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Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tex Stuff from how

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Speaker 1: stuff Works dot Com. Hey everyone, and welcome to tech Stuff.

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Speaker 1: I'm Jovin Strickland and I'm Lauren Folkebin. Today we're going

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Speaker 1: to talk about something that we've tackled in a previous

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Speaker 1: episode at least Chris and I did. We're gonna talk

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Speaker 1: about batteries and also why have batteries been so slow

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Speaker 1: to improve over time? What what could be the future

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Speaker 1: of batteries and uh and what are the implications of that.

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Speaker 1: This all comes to us courtesy of a listener suggestion.

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Speaker 1: David via Twitter said, could we talk about the improvements

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Speaker 1: and battery technology and also why battery text seems to

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Speaker 1: lag behind other technology when it comes to big leaps.

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Speaker 1: It's um, that's a good question. And so you know,

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Speaker 1: it's something that a lot of people have commented on

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Speaker 1: the fact that you have something called Moore's law. That's

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Speaker 1: that observation that in general, microprocessors get twice the number

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Speaker 1: of discrete elements, or if you prefer to think of

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Speaker 1: it in another way, microprocessors tend to get twice as

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Speaker 1: powerful every two years or so. There. Yeah, this is

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Speaker 1: not exponential growth, which I have called it in previous episodes,

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Speaker 1: by the way, and people right in every time and

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Speaker 1: call it take us to task on it, which is

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Speaker 1: important because when we get wrong, it's a misuse of

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Speaker 1: the word exponential. I'm using it's a colloquial use. But

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Speaker 1: I do not want to go down that hole again

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Speaker 1: because I'm like you guys, I get irritated when people

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Speaker 1: misuse words too. I just wish I didn't do it

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Speaker 1: as frequently myself. But anyway, it does double every two

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Speaker 1: years or so, and that's a phenomenal amount of growth.

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Speaker 1: We're talking about microprocessors that have billions of discrete elements

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Speaker 1: on them now, and they're all down at the nanoscale.

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Speaker 1: So there's this amazing amount of technology that's been poured

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Speaker 1: into microprocessors, partially because Morris law exists and companies strive

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Speaker 1: to to keep up with it to maintain it because

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Speaker 1: Moore's law, as we know, is not a real physical law.

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Speaker 1: It's more of an observation, and companies no one wants

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Speaker 1: to be the company that comes up and says, yeah,

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Speaker 1: we can't do that. You know, we just got bored.

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Speaker 1: So it means that there's been a lot of innovation

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Speaker 1: in that space. But meanwhile, on the battery front, batteries

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Speaker 1: have in large part remain more or less the same

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Speaker 1: for decades. I mean, we've we've seen improvements in battery life,

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Speaker 1: we've seen improvements in battery efficiency, but there have been

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Speaker 1: some new technologies over the past fifty years. But even so,

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Speaker 1: it just hasn't it hasn't at all kept up with

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Speaker 1: the microprocessors assessor side. This is also, by the way,

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Speaker 1: this ties into our episodes where we talked about things

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Speaker 1: like the Singularity, where we talk about how technology doesn't

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Speaker 1: all progress at the same rate. So while we do

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Speaker 1: see devices getting more and more sophisticated and powerful, the

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Speaker 1: power supplies aren't keeping up with that trend. So it

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Speaker 1: may be that the Singularity, if it is ever going

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Speaker 1: to arrive, is further off than what some people think,

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Speaker 1: simply because the power side of the equation is lagging behind, uh,

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Speaker 1: the the technological sophistication side. So why is that. Well

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Speaker 1: to understand it, we kind of have to one talk

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Speaker 1: about what a battery is and to sort of look

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Speaker 1: at the history of the development of batteries and talk

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Speaker 1: about what exactly it does now. On a very very

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Speaker 1: basic level, a battery is something that uses electro chemical

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Speaker 1: reactions so that you can guide electrons through a circuit

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Speaker 1: and have it do work. And that's about it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's that's really all a battery is. And it's because

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Speaker 1: there are certain chemicals that when they have these reactions,

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Speaker 1: they lose electrons in the process, and if you are

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Speaker 1: able to control the flow of those electrons, then you've

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Speaker 1: got a battery. So batteries date back possibly as long

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Speaker 1: as though more than two thousand years ago. Yeah, these

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Speaker 1: these clay jars found in modern day Iraq and you

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Speaker 1: might might have heard of them called Bagdad batteries, where um, yeah,

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Speaker 1: clay jars that contained an iron rod and cased in copper.

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Speaker 1: Tests suggest that the jars were at some point filled

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Speaker 1: with with with something ascetic like vinegar or wine, and

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Speaker 1: modern day replicas have successfully created an electric charge. They

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Speaker 1: might have been used for something like a like any

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Speaker 1: anything from religious rituals and medicinal purposes to even electro plating. Right,

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Speaker 1: And if you've seen if you're a big MythBusters fan,

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Speaker 1: you may have seen an episode where they actually showed

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Speaker 1: these They created one of these batteries and then they

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Speaker 1: tried to see if they could get enough of a

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Speaker 1: charge for it to be detectable. Um, so that that's

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Speaker 1: an indication of that we were familiar with the fact

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Speaker 1: that certain materials under certain circumstances could omit this weird energy. Now,

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Speaker 1: at that time we weren't necessarily really aware of all

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Speaker 1: the things that could do, but that would change as

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Speaker 1: the centuries would pass. The next big date I have

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Speaker 1: is quite some time later, which is and that's when

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Speaker 1: Alessandro Volta count alis Andra Volta. He's only one. If

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Speaker 1: there were more than one, I would count them. Oh, sorry,

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Speaker 1: you're talking about a nobility rank. So count Volta created

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Speaker 1: a battery by stacking alternating layers of zinc. Lawrence just

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Speaker 1: checked out at this point zinc, brine, soaked cloth or paper, uh,

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Speaker 1: and silver. He used these alternating layers kind of a

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Speaker 1: sandwich here. And we call this a voltaic peel peel

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Speaker 1: because it's French and uh and and voltaic after volta, yes,

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Speaker 1: and so uh. The this this peel or pile if

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Speaker 1: you prefer, because it is a pile. Oh stuff. When

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Speaker 1: you put it in this this configuration, you start getting

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Speaker 1: these chemical reactions that emit electrons, and you could make

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Speaker 1: the stack taller and taller to get more electrons a

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Speaker 1: stronger flow of current through this peel. But in order

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Speaker 1: to do that you actually had to stack it up

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Speaker 1: so high that eventually the weight from the top would

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Speaker 1: start to squish the layers on the bottom, which would

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Speaker 1: kind of make the brine soak out, and that would

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Speaker 1: make it less effective, and also the metal itself would

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Speaker 1: start to corrode fairly quickly. The Brian and the movement

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Speaker 1: the electrons, right, it just wasn't wasn't a practical way

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Speaker 1: of generating electricity, but it showed the premise and it

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Speaker 1: gave scientists the idea of there's something here, and if

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Speaker 1: we can figure out other ways of generating the same

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Speaker 1: kind of energy, we might be able to harness it

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Speaker 1: for something. Skipping ahead, I mean there there are lots

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Speaker 1: of different developments in this technology. I have two specific ones.

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Speaker 1: I think you have a few more. The next really

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Speaker 1: effective one um was eighty six. Yeah, John Frederick Daniel,

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Speaker 1: who was an English physicist. He created what we now

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Speaker 1: call the Daniel cell, which was a you take a

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Speaker 1: glass jar and on the bottom of the glass jar

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Speaker 1: you put on in a copper plate. So copper plate

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Speaker 1: in the bottom of the glass jar, and there's a

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Speaker 1: wire from the copper plate that comes out of the jar.

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Speaker 1: Then you or copper sulfate on top of that copper

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Speaker 1: plate to about the halfway point of the jar. Then

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Speaker 1: you suspend a zinc plate in the jar, and then

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Speaker 1: you pour zinc sulfate solution on top of the zinc plate. Now,

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Speaker 1: zinc sulfate is less dense than copper sulfate, so zinc

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Speaker 1: sulfate will float on top of copper sulfate. If you've

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Speaker 1: ever played with liquids of different densities that had different colors,

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Speaker 1: then you know what I'm talking about. You can see

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Speaker 1: that actual level of division. Yeah, it's actually it's one

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Speaker 1: of my favorite things. I just think it's super cool

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Speaker 1: when it When I see that, I'm easily amused, I

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Speaker 1: admit it. But anyway, you also have a wire coming

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Speaker 1: from the zinc plate uh and exiting the jar. So

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Speaker 1: a wire attached to this would become that that zinc

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Speaker 1: plate becomes the negative terminal that's where the electrons are

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Speaker 1: flowing from, and the copper plate becomes the positive terminal

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Speaker 1: that's where electrons are flowing too. And so if you

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Speaker 1: were to connect the two wires together, it would very

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Speaker 1: quickly burn out this bad but if you were to

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Speaker 1: connect it to a circuit, it could actually do uh,

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Speaker 1: it could or a load as we call it, it it

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Speaker 1: could actually do work. So again, not terribly practical, it was.

