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comment by interstice · 2023-04-21T22:17:12.218Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
What were your goals in designing this battery chemistry?
Replies from: bhauth↑ comment by bhauth · 2023-04-21T22:30:39.200Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The goal of the battery design was to be something suitable for electric cars, with similar specific energy (that's watt-hours/kg) to Li-ion, less flammability, and lower cost.
If you mean "why was I designing a battery", I guess I just like thinking about designs for new technology.
Replies from: johnswentworth↑ comment by johnswentworth · 2023-04-21T23:25:45.504Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Why these particular pieces to achieve those goals? (Or, insofar as there were degrees of freedom where you just arbitrarily chose a piece, where were those degrees of freedom and what do the alternatives look like?)
Replies from: bhauth↑ comment by bhauth · 2023-04-21T23:33:53.386Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
See this blog post for an initial answer.
comment by Algon · 2023-04-21T22:37:19.108Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Eh, I don't think I like AMA style posts without much detail in the post itself. If you're going to reply, why not write it beforehand and include it in the post? This seems like it might have been interesting if you had done so.
Replies from: bhauth↑ comment by bhauth · 2023-04-21T22:42:22.140Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
- That would be pretty long. The intro might be something like this.
- It's hard to do multiple levels of technical detail in one post.
- I want to know how to order things if I'm talking to a LW-ish investor-ish person.
↑ comment by Trevor Hill-Hand (Jadael) · 2023-04-22T03:35:04.828Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I don't think it would be TOO long, I happily read through very long posts on here.
However, that said, I was curious enough to read that blog post, and that's about the length and level of detail I expect in a normal short-to-medium size LW post, but it also stopped short of where I wanted it to. I hope that helps calibrate a little? I don't know how "typical" I am as an example LW reader though.
Oh, and because I know it annoys me when people get distracted away from the main question by this sort of stuff, question is "Can you share the experimental results with just enough explanation to understand the methodology", because I think everything else will flow naturally from questions about the experiment and the results.
Replies from: bhauth↑ comment by bhauth · 2023-04-22T04:16:29.153Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Replies from: johnswentworth↑ comment by johnswentworth · 2023-04-22T04:32:00.544Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
How do you distinguish oxygen contamination from other problems, and what's the mechanism by which oxygen causes problems?
Replies from: bhauth↑ comment by bhauth · 2023-04-22T04:41:03.386Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Oxygen reacts spontaneously with sodium metal. (And various other things.) That causes current to go in and not come back out, but other things can cause that too.
When that happens, telling why can be complicated, but one way to tell if oxygen is the problem is to take away the oxygen and see if that helps.
comment by Cervera · 2023-04-22T12:57:38.840Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
How do you think discharge rates would affect the battery? Would it behave like a LFP that basically outputs mostly the same rate of Amps in the full spectrum of charge (Voltage varies little with discharge %)
Do you think an approach like this generates bateries with long lifetimes?
Did you expect balancing of these particular batteries to be particularly complicated?
Basically, tell us more!
Replies from: bhauth↑ comment by bhauth · 2023-04-22T13:45:38.678Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Li-ion batteries have solid particles that Li ions migrate into and out of. This can cause particles to break up, especially at high charge/discharge rates. Because there are fewer ions to migrate, fast discharge at low charge is bad for battery lifetime and gives lower voltage.
SMAC batteries have solid particles that dissolve and form as the battery is operated. It doesn't matter if those break up. To some extent, the maximum discharge rate would decrease as some smaller particles disappear during discharge. There's also some Ostwald ripening that happens, which decreases discharge rate a bit over time, until the next charge cycle, but the extent is limited.
Li-ion batteries are limited largely by SEI growth from electrolyte-Li reaction. Charging and discharging accelerates SEI growth because it causes cracking in the existing SEI, especially at high rates.
SMAC battery lifetime would probably be limited by water migration, with charge cycles being irrelevant and only time & temperature being important, but the long-term lifetime isn't clear at this point. Yes, there is a SEI in SMAC batteries, but it's a thin SEI that works for Na but not Li, with less surface area, so it wouldn't cause much capacity loss.
The relative charge rate of Li-ion vs SMAC depends on the thickness of the electrolyte layers, which depends on the manufacturing process rather than the chemistry. The experimental data I got doesn't really indicate this because an insulating oxide layer was forming, and because the test cells used much thicker layers than commercial cells would. But I'd expect it to be similar, meaning max charge rates between 0.1C and 10C.
I'm not sure why balancing would be different.