Lithium battery fires could be a thing of the past
THE DAYS when laptops occasionally explode due to their lithium batteries breaking down could soon be over.
An invention, called Stoba, which was developed at the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) in Taiwan, sits between the positive and negative poles of the battery. When the battery temperature hits 130 degrees centigrade, Stoba transforms from a porous material to a solid film barrier and shuts down the reaction.
Alex Pang, the senior researcher who led a team that developed the new material over four years, said that when lithium-ion batteries develop internal shorts they can quickly heat up to as high as 500 degrees centigrade and catch fire or explode.
Adding a third substance that acts as a controller prevents the battery from ever getting out of control.
Pang said that battery makers in Taiwan are in the testing stage and have ramped up manufacturing of Stoba-equipped cells to the thousands. They expect to begin shipping in the first quarter of 2010.
Talking to Reuters, Pang said that Stoba will add only two to three per cent to the cost of lithium-ion battery manufacturing. He is trying to flog the technology to major laptop and phone manufacturers. µ
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Thats a nice safety device, but how about really stopping the problem of the batteries going bad.
Expect this technology to hit deaf ears by most manufacturers whom would not want to loose that 3% as it eats into the bottom line.
If anyone will take up a feature like this it will likely be Apple or perhaps Sony. Dull, Acer and Co will unlikely be using this technology on there very tight margin cheep as chips laptops.
SomeBodaies gotta PAYland. Will Stubba stuff Ungell & make Battery REusable? Can We Go Back to GREAT DePression? How Much Potenial Is Lost Per GummyCycle? Will Battery Turn Into Skeleton & wonder Where its' Flesh Went.
Doing Hockie BONE @ Steaming mere 12.5%A? I'll Take MY Chances At Mellow 285C.
drashek HOT Baths r Go-d.
I can see where you are coming from, but that 2-3% might be worth it if it reduces the number of warranty returns or lawsuits from faulty units injuring someone or their property. Plus, it could easily be turned to a marketing gimic of "our batteries are safe, are the other guys?" or whatever.
If we had possessed the Stoba earlier, perhaps we could have avoided the destruction of five-sixths of a solar system. But as it was, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle nixed all hope of avoiding the exotic particles that spontaneously emerged, existing for fractions of a second before being annihilating by anti-particles. The particle/anti-particle turbulence, resembling a quantum foam of vacuum energy, sucked the entire solace off the multiverse.
"Thats a nice safety device, but how about really stopping the problem of the batteries going bad."
Are you inbred? You're parents are brother and sister right? I'm not going to go into the physics involved in the whole battery process. Sufficient to day, a battery cannot last forever, period. It's a physics and chemistry thing. Look it up or shut up!
Lithium Ion batteries are on the way out anyways. Supercapacitors are where it's at.
Super capacitors don't have the energy density. The developers of EESTOR are likely fradulent or simply mistaken.
If anything kills Li-ion I bet it's going to be rechargable metal-air batteries if they are ever developed to the point of being practical.