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Speaker 1: It was useful for anything that was stationary. But you know,

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Speaker 1: you're talking about a liquid uh battery here, so it's

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Speaker 1: not something that you could easily carry around or put

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Speaker 1: into portable electronics, right right, Yeah, and there's there's a

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Speaker 1: lot of a lot more elegant ways of getting that

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Speaker 1: that electrol kind of solution of of you know, just

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Speaker 1: just a charged molecule then yeah, yeah, And it wouldn't

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Speaker 1: be until we developed dry cell battery technology that we

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Speaker 1: started to find practical ways of using it in portable means,

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Speaker 1: you know. And even then, you know, the batteries weren't

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Speaker 1: small enough to use and what we consider portable electronics today,

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Speaker 1: but you could move it around. Uh. The kind of

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Speaker 1: Daniel cells that that John Frederick Daniel created were useful

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Speaker 1: for different technologies, things like telephones. It was stuff that

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Speaker 1: back then you did not carry around. I don't know

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Speaker 1: if your kids know this, but telephones used to be

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Speaker 1: these things that were extremely stationary. It's only recently that

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Speaker 1: we started carrying them around. Uh. Anyway, that's the kind

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Speaker 1: of battery that became popular for that. Uh. Now, did

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Speaker 1: you have any other ones who want to talk about

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Speaker 1: before we move onto the basics of batteries rechargeable batteries.

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Speaker 1: The signs for that started um started with research around

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Speaker 1: eighteen fifty or so when a French physicist, Gaston Plant

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Speaker 1: invented the lead acid cell um and that that was

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Speaker 1: a that was a precursor to to modern day car batteries.

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Speaker 1: So there you have, you know, the discovery that this

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Speaker 1: chemical reaction that takes place within a battery, you get

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Speaker 1: compounds that form out of it, and it makes the

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Speaker 1: battery over time less effective. That's why batteries die. Eventually,

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Speaker 1: the active elements that would create the flow of electrons

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Speaker 1: end up combining with other stuff and for the purposes

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Speaker 1: of an of passing a current through a circuit, they

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Speaker 1: become a nert. Yeah. Yeah, something either wears out or

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Speaker 1: um or maybe the the anodeor cathode could could dissolve

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Speaker 1: in the solution. Right you just essentially what it means

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Speaker 1: is that you run out of the stuff you need

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Speaker 1: in order to make it to make this go right?

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Speaker 1: And so what what was it? Plant? Believe? Yes, what

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Speaker 1: Plant discovered was that for some kinds of solutions, if

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Speaker 1: you were to pass electric current through the system as

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Speaker 1: opposed to siphoning it off, you could reverse this process

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Speaker 1: and yeah, and create a battery that can be used

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Speaker 1: more than once. Right now, this does not work for

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Speaker 1: all batteries, which is why you can't just throw any

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Speaker 1: regular battery into a recharger and expect it to come

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Speaker 1: out fine. If you did that to a to a

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Speaker 1: you know, to Adris cell or something like that, mostly

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Speaker 1: just explode, right. Yeah, that these are has to be

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Speaker 1: batteries that are using specific uh compounds in it for

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Speaker 1: it to have this this reversible reaction, because not all

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Speaker 1: compounds will reverse some of them once they're done, they're

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Speaker 1: done and battery. We will talk about that a little

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Speaker 1: bit a little bit later. Um, but but let's let's

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Speaker 1: talk about how how exactly this this circuitry works. Okay, So,

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Speaker 1: if you've ever looked at a battery, you've seen that

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Speaker 1: there's a side that is labeled as a plus and

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Speaker 1: one that's labeled as a minus, so positive and negative.

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Speaker 1: If you're looking at like a nine volt battery, then

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Speaker 1: they're next to each other. If you're looking at double

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Speaker 1: a's or whatever, then it's on one end and the other.

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Speaker 1: So the negative end the that's where the electrons flow

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Speaker 1: out of. That's the electrons flow from that end through

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Speaker 1: a circuit and into the positive end. Uh. Now we

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Speaker 1: know that, you know, the the opposite charges attract, So

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Speaker 1: that's why the negative wants to get to the positive.

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Speaker 1: And inside the the the battery itself, there is a

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Speaker 1: chemical called or a compound called an electro light. Now

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Speaker 1: the electro light has a very important job. It blocks

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Speaker 1: those electrons from just passing from the negative side to

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Speaker 1: the positive side directly. Direct That would burn burn everything out. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that you wouldn't You wouldn't be able to power anything.

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Speaker 1: The battery would just you would just have a chemical

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Speaker 1: reaction inside a canister and it would be dead within

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Speaker 1: however long it took for those reactions. Yeah. Um. So

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Speaker 1: it does allow ions to pass through, but not electrons,

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Speaker 1: and that becomes important. So the negative terminal is connected

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Speaker 1: to something that's called the anode. The positive terminal is

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Speaker 1: connected to what we call the cathode, and these together

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Speaker 1: are the electrodes of a battery. Then you've got the

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Speaker 1: separator between the anode and the cathode that's presenting that's

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Speaker 1: preventing those two sides from reacting to each other. And

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Speaker 1: you have the electro LTE that allows the electric charge

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Speaker 1: to flow between cathode and anode, allowing the ions to

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Speaker 1: pass through while making sure the electrons don't. And then

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Speaker 1: you have a collector, which is the part of the

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Speaker 1: battery that conducts the charge to the outside of the

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Speaker 1: battery and through whatever the load is, the electronic load,

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Speaker 1: so the circuit um. So within that anode side, the

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Speaker 1: negative side, the chemical reaction that takes place is called

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Speaker 1: oxid ation. It's an oxidation reaction. This ends up releasing

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Speaker 1: ions and the ions move through the electro light to

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Speaker 1: combine on UH the other side, and then you've got

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Speaker 1: UH the release of electrons that go through the circuitry.

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Speaker 1: On the catholic side, you've got the reduction reaction. That's

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Speaker 1: where the catholic material and the ions UH combined with

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Speaker 1: the electrons that are coming in through the circuit that

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Speaker 1: they form a new compound. And so essentially you've got

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Speaker 1: the anode freeing up electrons. The cathode accepting electrons, and

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Speaker 1: the electrons do work along the way. So if you

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Speaker 1: were to actually connect a wire from the negative terminal

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Speaker 1: to the positive terminal, you would allow that that pathway

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Speaker 1: to be open and it would just start to burn

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Speaker 1: up that battery pretty quickly. Don't do that. It's a

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Speaker 1: waste of batteries. It's going to heat up that wire.

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Speaker 1: It doesn't do anything other than kill your battery. But

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Speaker 1: but that's what happens. It's so when you've got it

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Speaker 1: plugged into something, whenever you turn the switch on to

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Speaker 1: whatever it is, whether it's a you know, a lightsaber

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Speaker 1: or a phaser. You know, I allow all kinds of

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Speaker 1: science fiction toys for batteries. But whenever you turn it on,

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Speaker 1: it opens up that circuit and that allows the electrons

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Speaker 1: to flow through. And when you turn it off, then

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Speaker 1: the one of the gates gets closed essentially, and you

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Speaker 1: no longer the connection is no longer there, so the

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Speaker 1: battery stops the chemical reaction. It has to have that

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Speaker 1: pathway open for the chemical reaction to keep going. Now,

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Speaker 1: there are several different basic types of batteries that are

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Speaker 1: out there, and we're just going to cover a couple

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Speaker 1: of them, and we're covering them based upon the stuff

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Speaker 1: that's inside them, right, because there's a whole bunch of

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Speaker 1: different substances that you can use to create these reactions.

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Speaker 1: Like like we said, so yeah, so so one basic

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Speaker 1: type is the is alkaline batteries. Uh, the anode and

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Speaker 1: alkaline batteries tends to be zinc powder. So the anode

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Speaker 1: again is that negative side that's the electrons are coming from.

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Speaker 1: The cathode side has typically manganese dioxide, and the electrolyte

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Speaker 1: is typically potassium hydroxide. These are the kind of batteries

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Speaker 1: that you typically find in double a's, C and D batteries. Right.

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Speaker 1: These are all examples of this is an example of

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Speaker 1: dry cell batteries. Yes, which dry cell batteries. One of

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Speaker 1: the big benefits of those that you don't have to

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Speaker 1: worry about liquid slashing around inside the battery, so that

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Speaker 1: allows it to be used in lots of applications. You know,

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Speaker 1: anything that's liquid obviously you can't shake around too much

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Speaker 1: or else just gonna disrupt it and you're not gonna

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Speaker 1: have a working battery. For they're more they're more more volatile. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you want that, you want then a very h stationary position.

