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Lionheart
December 10th, 2009, 15:29
A new find recently has discovered that they can make batteries using sheets of Algae. Surprisingly, the materials are super lite-weight, inexpensive, and easy to manufacture, and are more efficient in holding electricity, recharge rates, and expenditure of electron flow.


Imagine wrapping paper that could be a gift in and of itself because it lights up with words like "Happy Birthday." That is one potential application of a new biodegradable battery made of cellulose, the stuff of paper.

Scientists worldwide are striving to develop thin, flexible, lightweight, inexpensive, environmentally friendly batteries made entirely from nonmetal parts. Among the most promising materials for these batteries are conducting polymers.

However, until now these have impractical for use in batteries — for instance, their ability to hold a charge often degrades over use.

Easy to make

The key to this new battery turned out to be an often bothersome green algae known as Cladophora. Rotting heaps of this hairlike freshwater plant throughout the world can lead to unsightly, foul-smelling beaches.

This algae makes an unusual kind of cellulose typified by a very large surface area, 100 times that of the cellulose found in paper. This allowed researchers to dramatically increase the amount of conducting polymer available for use in the new device, enabling it to better recharge, hold and discharge electricity.

"We have long hoped to find some sort of constructive use for the material from algae blooms and have now been shown this to be possible," said researcher Maria Strømme, a nanotechnologist at Uppsala University in Sweden. "This creates new possibilities for large-scale production of environmentally friendly, cost-effective, lightweight energy storage systems."

The new batteries consisted of extremely thin layers of conducting polymer just 40 to 50 nanometers or billionths of a meter wide coating algae cellulose fibers only 20 to 30 nanometers wide that were collected into paper sheets.

"They're very easy to make," Strømme said.

Quick to charge

They could hold 50 to 200 percent more charge than similar conducting polymer batteries, and once better optimized, they might even be competitive with commercial lithium batteries, the researchers noted. They also recharged much faster than conventional rechargeable batteries — while a regular battery takes at least an hour to recharge, the new batteries could recharge in anywhere from eight minutes to just 11 seconds.

The new battery also showed a dramatic boost in the ability to hold a charge over use. While a comparable polymer battery showed a 50 percent drop in the amount of charge it could hold after 60 cycles of discharging and recharging, the new battery showed just a 6 percent loss through 100 charging cycles.

"When you have thick polymer layers, it's hard to get all the material to recharge properly, and it turns into an insulator, so you lose capacity," said researcher Gustav Nyström, an electrochemist at Uppsala University. "When you have thin layers, you can get it fully discharged and recharged."

Flexible electronics

The researchers suggest their batteries appear well-suited for applications involving flexible electronics, such as clothing and packaging.

"We're not focused on replacing lithium ion batteries — we want to find new applications where batteries are not used today," Strømme told LiveScience. "What if you could put batteries inside wallpaper to charge sensors in your home? If you could put this into clothes, can you couple that with detectors to analyze sweat from your body to tell if there's anything wrong?"

Future directions of research include seeing how much charge these batteries lose over time, a problem with polymer batteries and all batteries in general. They also want to see how much they can scale up these batteries, "see if we can make them much, much larger," Strømme said.

The scientists detailed their last month in the journal Nano Letters.




More here;

http://www.livescience.com/technology/091125-paper-battery.html



Pretty amazing.. I always hold to my thoughts that batteries have a huge distance to go, that we are in a 'cave man' like era concerning batteries. I can only wonder what alien technologies have found out about batteries.


Bill

Chacha
December 10th, 2009, 15:31
Great Find!


Thanks .... I am still be reading... :jump:

Wing_Z
December 10th, 2009, 17:59
Interesting find...the amount of energy that's being invested (pun intended) in battery research...there is a dam about to burst.
Any day now, and the winner is going to be very very wealthy.
Cars will drive this (pun again, wow!) and the first mainstream models are with us from next year.

Lionheart
December 10th, 2009, 18:14
The one thing that really keeps people away from electric cars isnt speed or accelleration, as they can out perform some gas engines in that, even some dragsters.

The real issue is 'duration' and 'time to recharge'.

With recharge time lowered to say several min's, that would replicate filling up a car at a pump. You would simply wait a moment and its charged to full again. In that case, you wouldnt be stranded in the desert for 6 hours waiting for your car to charge to get to California, (or Arizona).

Having enough power for driving say 120 to 200 miles would also be nice. Highway distances at those figures would make it totally logical to own if its cost effective and doesnt use Alcaida fluid... :d

Bjoern
December 11th, 2009, 08:42
Noted.

Might be a useful component for my thesis.

cheezyflier
December 11th, 2009, 09:37
The one thing that really keeps people away from electric cars isnt speed or accelleration, as they can out perform some gas engines in that, even some dragsters.

The real issue is 'duration' and 'time to recharge'.

