Speaker 1: Welcome to text Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech and today it's time
Speaker 1: for another classic episode of tech Stuff. This episode originally
Speaker 1: published on June third, two thirteen. It is titled The
Speaker 1: Evolution of Batteries. So we talk all about how batteries
Speaker 1: were first invented and then how they changed over time.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you'll get a real charge out of it.
Speaker 1: Let's listen. You have something called Moore's law. That's that
Speaker 1: observation that in general, microprocessors get twice the number of
Speaker 1: discrete elements, or if you prefer to think of it
Speaker 1: in another way, microprocessors tend to get twice as powerful
Speaker 1: every two years or so. Yeah. This is not exponential growth,
Speaker 1: which I have called it in previous episodes, by the way,
Speaker 1: and people right in every time and call it. Take
Speaker 1: us to task on it, which is important because it's
Speaker 1: a misuse of the word exponential. I'm using it's a
Speaker 1: colloquial use, but I do not want to go down
Speaker 1: that hole again because I'm like you, guys, I get
Speaker 1: irritated when people misuse words too. I just wish I
Speaker 1: didn't do it as frequently myself, But anyway, it does
Speaker 1: double every two years or so, and that's a phenomenal
Speaker 1: amount of growth. We're talking about microprocessors that have billions
Speaker 1: of discrete elements on them now, and they're all down
Speaker 1: at the nano scale. So there's this amazing amount of
Speaker 1: technology that's been poured into microprocessors, partially because More's Law
Speaker 1: exists and companies strive to to keep up with it,
Speaker 1: to maintain it because Moore's Law, as we know it
Speaker 1: is not a real physical law. It's more of an observation,
Speaker 1: and companies no one wants to be the company that
Speaker 1: comes up and says, yeah, we can't do that. You know,
Speaker 1: we just got bored. So it means that there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of innovation in that space. But mean, while
Speaker 1: on the battery front, batteries have in large part remain
Speaker 1: more or less the same for decades. I mean, we've
Speaker 1: we've seen improvements in battery life, we've seen improvements in
Speaker 1: battery efficiency, but there have been some new technologies over
Speaker 1: the past fifty years. But even so, it just hasn't
Speaker 1: it hasn't at all kept up with the microprocessors assessor side.
Speaker 1: This is also, by the way, this ties into our
Speaker 1: episodes where we talked about things like the Singularity, where
Speaker 1: we talk about how technology doesn't all progress at the
Speaker 1: same rate. So while we do see devices getting more
Speaker 1: and more sophisticated and powerful, uh, the power supplies aren't
Speaker 1: keeping up with that trend. So it may be that
Speaker 1: the singularity, if it is ever going to arrive, is
Speaker 1: further off than what some people think simply because the
Speaker 1: power side of the equation is lagging behind, uh, the
Speaker 1: the technological sophistication side. So why is that. Well to
Speaker 1: understand that, we kind of have to one talk about
Speaker 1: what a battery is and to sort of look at
Speaker 1: the history of the development of batteries and talk about
Speaker 1: what exactly it does. Now on a very very basic level,
Speaker 1: a battery is something that uses electrochemical reactions so that
Speaker 1: you can guide electrons through a circuit and have it
Speaker 1: do work. And that's about it. Yeah, that's that's really
Speaker 1: all a battery is. And it's because there are certain
Speaker 1: chemicals that when they have these reactions, they lose electrons
Speaker 1: in the process, and if you are able to control
Speaker 1: the flow of those electrons. Then you've got a battery.
Speaker 1: So batteries date back possibly as long as though more
Speaker 1: than two thousand years ago. Yeah, these these clay jars
Speaker 1: found in modern day Iraq and you might have might
Speaker 1: have heard of them called Bagdad batteries where um, yeah,
Speaker 1: clay jars that contained an iron rod en cased in copper.
Speaker 1: Tests suggest that the jars were at some point filled
Speaker 1: with with with something acidic like vinegar or wine, and
Speaker 1: modern day replicas have successfully created an electric charge. They
Speaker 1: might have been used for something like a like any
Speaker 1: anything from religious rituals and medicinal purposes to even electro plating. Right,
Speaker 1: And if you've seen if you're a big MythBusters fan,
Speaker 1: you may have seen an episode where they actually showed
Speaker 1: these They created one of these batteries and then they
Speaker 1: tried to see if they could get enough of a
Speaker 1: charge for it to be detectable. Um, so that that's
Speaker 1: an indication of that we were familiar with the fact
Speaker 1: that certain materials, under certain circumstances could omit this weird energy.
Speaker 1: Now at that time we weren't necessarily really aware of
Speaker 1: all the things that could do, but that would change
Speaker 1: as the centuries would pass. The next big date I
Speaker 1: have is quite some time later, which is and that's
Speaker 1: when Alessandro Volta, Count Alessandro Volta, he's only one. If
Speaker 1: there were more than one, I would killt him. Oh, sorry,
Speaker 1: you're talking about a nobility rank. So Count Volta created
Speaker 1: a battery by stacking alternating layers of zinc. Lawrence just
Speaker 1: checked out at this point zinc, brine, soaked cloth or paper, uh,
Speaker 1: and silver. He used these alternating layers kind of a
Speaker 1: sandwich here. And we call this a voltaic peel peel
Speaker 1: because it's French and uh and and voltaic after volta, yes,
Speaker 1: and so uh. The this this peel or pile if
Speaker 1: you prefer, because it is a pile oh stuff. When
Speaker 1: you put it in this this configuration, you start getting
Speaker 1: these chemical reactions that emit electrons. And you could make
Speaker 1: the stack taller and taller to get more electrons a
Speaker 1: stronger flow of current through this peel. But in order
Speaker 1: to do that, you actually had to stack it up
Speaker 1: so high that eventually the weight from the top would
Speaker 1: start to squish the layers on the bottom, which would
Speaker 1: kind of make the brine soak out. And that would
Speaker 1: make it less effective, and also the metal itself would
Speaker 1: start to corrode fairly quickly from the brine and movement
Speaker 1: the electrons. Right. It just wasn't wasn't a practical way
Speaker 1: of generating electricity, but it showed the premise and it
Speaker 1: gave scientists the idea of there's something here and if
Speaker 1: we can figure out other ways of generating the same
Speaker 1: kind of energy, we might be able to harness it
Speaker 1: for something. Skipping ahead, I mean there there are lots
Speaker 1: of different developments in this technology. I have two specific ones.