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Speaker 1: Then you've got zinc carbon batteries. Uh. These have an

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Speaker 1: anode that has that's zinc obviously. Uh. And then you've

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Speaker 1: got the meganese dioxide cathode. But the electrolyte in this

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Speaker 1: case is often either ammonium chloride or zinc chloride. These

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Speaker 1: are often found in triple A, double A, C and

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Speaker 1: D dry cell batteries. Then you've got lithium ion batteries.

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Speaker 1: These are the ones that we find in laptops, smartphones, cameras,

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Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. They are rechargeable batteries and they

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Speaker 1: have different materials in them. But uh, one common version

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Speaker 1: of lithium ion batteries uses a carbon note and a

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Speaker 1: lithium cobalt oxide cathode and uh and yeah, these are

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Speaker 1: the ones that we use when we're recharging our our

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Speaker 1: various electronics very frequently anyway. Then you've got lead acid batteries.

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Speaker 1: These are the ones that you often find in cars.

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Speaker 1: These are more heavy duty, right, they are more volatile.

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Speaker 1: They do include liquid, Yeah, they include their they're they're

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Speaker 1: electrolyte tends to be sulfuric acid. This is one of

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Speaker 1: the reasons why you want to be really careful with

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Speaker 1: car batteries because the materials inside them can be very

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Speaker 1: caustic and and they can damage you your stuff, your car.

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Speaker 1: That's why you know you've got to be really careful

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Speaker 1: with these things. Um, they tend to have uh, lead

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Speaker 1: dioxide and metallic lead as their electrodes. So yeah, the

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Speaker 1: rechargeable battery we've already talked about, that's the kind where

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Speaker 1: if you put the electric current through the battery, you

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Speaker 1: reverse this uh, this chemical reaction. Uh. It depends upon

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Speaker 1: what that rechargeable battery is made from, whether how effective

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Speaker 1: this this process is right, because there's some kinds of

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Speaker 1: rechargeable batteries that have well they have a memory, and

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Speaker 1: that memory is not a good one. The memory effect

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Speaker 1: is what I'm talking about. So I don't know how

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Speaker 1: many of you are familiar with this, but if you've

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Speaker 1: ever heard someone say that before you recharge your device,

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Speaker 1: you should make sure that it's completely that the current

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Speaker 1: charges completely out. This was due to some some older

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Speaker 1: types of batteries that have been mostly replaced by lithium

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Speaker 1: ion batteries. Nickel cadmium is the main culprit here. So

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Speaker 1: the problem that some people notice with nickel cadmium is

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Speaker 1: that if you used a nickel cadmium battery for a

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Speaker 1: while and then you recharged it before you had completely

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Speaker 1: discharged the original charge, it wouldn't hold as much of

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Speaker 1: a charge the next time. So let's say that I've

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Speaker 1: got a device that has a nickel cadmium battery in

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Speaker 1: it and I run it down to about left like

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Speaker 1: it's it only has charge left, and I decided to

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Speaker 1: recharge it. Well, now it's new maximum charge is more

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Speaker 1: like eight of what it used to be because I

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Speaker 1: didn't let it go. It remembers that, but it doesn't

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Speaker 1: let me actually consume that power anymore. So yeah, that

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Speaker 1: was a problem. Now most batteries now don't have that issue.

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Speaker 1: I mean, there's still a minor memory effect in some

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Speaker 1: rechargeable batteries, but it's not nearly as dramatic as it

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Speaker 1: the older batteries were, right, So so yeah, so if

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Speaker 1: you are using a lithium ion battery and someone tells

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Speaker 1: you that thing, you can you can tell them that

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Speaker 1: we told you no, No, not as big a deal.

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Speaker 1: And another interesting thing about batteries is what happens if

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Speaker 1: you place them in series versus in parallel. So in

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Speaker 1: series it sounds kind of you know, is what it is.

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Speaker 1: You've you've got them hooked up so that they are

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Speaker 1: all the charges running through one and then another and

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Speaker 1: then another. Yeah, in a sequence exactly. And uh, if

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Speaker 1: you do that, you increase the voltage of the output. Now,

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Speaker 1: if you put them in parallel, you increase the current.

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Speaker 1: Now you might wonder what's the differences voltage and current

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Speaker 1: if you're if you're not really familiar with electronics. I

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Speaker 1: always have to look this up because I I I,

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Speaker 1: I always second guess myself. But voltage measures the energy

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Speaker 1: per unit charge. And you can think of that is

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Speaker 1: it's how strong the electrons are pushed through a circuit.

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Speaker 1: So think of it like water pressure, you know, through

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Speaker 1: a hose. So the greater the water pressure, the harder

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Speaker 1: that water is being pushed through the hose. That's essentially

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Speaker 1: your voltage, it's you know. And then current is the

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Speaker 1: rate at which electric charge passes through a circuit. Now,

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Speaker 1: voltage will stay constant, the voltage output will stay constant

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Speaker 1: based upon whatever kind of battery you have, or whether

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00:20:07,840 --> 00:20:11,080
Speaker 1: or not they're in series. Uh, but otherwise it's going

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Speaker 1: to remain the same current, however, will vary depending upon

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Speaker 1: the load you place it, uh, you place on it,

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Speaker 1: so and that can like the resistance of a wire

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Speaker 1: can affect what the current is. So current is variable.

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Speaker 1: Voltage is not, and uh, apart from the fact that

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Speaker 1: if you put them in series, you increase the voltage,

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Speaker 1: but once you've done that, it does not vary. Um.

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Speaker 1: All right, Well that's the basis the very basic foundation

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Speaker 1: of batteries. And in the moment we're going to talk

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Speaker 1: about why we haven't moved very far away from this

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Speaker 1: basic explanation we just gave you. But before we do that,

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Speaker 1: I'd like to take a quick moment to thank our

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Speaker 1: sponsored all Right, so we're back, uh, and we've learned

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Speaker 1: the basic function of a battery and how it does

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Speaker 1: what it does. So what's the problem. Why haven't we

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Speaker 1: made super batteries that last forever and never need to

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Speaker 1: be recharged and can put out more energy than uh

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Speaker 1: the generator? Yeah, well, I mean, you know, there's the

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Speaker 1: first commercial dry cell batteries premiered in and they haven't

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Speaker 1: really changed all that much since then. Yeah, We've we've

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Speaker 1: experimented with different materials, but the actual process has remained

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Speaker 1: very much the same, And there are physical limits that

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Speaker 1: chemical batteries have. They can only generate so much electricity

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Speaker 1: through these reactions. There have been a few permutations of

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Speaker 1: different things. In addition to those nickel cadmium batteries that

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Speaker 1: that have the memory effect problem that we mentioned earlier,

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Speaker 1: there's there was also some some nickel metal hydride, but

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00:21:53,040 --> 00:21:55,680
Speaker 1: they had a really short shelf life. They would start

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00:21:55,680 --> 00:21:59,359
Speaker 1: degrading pretty quickly. Yeah, that's another thing about some types

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00:21:59,400 --> 00:22:02,480
Speaker 1: of batteries that lithium ion batteries have that problem as well. Um,

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00:22:02,640 --> 00:22:06,359
Speaker 1: they're they're less bad at it, but they're still not ideal. Right,

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00:22:06,400 --> 00:22:09,280
Speaker 1: the idea being that these these chemical reactions, like the

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00:22:09,359 --> 00:22:15,920
Speaker 1: longer the battery sits idle, the less juice. Yeah. And

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00:22:15,920 --> 00:22:17,240
Speaker 1: and and this doesn't have anything to do with how

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Speaker 1: much you use it. It's it's from the moment that

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00:22:19,000 --> 00:22:22,640
Speaker 1: they're made. Yeah. Yeah. And also you may have heard

396
00:22:22,640 --> 00:22:26,159
Speaker 1: stories about, well, if you want to keep your batteries

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Speaker 1: from degrading, you should put them in the refrigerator. Don't

398
00:22:29,119 --> 00:22:31,399
Speaker 1: do that. Don't do that because that actually it actually

399
00:22:31,400 --> 00:22:37,160
Speaker 1: slows down the chemical processes that happen when you yeah,

400
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Speaker 1: when you're when you're trying to use the battery, and

401
00:22:38,920 --> 00:22:41,200
Speaker 1: you're going to not get as much juice as you

402
00:22:41,280 --> 00:22:44,440
Speaker 1: thought you were because the chemicals themselves are too cold

403
00:22:44,480 --> 00:22:46,840
Speaker 1: to have those chemical reactions happen at the correct rate.

