Xing estimates that if lithium-air progresses like lithium-ion, the battery used in electric cars today, it will take 15 to 20 years to go commercial. But high-risk research like his -- which may catapult the technology ahead or slam into a dead end -- could change that calendar. "Obviously, if a breakthrough technology is successful, that's going to shorten the time a lot," he said.
Xing isn't the mad inventor working on rocket packs, mechanized human wings or time machines in his garage. To most, he probably comes off like most engineering professors: bookish, private, inclined to discuss factual matters rather than tarry on questions of meaning.
Yet in this anonymity, Xing has advanced science that could turn the dawn of the electric car into an era. It's sprung from careful, plodding chemistry, at the intersection of fuel cells and batteries, that he and a half-dozen graduate students have worked on for six years.
Finding its way to the ultimate risk-taker
A couple years ago, he realized this work could apply to lithium-air, already known as the holy grail of the field. Yet when he floated the idea to a few business contacts, they hedged. There was no guarantee the research would succeed, they pointed out, and the professor had no prototype to prove he could turn math into machines. Xing's idea was stranded.
Then ARPA-E was born, and he sensed a rare opportunity. So he called up some of his contacts from over the years -- a government lab, a small battery company, a nanotechnology research firm -- and decided to try his chances.
Xing's group was up against 220 other battery proposals, including plans from Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and companies with deep roots in government labs. Yet his idea made the final cut of 10 projects.
Now he has a $1.2 million grant to use over three years. After he hires some more researchers, the entire team will have about a dozen people.
So how exactly does one search for a breakthrough? Xing is cagey. Asked to expand on the specific work he's doing, he said he can't discuss the technical details of his research. He only said he's developing a new electrode and a new catalyst for lithium-air.
This is about as specific as a jet designer saying he's working on a new type of engine. But Xing isn't the only one treating his ARPA-E project sensitively. The other lithium-air awardee, PolyPlus Battery Company Inc., a spinoff from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory considered a world leader in the technology, didn't return ClimateWire's messages. Two other ARPA-E awardees, each working on other types of cutting-edge batteries, declined to talk to ClimateWire.
What is known about Xing's work is that it focuses on the major scientific challenges that keep lithium-air from practicality.
Most batteries are self-contained units. They hold materials whose chemical relationship essentially kicks electrically charged particles called ions from one side of the battery to the other. When ions get punted one way, the battery generates electricity; when they go the other direction, the battery stores energy.
Lithium-air batteries work similarly, but they aren't self-contained units. One of the "kickers" is actually a doorway to the outside world. It's a porous sheet whose only job is to let oxygen in, because that drives the chemical reactions that keep the kicking game going. This sheet takes up a lot less space than the solid material needed in other batteries, like iron, cobalt or manganese. Voilà: The battery holds just as much energy, but would take up a fifth of the space of lithium-ion batteries used in today's electric vehicles.
That sounds basic, but no one has found the right recipe yet. Indeed, scientists are still working out the basics.
What a 'breakthrough' has to be
Xing and his team are working on two aspects. The first is using nanotechnology to make a porous sheet that "breathes" oxygen more efficiently. The other challenge is finding a material that binds oxygen just as easily as it lets oxygen go; otherwise, the battery's not rechargeable, and it's useless for electric cars.
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18 Comments
Add CommentWhat is happening with the liquid salt and the liquid metal batteries that was slanted to be mega charge batteries?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this+1 to the Edgar Casey reference! Now we need to dig under the spynx's paw.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs I understand and recall, in the 1970s ARPA-net was not a magnanimous gift bestowed upon private industry, as implied in this article, but a method for the military to foster better communications among its widespread scientific project development subcontractors working in academia. It did work well and academics expanded its use for other scientific projects.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow will ARPA-E ensure that any successful technological development produced by its taxpayer funded grantees will lead to products manufactured in the U.S. and sold by U.S. companies? Many successful Asian manufactured technologies were developed in the U.S. – there seems to be no ability or even desire for any industry to use U.S. developments to benefit U.S. companies and workers. Of the grants that have been given, how many have been awarded to foreign nationals or those with close family or personal contacts with foreign citizens? If grants are going to universities, how many foreign national students will be working on them? I'm not being bigoted in any way, but ARPA-E seems to present itself as encouraging developments that directly benefit the U.S. economy. This does not seem to me to be a feasible objective.