Speaker 1: I think you have a few more. The next really
Speaker 1: effective one um was eighty six. Yeah, John Frederick Daniel,
Speaker 1: who was an English physicist. He created what we now
Speaker 1: call the Daniel cell, which was a you take a
Speaker 1: glass jar and on the bottom of the glass jar
Speaker 1: you put on in a copper plate, so copper plate
Speaker 1: in the bottom of the glass jar, and there's a
Speaker 1: wire from the copper plate that comes out of the jar.
Speaker 1: Then you pour copper sulfate on top of that copper
Speaker 1: plate to about the halfway point of the jar. Then
Speaker 1: you suspend a zinc plate in the jar, and then
Speaker 1: you pour zinc sulfate solution on top of the zinc plate. Now,
Speaker 1: zinc sulfate is less dense than copper sulfate, so zinc
Speaker 1: sulfate will float on top of copper sulfate. If you've
Speaker 1: ever played with liquids of different densities that had different colors,
Speaker 1: then you know what I'm talking about. You can see
Speaker 1: that actual level of division. Yeah, it's actually it's one
Speaker 1: of my favorite things. I just think it's super cool
Speaker 1: when it When I see that, I'm easily amused, I
Speaker 1: admit it. But anyway, you also have a wire coming
Speaker 1: from the zinc plate uh and exiting the jar. So
Speaker 1: a wire attached to this would become that that zinc
Speaker 1: plate becomes the negative terminal that's where the electrons are
Speaker 1: flowing from, and the copper plate becomes the positive terminal
Speaker 1: that's where electrons are flowing too. And so if you
Speaker 1: were to connect the two wires together, it would very
Speaker 1: quickly burn out this battery. But if you were to
Speaker 1: connect it to a circuit, it could actually do uh,
Speaker 1: it could or a load as we call it, It It
Speaker 1: could actually do work. So again, not terribly practical. It
Speaker 1: it was useful for anything that was stationary. But you
Speaker 1: know you're talking about a liquid battery here. So it's
Speaker 1: not something that you could easily carry around or put
Speaker 1: into portable electronics, right right, Yeah, and there's there's a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot more elegant ways of getting that
Speaker 1: that electrol kind of solution of of you know, just
Speaker 1: just a charged molecule then yeah, yeah, And it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be until we developed dry cell battery technology that we
Speaker 1: started to find practical ways of using it in portable means,
Speaker 1: you know. And even then, you know, the batteries weren't
Speaker 1: small enough to use in what we consider portable electronics today,
Speaker 1: but you could move it around. Uh. The kind of
Speaker 1: Daniel cells that that John Frederick Daniel created were useful
Speaker 1: for different technologies, things like telephones. It was stuff that
Speaker 1: back then you did not carry around. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you kids know this, but telephones used to be
Speaker 1: these things that were extremely stationary. It's only recently that
Speaker 1: we started carrying them around. Uh. Anyway, that's the kind
Speaker 1: of battery that became popular for that. Uh. Now, did
Speaker 1: you have any other ones who wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: before we move onto the basics of batteries. Rechargeable batteries,
Speaker 1: The science for that started um started with research around
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty nine or so when a French physicist, Gaston
Speaker 1: Plant invented the lead acid cell um and that that
Speaker 1: was a that was a precursor to to modern day
Speaker 1: car batteries. So there you have, you know, the discovery
Speaker 1: that this chemical reaction that takes place within a battery,
Speaker 1: you get compounds that form out of it, and it
Speaker 1: makes the battery over time less effective. That's why batteries die. Eventually,
Speaker 1: the active elements that would create the flow of electrons
Speaker 1: end up combining with other stuff and for the purposes
Speaker 1: of of passing a current through a circuit, they become
Speaker 1: a nert. Yeah. Yeah, something either wears out or um
Speaker 1: or maybe the the anode or cathode could could dissolve
Speaker 1: in the solution. Right, you just essentially what it means
Speaker 1: is that you run out of the stuff you need
Speaker 1: in order to make it to make this go, right,
Speaker 1: and so what what was it? Plant believe? Yes, what
Speaker 1: Plant discovered was that for some kinds of solutions, if
Speaker 1: you were to pass electric current through the system as
Speaker 1: opposed to siphoning it off, you could reverse this process
Speaker 1: and yeah, and create a battery that can be used
Speaker 1: more than once. Right Now, this does not work for
Speaker 1: all batteries, which is why you can't just throw any
Speaker 1: regular battery into a recharger and expect it to come
Speaker 1: out fine. If you did that to a to a
Speaker 1: you know, to adrist cell or something like that, mostly
Speaker 1: just explode. Right that these are has to be batteries
Speaker 1: that are using specific uh compounds in it for it
Speaker 1: to have this this reversible reaction, because not all compounds
Speaker 1: will reverse some of them once they're done, they're done
Speaker 1: and battery. We will talk about that a little bit
Speaker 1: a little bit later, but but let's let's talk about
Speaker 1: how how exactly this this circuitry works. Okay, So, if
Speaker 1: you've ever looked at a battery, you've seen that there's
Speaker 1: a side that is labeled as a plus and one
Speaker 1: that's labeled as a minus. So positive and negative. If
Speaker 1: you're looking at like a nine volt battery, then they're
Speaker 1: next to each other. If you're looking at double a's
Speaker 1: or whatever, then it's on one end and the other.
Speaker 1: So the negative end the that's where the electrons flow
Speaker 1: out of. That's the electrons flow from that end through
Speaker 1: a circuit and into the positive end. Uh. Now we
Speaker 1: know that you know the uh, the opposite charges attract,
Speaker 1: so that's why the negative wants to get to the positive.