404
00:22:47,040 --> 00:22:50,240
Speaker 1: They're still going to happen, but you're gonna get a

405
00:22:50,280 --> 00:22:53,720
Speaker 1: easily amount of juice out of it, right. So, so far,

406
00:22:54,000 --> 00:22:57,360
Speaker 1: lithium ion batteries, especially for small uses, have have been

407
00:22:57,840 --> 00:23:00,640
Speaker 1: have been pretty pretty rad um. How however, they are

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00:23:00,840 --> 00:23:04,399
Speaker 1: very sensitive to high temperatures um, you know, which is

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00:23:04,440 --> 00:23:08,520
Speaker 1: occasionally why they wind up exploding, bursting into flame. Let's

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00:23:08,720 --> 00:23:12,119
Speaker 1: let's also point out that lithium is an alkali metal,

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Speaker 1: so and we'll we'll talk about a little bit. We're

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Speaker 1: gonna talk about a AH, a possible future type of

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Speaker 1: battery that people are working on right now, where that's

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Speaker 1: really an issue. Both lithium and sodium are being considered

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Speaker 1: for new types of batteries, but both of them are

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Speaker 1: alkali metals. The big problem, there are several problems, but

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Speaker 1: the big problem I would say with that is alkali

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Speaker 1: metals belong to a class where they tend to be

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Speaker 1: let's say, reactive when they come into contact with water.

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Speaker 1: So if you've ever heard stories about sodium and water,

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00:23:46,480 --> 00:23:49,400
Speaker 1: or if you've ever seen anyone demonstrate what happens when

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Speaker 1: sodium encounters water, uh, you know it's explosive. The same

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00:23:54,240 --> 00:23:57,040
Speaker 1: thing is true of lithium. All right, this is where

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Speaker 1: we get a little chemistry. Lesson, everyone, go and get

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Speaker 1: your period audic table of elements. I'll wait now. If

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00:24:03,520 --> 00:24:06,280
Speaker 1: you look at the left hand side of that table

427
00:24:06,359 --> 00:24:08,760
Speaker 1: of elements, you're gonna see that down the line you're

428
00:24:08,800 --> 00:24:10,719
Speaker 1: gonna have lithium and you're gonna have sodium that are

429
00:24:10,760 --> 00:24:13,399
Speaker 1: both in that same line, as well as potassium and

430
00:24:13,480 --> 00:24:17,679
Speaker 1: some other alkali metals. That means that those elements share

431
00:24:17,960 --> 00:24:21,360
Speaker 1: common characteristics, and one of those is when water comes

432
00:24:21,359 --> 00:24:25,160
Speaker 1: in contacts, sometimes things go boom. So first of all,

433
00:24:25,359 --> 00:24:29,399
Speaker 1: never never ever play with these I don't if you

434
00:24:29,600 --> 00:24:32,920
Speaker 1: get hold of sodium or lithium, never play with that

435
00:24:32,960 --> 00:24:36,800
Speaker 1: and water. This is seriously dangerous stuff. Also, probably just

436
00:24:36,800 --> 00:24:39,000
Speaker 1: just don't. I mean, because because water is in the

437
00:24:39,119 --> 00:24:42,920
Speaker 1: air around us in in great enough quantities that hypothetically

438
00:24:43,000 --> 00:24:47,359
Speaker 1: it can burst into flame. I know of someone I didn't.

439
00:24:47,440 --> 00:24:49,160
Speaker 1: This is a friend of a friend's story, so it's

440
00:24:49,280 --> 00:24:53,360
Speaker 1: possibly apocryphal. So it could be urban legend. I admit that,

441
00:24:53,760 --> 00:24:59,359
Speaker 1: But I know of someone who pocketed some sodium from

442
00:24:59,760 --> 00:25:04,040
Speaker 1: his chemistry class and then was walking around with it

443
00:25:04,040 --> 00:25:09,760
Speaker 1: in his pocket, and his body was giving off moisture,

444
00:25:10,440 --> 00:25:12,800
Speaker 1: and so he began to feel a burning sensation in

445
00:25:12,840 --> 00:25:16,919
Speaker 1: his pants and immediately ran to the bathroom and pulled

446
00:25:16,920 --> 00:25:22,760
Speaker 1: the sodium mountain threw it into the toilet, which then exploded. Yeah, again,

447
00:25:22,840 --> 00:25:25,440
Speaker 1: could be apocryphal. This is it was a story about

448
00:25:25,440 --> 00:25:27,560
Speaker 1: a high school student who went to a rival school,

449
00:25:27,600 --> 00:25:29,160
Speaker 1: so it could have very well been one of those

450
00:25:29,160 --> 00:25:30,960
Speaker 1: stories where ha ha, the people who go to that

451
00:25:31,000 --> 00:25:32,800
Speaker 1: school are so dumb, so much more dumb than the

452
00:25:32,800 --> 00:25:35,600
Speaker 1: people who go to my school, which is saying something.

453
00:25:36,119 --> 00:25:41,280
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding. I love all my classmates Spartans, but anyway,

454
00:25:41,640 --> 00:25:44,720
Speaker 1: you were the Spartans, I was the Spartans. Were Spartans

455
00:25:45,200 --> 00:25:49,440
Speaker 1: Spartans together. This is tech stuff. So but the point,

456
00:25:49,520 --> 00:25:53,440
Speaker 1: the point being that these these these elements have serious

457
00:25:53,520 --> 00:25:55,440
Speaker 1: drawbacks to him. And that's one of the reasons why

458
00:25:56,480 --> 00:25:59,679
Speaker 1: the another reason why battery improvement has gone so slowly,

459
00:25:59,680 --> 00:26:02,080
Speaker 1: because we have to find safe ways to handle this

460
00:26:02,240 --> 00:26:05,240
Speaker 1: stuff so that it doesn't come into contact with water

461
00:26:05,359 --> 00:26:07,600
Speaker 1: and then just blow up. Right. Part of that in

462
00:26:07,680 --> 00:26:09,720
Speaker 1: lithium ion batteries specifically, is that they have to have

463
00:26:09,760 --> 00:26:13,280
Speaker 1: a very small, very simple onboard computer to to manage

464
00:26:13,480 --> 00:26:15,920
Speaker 1: the way that all of the bits flow around in there,

465
00:26:16,320 --> 00:26:18,680
Speaker 1: and uh and and that that makes them pretty expensive.

466
00:26:18,720 --> 00:26:20,920
Speaker 1: Lithium is already pretty expensive, but it makes them even

467
00:26:20,920 --> 00:26:22,840
Speaker 1: more expensive than they would already be. Now, we have

468
00:26:22,960 --> 00:26:26,639
Speaker 1: seen some improvements with battery life in recent years, but

469
00:26:26,760 --> 00:26:29,760
Speaker 1: a lot of that doesn't come from improvements in the batteries.

470
00:26:30,080 --> 00:26:33,320
Speaker 1: It's coming in improvements in the actual electronics. We are

471
00:26:33,560 --> 00:26:37,400
Speaker 1: finding more efficient ways to generate the stuff we want.

472
00:26:37,600 --> 00:26:41,760
Speaker 1: So your smartphones, if you've got a smartphone recently that

473
00:26:41,880 --> 00:26:45,480
Speaker 1: has a decent battery life, it may not be that

474
00:26:45,640 --> 00:26:47,480
Speaker 1: the battery is so much better. It's just that the

475
00:26:47,520 --> 00:26:50,720
Speaker 1: people who designed the hardware and software we're able to

476
00:26:50,960 --> 00:26:55,200
Speaker 1: maximize performance while being as efficient as possible. So you're

477
00:26:55,200 --> 00:26:59,840
Speaker 1: still working with the same basic amount of Yeah, but

478
00:27:00,000 --> 00:27:02,000
Speaker 1: you don't need as much of it to do the

479
00:27:02,000 --> 00:27:05,440
Speaker 1: stuff you are doing exactly. Speaking of that juice, though,

480
00:27:05,680 --> 00:27:07,919
Speaker 1: the problem with batteries, and the reason that that that

481
00:27:08,080 --> 00:27:11,639
Speaker 1: gasoline has not been ousted completely by batteries. Is that

482
00:27:12,240 --> 00:27:15,200
Speaker 1: gasoline has an energy density of something like thirteen thousand

483
00:27:15,440 --> 00:27:17,960
Speaker 1: watt hours per kilogram, which is which is just a

484
00:27:18,000 --> 00:27:20,400
Speaker 1: measure of how much of juice it has, how much

485
00:27:20,800 --> 00:27:23,400
Speaker 1: how much, how much work they can get out of

486
00:27:23,560 --> 00:27:28,040
Speaker 1: a given amount of gasoline. Sure, um, the best lithium

487
00:27:28,080 --> 00:27:32,040
Speaker 1: ion batteries only hold about two hundred what hours per kilogram,

488
00:27:32,160 --> 00:27:35,200
Speaker 1: so with of a of a hypothetical in a perfect

489
00:27:35,200 --> 00:27:40,160
Speaker 1: world situation, four hundred possible, So still vastly underpowered when

490
00:27:40,160 --> 00:27:44,640
Speaker 1: you compare it to gasoline. Right now, there are some