Well the article actually suggests exactly how this funding will impact production. By the way, ARPAnet was only one of MANY DARPA and later ARPA projects that impacted civilian tech. Things like cell phones and composite materials can also be linked right back to the bad old days of the cold war.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is a targeted program aimed at a well understood failing of the U.S. research and development community. Which is, as cited in the article, the lack of willingness to expend funding on development of good research leads. ARPA E directly addresses this failing by providing a stepping stone.
It is clear to me that this attracts venture capital because several ARPA E projects are already attracting attention from commercial investors to the tune of millions of dollars. Hopefully a lot of the ideas so funded will attract attention here at home and not get shipped overseas for a quick buck.
The main potential problems I see are with technologies that industry might see as requiring them to abandon technologies that are still very profitable to them. We have a somewhat short sighted set of models for industry in this country and one can only hope that is changing.
It's worth noting that not all of the projects being overseen by ARPA E are small companies or universities. I know of at least one large car company that has submitted ideas as well.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry, but I find no mention of any method ensuring that taxpayer funded developments will only be implemented by U.S. manufacturing companies. For that matter, many U.S. manufacturing companies are manufacturing overseas, displacing U.S. workers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWho will might be granted the patents for new technologies developed under these grants? I guess it's not the U.S. taxpayers or ARPA-E. Who has control over international manufacturing rights? As I understand, its the patent holder, if anyone.
Please let me know (specifically) if I'm missing something.
Mag-lev monorail system could travel above the traffic, ignore the bad weather such as ice and snow, carry thousands of people and cargo at hundreds of miles per hour without human intervention. Once in motion inertia and magnetic tunnels would let the train (pods)clear steeper grades. Gravity would accelerate it to lower elevations.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are no guarantees in this world. If the U.S. wants to be a manufacturing center then it needs to clean up its act. We need to upgrade infrastructure, enact a SANE and cost effective health care system that doesn't cost 4x more than it should, etc. Instead, in their infinite wisdom, the voters of this country have elected a bunch of ignoramuses to Congress, insuring that idiocy and foolishness will continue to be the word of the day.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMore to the point, what exactly would ARPA-e do to 'insure' that any technology developed under its auspices would be used in U.S. manufacturing? You could slap a bunch of contract language onto your grants, but if it is 4x cheaper to make stuff in China, then that's where it will end up being made, one way or another. Alternately nobody actually interested in making money will touch anything tainted with such grants with a 10' pole. It is like sticking a 'you must walk on water' clause into a contract. You can do it, but there's a 100% chance it still won't actually happen.
It is incredible that the author focuses on the energy density of Lithium-air batteries, comparing it to gasoline, but provides no numeric data for energy density.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI guess they assume the reader has not made it through a high school physics course - or perhaps the reporter has not.
I agree - my comments were directed to the inference repeated in the article that taxpayer investments in ARPA-E technological developments would revitalize the U.S. economy:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The White House argues that if lithium-air achieves a breakthrough, or any of the other battery technologies do, the payoff will be huge. Money normally spent on foreign oil could stay in the U.S. economy. One-hundred-thirty-million cars in the United States, gradually turning electric, would revitalize the auto industry as well as its suppliers in the Midwest. More manufacturing jobs would sprout up to supply the tons of minerals and materials that go into the batteries. Used-up batteries could find a second life on the grid."
