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Battery Density Starting to Surpass Moore's Law Something old is new, the picture above is the first Thomas Edison Storage Battery. This was an Alkaline Battery that he started developing in 1890 and completed in 1903. As the Auto industry started up, Edison felt that electric auto's was a superior way to go versus steam, gas or any other form that was being played with. Edison found the traditional battery to be toxic, heavy and short life with only average energy storage. In 1903 Edison declaring his battery finished showed off his potassium hydroxide battery that would react with the Iron / Nickel electrodes creating a battery that was reliable and rechargeable. This battery also was 3 times as dense energy wise as traditional lead-acid batteries. Those building electric auto's flocked to buying Edison's batteries. Sadly due to various issues of leakage post manufacturing, electric auto companies did not get the long term benefit they had hoped for and went back to using cheaper to produce lead-acid batteries and Edison closed his battery plant in 1908 and Edison who was friends with Henry Ford acknowledged that the electric auto had lost to the Model T Car. While Edison's battery was of too low a voltage for ICE Auto's to use starting in 1912 when electric start began, they were profitable due to their long life and reliability that allowed them to be used in railroad crossing signs and especially in lamps for use in the mines. These batteries once Edison had fixed the packaging issue became his biggest moneymaker. Now you might ask why the History lesson? Battery density has been a slow but growing segment and many in the computer industry has felt that we are on the cusp of starting to use Moore's law for CPU's in regards to batteries. Reminder ( Moore's law is the observation that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years.) Recently, I posted about Toshiba's Generation 2 SCiB batteries that have tripled the density while maintaining charge times using a Titanium Niobium Oxide Anode to charge the battery. Researchers at the University of Maryland in partnership with Brook-haven National Laboratory looked to what had been invented in the past, the issues that existed and if they could possibly improve upon them to overcome limitations to allow a new product to come to market fast. Here is where Edison's battery comes into play as he had already figured out how to triple the density of the battery, but not how to improve the voltage recharge time as the batteries were slow to recharge. The short answer for those not wanting to look at the scientific paper listed below or download the document file is that they have designed due to current technology a new cathode material (Iron Triflouride) that triples energy density of Lithium-ion batteries while reducing recharge times greatly in a stable battery package. As the picture above shows, a traditional button 2032 battery now has triple the energy density of the original battery. Think of your laptop or cell phone battery that would now give you three times as much life before recharging is needed. The end result is that only a year ago we had batteries with a certain density and now 12 months later we are seeing proto types of batteries in their same size but three times as dense. Consider a Chevy Volt in it's current battery pack of 54 miles now 162 mile range or a Chevy BOLT's battery pack of 238 miles now 714 miles. The future is looking shockingly BRIGHT for long range batteries for all sorts of technology from cell-phones, laptop computers to other forms of portable electronics and especially electric auto's. Edison Alkaline Battery Info Iron Triflouride scientific paper release