491
00:27:45,960 --> 00:27:49,000
Speaker 1: people out there, very very smart people working on batteries

492
00:27:49,040 --> 00:27:53,280
Speaker 1: that would have much higher densities power densities for their

493
00:27:53,320 --> 00:27:55,840
Speaker 1: batteries if they can get the batteries to work, if

494
00:27:55,840 --> 00:27:58,840
Speaker 1: they can get the the components to to to play nicely,

495
00:27:59,280 --> 00:28:02,400
Speaker 1: to not explore oade, and to work on larger scales,

496
00:28:02,560 --> 00:28:05,840
Speaker 1: and to work after more than three charges. There are

497
00:28:05,840 --> 00:28:08,480
Speaker 1: a lot of barriers that are in place, and we'll

498
00:28:08,520 --> 00:28:12,520
Speaker 1: talk about some specific uh cases, but keep in mind

499
00:28:12,840 --> 00:28:16,840
Speaker 1: there have been dozens, if not hundreds of different experiments

500
00:28:16,840 --> 00:28:20,840
Speaker 1: and trying to improve battery technology, and most of them

501
00:28:20,880 --> 00:28:23,400
Speaker 1: just have not panned out. They might have seen promising

502
00:28:23,440 --> 00:28:24,920
Speaker 1: at the beginning, but when you get to a point

503
00:28:24,920 --> 00:28:26,320
Speaker 1: where you're thinking, all right, how are we going to

504
00:28:26,359 --> 00:28:29,119
Speaker 1: scale this up where we can actually manufacture it or

505
00:28:29,600 --> 00:28:32,159
Speaker 1: create a battery large enough to do something useful, and

506
00:28:32,200 --> 00:28:35,119
Speaker 1: then things start to break down. So one of the

507
00:28:35,119 --> 00:28:37,800
Speaker 1: ones I wanted to talk about where these things called

508
00:28:37,800 --> 00:28:42,120
Speaker 1: micro batteries, And this was something that that we received

509
00:28:42,360 --> 00:28:47,200
Speaker 1: from that initial request to talk about battery improvements. And

510
00:28:47,240 --> 00:28:50,600
Speaker 1: this is a story about a team of researchers from

511
00:28:50,600 --> 00:28:55,720
Speaker 1: the University of Illinois uh talking about a particular type

512
00:28:55,720 --> 00:29:00,240
Speaker 1: of battery that uses these very tiny electrodes and lots

513
00:29:00,240 --> 00:29:03,440
Speaker 1: and lots of them, and their three dimensional electrodes, and

514
00:29:04,080 --> 00:29:07,720
Speaker 1: it was almost like these electrodes are kind of intertwined together,

515
00:29:07,800 --> 00:29:10,480
Speaker 1: so they're very close together, which allows the ions to

516
00:29:10,600 --> 00:29:14,240
Speaker 1: pass very very quickly. It also allows electrons to flow

517
00:29:14,560 --> 00:29:16,520
Speaker 1: very quickly, and the idea being that you would be

518
00:29:16,560 --> 00:29:18,760
Speaker 1: able to release quite a bit of energy in a

519
00:29:18,760 --> 00:29:21,880
Speaker 1: short amount of time, faster than you could with most batteries,

520
00:29:22,080 --> 00:29:25,960
Speaker 1: and you could also recharge the battery way faster, right,

521
00:29:25,960 --> 00:29:27,960
Speaker 1: because that thoroughput speed has a lot to do with

522
00:29:28,000 --> 00:29:31,120
Speaker 1: how effective a battery is. Yeah, and in fact, according

523
00:29:31,240 --> 00:29:36,080
Speaker 1: to several articles that were posted about this technology. BBC

524
00:29:36,320 --> 00:29:40,040
Speaker 1: did one as well as some other outlets. The claim

525
00:29:40,120 --> 00:29:42,800
Speaker 1: was that such a battery would be reached could be

526
00:29:42,840 --> 00:29:47,440
Speaker 1: recharged one thousand times faster than competing technology, so you

527
00:29:47,520 --> 00:29:51,200
Speaker 1: could turn your you know, plug your smartphone in. Let's

528
00:29:51,200 --> 00:29:53,160
Speaker 1: say your smartphone has one of these batteries in it

529
00:29:53,720 --> 00:29:56,520
Speaker 1: and you plugged it in. After a second, it's fully recharged.

530
00:29:57,080 --> 00:29:59,360
Speaker 1: You don't have to leave it there for hours for

531
00:29:59,400 --> 00:30:02,400
Speaker 1: it to charge, which is that's a very attractive thing.

532
00:30:02,920 --> 00:30:05,360
Speaker 1: So you're thinking, well, if it can release lots of energy,

533
00:30:05,520 --> 00:30:08,000
Speaker 1: and if it can be recharged in a blink of

534
00:30:08,040 --> 00:30:12,920
Speaker 1: an eye, where's the problem. Well, mostly the problem comes

535
00:30:13,040 --> 00:30:18,120
Speaker 1: in from the manufacturing side and the scalability as well

536
00:30:18,160 --> 00:30:22,600
Speaker 1: as uh the fact that it's not the most reliable technology.

537
00:30:22,640 --> 00:30:26,640
Speaker 1: Ours Technica actually ran a great article where they really

538
00:30:26,680 --> 00:30:29,920
Speaker 1: looked into this and and dove deeper than a lot

539
00:30:29,960 --> 00:30:33,040
Speaker 1: of the other outlets did to kind of take a

540
00:30:33,040 --> 00:30:35,400
Speaker 1: look at this technology with a skeptical eye, just to

541
00:30:35,440 --> 00:30:37,880
Speaker 1: make sure that it really did measure up to the hype,

542
00:30:38,240 --> 00:30:42,120
Speaker 1: because we've seen this before with battery technology, right, and

543
00:30:42,160 --> 00:30:44,160
Speaker 1: this isn't to say that they want the team won't

544
00:30:44,200 --> 00:30:46,400
Speaker 1: figure out a way of of solving the problems that

545
00:30:46,440 --> 00:30:48,200
Speaker 1: they face. But here are some of the problems. One

546
00:30:48,240 --> 00:30:51,320
Speaker 1: of them is that it's really hard to manufacture these things.

547
00:30:51,400 --> 00:30:53,800
Speaker 1: The way that the team was doing it, they were

548
00:30:53,880 --> 00:30:58,240
Speaker 1: using this uh, this essentially gold to make these little

549
00:30:58,240 --> 00:31:02,280
Speaker 1: three dimensional um electrides electrodes sort of, and then they

550
00:31:02,360 --> 00:31:07,320
Speaker 1: used poly styrene uh, little little tiny poly styrene pills,

551
00:31:07,560 --> 00:31:13,040
Speaker 1: essentially packing them in there, twisting the electrodes around, coding

552
00:31:13,080 --> 00:31:16,880
Speaker 1: it and nickel in a well in a combination of

553
00:31:16,960 --> 00:31:20,920
Speaker 1: nickel and tin and then UH nickelton alloy actually, and

554
00:31:20,960 --> 00:31:26,760
Speaker 1: then coding the rest of it with manganese oxy hydroxide uh,

555
00:31:26,840 --> 00:31:32,160
Speaker 1: and then melting away the poly styrene so it it's gone,

556
00:31:32,480 --> 00:31:34,600
Speaker 1: then immersing the whole thing to a liquid that was

557
00:31:34,640 --> 00:31:39,320
Speaker 1: heated to three degrees celsius or five degrees fahrenheit. And

558
00:31:39,440 --> 00:31:42,400
Speaker 1: so it's what even the team has referred to as

559
00:31:42,480 --> 00:31:47,959
Speaker 1: a boutique manufacturing approach, meaning that it's very detailed, it's painstaking,

560
00:31:48,080 --> 00:31:52,760
Speaker 1: it is not automated, extremely expensive. Yeah, it's no time

561
00:31:52,800 --> 00:31:57,560
Speaker 1: consuming exactly, not something that's scalable to mass manufacturing methods

562
00:31:57,640 --> 00:31:59,520
Speaker 1: right now, certainly right that's not to say that they

563
00:31:59,520 --> 00:32:01,920
Speaker 1: wouldn't find some other way of doing it. They may

564
00:32:01,960 --> 00:32:04,080
Speaker 1: find a way of doing it where it doesn't require

565
00:32:04,240 --> 00:32:07,880
Speaker 1: this series of painstaking steps in order to get the

566
00:32:07,920 --> 00:32:12,719
Speaker 1: result that they want, but uh, it's not ideal. Another

567
00:32:12,760 --> 00:32:16,600
Speaker 1: problem is that the electrolyte they're using is combustible, so

568
00:32:16,680 --> 00:32:19,080
Speaker 1: that's always a concern. If you get it too hot,

569
00:32:19,160 --> 00:32:22,440
Speaker 1: it could burst into flames. Uh um, or you know,

570
00:32:22,480 --> 00:32:24,080
Speaker 1: if you were to get it close to a flame,

571
00:32:24,120 --> 00:32:28,240
Speaker 1: it could catch fire. And on top of all that, uh,

572
00:32:28,480 --> 00:32:31,360
Speaker 1: the battery loses about five percent of its capacity with

573
00:32:31,480 --> 00:32:35,920
Speaker 1: each charge discharge cycle, so after fifteen cycles it would

574
00:32:35,920 --> 00:32:38,560
Speaker 1: be down to about two thirds of its original capacity.