By the way, wiki says that Chile and Argentina are currently the largest producers of lithium, but "China may emerge as a significant producer of brine-source lithium carbonate around 2010. There is potential production of up to 55,000 tonnes per year if projects in Qinghai province and Tibet proceed."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis could lead to the breakthrough in batteries that we've been waiting for (for 200 yrs.?), or it could be another mirage distracting from more realistic scenarios for reducing GHG's. It might be good to recall that over the last 50 yrs. there have been many similar announcements of a revolutionary battery technology which was going to solve everything....with just a bit more research and money.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs people have suggested above, the killer job argument is so dishonest: what technology is harnessed in the end is less relevant than other factors affecting the US as a manufacturing base.
Poor obama ... he never gets his facts correct and misleads the ignorant. The Internet was not because of government 'investment' but rather a natural evolution of the electronic communications between researchers. Most of the growth of the internet was private VC's betting on companies like cisco. GPS was developed for the military to drop bombs on target and make sure troops don't get lost. Most of the real advances from government investments that we use as civilian were first developed for the military. Even the interstate highway system was developed to defend the US by facilitating military troop movement and defense transportation. Same for railroads.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGovernment investments specifically for civilian use are pretty sorry as far as returns. The government is good at getting industries together and setting STANDARDS. When they try to set standards or ‘invent’ stuff, they fail. When you bet your own money, you succeed. Bet someone else’s money and you just don’t care. That’s why VC’s sit on boards and control management. They get smarter guys to watch the smart guys.
On the surface, lithium air batteries seem like a good bet. However, they suffer from a lot of issues that are pretty basic:
1) If a battery will provide charge for 500 miles – 10 hours of discharge – it will take more than 10 hours to charge – battery exchanges rather than gas stations?
2) Lithium is not the nicest element. The EPA probably will not let us make batteries here. Where do you get this much lithium and what do you do with old batteries? Recycle?
In the end, we have to develop BIOLOGCAL engines that are not heat engines but use ATP for efficient power conversion. Or develop analogs to what has evolved in Nature.
Battery power density is a major stumbling block preventing the widespread use of electric vehicles, but it is not the only one. As co2dog points out, recharging is also a problem. I doubt that battery swap will provide a viable solution. Imagine you've just bought a shiny new electric car. A substantial part of its value lies in the batteries. Are you happy to take it into a 'filling station' after a few hundred miles and have the battery replaced by a unit of whose history you are completely unaware? I don't think so.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLook at the amount of energy currently used in transportation. According to DoE figures, it's close to 2/3 of that used in electricity generation. Even being generous about the differing efficiencies, the US would need something like 50% more generating capacity to power an all-electric transportation system. And every filling station will need a multi-megawatt supply, so you will also need a radical upgrade of the grid.
I think it will be highly entertaining when we solve the energy/transportation issue just in time for telecommunications to radically alter the need for personal transport to a much less demanding level. With geothermal heatpumps the electricity demand for summer and winter peak times will drop quite a bit. Machinery will still need power but thermal exchange will work much better and working from home will become wide spread. A productivity based pay system should gradually edge out inaccurate pay for time systems that are currently dominant. As agriculture continues to adopt a less intrusive model that uses precision fertilizing, pesticide spraying and watering, the amount of energy used to grow food will drop as well. By 2050 I personally feel that energy usage per person will have dropped significantly world wide. I doubt that population levels will be such that we can sustain our current level of technology penetration but I guess we will see.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree. I'd also like to see the details of the comparison of pollution from gasoline powered cars vs. electric powered by a 50% coal-fired grid.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"there seems to be no ability or even desire for any industry to use U.S. developments to benefit U.S. companies and workers"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the main true, primarily due to the demands and greed of America's unionistic workers (ie. high school graduates working as auto workers getting $75./hr incl. benefits 5 yrs ago) The desire to make more money on the part of management has also been a factor. However new U.S. discoveries do benefit U.S. interests in smaller ways, such as at management levels and, sometimes, in U.S. assembly plants (using foreign made parts)
Agreed, as things stand now there is no way this much benefit will acrue to America. However lesser benefits would probably happen, such as the benefit to the environment of cleaner cars, some of which would probably at least be assembled in the U.S. Also one never knows which way the technology would branch out. There could be other related products and, if the manufacturing was highly technical then, at least for a time, it may be done in the U.S.
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