Speaker 1: And inside the the the battery itself, there is a
Speaker 1: chemical called or a compound called an electro light. Now
Speaker 1: the electro light has a very important job. It blocks
Speaker 1: those electrons from just passing from the negative side to
Speaker 1: the positive side directly direct That would burn, burn everything out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that you wouldn't have You wouldn't be able to power anything.
Speaker 1: The battery would just you would just have a chemical
Speaker 1: reaction inside a canister and it would be dead within
Speaker 1: however long it took for those reactions. Yeah. Um. So
Speaker 1: it does allow ions to pass through, but not electrons,
Speaker 1: and that becomes important. So the negative terminal is connected
Speaker 1: to something that's called the anode, the positive terminal is
Speaker 1: connected to what we call the cathode, and these together
Speaker 1: are the electrodes of a battery. Then you've got the
Speaker 1: separator between the anode and the cathode that's presenting that's
Speaker 1: preventing those two sides from reacting to each other. And
Speaker 1: you have the electro light that allows the electric charge
Speaker 1: to flow between cathode and anode, allowing the ions to
Speaker 1: pass through. While making sure the electrons don't. And then
Speaker 1: you have a collector, which is the part of the
Speaker 1: battery that conducts the charge to the outside of the
Speaker 1: battery and through whatever the load is, the electronic load,
Speaker 1: so the circuit um. So within that anode side, the
Speaker 1: negative side, the chemical reaction that takes place is called oxidation.
Speaker 1: It's an oxidation reaction. This ends up releasing ions, and
Speaker 1: the ions move through the electro light to combine on
Speaker 1: UH the other side, and then you've got uh the
Speaker 1: release of electrons that go through the circuitry. On the
Speaker 1: catholic side, you've got the reduction reaction. That's where the
Speaker 1: catholic material and the ions UH combine with the electrons
Speaker 1: that are coming in through the circuit that they form
Speaker 1: a new compound. And so essentially you've got the anode
Speaker 1: freeing up electrons, the cathode accepting electrons, and the electrons
Speaker 1: do work along the way. So if you were to
Speaker 1: actually connect a wire from the negative terminal to the
Speaker 1: positive terminal, you would allow that that pathway to be
Speaker 1: open and it would just start to burn up that
Speaker 1: battery pretty quickly. Don't do that. It's a waste of batteries.
Speaker 1: It's going to heat up that wire. It doesn't do
Speaker 1: anything other than kill your battery. But but that's what happens.
Speaker 1: It's so when you've got it plugged into something, whenever
Speaker 1: you turn the switch on to whatever it is, whether
Speaker 1: it's a you know, a lightsaber or a phaser. You know,
Speaker 1: I allow all lines of science fiction toys for batteries.
Speaker 1: But whenever you turn it on, it opens up that
Speaker 1: circuit and that allows the electrons to flow through. And
Speaker 1: when you turn it off, then the one of the
Speaker 1: gates gets closed essentially, and you no longer the connection
Speaker 1: is no longer there. So the battery stops the chemical reaction.
Speaker 1: It has to have that pathway open for the chemical
Speaker 1: reaction to keep going. Now, there are several different basic
Speaker 1: types of batteries that are out there, and we're just
Speaker 1: going to cover a couple of them, and we're covering
Speaker 1: them based upon the stuff that's inside them, right, because
Speaker 1: there's a whole bunch of different substances that you can
Speaker 1: use to create these reactions. Like like we said, so yeah, so,
Speaker 1: so one basic type is the is alkaline batteries. Uh,
Speaker 1: the anode in alkaline batteries tends to be zinc powder.
Speaker 1: So the anode again is that negative side that's where
Speaker 1: the electrons are coming from. The cathode side has uh,
Speaker 1: typically manganese dioxide, and the electrolyte is typically potassium hydroxide.
Speaker 1: These are the kind of batteries that you typically find
Speaker 1: in double a's, C and D batteries, right, and these
Speaker 1: are all examples of This is an example of dry
Speaker 1: cell batteries. Yes, which dry cell batteries. One of the
Speaker 1: big benefits of those that you don't have to worry
Speaker 1: about liquid slashing around inside the battery, so that allows
Speaker 1: it to be used in lots of applications. You know,
Speaker 1: anything that's liquid obviously you can't shake around too much
Speaker 1: or else just gonna disrupt it and you're not gonna
Speaker 1: have a working battery. For they're more they're more more volatile. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you want that, you want that in a very uh
Speaker 1: stationary position. Then you've got zinc carbon batteries. Uh. These
Speaker 1: have an anode that has that's a zinc obviously uh,
Speaker 1: and then you've got the manganese dioxide cathode. But the
Speaker 1: electrolyte in this case is often either ammonium chloride or
Speaker 1: zinc chloride. These are often found in triple A, double A,
Speaker 1: C and D dry cell batteries. Then you've got lithium
Speaker 1: ion batteries. These are the ones that we find in laptops, smartphones, cameras,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. They are rechargeable batteries and they
Speaker 1: have different materials in them. Uh uh. One common version
Speaker 1: of lithium ion batteries uses a carbon note and a
Speaker 1: lithium cobalt oxide cathode and uh and yeah, these are
Speaker 1: the ones that we use when we're recharging our our
Speaker 1: various electronics very frequently anyway. Then you've got lead acid batteries.
Speaker 1: These are the ones that you often find in cars.
Speaker 1: These are more heavy duty, right, they are more volatile.
Speaker 1: They do include liquid, Yeah, they include their their their
Speaker 1: electrolyte tends to be sulfuric acid. This is one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why you want to be really careful with
Speaker 1: car batteries because the materials inside them can be very
Speaker 1: caustic and and they can damage you, your stuff, your car.