575
00:32:38,960 --> 00:32:43,400
Speaker 1: And uh, if you were to do a full discharge

576
00:32:43,400 --> 00:32:46,200
Speaker 1: full charge, it might be even worse than that. So

577
00:32:46,480 --> 00:32:49,120
Speaker 1: while it would recharge very quickly, it would have a

578
00:32:49,160 --> 00:32:53,560
Speaker 1: little less juice each time. And so after you recharge

579
00:32:53,560 --> 00:32:57,600
Speaker 1: it twenty times, yeah, you have to buy a new battery,

580
00:32:57,720 --> 00:33:01,920
Speaker 1: new battery, right, So, uh, that raises lots of problems

581
00:33:01,920 --> 00:33:04,680
Speaker 1: to waste problems. For example, like even if you were

582
00:33:04,720 --> 00:33:07,000
Speaker 1: to say, well, that's acceptable because I want to be

583
00:33:07,000 --> 00:33:09,120
Speaker 1: able to charge my phone in the second, you can

584
00:33:09,160 --> 00:33:10,640
Speaker 1: do that twenty times, and then you have to go

585
00:33:10,680 --> 00:33:12,520
Speaker 1: buy a new battery. And especially when the when the

586
00:33:12,560 --> 00:33:15,320
Speaker 1: technology to create it is so so detailed and expensive,

587
00:33:15,360 --> 00:33:17,520
Speaker 1: and to be fair, you wouldn't even you wouldn't even

588
00:33:17,560 --> 00:33:20,040
Speaker 1: go twenty times, right because each time you would have

589
00:33:20,160 --> 00:33:23,320
Speaker 1: less juice and so your your phone would be less

590
00:33:23,360 --> 00:33:26,560
Speaker 1: and less useful over time. So after after your phone

591
00:33:26,560 --> 00:33:28,680
Speaker 1: doesn't last more than a couple of hours, you think, well,

592
00:33:28,680 --> 00:33:30,520
Speaker 1: I gotta get a new battery. So that might be

593
00:33:30,640 --> 00:33:34,920
Speaker 1: six or seven recharges, depending upon how hard you are

594
00:33:35,000 --> 00:33:38,680
Speaker 1: on electronics. If you're me, then you'd be like, all right,

595
00:33:38,800 --> 00:33:42,760
Speaker 1: recharge it, give me a new battery. So um. So

596
00:33:42,800 --> 00:33:47,680
Speaker 1: that that's the downside to this micro battery technology. That's

597
00:33:47,720 --> 00:33:50,320
Speaker 1: not to say again that they won't find ways around that.

598
00:33:50,400 --> 00:33:54,080
Speaker 1: Engineers are brilliant at finding ways of fixing problems. But

599
00:33:54,320 --> 00:33:58,480
Speaker 1: it's not going to be the revolutionary battery technology that

600
00:33:58,520 --> 00:34:00,240
Speaker 1: we're all going to see in our smart on in

601
00:34:00,280 --> 00:34:02,360
Speaker 1: the next few months. It'll it'll at least be a

602
00:34:02,360 --> 00:34:05,200
Speaker 1: couple of years before we can see this rolled out

603
00:34:05,200 --> 00:34:07,200
Speaker 1: in any way, assuming that they find a way to

604
00:34:07,240 --> 00:34:10,840
Speaker 1: fix these problems. Right. One of the other ones that

605
00:34:10,880 --> 00:34:13,919
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about our lithium air batteries, and

606
00:34:14,080 --> 00:34:16,880
Speaker 1: this is where we're getting into those alkali metals and

607
00:34:16,920 --> 00:34:20,480
Speaker 1: the concern about how they react with water exactly. You know,

608
00:34:20,760 --> 00:34:23,560
Speaker 1: they could hypothetically store up to four times as as

609
00:34:23,680 --> 00:34:26,560
Speaker 1: much as as lithium ion batteries, as much power as

610
00:34:26,560 --> 00:34:32,240
Speaker 1: lithium ion batteries, but they work in that um. Lithium

611
00:34:32,239 --> 00:34:35,040
Speaker 1: combines with with oxygen that's trapped by a carbon surface.

612
00:34:35,200 --> 00:34:38,200
Speaker 1: Carbon nanotubes are are popular right now and um and

613
00:34:38,239 --> 00:34:42,000
Speaker 1: the resulting interplay of these lithium ions and electrons induces

614
00:34:42,040 --> 00:34:45,319
Speaker 1: the flow of current. UM. Yeah, you get a get a.

615
00:34:45,719 --> 00:34:47,440
Speaker 1: One of the by products you get out of this

616
00:34:47,560 --> 00:34:52,960
Speaker 1: is lithium peroxide, which is a problem because as it accumulates,

617
00:34:53,040 --> 00:34:56,879
Speaker 1: it starts to make it more difficult to recharge the battery. Right.

618
00:34:57,160 --> 00:35:01,359
Speaker 1: So they they've only recently figured well, they they've had

619
00:35:01,400 --> 00:35:05,759
Speaker 1: a bunch of of barriers to to making this work.

620
00:35:05,880 --> 00:35:08,360
Speaker 1: That is, that is one of them they're they're starting

621
00:35:08,360 --> 00:35:11,440
Speaker 1: to For a long time, they didn't understand why the

622
00:35:11,480 --> 00:35:14,360
Speaker 1: electrochemical reactions were going so poorly in these things, and

623
00:35:14,360 --> 00:35:19,640
Speaker 1: it wasn't until uh May thirteen that that researchers at

624
00:35:19,719 --> 00:35:22,319
Speaker 1: m I T and Sandia National Labs announced that they

625
00:35:22,320 --> 00:35:25,440
Speaker 1: were starting to be able to observe the reactions at

626
00:35:25,440 --> 00:35:27,960
Speaker 1: all to figure out why this isn't working, and that's

627
00:35:27,960 --> 00:35:31,080
Speaker 1: when they started seeing this lithium peroxide forming that was

628
00:35:31,120 --> 00:35:34,880
Speaker 1: inhibiting the flow of electricity. And uh, they did discover

629
00:35:35,040 --> 00:35:38,960
Speaker 1: that if the electricity were flowing, that the lithium peroxide

630
00:35:39,120 --> 00:35:43,520
Speaker 1: was starting to reduce around the trouble spots. And they

631
00:35:43,680 --> 00:35:46,840
Speaker 1: figured that if they could improve the electron flow of

632
00:35:46,880 --> 00:35:50,000
Speaker 1: the battery overall, then they might be able to get

633
00:35:50,040 --> 00:35:55,280
Speaker 1: around this problem so that recharging doesn't become an issue. Right. Uh,

634
00:35:55,400 --> 00:35:58,000
Speaker 1: that that explosion thing that we mentioned earlier is still

635
00:35:57,960 --> 00:36:01,200
Speaker 1: at issue because when when you're dealing with you know,

636
00:36:01,280 --> 00:36:05,200
Speaker 1: these these carbon surfaces are allowing air to basically breathe

637
00:36:05,239 --> 00:36:09,200
Speaker 1: into the battery, and since water happens in air, Yeah,

638
00:36:09,320 --> 00:36:11,480
Speaker 1: you have to find either a way of coating the

639
00:36:11,520 --> 00:36:13,880
Speaker 1: lithium inside the battery so that the water would not

640
00:36:13,920 --> 00:36:16,400
Speaker 1: react with the surface of lithium, or you'd have to

641
00:36:16,400 --> 00:36:19,440
Speaker 1: find a way of filtering the water out entirely, so

642
00:36:19,480 --> 00:36:24,160
Speaker 1: that membrane at the top end, yeah, hydrophobic membrane, that's

643
00:36:24,200 --> 00:36:26,120
Speaker 1: what we'd like to call that it's scared of water.

