Batteryjam.com James Ray Sedona
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Oct 12, 2009 -
Since oxygen enters the battery on-demand, it offers an essentially unlimited amount of reactant, metered only by the surface area of its electrodes.As a part of IBM's 2-year-old Big Green Innovations program, the Battery 500 Project aims to boost the range of rechargeable batteries for all-electric cars from less than 100 miles today to as far as 500 miles.Lithium-
air batteries are unique in that instead of being a sealed system, they couple to atmospheric oxygen—essentially harnessing the oxygen in the air as the cathode of the battery.The consortium's efforts are being led by the Almaden Lab in collaboration with several U.Andrews in Scotland.Batteries technology has improved, but is still far inferior to gasoline in terms of how much energy they hold," said Spike Narayan, a key IBM researcher.The remedy, according to IBM, is to harness its nanoscale semiconductor manufacturing techniques to boost the capacity of batteries by increasing their storage density by 10 times over the lithium-ion batteries used today.IBM believes its nanoscale semiconductor fabrication techniques can increase the surface area of the lithium-air battery's electrodes by at least 100 times, enabling them to meet the goals of the project.The Battery 500 Project recently held its kickoff meeting at IBM's Almaden Laboratory in San Jose, Calif.Listen to a podcast about the project.Department of Energy's national labs.See the video.The energy density—which is the amount of energy a lithium-ion battery stores per unit weight—is really not enough to produce a family-sized sedan with a 300- to 500-mile range.
The Battery Project initiative grew from an internal "grand challenge" contest run late last year by IBM's Almaden Lab.
The Battery 500 Project aims to achieve that goal with a lithium-air battery technology, whose feasibility was demonstrated earlier this year at the University of St.The contest's winning entry was the lithium-air battery, the design for which the consortium will attempt to perfect by pooling the resources of about 40 engineers and scientists working on The Battery 500 Project.
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http://www.prlog.org/10373377/1Batteryjam.info is a California based company dedicated to making batteries affordable to everyone. Under the BatteryJam Project, the cost of batteries has been reduced by 45%, while increasing efficiency by 33%