Speaker 1: That's why you know you've got to be really careful
Speaker 1: with these things. Um. They tend to have uh, lead
Speaker 1: dioxide and metallic lead as their electrodes. So yeah, the
Speaker 1: rechargeable battery we've already talked about. That's the kind where
Speaker 1: if you put the electric current through the battery, you
Speaker 1: reverse this uh, this chemical reaction. Uh. It depends upon
Speaker 1: what that rechargeable battery is made from, whether how effective
Speaker 1: this this process is right, because there's some kinds of
Speaker 1: rechargeable batteries that have well they have a memory, and
Speaker 1: that memory is not a good one. The memory effect
Speaker 1: is what I'm talking about. So I don't know how
Speaker 1: many of you are familiar with this, but if you've
Speaker 1: ever heard someone say that before you recharge your device,
Speaker 1: you should make sure that it's completely that the current
Speaker 1: charges completely out. This was due to some some older
Speaker 1: types of batteries that have been mostly replaced by lithium
Speaker 1: ion batteries. Nickel cadmium is the main culprit here. So
Speaker 1: the problem that some people notice with nickel cadmium is
Speaker 1: that if you used a nickel cadmium battery for a
Speaker 1: while and then you recharged it before you had completely
Speaker 1: discharged the original charge, it wouldn't hold as much of
Speaker 1: a charge the next time. So let's say that I've
Speaker 1: got a device that has a nickel cadmium battery in
Speaker 1: it and I run it down to about left like
Speaker 1: it's it only has charge left, and I decided to
Speaker 1: recharge it. Well, now it's new maximum charge is more
Speaker 1: like eight of what it used to be because I
Speaker 1: didn't let it go all. It remembers that but doesn't
Speaker 1: let me actually consume that power anymore. So, yeah, that
Speaker 1: was a problem. Now most batteries now don't have that issue.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's still a minor memory effect in some
Speaker 1: rechargeable batteries, but it's not nearly as dramatic as it
Speaker 1: the older batteries were, right, So so yeah, so if
Speaker 1: you are using the lithium ion battery and someone tells
Speaker 1: you that thing, you can you can tell them that
Speaker 1: we told you no, no, not as big a deal.
Speaker 1: And another interesting thing about batteries is what happens if
Speaker 1: you place them in series versus in parallel. So in
Speaker 1: series it sounds kind of you know, is what it is.
Speaker 1: You've you've got them hooked up so that they are
Speaker 1: all the charges running through one and then another and
Speaker 1: then another yea in the sequence exactly. And uh, if
Speaker 1: you do that, you increase the voltage of the output. Now,
Speaker 1: if you put them in parallel, you increase the current.
Speaker 1: Now you might wonder what's the differences voltage and current
Speaker 1: if you're if you're not really familiar with electronics. I
Speaker 1: always have to look this up because I I, I
Speaker 1: always second guess myself. But voltage measures the energy per
Speaker 1: unit charge. And you can think of that is it's
Speaker 1: how strong the electrons are pushed through a circuit. So
Speaker 1: think of it like water pressure, you know, through a hose.
Speaker 1: So the greater the water pressure, the harder that water
Speaker 1: is being pushed through the hose. That's essentially your voltage,
Speaker 1: it's you know. And then current is the rate at
Speaker 1: which electric charge passes through a circuit. Now, voltage will
Speaker 1: stay constant, the voltage output will stay constant based upon
Speaker 1: whatever kind of battery you have or whether or not
Speaker 1: they're in series. Uh. But otherwise it it's going to
Speaker 1: remain the same. Current, however, will vary depending upon the
Speaker 1: load you place it. Uh, you place on it. So
Speaker 1: and that can, like the resistance of a wire, can
Speaker 1: affect what the current is. So current is variable. Voltage
Speaker 1: is not. And uh, apart from the fact that if
Speaker 1: you put them in series, you increase the voltage. But
Speaker 1: once you've done that, it does not vary. Um. All right,
Speaker 1: Well that's the basis the very basic foundation of batteries. Guys,
Speaker 1: We're gonna have to take a quick break. I just
Speaker 1: realized the podcast has runned out of batteries, So I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go run across the street grab a couple more. Um,
Speaker 1: I'll be right back. All right, So we're back. Uh,
Speaker 1: And we've learned the basic function of a battery and
Speaker 1: how it does what it does. So what's the problem.
Speaker 1: Why haven't we made super batteries that last forever and
Speaker 1: never need to be recharged and can put out more
Speaker 1: energy than uh the generator? Yeah, well, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: there's the first commercial dry cell batteries premiered in and
Speaker 1: they haven't really changed all that much since then. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've we've experimented with different materials, but the actual process
Speaker 1: has remained very much the same. And there are physical
Speaker 1: limits that chemical batteries have, but they can only generate
Speaker 1: so much electricity through these reactions. There have been a
Speaker 1: few permutations of different things. In addition to those nickel
Speaker 1: cadmium batteries that that have the memory effect problem that
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier. There's there was also some some nickel
Speaker 1: metal hydride, but they had a really short shelf life.
