Shades of Tesla...

Topics: Consumer Electronics, Economy, Electric Vehicles, Electrical Engineering, Jobs, Nicola Tesla

The Old

University of Illinois student Steve Ward and Fermilab senior technician Jeff Larson developed twin Tesla coils capable of emitting 12 feet (4 meters) of sparks.
Credit: Fermilab

Among his numerous innovations, Nikola Tesla dreamed of creating a way to supply power to the world without stringing wires across the globe. The inventor came close to accomplishing this when his "mad scientist" experiments with electricity led to his creation of the Tesla coil.

The first system that could wirelessly transmit electricity, the Tesla coil was a truly revolutionary invention. Early radio antennas and telegraphy used the invention, but variations of the coil can also do things that are just plain cool — like shoot lightning bolts, send electric currents through the body and create electron winds. [1]

The New

Stanford scientists have created a device that wirelessly transmits electricity to a movable disc. The technology could some day be used to charge moving electric vehicles and personal devices. Credit: Sid Assawaworrarit/Stanford University

If electric cars could recharge while driving down a highway, it would virtually eliminate concerns about their range and lower their cost, perhaps making electricity the standard fuel for vehicles.

Now Stanford University scientists have overcome a major hurdle to such a future by wirelessly transmitting electricity to a nearby moving object. Their results are published in the June 15 edition of Nature.

"In addition to advancing the wireless charging of vehicles and personal devices like cellphones, our new technology may untether robotics in manufacturing, which also are on the move," said Shanhui Fan, a professor of electrical engineering and senior author of the study. "We still need to significantly increase the amount of electricity being transferred to charge electric cars, but we may not need to push the distance too much more."

The group built on existing technology developed in 2007 at MIT for transmitting electricity wirelessly over a distance of a few feet to a stationary object. In the new work, the team transmitted electricity wirelessly to a moving LED lightbulb. That demonstration only involved a 1-milliwatt charge, whereas electric cars often require tens of kilowatts to operate. The team is now working on greatly increasing the amount of electricity that can be transferred, and tweaking the system to extend the transfer distance and improve efficiency. [2]

"What's past is prologue." William Shakespeare

1. Wireless Electricity? How the Tesla Coil Works, Kelly Dickerson, Live Science
2. Wireless charging of moving electric vehicles overcomes major hurdle, Sid Assawaworrarit et al, Phys.org

Electric Realpolitik...

Figure 1. A discharging battery converts chemical potential into electric potential. At the anode, an oxidation reaction frees electrons (e−) from their parent atoms. The electrons pass through an external circuit, where they do work on a load, while the ions they leave behind diffuse through an electrolyte and separator to the cathode. There, the electrons and ions recombine via a reduction reaction. During recharging, the process is reversed, and the anode is restored. In lithium-ion batteries, the electrode materials are typically layered structures, with lithium stored in the gaps between layers.

Topics: Alternative Energy, Electrical Vehicles, Green Tech, Global Warming, Solid State Physics

This post reminded me of the documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?" and the synopsis that powerful forces - the same that fuel climate change denial as it did obfuscation on the dangers of cigarette smoking - are holding back progress because they want no other competition is the "free market" of commerce. Sounds less libertarian and more like targeted socialism for the already well-heeled 1%.

The electric vehicle’s history offers a lesson to the wise: Harvesting the fruits of basic science requires industrial foresight, investment, and a healthy dose of realpolitik.

By 2004 the all-electric vehicle seemed destined for the dustbin of history. General Motors (GM) was recalling and destroying all copies of the EV1, its first-generation electric car, after company officials convinced themselves and regulators that fuel cells, not batteries, were the ultimate power source of the future electric car. Meanwhile, hybrid electrics had begun to proliferate as a more economically viable alternative in the short run. Most batteries were then considered simply too expensive, too heavy, and too weak to power cars on their own. Then came the lithium-ion battery. (See the article by Héctor Abruña, Yasuyuki Kiya, and Jay Henderson, Physics Today, December 2008, page 43.) With higher energy density than older rechargeables—and with the ability to release that energy quickly on demand—the battery is widely viewed as having led a revival of the electric vehicle. