The
days of $1.50 gasoline are long gone, and high costs coupled with
environmental concerns have ignited a search for the battery that will
power the cars of the future. IBM is at the forefront of this effort
with its development of the lithium air super-battery that can
power electric vehicles for 500 miles in a single charge. On Friday
(2012.04.20), Big Blue announced that material innovation developers Asahi Kasei and Central Glass had joined its Battery 500 Project team to develop new battery technology for electric vehicles.
Challenge for Today’s Electric Car
President Obama had previously made development of electric vehicles a priority of his administration, and to date has provided a US$7,500 tax credit for buyers of plug-in cars, and has further provided billions of dollars in grants and loans to companies for vehicle and battery development through Energy Department programs.
However, drivers aren't plugging in yet. The mass adoption of electric vehicles has fallen short of optimistic projections, and even highly touted vehicles such as the Chevy Volt have missed sales targets, according to a report from Lux Research. Two impediments have been the cost of the vehicles and the range of their batteries.
"The limited range of electric cars is slowing down their adoption," Michael Holman, research director at Lux Research, told TechNewsWorld. "This new technology has the potential to address those issues for car buyers. If it's possible to increase the range, that might make the decision to buy an electric car easier for consumers."
A Battery of the Future
The goal "is to create a battery that will power the typical family car about 500 miles between recharges," explains Winfried Wilcke, Senior Manager, Nanoscale Science and Technology with IBM. "Today's batteries...fall short of this goal by quite a factor, with [the best batteries] only lasting approximately 200 to 240 miles."
Bridging this gap requires drastically increasing the battery's energy density by making it lighter. IBM reduces the weight by getting rid of the heavy transition metal oxides like cobalt oxide or manganese oxide and replacing them with a lightweight, high-surface carbon structure.
The lithium air battery represents "the highest energy density of any imaginable system," says Wilcke, "but it's not easy to do. It's a long-term project currently in its early science phases, but in the last six or seven months we have gotten a lot of positive results, which make me cautiously optimistic that this can actually work."
Bridging this gap requires drastically increasing the battery's energy density by making it lighter. IBM reduces the weight by getting rid of the heavy transition metal oxides like cobalt oxide or manganese oxide and replacing them with a lightweight, high-surface carbon structure.
The lithium air battery represents "the highest energy density of any imaginable system," says Wilcke, "but it's not easy to do. It's a long-term project currently in its early science phases, but in the last six or seven months we have gotten a lot of positive results, which make me cautiously optimistic that this can actually work."
Materials scientists for years have been pursuing lithium air batteries, which use oxygen from the air to react with lithium ions to discharge and charge electric energy. It still remains in the realm of research but Wilcke said that IBM has made progress understanding the basic chemistry and made important decisions on how a working battery would be engineered.
"New materials development is vitally important to ensuring the viability of lithium-air battery technology," said Tatsuya Mori, director and executive managing officer of Central Glass. "As a longstanding partner of IBM and leader in developing high-performance electrolytes for batteries, we're excited to share each other's chemical and scientific expertise in a field as exciting as electric vehicles."
The key difference with lithium-air batteries is that these have higher energy density than lithium-ion batteries, while the primary "fuel" is the oxygen, which is readily available in the atmosphere. As a result, lithium-air technology promises a battery that offers a longer range and one that could be smaller than existing batteries -- but other issues remain.
"This technology is still similar in ways to conventional lithium-ion batteries," said Holman, "so the number of cycle lives could still be an issue. With each charge, tendrils form -- and these get larger each time until the battery can no longer be recharged."
Wilcke hopes to have a lithium air battery in cars by 2020. A battery that could power a car for 500 miles would certainly be worth the wait.
Wilcke hopes to have a lithium air battery in cars by 2020. A battery that could power a car for 500 miles would certainly be worth the wait.
Big Blue’s Blue-sky Research
IBM's gamble swims against a 50-year trend. U.S. companies used to perform their own basic research, but they have increasingly turned this over to universities and the government. Today, most companies' research and development divisions focus on applied research -- work that is likely to make money for the company soon.
In late 2009, IBM applied for a Department of Energy grant to defray some of the cost of this risky research. But DOE chose to fund two other lithium-air projects -- not IBM's. All the grants occurred under the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E. IBM's choice to continue the research puts it in a rare category: a big company willing to take a big risk.
Winfried said it's been tricky to make the battery rechargeable -- even to measure that it's recharging. But after seeing progress over the last six months, he said, "I have got a lot more optimistic that it will work, actually."
Winfried said it's been tricky to make the battery rechargeable -- even to measure that it's recharging. But after seeing progress over the last six months, he said, "I have got a lot more optimistic that it will work, actually."
IBM wants a "substantial demonstration" or lab demo in three years, Wilcke said. He wouldn't say how much money or how many people it has put to the task. ARPA-E's lithium-air awardees received about $5 million and $1 million, respectively.
Michael Holman, research director at Lux Research, keeps an eye on breakthrough battery technologies like lithium-air. He calls IBM "a bit of a throwback" to a time when companies did "blue-sky" research.
Some companies still do this today, Holman said, not least because the "R&D playgrounds" attract great scientists.
When asked why IBM is pursuing this research, Wilcke observed that the company doesn't currently make its money in batteries: "We have the resources, we can think long-term."
He said world demand for cars is about to double, thanks to India and China. "Now we would have to be blind not to see the mother of all opportunities: environment and the clean world," he said.
In three years, Wilcke said, he should have enough information to either advance the technology with IBM's commercial partners, or to say, "Nah, doesn't work, shut it down. I'm perfectly willing to do the latter if it turns out to be the right thing to do."
Update:
- 2012.04.22 - original post
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