Battery driving myths

2008-10-03T01:30:00.000-07:00

In everyday life, you are affected by prices, and by the way, from time to time you hear some things about global warming, to much pollution, green energy. More and more, you hear about electric cars, hybrid cars, and wind energy especially solar solutions.

Some of people go deeper in problem and hear about geothermal solutions or tidal energy. And then if you go deeper, you are excited when you see some drawings on the net, with a sketch, where geothermal water heat some vessels, water become hot and start to turn a turbine whose final product is our everyday electricity, cheap and without carbon emission. Or you read about some performances of electric cars, which drive you from east to west, with only a few charging, while you rest or sleep.

Then you think, with content, there already exist solutions, but its not time yet to apply them on a large scale, because some oil or car companies are not interested to do this.

Things are not so simple, and especially in future will face heavy problems with our everyday commodity.

What are these problems I’ll try to explain in simple words, especially the ones affect everyday activities.

Everyone heard about electric or hybrid cars, cars driven on fuel cells, fuel cells generation of electricity, as well a new brand, water (hydrogen) like fuel.

Lets take one by one and analyze them.

Is batteries solution our solution for electric driving?

Yes! Because there will not be something better.

Batteries

Batteries transform chemical energy into electric energy, and reverse. They are devices where you store electric energy. Chemical process has two directions, charging and discharging. If you don’t complete process in one or another direction, there is no efficiency. Elementary knowledge of electricity, tell us that electromotor force is produced by difference of potential, or voltage. Smallest drop of voltage, diminish power of battery. You’ll see on every battery two parameters which characterized battery.

This is nominal voltage, and AmperHours, or look on your mobile telephone battery, miliAmperahours. A smallest drop of voltage, cannot deliver electromotor force and burry all AmperHours unused.

Some of battery solutions are now history (led acid), because of volume and heaviness, the best performances of batteries are achieved with lithium ion batteries, and it seems to be final solution for electric cars.

Now, why sustainable myth?

Lithium resources

Lithium Ion batteries are rapidly becoming the technology of choice for the next generation of Electric Vehicles – Hybrid, Plug In Hybrid and battery EVs. The automotive industry is committed increasingly to Electrified vehicles to provide sustainable mobility in the next decade. Li Ion is the preferred battery technology to power these vehicles.

Lithium is not enough on the earth to fulfill necessities for batteries.

Lithium is extracted from lithium carbonate Li2CO3.

Look at this small calculation:

A LiIon battery requires between 1.4 and 1.5 kg of lithium carbonate, per KW of capacity. Therefore, for example 60 million hybrid cars, with a 5KW battery would require ar least 420.000 tones of lithium carbonate per year, which is six time current production.

A 5KWh battery is in fact to small, there is need for at least 8KWh of capacity to assure 30 miles range of driving for a compact sized vehicle.

In another calculation, if you provide 5KWH battery for 60M cars, you can reduce fuel consumption up to 50%.

Total global reserves are estimated on 58Mtones (Mega 6^th exponent of ten).

Most of these resources are in Bolivia 50%, and generally in South America is around 75% of total reserves.

Analysis shows that a world dependent on Lithium on its vehicles could soon face even tighter constraints than we face today with oil.

Here we didn’t consider a hand held devices (laptops, mobiles etc), which are growing in production.

Future article will touch fuel cells myth.

Useful advice for use batteries(any batteries):

Always use battery up to the end of chemical process.(lowest functional level on progress bar).

Don’t rush immediately to charge.

Always let it more charging, than when rich up side progress bar on your device.

Full battery bar on your device is calibrated for nominal voltage, and not for end of chemical process.

Forming a new battery is of utmost importance. Always follow producer advices. A wrong first charge of battery can damage battery for ever.

Battery driving Myths

Battery driving myths