Speaker 1: They would start degrading pretty quickly. Yeah. That's another thing
Speaker 1: about some types of batteries is that lithium ion batteries
Speaker 1: have that problem as well. Um, they're they're less bad
Speaker 1: at it, but they're still not deal right. The idea
Speaker 1: being that these these chemical reactions, like the longer the
Speaker 1: battery sits idle, the less juice. Yeah, and and and
Speaker 1: this doesn't have anything to do with how much you
Speaker 1: use it. It's it's from the moment that they're made. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also you may have heard stories about, well, if
Speaker 1: you want to keep your batteries from the grading, you
Speaker 1: should put them in the refrigerator. Don't do that. Don't
Speaker 1: do that because that actually it actually slows down the
Speaker 1: chemical processes that happen when you Yeah, when you're when
Speaker 1: you're trying to use the battery, and you're going to
Speaker 1: not get as much juice as you thought you were
Speaker 1: because the chemicals themselves are too cold to have those
Speaker 1: chemical reactions happen at the correct rate. They're still going
Speaker 1: to happen, but you're gonna get a easily amount of
Speaker 1: juice out of it. Right, So, so far lithium ion batteries,
Speaker 1: especially for small uses, have have been have been pretty
Speaker 1: pretty rad um. However, they are very sensitive to high
Speaker 1: temperatures um, you know, which is occasionally why they wind
Speaker 1: up exploding, bursting into flame. Let's let's also point out
Speaker 1: that lithium is an alkali metal, so and we'll we'll
Speaker 1: talk about a little bit. We're gonna talk about a
Speaker 1: a a possible future type of battery that people are
Speaker 1: working on right now where that's really an issue. Both
Speaker 1: lithium and sodium are being considered for new types of batteries,
Speaker 1: but both of them are alkali metals. The big problem,
Speaker 1: there are several problems, but the big problem I would
Speaker 1: say with that is alkali metals belong to a class
Speaker 1: where they tend to be let's say, reactive when they
Speaker 1: come into contact with water. So, if you've ever heard
Speaker 1: stories about sodium and water, or if you've ever seen
Speaker 1: anyone demonstrate what happens when sodium encounters water, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's explosive. The same thing is true of lithium. All right,
Speaker 1: this is where we get a little chemistry lesson. Everyone
Speaker 1: go and get your periodic table of elements. I'll wait now,
Speaker 1: if you look at the left hand side of that
Speaker 1: table of elements, you're gonna see that down the line,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have lithium and you're gonna have sodium that
Speaker 1: are both in that same line, as well as potassium
Speaker 1: and some other alkali metals. That means that those elements
Speaker 1: share common characteristics, and one of those is when water
Speaker 1: comes in contacts, sometimes things go boom. So first of all,
Speaker 1: never never ever play with these I don't if you
Speaker 1: get hold of sodium or lithium, never play with that.
Speaker 1: And water, this is seriously dangerous stuff. Also, probably just
Speaker 1: just don't. I mean, because because water is in the
Speaker 1: air around us in in great enough quantities that hypothetically
Speaker 1: it can burst into flame. I know of someone I didn't.
Speaker 1: This is a friend of a friend's story, so it's
Speaker 1: possibly apocryphal, So so it could be urban legend. I
Speaker 1: admit that. But I know of someone who pocketed some
Speaker 1: sodium from his chemistry class and then was walking around
Speaker 1: with it in his pocket, and and his body was
Speaker 1: giving off moisture, and so he began to feel a
Speaker 1: burning sensation in his pants and immediately ran to the
Speaker 1: bathroom and pulled the sodium mountain threw it into the toilet,
Speaker 1: which then exploded. Yeah, again, could be apocryphal. This is
Speaker 1: it was a story about a high school student who
Speaker 1: went to a rival school, so it could have very
Speaker 1: well been one of those stories where ha ha, the
Speaker 1: people who go to that school are so dumb, so
Speaker 1: much more dumb than the people who go to my school,
Speaker 1: which is saying something. I'm just kidding. I love all
Speaker 1: my classmates Spartans, but anyway, you were the Spartans, I
Speaker 1: was the Spartans. Spartans Spartans together. This is tech stuff.
Speaker 1: So but the point, the point being that these these
Speaker 1: these elements have serious drawbacks to him. And that's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why the another reason why battery improvement
Speaker 1: has gone so slowly, because we have to find safe
Speaker 1: ways to handle this stuff so that it doesn't come
Speaker 1: into contact with water and and just blow up. Right.
Speaker 1: Part of that in lithium ion batteries specifically, is that
Speaker 1: they have to have a very small, very simple onboard
Speaker 1: computer to to manage the way that all of the
Speaker 1: bits flow around in there, and uh and and that
Speaker 1: that makes them pretty expensive lithium is already pretty expensive,
Speaker 1: but it makes them even more expensive than they would
Speaker 1: already be. Now, we have seen some improvements with battery
Speaker 1: life in recent years, but a lot of that doesn't
Speaker 1: come from improvements in the batteries. It's coming in improvements
Speaker 1: in the actual electronics. We are finding more efficient ways
Speaker 1: to generate the stuff we want. So your smartphones, if
Speaker 1: you've got a smartphone recently that has a decent battery life,
Speaker 1: it may not be that the battery is so much better.
Speaker 1: It's just that the people who designed the hardware and software,
Speaker 1: we're able to maximize performance while being as efficient as possible.
Speaker 1: So you're still working with the same basic amount of Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I don't need as much of it to do
Speaker 1: the stuff you are doing exactly. Speaking of that juice though, Um,
Speaker 1: the problem with batteries, and the reason that that that
Speaker 1: gasoline has not been ousted completely by batteries, is that
Speaker 1: gasoline has an energy density of something like thirteen thousand
Speaker 1: watt hours per kilogram, which is which is just a
Speaker 1: measure of how much of juice it has, how much
Speaker 1: how much how much work you can get out of
Speaker 1: a given amount of gasoline. Sure, Um, the best lithium
Speaker 1: ion batteries only hold about two hundred what hours per kilogram,
Speaker 1: with of a of a hypothetical in a perfect world
Speaker 1: situation four hundred possible, so still vastly underpowered when you
Speaker 1: compare it to gasoline. Right now, there are some people
Speaker 1: out there, very very smart people working on batteries that
Speaker 1: would have much higher densities power densities for their batteries
Speaker 1: if they can get the batteries to work, if they
Speaker 1: can get the the components to to to play nicely,
Speaker 1: to not explode, and to work on larger scales and
Speaker 1: to work after more than three charges. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of barriers that are in place, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: about some specific uh cases, but keep in mind there
Speaker 1: have been dozens, if not hundreds of different experiments and
Speaker 1: trying to improve battery technology, and most of them just
Speaker 1: have not panned out. They might have seen promising at
Speaker 1: the beginning, but when you get to a point where
Speaker 1: you're thinking, all right, how are we going to scale
Speaker 1: this up where we can actually manufacture it or create
Speaker 1: a battery large enough to do something useful, and then
Speaker 1: things start to break down. So one of the ones
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about where these things called micro batteries.