644
00:36:26,200 --> 00:36:30,399
Speaker 1: It pushes water out, So uh yeah, it's that that's

645
00:36:30,400 --> 00:36:34,360
Speaker 1: an issue. Now, there is a potential alternative to lithium

646
00:36:34,400 --> 00:36:38,400
Speaker 1: air batteries called sodium air batteries that are even they

647
00:36:38,440 --> 00:36:41,359
Speaker 1: are they may not be able to hold as much

648
00:36:41,640 --> 00:36:45,960
Speaker 1: energy as a lithium a battery. It's a lower theoretical

649
00:36:46,160 --> 00:36:49,440
Speaker 1: energy density but a higher practical energy density at the

650
00:36:49,480 --> 00:36:54,399
Speaker 1: current moment exactly, so current moment. So yeah, no, it's

651
00:36:54,480 --> 00:36:57,640
Speaker 1: it always happens. You can't get around it. But yeah,

652
00:36:57,760 --> 00:37:01,759
Speaker 1: that's so that's a stability. But again, remember sodium is

653
00:37:01,760 --> 00:37:04,840
Speaker 1: probably that alkali metal groups, so against same issues. You

654
00:37:05,000 --> 00:37:08,600
Speaker 1: get that water in contact with sodium and battery goal

655
00:37:08,680 --> 00:37:14,400
Speaker 1: boom instead of instead of zap zap. Right. Uh. There's

656
00:37:14,480 --> 00:37:17,320
Speaker 1: there's also research being done into what's being called solid

657
00:37:17,320 --> 00:37:20,080
Speaker 1: state batteries UM, which are kind of kind of the

658
00:37:20,160 --> 00:37:24,120
Speaker 1: lithium ion um solution to dry cell batteries. It's it's

659
00:37:24,239 --> 00:37:28,440
Speaker 1: using um thin layers of solid electrolyte instead of instead

660
00:37:28,480 --> 00:37:32,960
Speaker 1: of the liquid that most lithium ions use. Yeah, and

661
00:37:32,960 --> 00:37:36,160
Speaker 1: then there's a I read on Wired this interesting idea

662
00:37:36,239 --> 00:37:39,359
Speaker 1: of spray can batteries where each of the each of

663
00:37:39,400 --> 00:37:43,080
Speaker 1: the elements that you would find within a battery, the cathodeiana,

664
00:37:43,160 --> 00:37:46,680
Speaker 1: the electrolyte, all that is represented by a different can

665
00:37:46,920 --> 00:37:50,880
Speaker 1: of uh sprayable material. So you could actually spray this

666
00:37:50,960 --> 00:37:54,520
Speaker 1: material onto different surfaces and make a battery that way.

667
00:37:54,760 --> 00:37:56,640
Speaker 1: And the idea being that this would allow you to

668
00:37:56,680 --> 00:38:01,000
Speaker 1: create batteries in devices that would break the battery designed

669
00:38:01,040 --> 00:38:03,520
Speaker 1: directly into the device, so you wouldn't have this blocky

670
00:38:03,560 --> 00:38:07,120
Speaker 1: battery compartment. Now, it's not saying that these batteries would

671
00:38:07,120 --> 00:38:11,120
Speaker 1: be particularly efficient or powerful compared to what we have now,

672
00:38:11,680 --> 00:38:14,840
Speaker 1: just that this would give us more opportunity to explore

673
00:38:14,960 --> 00:38:20,000
Speaker 1: different ways of shaping batteries so that they are part

674
00:38:20,200 --> 00:38:23,080
Speaker 1: of our electronics and not just you know, again, not

675
00:38:23,160 --> 00:38:26,200
Speaker 1: just some clunky thing that you have to find make room,

676
00:38:26,200 --> 00:38:28,239
Speaker 1: make room for it, right, right, and and also not

677
00:38:28,320 --> 00:38:31,319
Speaker 1: so heavy, um what would be terrific. That reminds me

678
00:38:31,400 --> 00:38:34,839
Speaker 1: of the nanocomposite paper batteries that some people are are

679
00:38:34,880 --> 00:38:37,759
Speaker 1: working on. These are these are composed of cellulose and

680
00:38:37,880 --> 00:38:41,440
Speaker 1: um an aligned carbon nanotubes woven together um and and

681
00:38:41,480 --> 00:38:45,640
Speaker 1: they're they're they're small, they're flat, they're flexible, they're implantable. Um,

682
00:38:45,880 --> 00:38:50,680
Speaker 1: they could hypothetically be put into medical devices. Yeah, these

683
00:38:50,680 --> 00:38:54,759
Speaker 1: could actually use biological fluid as ionic fluid. So it

684
00:38:54,880 --> 00:38:58,479
Speaker 1: ends up turning your body's fluids into the electrolyteed needs.

685
00:38:59,200 --> 00:39:02,640
Speaker 1: This is just making think of idiocracy. It's electrolyte. It's

686
00:39:02,680 --> 00:39:05,520
Speaker 1: the thing that plants crave um. I was doing the

687
00:39:05,600 --> 00:39:07,879
Speaker 1: hand gesture and everything for those of you are fans

688
00:39:07,880 --> 00:39:10,719
Speaker 1: of that movie. Then there's also uh, you know, the

689
00:39:10,800 --> 00:39:16,399
Speaker 1: Verge reported on bacteria that are able to transfer electricity,

690
00:39:16,480 --> 00:39:18,600
Speaker 1: and scientists had known about this for a while, but

691
00:39:18,640 --> 00:39:21,439
Speaker 1: they weren't sure about what the mechanism was, like how

692
00:39:21,480 --> 00:39:26,000
Speaker 1: did it transfer electricity? And they discovered that that there

693
00:39:26,000 --> 00:39:30,080
Speaker 1: were proteins on the bacteria surface that we're responsible for

694
00:39:30,160 --> 00:39:35,560
Speaker 1: electron transfer. Uh. The bacteria is uh, this is this

695
00:39:35,640 --> 00:39:37,799
Speaker 1: is going to be a train wreck of a pronunciation

696
00:39:38,560 --> 00:39:46,240
Speaker 1: of me luck she wa nella oneidnisis. But anyway attaches

697
00:39:46,239 --> 00:39:48,960
Speaker 1: to rusty iron and other materials and breaks those down

698
00:39:49,239 --> 00:39:52,480
Speaker 1: and in the process of breaking down these materials, it

699
00:39:52,560 --> 00:39:56,960
Speaker 1: releases electrons. So why are we interested in this? Because

700
00:39:57,480 --> 00:40:02,839
Speaker 1: by studying biological organisms that can emit electricity as part

701
00:40:02,960 --> 00:40:06,799
Speaker 1: of some process where it's consuming something, we might be

702
00:40:06,840 --> 00:40:10,799
Speaker 1: able to create biological batteries, and these are these are

703
00:40:10,800 --> 00:40:14,240
Speaker 1: a little bit more of fuel cell really than a battery.

704
00:40:14,400 --> 00:40:17,399
Speaker 1: But and and to explain the difference, a fuel cell

705
00:40:17,680 --> 00:40:21,799
Speaker 1: is a device that you put fuel into and then

706
00:40:21,840 --> 00:40:25,920
Speaker 1: there's a chemical reaction that generates electricity, and then you

707
00:40:26,000 --> 00:40:28,840
Speaker 1: refill the fuel cells. So and you know, with a battery,

708
00:40:28,880 --> 00:40:32,480
Speaker 1: what you're doing is you're using an electric uh or

709
00:40:32,560 --> 00:40:36,960
Speaker 1: electrochemical reaction to harness electricity, and then you either have

710
00:40:37,040 --> 00:40:39,880
Speaker 1: to reverse the reaction in order to get the battery

711
00:40:39,960 --> 00:40:42,320
Speaker 1: to do it again, or you have to replace the battery.

712
00:40:42,360 --> 00:40:45,680
Speaker 1: Fuel cell, you just refill it with fuel. So hydrogen

713
00:40:45,719 --> 00:40:48,520
Speaker 1: fuel cells are the ones that most people know about

714
00:40:48,600 --> 00:40:50,480
Speaker 1: because those the ones that we've talked about for things

715
00:40:50,560 --> 00:40:54,400
Speaker 1: like cars. Hydrogen fuel cells use hydrogen, which is the

716
00:40:54,400 --> 00:40:58,640
Speaker 1: most plentiful element on Earth, although you have to break

717
00:40:58,640 --> 00:41:01,480
Speaker 1: it up from other stuff. It doesn't it doesn't it's

718
00:41:01,520 --> 00:41:04,839
Speaker 1: not so plentiful in its pure state. It's usually it's

719
00:41:05,000 --> 00:41:08,520
Speaker 1: it's in water, which is very plentiful, and hydrocarbons as well,

720
00:41:08,640 --> 00:41:11,720
Speaker 1: also very plentiful. But you have to separate the hydrogen outfast,

721
00:41:11,719 --> 00:41:14,160
Speaker 1: which requires energy a lot of energy. But once you've

722
00:41:14,160 --> 00:41:17,880
Speaker 1: got it, assuming that you've assuming that you found some

723
00:41:17,960 --> 00:41:20,279
Speaker 1: sort of hydrogen mine where it's not going to take

724
00:41:20,320 --> 00:41:23,440
Speaker 1: you too much energy to get it free. Um, you

725
00:41:23,520 --> 00:41:27,880
Speaker 1: put hydrogen on one side of a membrane um that

