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Dear battery technology claimant,<p>Thank you for your submission of proposed new revolutionary battery technology. Your new technology claims to be superior to existing lithium-ion technology and is just around the corner from taking over the world. Unfortunately your technology will likely fail, because:<p>[ ] it is impractical to manufacture at scale.<p>[ ] it will be too expensive for users.<p>[ ] it suffers from too few recharge cycles.<p>[ ] it is incapable of delivering current at sufficient levels.<p>[ ] it lacks thermal stability at low or high temperatures.<p>[x] it lacks the energy density to make it sufficiently portable.<p>[ ] it has too short of a lifetime.<p>[ ] its charge rate is too slow.<p>[ ] its materials are too toxic.<p>[ ] it is too likely to catch fire or explode.<p>[ ] it is too minimal of a step forward for anybody to care.<p>[ ] this was already done 20 years ago and didn't work then.<p>[ ] by this time it ships li-ion advances will match it.<p>[ ] your claims are lies.<p>----------------------------------------------------------------<p>Source: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26633670">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26633670</a>
Sulfur in mining tailings is huge problem ( <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_mine_drainage" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_mine_drainage</a> ). This one reason there is so much research in Li-S batteries. Plenty of material innovations have come from people looking at mine tailings and wondering if something useful could me made of it.
"lithium-ion batteries .. degrade after just 1,000 cycles"
If you charge your car battery twice a week and complete a full cycle then we are still talking about like 9 years to reach 1000 cycles.
If you charge your phone every day, and do a full cycle, then we are close to 2.7 years. But you will probably not do a full cycle.
So, I guess lithium-ion batteries are not really that bad.
When to comes to batteries, you have to look at multiple factors.<p>Focusing on just 1, e.g. cycles doesn't give you the whole picture.<p>1. What is the capacity per $?<p>2. What is the capacity per kg?<p>3. What is the capacity per unit of volume?<p>4. Ease of disposal and recycling<p>5. Charge and discharge rates.<p>6. Safety.<p>7. Viable to produce commercially en masse?<p>There are just off the top of my head, and not necessarily in that order. The priority will vary depending on your use case.
This is big news....if it can be refined into a scalable process enabling commercial production.<p>LI-S batteries have significantly more capacity than commercial Li-[x] batteries of the same weight, but the big weakness until now has been that they have terrible durability.
I hope the better batteries, when they genuinely are deemed to be better, are used in phones and stuff instead of using batteries that’ll go bad in a few years on purpose to drive up sales of new phones.<p>Even people who can deal with the slower speeds after a few years of owning a phone get driven crazy by having to charge it often, I’d say it’s a big driver if not the biggest to buy a new phone.
In theory, a Li-S chemistry should be able to outperform Lithium Ion NCM chemistries by a factor of two or three.<p>Operating temperature range and cycle endurance were some primary barriers, and this seems promising, but ...<p>"The researchers suggest more work is required to improve the energy density and perhaps to find other materials to use for the mix to ensure a low-weight battery."<p>ok, nevermind.