Speaker 1: And this was something that UH that we received from
Speaker 1: that initial request to talk about battery improvements. And this
Speaker 1: is a story about a team of researchers from the
Speaker 1: University of Illinois UH talking about a particular type of
Speaker 1: battery that uses these very tiny electrodes and lots and
Speaker 1: lots of them, and their three dimensional electrodes, and it
Speaker 1: was almost like these troads are kind of intertwined together,
Speaker 1: so they're very close together, which allows the ions to
Speaker 1: pass very very quickly. It also allows electrons to flow
Speaker 1: very quickly, and the idea being that you would be
Speaker 1: able to release quite a bit of energy in a
Speaker 1: short amount of time, faster than you could with most batteries,
Speaker 1: and you could also recharge the battery way faster, right,
Speaker 1: because that thoroughput speed has a lot to do with
Speaker 1: how effective a battery is. Yeah, And in fact, according
Speaker 1: to several articles that were posted about this technology, BBC
Speaker 1: did one as well as some other outlets. The claim
Speaker 1: was that such a battery would be reached could be
Speaker 1: recharged one thousand times faster than competing technology. So you
Speaker 1: could turn your you know, plug your smartphone in let's
Speaker 1: say your smartphone has one of these batteries in it,
Speaker 1: and you plugged it in. After a second, it's fully recharged.
Speaker 1: You don't have to leave it there for hours for
Speaker 1: it to charge up, which is that's a very attractive thing.
Speaker 1: So you're thinking, well, if it can release lots of
Speaker 1: energy and if it can be recharged in a blink
Speaker 1: of an eye, where's the problem. Well, mostly the problem
Speaker 1: comes in from the manufacturing side and the scalability as
Speaker 1: well as, uh, the fact that it's not the most
Speaker 1: reliable technology. Ours Technica actually ran a great article where
Speaker 1: they really looked into this and and dove deeper than
Speaker 1: a lot of the other outlets did to kind of
Speaker 1: take a look at this technology with a skeptical eye,
Speaker 1: just to make sure that it really did measure up
Speaker 1: to the hype, because we've seen this before with battery technology, right.
Speaker 1: And this isn't to say that they want the team
Speaker 1: won't figure out a way of of solving the problems
Speaker 1: that they face, But here are some of the problems.
Speaker 1: One of them is that it's really hard to manufacture
Speaker 1: these things. The way that the team was doing it,
Speaker 1: they were using this uh this essentially gold to make
Speaker 1: these little three dimensional um electrodes sort of, and then
Speaker 1: they used polystyrene uh, little little old tiny poly styring pills,
Speaker 1: essentially packing them in there, twisting the electrodes around, coding
Speaker 1: it in nickel in a well in a combination of
Speaker 1: nickel and tin and then uh nickelton alloy actually, and
Speaker 1: then coding the rest of it with manganese oxy hydroxide uh,
Speaker 1: and then melting away the poly styrene so it it's gone,
Speaker 1: then immersing the whole thing to a liquid that was
Speaker 1: heated to three degrees celsius or five degrees fahrenheit. And
Speaker 1: so it's what even the team has referred to as
Speaker 1: a boutique manufacturing approach, meaning that it's very detailed, it's painstaking,
Speaker 1: it is not automated. Extremely expensive. Yeah, it's not time
Speaker 1: consuming exactly. Not something that's scalable to mass manufacturing methods
Speaker 1: right now, certainly. Right. That's not to say that they
Speaker 1: wouldn't find some other way of doing it. They may
Speaker 1: find a way of doing it where it doesn't require
Speaker 1: this series of painstaking steps in order to get the
Speaker 1: result that they want, but uh, it's not ideal. Another
Speaker 1: problem is that the electrolyte they're using is combustible, so
Speaker 1: that's always a concern. If you get it too hot,
Speaker 1: it could burst into flames. Uh um or you know,
Speaker 1: if you were to get it close to a flame,
Speaker 1: it could catch fire. And on top of all that, uh,
Speaker 1: the battery loses about five percent of its capacity with
Speaker 1: each charge discharge cycle, So after fifteen cycles it would
Speaker 1: be down to about two thirds of its original capacity.
Speaker 1: And uh, if you were to do a full discharge
Speaker 1: full charge, it might be even worse than that. So
Speaker 1: while it would recharge very quickly, it would have a
Speaker 1: little less juice each time. And so after you recharge
Speaker 1: it twenty times, you have to charge, Yeah, you have
Speaker 1: to buy a new battery, new battery, right, So uh
Speaker 1: that raises lots of problems to waste problems. For example,
Speaker 1: like even if you were to say, well that's acceptable
Speaker 1: because I want to be able to charge my phone
Speaker 1: in a second, you can do that twenty times, and
Speaker 1: then you have to go buy a new battery. And
Speaker 1: especially when the when the technology to create it is
Speaker 1: so so detailed and expensive, and to be fair, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't even you wouldn't even go twenty times, right because
Speaker 1: each time you would have less juice and so your
Speaker 1: your phone would be less and less useful over time.
Speaker 1: So after after your phone doesn't last more than a
Speaker 1: couple of hours, you think, well, I gotta get a
Speaker 1: new battery. So that might be six or seven recharges,
Speaker 1: depending upon how hard you are on electronics. If you're me,
Speaker 1: then you'd be like, all right, recharge it, give me
Speaker 1: a new battery, yea. Lauren and I have more to
Speaker 1: say about the evolution of batteries in just a moment,
Speaker 1: but first let's take another quick break. So so that
Speaker 1: that's the downside to this micro battery technology. That's not
Speaker 1: to say again that they won't find ways around that.