726
00:41:27,960 --> 00:41:31,360
Speaker 1: has a catalyst on it, usually something really expensive like platinum,

727
00:41:31,760 --> 00:41:33,120
Speaker 1: and then on the other side of the membrane you've

728
00:41:33,120 --> 00:41:38,160
Speaker 1: got oxygen. The membrane allows the hydrogen ions to pass through,

729
00:41:38,200 --> 00:41:41,359
Speaker 1: but not hydrogen atoms. It has to lose the electrons

730
00:41:41,400 --> 00:41:43,600
Speaker 1: for it to pass through. The electrons go through a

731
00:41:43,600 --> 00:41:46,120
Speaker 1: circuit just like it would with a battery and combine

732
00:41:46,160 --> 00:41:49,359
Speaker 1: on the other side. So the hydrogen ions passed through

733
00:41:49,360 --> 00:41:52,720
Speaker 1: the membrane and that meets up with the oxygen and says, hey,

734
00:41:53,280 --> 00:41:55,680
Speaker 1: you wanna you wanna go do something? I got my

735
00:41:55,719 --> 00:41:57,440
Speaker 1: buddy here, my buddy here, and I would love to

736
00:41:58,000 --> 00:42:00,520
Speaker 1: take you out to dinner. And so the two hydrogen

737
00:42:00,560 --> 00:42:03,080
Speaker 1: take out the one oxygen to dinner. Meanwhile, the electrons

738
00:42:03,120 --> 00:42:06,040
Speaker 1: come back over through the circuit and recombined, and then

739
00:42:06,080 --> 00:42:09,759
Speaker 1: you get water. So the output of a hydrogen based

740
00:42:09,800 --> 00:42:14,719
Speaker 1: fuel cell is water, electricity, and heat, which is why

741
00:42:14,719 --> 00:42:17,000
Speaker 1: every pretty sweet deal. Yeah, I think This is why

742
00:42:17,040 --> 00:42:19,520
Speaker 1: we would love to use it to fuel cars because

743
00:42:19,520 --> 00:42:24,200
Speaker 1: instead of giving off all these different greenhouse Yeah, now,

744
00:42:24,400 --> 00:42:27,960
Speaker 1: water vapor is technically a greenhouse gas, but it's water vapor.

745
00:42:28,000 --> 00:42:31,279
Speaker 1: It's not carbon dioxide, it's not methane or anything like that.

746
00:42:31,719 --> 00:42:34,759
Speaker 1: So that's why they're very attractive. But they are you know,

747
00:42:34,880 --> 00:42:37,480
Speaker 1: they're similar to batteries, but there there is a difference.

748
00:42:37,719 --> 00:42:41,480
Speaker 1: There is I do I do have a have a

749
00:42:41,520 --> 00:42:44,400
Speaker 1: bio battery that I was just reading about research last

750
00:42:44,440 --> 00:42:47,120
Speaker 1: November at m i T. Harvard and the Massachusetts Eye

751
00:42:47,200 --> 00:42:52,880
Speaker 1: and Ear Infirmary. Um the okay, so, so mammals have

752
00:42:53,120 --> 00:42:56,719
Speaker 1: in their inner ears chamber that's filled with ions and

753
00:42:56,880 --> 00:43:01,520
Speaker 1: um uh. These these ions produce use an electrical potential

754
00:43:01,880 --> 00:43:04,759
Speaker 1: which drives neural signals. And what this means is that

755
00:43:05,040 --> 00:43:08,200
Speaker 1: this is the chamber in your ear that that lets

756
00:43:08,239 --> 00:43:12,399
Speaker 1: the vibration of your ear drum be converted into an

757
00:43:12,400 --> 00:43:15,560
Speaker 1: electrochemical signal that your brain can read and then interprets

758
00:43:15,560 --> 00:43:19,600
Speaker 1: the sound and interprets a sound. Um and so but

759
00:43:19,600 --> 00:43:22,000
Speaker 1: but but you've got this this inner chamber that's just

760
00:43:22,120 --> 00:43:25,440
Speaker 1: hanging out with ions in it, which is a potential battery.

761
00:43:25,920 --> 00:43:28,719
Speaker 1: Um and these researchers put UM put some electrodes in

762
00:43:28,719 --> 00:43:33,799
Speaker 1: there along with a very low power electronic device, and

763
00:43:34,120 --> 00:43:38,080
Speaker 1: UM the chamber produced enough power with these electrodes to

764
00:43:38,160 --> 00:43:42,319
Speaker 1: power the device to wire wirelessly transmit data. That's pretty

765
00:43:42,360 --> 00:43:45,960
Speaker 1: cool to to an external drive. Now again we're talking

766
00:43:46,000 --> 00:43:48,279
Speaker 1: about you know, we're not talking about stuff that's that's

767
00:43:48,719 --> 00:43:51,960
Speaker 1: advancing the power of batteries, but we are looking at

768
00:43:52,040 --> 00:43:55,440
Speaker 1: brand new applications that could that are really exciting. Yeah,

769
00:43:55,520 --> 00:43:57,960
Speaker 1: it's just but again, this isn't the thing that's going

770
00:43:58,000 --> 00:44:01,560
Speaker 1: to make your cell phone last longer. Probably probably not.

771
00:44:02,080 --> 00:44:04,799
Speaker 1: It's it's really really really low power, but it would

772
00:44:04,840 --> 00:44:07,960
Speaker 1: it would mostly be great for for medical advances in

773
00:44:08,160 --> 00:44:14,920
Speaker 1: um hearing aids. Yeah. So anyway, anyway, the advances we're

774
00:44:14,960 --> 00:44:18,200
Speaker 1: talking about, for the most part, are again just refining

775
00:44:18,400 --> 00:44:21,399
Speaker 1: the technology that we already have. It may turn out

776
00:44:21,480 --> 00:44:23,759
Speaker 1: that we just have to find a different means of

777
00:44:23,800 --> 00:44:28,120
Speaker 1: generating electricity that goes away from this electrochemical model entirely

778
00:44:28,280 --> 00:44:31,839
Speaker 1: for us to get beyond this this bottleneck, or if

779
00:44:31,880 --> 00:44:34,319
Speaker 1: one of these other like the if the lithium air

780
00:44:34,400 --> 00:44:36,840
Speaker 1: or sodium ayor batteries work out, or if the micro

781
00:44:36,960 --> 00:44:39,800
Speaker 1: battery works out, maybe maybe that will be that that

782
00:44:39,800 --> 00:44:42,080
Speaker 1: would be a huge leap ahead, and if either of

783
00:44:42,080 --> 00:44:44,680
Speaker 1: those of any of those were any any more efficient

784
00:44:45,200 --> 00:44:49,279
Speaker 1: chemical combination. Right, So there, we're not saying it's impossible.

785
00:44:49,640 --> 00:44:53,200
Speaker 1: We're just saying that it's been several decades and we've

786
00:44:53,280 --> 00:44:57,239
Speaker 1: only seen incremental improvements. So don't be surprised if that

787
00:44:57,440 --> 00:45:00,200
Speaker 1: stays the same. If it doesn't stay the same, aime,

788
00:45:00,280 --> 00:45:02,719
Speaker 1: if we do have this huge leap, that's gonna be

789
00:45:02,800 --> 00:45:06,880
Speaker 1: awesome for everybody, and that's what everyone wants. Just you know,

790
00:45:07,080 --> 00:45:10,319
Speaker 1: be prepared to wait. Just what I'm saying, all right,

791
00:45:10,400 --> 00:45:13,040
Speaker 1: So I think that was a good explanation of batteries,

792
00:45:13,080 --> 00:45:15,200
Speaker 1: also what the future is and why it's kind of

793
00:45:15,239 --> 00:45:19,480
Speaker 1: lagging behind at least in respect to the way processors

794
00:45:19,520 --> 00:45:22,680
Speaker 1: are taking off. If you guys have any ideas for

795
00:45:22,800 --> 00:45:25,920
Speaker 1: future episodes, there's a concept you really want to explained,

796
00:45:26,040 --> 00:45:29,120
Speaker 1: or there's a particular gadget or computer that you think

797
00:45:29,320 --> 00:45:31,799
Speaker 1: needs to be talked about, or there's a company or

798
00:45:31,840 --> 00:45:34,960
Speaker 1: a person let us know, send us an email that

799
00:45:35,040 --> 00:45:39,120
Speaker 1: address is tech stuff at Discovery dot com, or drop

800
00:45:39,200 --> 00:45:41,160
Speaker 1: us a line on Facebook or Twitter. Are handled. There

801
00:45:41,280 --> 00:45:44,520
Speaker 1: is text stuff HS w and Lauren and I will

802
00:45:44,560 --> 00:45:54,160
Speaker 1: taught to you again really soon For more on this

803
00:45:54,280 --> 00:45:56,800
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Does it, How staff works?

804
00:45:56,840 --> 00:46:02,240
Speaker 1: Dot com chos