Oct 17th 2014
Know How... 115
Batteries, Tor Bundle, and Quadcopter Pt. 1
Hosted by
Bryan Burnett,
Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ
Batteries, Tor Bundle, and Quadcopter Part One
Although the show is no longer in production, you can enjoy episodes from the TWiT Archives.
How rust and nanotubes will make quick charging batteries, basics using the Tor Bundle, and part one of building your own Quadcopter.
Let's Talk about Lithium-Ion Batteries!
* They're everywhere!
-- Your phone/laptop/watch/Cars/Quadcopters
We like them because they contain a lot of power and are relatively easy to build into designs
But there are a few problems:
-1. Runnaway reactions
-2. Limited Use: a few hundred to a few thousand charge cycles, and the cells are useless
-3. Charge time: There are SOME LiPos that can handle a ridiculous amount of charging current, but fast charging usually KILLS the life-span of the cells.
** Li-Po cells are only safe as long as the chemistry is stable. If you overcharge a cell, or over-current the charging, or if you leave it in a full-power SoC (State of Charge) for too long, the chemistry became unstable and you get gassing, fires, death/destruction.
There has been some promising research with Lithium-Poly cells that incorporate carbon nanotubes:
* Carbon Nanotubes are EXCEPTIONALLY good at stabilizing battery chemistry and improving its ability to absorb MORE charge, to receive it more quickly and discharge it more quickly
** In other words, Carbon-Nanotubes can hold more, charge faster, and give more power/more quickly to the device being powered.
Unfortunately, we STILL haven't mastered the manufacturing of carbon nanotubes in quantity. So batteries with carbon nanotubes, though very promising, are ridicuously expensive and rare.
Luckily... a few researches at Nanyang Technical University in Signapore MAY have found an alternative to the elusive, expensive, and all too-rare nanotubes: ---
*** RUSTED TITANIUM ***
* Professor Chen Xiaodong -- NTU School of Materials Science and Engineering
-- Discovered a way to form Titanium Dioxide (Rusted Titanium) into nanotubes
-- The nanotubes are kept in suspension within a gel
When the gel is introduced into Lithium-Poly chemistry, the tiny nanotubes GREATLY increase the amount of surface area within the cell:
-- This increases the surface area for reactions within the cell, which GREATLY increases the amount of charge it can safely take
-- It also increase the amount of power it can safely discharge
-- Because the Titanium Dioxide is in nanotube form, it stabilizes the chemistry of the LiPo and increases the lifespan of a typical cell by more than 10x that of a traditional cell. (20 years vs. 2 years)
This means we can have have LiPo batteries that can charge in seconds and minutes instead of minutes and hours.
-- Used in EVs, we could have 2 minute recharges
-- With faster recharges, we could reduce the size of our battery packs (because it's fast to charge)
In other words... the future... compliments of RUST!
Download the Tor Bundle
https://www.torproject.org/