New aluminum-sulfur battery tech offers full charging in under a minute | Hacker News Reader

New aluminum-sulfur battery tech offers full charging in under a minute

arstechnica.com

29 pointssoperj12 comments

This topic gives pretty good google, as in [1]. [2] and many others

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s42004-022-00693-5

[2] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acsaem.0c00921

I read through [1], certainly gives a more thorough overview. Thanks. I especially liked the open problems section.

How thick of a cable does it need to transfer a whole battery in just a minute? 85 Kw/h in 1/60th of an hour over 60 seconds is 5.1 mega joules per second. A 24,000 volts it would need wire capable of carrying 212.5 amps. How could that be made safe?

Doctor Emmett Brown managed to transfer 1.21 Gigawatts in a second down a cable no bigger than a telephone wire. I'm sure it'll be fine.

Once the connection is established, the ionized pathway, where the conductor was, should do well enough.

There are cables that can handle that kind of power. They're pretty big. Here's a picture of one: https://i.imgur.com/OlGx0.jpg

That can handle the current easily. But the voltage is high. Even with DC I wonder if the insulation would enough on that cable.

DC or AC ? Putting 212 A through a wire will be an interesting magnet :)

As far as battery tech articles go, this one seems more promising.

So what is the price per kWh? And how many cycles?

raw material costs - the researchers calculate under $9 per kilowatt-hour (from the article). Cycles seem to be related to how fast you want to charge/discharge it.

> If the cell was discharged over two hours and charged in just six minutes, it still had a charge capacity per weight that was 25 percent higher than lithium-ion batteries and retained roughly 80 percent of that capacity after 500 cycles—well beyond what you'd see with most lithium chemistries.

> retained roughly 80 percent of that capacity after 500 cycles—well beyond what you'd see with most lithium chemistries.

This loss is not realistic since most EV don't charge to 100% or discharge to 0%, where the low cycle count comes into play. Many will only charge to 80% charge capacity, but display 100% "range capacity", to maximize longevity, since most damage happens > 75%. But, this also means EV's have even poorer energy density.

> the researchers calculate under $9 per kilowatt-hour

Raw material isn't all that useful, without knowing the cost of a full cell. Enough raw material, for a handful of diamonds, can be found in your nearest dead shrub.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com