Speaker 1: Engineers are brilliant at finding ways of fixing problems. But
Speaker 1: it's not going to be the revolutionary battery technology that
Speaker 1: we're all going to see in our smartphones in the
Speaker 1: next few months. It'll it'll at least be a couple
Speaker 1: of years before we can see this rolled out in
Speaker 1: any way, assuming that they find a way to fix
Speaker 1: these problems. Right. One of the other ones that I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about our lithium air batteries, and this
Speaker 1: is where we're getting into those alkali metals and the
Speaker 1: concern about how they react with water exactly. You know,
Speaker 1: they could hypothetically store up to four times as as
Speaker 1: much as as lithium ion batteries, as much power as
Speaker 1: lithium ion batteries, but they work in the um. Lithium
Speaker 1: combines with with oxygen that's trapped by a carbon surface.
Speaker 1: Carbon nanotubes are are popular right now and um and
Speaker 1: the resulting interplay of these lithium ions and electrons induces
Speaker 1: the flow of current UM. Yeah, you get a get a.
Speaker 1: One of the by products you get out of this
Speaker 1: is lithium peroxide, which is a problem because as it umulates,
Speaker 1: it starts to make it more difficult to recharge the battery. Right.
Speaker 1: So they they've only recently figured well, they they've had
Speaker 1: a bunch of of barriers to to making this work.
Speaker 1: That is, that is one of them. They're they're starting to.
Speaker 1: For a long time, they didn't understand why the electrochemical
Speaker 1: reactions were going so poorly in these things, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't until uh that that researchers at M I T
Speaker 1: and Sandia National Labs announced that they were starting to
Speaker 1: be able to observe the reactions at all to figure
Speaker 1: out why this isn't work. And that's when they started
Speaker 1: seeing this lithium peroxide forming that was inhibiting the flow
Speaker 1: of electricity. And uh, they did discover that if the
Speaker 1: electricity were flowing, that the lithium peroxide was starting to
Speaker 1: reduce around the trouble spots, and they figured that if
Speaker 1: they could improve the electron flow of the battery overall,
Speaker 1: then they might be able to get around this problem.
Speaker 1: So that recharging does become an issue, right. Uh, that
Speaker 1: that explosion thing that we mentioned earlier is still at
Speaker 1: issue because when when you're dealing with you know, these
Speaker 1: these carbon surfaces are allowing air to basically breathe into
Speaker 1: the battery, and since water happens in air, yeah, you
Speaker 1: have to find either a way of coding the lithium
Speaker 1: inside the battery so that the water would not react
Speaker 1: with the surface of lithium, or you have to find
Speaker 1: a way of filtering the water out entirely, so that
Speaker 1: membrane at the top end, Yeah, hydrophobic membrane, that's what
Speaker 1: we'd like to call that. It's scared of water. It
Speaker 1: pushes water out. So uh, yeah, it's that that's an issue. Now,
Speaker 1: there is a potential alternative to lithium air batteries called
Speaker 1: sodium air batteries that are even they are, they may
Speaker 1: not be able to hold as much energy as a
Speaker 1: lithium battery. It's a lower theoretical energy density, but a
Speaker 1: higher practical energy density at at the current moment exactly,
Speaker 1: So current moment dear. So yeah, no, it's it always happens.
Speaker 1: You can't get around it. But yeah, that's so that's
Speaker 1: a possibility. But again, remember sodium is probably that alkali
Speaker 1: metal groups, so against same issues. You get that water
Speaker 1: in contact with sodium and battery goal boom, yeah instead
Speaker 1: of instead of zap zap. Right. Uh. There's there's also
Speaker 1: research being done into what's being called solid state batteries UM,
Speaker 1: which are kind of kind of the lithium ion um
Speaker 1: solution to dry cell batteries. It's it's using um thin
Speaker 1: layers of solid electrolyte instead of instead of the liquid
Speaker 1: that most lithium ions use. UM. Yeah. And then there's
Speaker 1: a I read on Wired this interesting idea of spray
Speaker 1: can batteries where each of the each of the elements
Speaker 1: that you would find within a battery, the cathodeena, the electrolyte,
Speaker 1: all that is represented by a different can of uh,
Speaker 1: sprayable material, so you could actually spray this material onto
Speaker 1: different surfaces and make a battery that way. And the
Speaker 1: idea being that this would allow you to create batteries
Speaker 1: in devices that would incorporate the battery designed directly into
Speaker 1: the device, so you wouldn't have this blocky battery compartment. Now,
Speaker 1: it's not saying that these batteries would be particularly efficient
Speaker 1: or powerful compared to what we have now, just that
Speaker 1: this would give us more opportunity to explore different ways
Speaker 1: of shaping batteries so that they are part of our
Speaker 1: electronics and not just you know again, not just some
Speaker 1: clunky thing that you have to find make room, make
Speaker 1: room for it, right, right, and and also not so heavy. Um,
Speaker 1: what would be terrific. That reminds me of the nanocomposite
Speaker 1: paper batteries that some people are are working on. These
Speaker 1: are These are composed of cellulose and um an aligned
Speaker 1: carbon nanotubes woven together UM and and they're they're they're small,
Speaker 1: they're flat, they're flexible, they're implantable. Um. They could hypothetically
Speaker 1: be put into medical devices. Yeah, these could actually use
Speaker 1: biological fluid as ionic fluid, So it ends up turning
Speaker 1: your body's fluids into the electrolyte it needs. This is
Speaker 1: just making me think of idiocracy. It's electrolyte. It's the
Speaker 1: thing that plants crave. Um. I was doing the hand
Speaker 1: gesture and everything for those of you are fans of
Speaker 1: that movie. Then there's also uh, you know, the Verge
Speaker 1: reported on bacteria that are able to transfer electricity, and
Speaker 1: scientists had known about this for a while, but they
Speaker 1: weren't sure about what the mechanism was, like how did
Speaker 1: it transfer electricity? And they discovered that that there were
Speaker 1: proteins on the bacteria surface that we're responsible for electron transfer. Uh.
Speaker 1: The bacteria is uh, this is this is going to
Speaker 1: be a train wreck of a pronunciation in front of me.
Speaker 1: Luck she wa nella oneidnisis. But anyway attaches to rusty
Speaker 1: iron and other materials and breaks those down and in
Speaker 1: the process of breaking down these materials, it releases electrons.
