IBM creates breathing, high-density, light-weight lithium-air battery
extremetech.com
extremetech.com
(IBM PM during the day here)
How do you like working there all in all? I understand hierarchy and bureaucracy are the name of the game back east, especially at big blue, but I suspect this will be nothing new... and that SV just claims to be more flat. But would love to hear your perspective and whether it's fulfilling in your org.
You're right, hierarchy and bureaucracy are name of the game, but that's true in any big org. You're probably best off asking someone who's actually working in the department where you'd be applying. There are so many departments and each one has their own culture, processes, etc. Someone who complains or is happy about stuff in one department is most likely not reflective of another department.
For the record, my department isn't exactly great, but they're giving me the opportunity that I actually care about (an opportunity to live in China so I can learn Mandarin).
Anyway to be honest I sort of like the idea of honesty about being hierarchical. Sometimes SV's claims of flatness feel like propaganda and rub me the wrong way when they're not realistic.
I can imagine what you mean about most people not being on the really cool stuff: I can see that IBM is keen to develop really awesome stuff that doesn't necessarily make money but which ensures IBM's brand is synonymous with innovation. Better than splattering coke and pepsi signs across the world's cities after all :)
Cheers!
IE 6 as a requirement is really rare now. (as an FYI for everyone else - IBM has one of the largest Mac fleets in the world, and fully supports a Linux desktop client as well. ( and yes Lotus Notes runs on win/mac/Linux/iOS/Android)
How do you like working there all in all? I understand hierarchy and bureaucracy are the name of the game back east, especially at big blue, but I suspect this will be nothing new... and that SV just claims to be more flat. But would love to hear your perspective and whether it's fulfilling in your org.
IBM tries very hard to encourage us to participate and let our voices be heard, but in my experience anything that takes time, effort or money is ignored, making the whole thing a silly puppet show.
I'm leaving the job soon because of things like this. I absolutely hate it when people say "such overhead is inevitable within such a big organization" because it's become an excuse for EVERYTHING. You wouldn't believe the sort of things we spend weeks on doing that should take minutes. We are talking manually renaming files and proccessing log files, because the "budget for such changes is already used up" or some other bullshit.
There is no ridiculous mind-numbingly slow process that isn't justified by the fact that the organizational aspect is in the way. I think it's become a warm blanket that managers can wrap around themselves to avoid taking responsibility.
I guess the NYC job market's a tough one especially for tech.
I see evidence for this folklore in that the biggest technology patent wars we've seen in recent years have focused around wireless, which one might consider the first major new computing technology that IBM didn't take a big part in developing.
Press release: http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/37511.wss
I too love IBM but they have a lot worse than some patent trolling lurking in their history.
And while it's very important to remember that this happened! It's time to disconnect this event from the company as it exists today.
You are only responsible for the sins of your parents if you keep doing those sins.
Does that mean that as the battery charge is depleted (=it runs out of free lithium ions, I guess), it's mass increases due to all the newly bound oxygen being stored in there? That's counter-intuitive enough to just be awesome!
Also, a large-scale battery whose charge level is directly related to its mass (albeit inversely so, from my intuition) and supports recharging is almost a bit like magic. I hope they pull this off, so I can learn to weigh my car before going on long trips, in the future. :)
// also not very fond of people who say we watch for the wrecks
I want to watch a driver's skill, not the energy output of his / her fans.
I didn't see any numbers in the article, but a commenter (name, moishep) on the site posted the relative atomic masses of the elements and compounds involved:
Li ~7, O ~16, LiO2 ~39
If someone with a better understanding of the chemistry could answer, does this mean that a discharged battery would have over five times the mass of a charged one?
And if that much oxygen is being released in the charging process, that's quite a fire hazard that will need to be designed around.
Or am I missing part of the physics/chemistry involved?
It changes everything. It's not just about better battery life on your MacBook. There are so many things held back right now by poor battery technology.
Which means that unlike, for example, memristors, lithium air batteries most likely won't happen, and if they do happen, their happening will be a consequence of other research.
(Which is an argument why most research should be fundamental and open-ended, i.e. not directed towards specific outcomes.)
Also, I suspect that investors in this sector are hedging their bets and waiting for a clear winner to emerge before spending the big money.
Not a density breakthrough, but a UX breakthrough for sure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Modern_batt...
There have also been breakthroughs in the last five years to allow for massively faster charging:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_polymer_battery#Tec...
Unfortunately, there's another discipline where energy density is important: explosives. The critical difference is in how quickly the energy is released, and as Li-Ion batteries show it isn't always as controllable as we'd like.
So improvements are being made and we're seeing them. It's just slow going.
Moving heavy things up hills or through air at high speeds requires a respectable amount of energy, and current technology is already within an order of magnitude or so to the theoretical peak efficiency.
Li-Ion and older technologies make battery swapping hard because the pack is large and heavy enough that it really needs to be integrated into the vehicle chassis, which means that each model of vehicle—or at a minimum each class of vehicle—needs a different pack.
Something roughly the size and weight of a gas tank would be much easier to swap out and could probably come in only a few different sizes.
Another thing I'm wondering is if the battery could be simplified by "reprocessing" rather than recharging it. For instance, maybe the anode could be a big spool of lithium "tape" that is slowly unwound as it gets oxidized, with the spent lithium oxide wound around another spool. The whole thing could be mounted in a "cassette" that would be swapped out a reprocessing station, where it could be de-oxidized in a controlled environment and at a controlled rate using off-peak grid power.
It's true that if you keep driving an electric car until the car stops running, and then leave it for weeks or months without recharging as the battery pack continues to slowly trickle out, you could cause damage. Then again, if you keep driving a gasoline car for too long without changing the oil, you can also cause damage.
You'll likely also have to bleed the system because the injectors won't open on air pressure alone, but that's not really damage (it just makes it a lot harder to get it started again once it is out of fuel).
But as the battery is discharged, the oxygen molecules are altered (according to the video) and presumably stored in the battery - which implies when discharged, the battery gains (significant?) mass. During charging, the oxygen is released again, so the weight goes down.
Is that right?
>If all continues to go well, we could see air-breathing batteries powering cars some time between 2020 and 2030
Ouch. Maybe laptops will come sooner?
Toyota is only just starting to ship Lithium batteries in some of their hybrids, but they've been common in consumer electronics for years.
Made me shudder. One, for the violent imagery, two, for the trivialization of remarkable science and technology.
I would think carbon nanotubes coming out of my ears would look more like extremely fine hair. Probably good for keeping bugs out, but it'd creep my wife out too.
Please read http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html especially this bit:
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If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)
Second, the title is sensationalistic and misleading. To a casual reader the it implies that the battery is ready for use ("creates") and that it's unique to IBM. Neither are true. A more accurate title would be: IBM research department is trying to develop commercial lithium-air batteries, just like lots of other people.
The article is not in-depth, nor does it describe anything new or interesting in science. It is a brief, shallow overview of a line of research that has existed for decades. That is not news.
Battery research is slow and plodding, yet linkbait link this is often all over reddit and other technology blogs. Hacker News was supposed to be free, or at least low, on this kind of garbage, but the fact that this is the second time I see this very article (or an equivalent one) shows that the Hacker News userbase is no more discriminating than any other news site based on user voting.