With recharge time lowered to say several min's, that would replicate filling up a car at a pump. You would simply wait a moment and its charged to full again. In that case, you wouldnt be stranded in the desert for 6 hours waiting for your car to charge to get to California, (or Arizona).

Having enough power for driving say 120 to 200 miles would also be nice. Highway distances at those figures would make it totally logical to own if its cost effective and doesnt use Alcaida fluid... :d


at that point, the cars body could also be the battery. pretty cool stuff.
soon we could have electric planes too.

afaik, al qaeda's money comes from poppy's used to make opium and heroin.

stansdds
December 12th, 2009, 06:14
I'm sure some of that oil money gets funneled to them as well, possibly as bribes to keep them from destroying oil facilities or terrorizing people of oil producing nations, but that's really not the topic.

Money has been spent on hydrogen powered cars, electric cars, and hybrids, all have their problems. Ultimately, I think the electric car will win if the batteries can be small and light weight, recharged quickly, if the car can travel several hundred miles at highway speeds before needed a few hours of recharging, and if the batteries are durable. Will algae powered batteries be the key? Who knows, but it is interesting science.

Lionheart
December 12th, 2009, 08:00
I'm sure some of that oil money gets funneled to them as well,

It does. Saudi Arabia's kings wife's account funded al-caida just before the WTC attack.


Money has been spent on hydrogen powered cars, electric cars, and hybrids, all have their problems.

Even gas cars have their issues, especially pollution. An interesting concept for todays regular commuters, is that the average person only drives about 10 to 20 miles a day now, if that. For long trips, they could just rent a car that can go far distances on a tank of fuel instead of jumps to charge points.

When they can make batteries that can instantly be charged instead of waiting, then they will really have something. People are very impatient, typically.



Ultimately, I think the electric car will win if the batteries can be small and light weight,

Presently, the Toyota Prius has D sized batteries, lolol... Tons of them! These could be moved around into small nooks and crannies in a car, from door panels to center consoles to dash board inner cell zones, to areas near the fenders, etc.


Will algae powered batteries be the key? Who knows, but it is interesting science.

Batteries are an interesting science. We've found many 'grape' batteries in ancient Egyptian archeological dig sites. The batteries were used mainly for coating small gadgets with gold plating, setting up a diode electric flow. The enzymes in grapes which fueled the batteries would set off the electron flow and cause the battery to work. They somehow knew how to set up the diode and annode and how it travelled through metals.

Electricity from grapes... Imagine that.


Bill

Snuffy
December 12th, 2009, 08:51
Just think ... an electric car .. er ... truck ... run on a couple of 55 gallon drums with pond water and a load of algae in them.

How cool is that for a redneck ride??!! :jump:

stansdds
December 12th, 2009, 10:02
The Egyptians got their knowledge of batteries from the same place the got their knowledge of construction, aliens.

What?

Why is everyone staring at me?

cheezyflier
December 12th, 2009, 11:06
The Egyptians got their knowledge of batteries from the same place the got their knowledge of construction, aliens.



the pyramids were built with slave labor. guess who those slaves were?
maybe the egyptions were using "borrowed technology" as you suggest.
maybe it really was off-planet as well. it still fits, in a round about way

Lionheart
December 12th, 2009, 13:26
arrgh... Dont get me going, lol... Im trying to hold back..


dang.. ok, here's a tidbit on Cheops pyramid. Amazingly, the main sarcophagus (referred to also as coffins at times), had no details on it, no writings, nothing. Nothing inside nor outside.

3 American business owners that have their own successful stone cutting businesses were flown to Egypt to analyze how the Sarcophagus was created. They said that it was definately machined from a single piece of Diurite (is that the correct mineral?) which is an extremely super hard stone on Earth and that presently, no one makes cutting heads that can cut that stone that well. This was approximately 10 years ago. We might have that technology by now though. They said also that it was machined. They pointed to how it was carved and showed the grains that it was cut at. They said no one can do that here... (So that rules out little old craftsman with bronze axes banging away at a pile of diaurite for 20 years to make this thing).

So the main Sarcophagus was 'alien' to the 'Egyptian' environment. Hence they still believe it to be dated to about 10,000+ years old.

Some want to know what was in it..... Something was able to crack it open and slide the cap stone off and take what was inside.


Another oddity of the Sarcophagus is that if you sleep in it, you have the wierdest dreams you have ever had and they say that no one will do it twice in a row... I think they said this of a Mayan or Incan pyramid as well saying that it linked into the spirit world and their men could train in battle in these things.




Who knows.. :d



Bill

Wing_Z
December 12th, 2009, 16:42
Round about post #9...I was going to make a wiseguy crack about Egyptians and alien visitors...whew! glad I resisted that! :d

cheezyflier
December 12th, 2009, 18:46
arrgh... Dont get me going, lol... Im trying to hold back..

don't hold back! fly! be free! :icon_lol:







Who knows.. :d



a handful of long dead egyptians, i suppose :wavey: