A better lithium battery
 

Possibly big news in Science magazine where only the abstract is free to view. It reports a new design using a new matrix and air with lithium to produce a lighter battery with a higher energy density. See also HERE

I need some help from the P Chem people on this website, but there is a laymen's discussion of this advance at THIS WEBSITE which includes a lot of links.

The upshot seems to be that if this works we will have a battery that far exceeds what we have now

And now can we toss them in the landfills?

We certainly need better battery's, they are the life blood of all those $90,000 and $100,000 + vehicles.
The vehicles would be junk without a good lifetime battery.

So until then, I'll never let myself get suck-in the electric vehicle world.

And the new, fandangled batteries will cost as much as the cars.

And if you would read the links you would learn, God forbid, that these batteries are using less expensive materials than the lithium ion batteries now use. But you'd rather snipe than learn maybe??

If you are opposed to all lithium batteries I hope you will come back and tell me what kind of battery you have in your cell phone and your laptop? Or you might support recycling of lithium which is being done and improving both in efficiency and availability.

I have heard many times how lithium batteries are being recycled. Can you give me an example of them REALLY being recycled? I have heard that some companies CLAIM to be, or are going to recycle, but none of them seem to as of this time. Just wondering, not denying. Not that I am really concerned about the batteries being recycled. Personally, I am hoping that they come up with a newer idea than lithium, such as the experimental nuclear charged crystals that are supposed to be able to get a million miles lifespan and 900 miles to a charge. Lithium is volatile if introduced to water or overheated while being charged or strained in use. After being invented 200 years ago, I am glad that battery powered automobiles are almost ready for prime time. :BigApplause:

Highly recommend you read "Red Cobalt" and tell me with a clean conscious that we should convert our perfectly workable ICE vehicle infrastructure to LI batteries. From the WSJ review:

"The reader senses that the author has been left shell-shocked, not from the aesthetic carnage but from seeing thousands of people mining by hand, hammer and shovel in vast open pits hundreds of feet deep, most of the pits arrayed with hand-dug tunnels. Mr. Kara reports visiting a typical mine where “more than three thousand women, children, and men shoveled, scraped, and scrounged . . . under a ferocious sun and a haze of dust.” The book has no photographs, an understandable absence given the risks of using a camera with armed guards everywhere. Instead Mr. Kara captures the impact of artisanal mining through the powerful stories of the miners—men, women and children—that he has gleaned through interviews. It’s often hard to read his descriptions of the miners’ daily lives, the risks, accidents, promises unfulfilled and, too often, heart-wrenching tales of maimed or dead children.

This is in the Congo, BTW. There's your clean energy. And before you say it, if we were just powering phones and tools with LI, there would be no need for the massive mining needed to support EV in all passenger cars.

I completely agree with you that lithium mining is fraught with inhumane conditions and needs reformation. Hopefully enough light gets shown on this abuse that international pressure pushes reforms in those countries and those corporations that allow it to continue.

Similar conditions existed in coal mining here and elsewhere for generations, and still exist in clothing manufacturing, other mining, and very likely in the production of the cell phone I use. Sadly we as consumers are certainly complicit in our inadvertent or even advertent worker and environmental abuses. And worker abuses do not only occur in the third world, only differing in the severity and breadth of those abuses. The horror stories from Qatar building the World Cup facilities is a good example of how this goes on even in a rich country.

Huh, I read through my posts and didn’t find where I said I was against ALL lithium batteries. Just against the billions and trillions of vehicle batteries that will be required to run this boondoggle.

Even though it may cost less to produce, this, ahem… “premium battery” will be far more costly because you have to feed all the greedy shareholders sitting at the end of the product profit margin to say nothing about disposal and replacements.

Here is one company that is already in business. They are accepting Lithium ion batteries. I cannot tell if they are stockpiling or actually doing the recycling which is a very fair question. But either way it will get recycled.
Tesla's website says " None of our scrapped lithium-ion batteries go to landfilling, and 100% are recycled." but does not indicate what company is doing the work or if they are reclaiming the raw materials now, or planning once facilities are built to then begin reclamation.
I am very concerned with batteries being recycled as I care about our planet. I just took a bunch of old Lithium ion batteries to our local toxic waste event for recycling.

You are correct in being concerned. Less than 1% of lithium-ion batteries are currently being recycled in Europe and America. Lead-acid batteries have 99% recycling.

There have always been Luddites, blueash, and TOTV seems to have more than its fair share.

Keep posting good articles and you may win a few over, but most will continue to stick their heads in the sand and nay-say everything new with "evidence" they have been using since the 1990's.

And then we have our share of those hugging lithium batteries not knowing the long term, harmful damage the world will incur. But they’ve made up their mind without the facts. Ostriches…

Since the real issue is being able to manufacture at scale, lithium-ion batteries will be the norm for the foreseeable future. Infrastructure to recycle will develop with time. Whether you want to believe it or not, electric vehicles are a disruptive technology that will gain acceptance on the "S" curve that most new technologies have followed. Ready for prime time? I think we are past that.