Speaker 1: So why are we interested in this? Because by studying
Speaker 1: biological organisms that can emit electricity as part of some
Speaker 1: process where it's consuming something, we might be able to
Speaker 1: create biological batteries. Right, And these are these are a
Speaker 1: little bit more of fuel cell really than a battery.
Speaker 1: But and and to explain the difference, a fuel cell
Speaker 1: is a device that you put fuel into and then
Speaker 1: there's a chemical reaction that generates electricity, and then you
Speaker 1: refill the fuel cell. So and you know, with a battery,
Speaker 1: what you're doing is you're using an electric uh or
Speaker 1: electrochemical reaction to harness electricity, and then you either have
Speaker 1: to reverse the reaction in order to get the battery
Speaker 1: to do it again, or you have to replace the battery.
Speaker 1: Fuel cell, you just refill it with fuel. So hydrogen
Speaker 1: fuel cells are the ones that most people know about
Speaker 1: because those the ones that we've talked about for things
Speaker 1: like cars. Hydrogen fuel cell ells use hydrogen, which is
Speaker 1: the most plentiful element on Earth, although you have to
Speaker 1: break it up from other stuff. It doesn't, it doesn't,
Speaker 1: it's not so plentiful in its pure state. It's usually
Speaker 1: it's it's in water, which is very plentiful, and hydrocarbons
Speaker 1: as well, also very plentiful. But you have to separate
Speaker 1: the hydrogen outfast, which requires energy a lot of energy.
Speaker 1: But once you've got it, assuming that you've assuming that
Speaker 1: you found some sort of a hydrogen mine where it's
Speaker 1: not going to take you too much energy to get
Speaker 1: it free. Um, you put hydrogen on one side of
Speaker 1: a a membrane UM that has a catalyst on it,
Speaker 1: usually something really expensive like platinum, and then on the
Speaker 1: other side of the membrane you've got oxygen. The membrane
Speaker 1: allows the hydrogen ions to pass through, but not hydrogen atoms.
Speaker 1: It has to lose the electrons for it to pass through.
Speaker 1: The electrons go through a circuit just like it would
Speaker 1: with a battery and combine on the other side. So
Speaker 1: the hydrogen ions passed through the membrane and that meets
Speaker 1: up with the oxygen and says, hey, you wanna you
Speaker 1: wanna go do something? I got my buddy here, my
Speaker 1: buddy here, and I would love to take you out
Speaker 1: to dinner. And so the two hydrogen take out the
Speaker 1: one oxygen to dinner. Meanwhile, the electrons come back over
Speaker 1: through the circuit and recombined, and then you get water.
Speaker 1: So the output of a hydrogen based fuel cell is water, electricity,
Speaker 1: and heat, which is why everything pretty Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: this is why we would love to use it to
Speaker 1: fuel cars because instead of giving off all these different
Speaker 1: ghouse Yeah, now water vapor is technically a greenhouse gas,
Speaker 1: but it's water vapor. It's not carbon dioxide, it's not
Speaker 1: methane or anything like that. So that's why they're very attractive.
Speaker 1: But they are you know, they're similar to batteries, but
Speaker 1: there there is a difference. I do I do have
Speaker 1: a have a bio battery that I was just reading
Speaker 1: about research last November at m I T. Harvard and
Speaker 1: the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. Um. Okay, so so
Speaker 1: mammals have in their inner ears chamber that's filled with
Speaker 1: ions and um uh. These these ions produce an electrical
Speaker 1: potential which drives neural signals. And what this means is
Speaker 1: that this is the chamber in your ear that that
Speaker 1: lets the vibration of your ear drum be converted into
Speaker 1: an electrochemical signal that your brain can read and then
Speaker 1: interprets the sound and interprets a sound. Um and so
Speaker 1: but but but you've got this this inner chamber that's
Speaker 1: just hanging out with ions in it, which is a
Speaker 1: potential battery. UM. And these researchers put, UM, put some
Speaker 1: electrodes in there along with a very low power electronic device,
Speaker 1: and UM the chamber produced enough power with these electrodes
Speaker 1: to power the device to wire wirelessly transmit data. That's
Speaker 1: pretty cool to to an external drive. Now again we're
Speaker 1: talking about you know, we're not talking about stuff that's
Speaker 1: that's advancing the power of batteries, but we are looking
Speaker 1: at brand new applications that could that are really exciting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just but again, this isn't the thing that's going
Speaker 1: to make your cell phone last longer. Probably probably not.
Speaker 1: It's it's really really really low power, but it would
Speaker 1: it would mostly be great for for medical advances in
Speaker 1: um hearing aids. Yeah. So anyway, anyway, the advances we're
Speaker 1: talking about for the most part, are again just refining
Speaker 1: the technology that we already have. It may turn out
Speaker 1: that we just have to find a different means of
Speaker 1: generating electricity that goes away from this electrochemical model entirely
Speaker 1: for us to get beyond this this bottleneck. Or if
Speaker 1: one of these other like the if the lithium air
Speaker 1: or sodium air batteries work out, or if the micro
Speaker 1: battery works out, maybe maybe that will be that that
Speaker 1: would be a huge leap ahead. And if either of those,
Speaker 1: if any of those were any any more efficient chemical combination. Right.
Speaker 1: So there, we're not saying it's impossible. We're just saying
Speaker 1: that it's been several decades AIDS and we've only seen
Speaker 1: incremental improvements. So don't be surprised if that stays the same.
Speaker 1: If it doesn't stay the same, if we do have
Speaker 1: this huge leap, that's gonna be awesome for everybody, and
Speaker 1: that's what everyone wants. Just you know, be prepared to wait. Guys,
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed this classic episode of text Stuff.
Speaker 1: If you have any suggestions for future tech stuff topics,
Speaker 1: reach out to me on Twitter or on Facebook. We
Speaker 1: use the same handle at both locations. It is text
Speaker 1: Stuff H s W. And I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
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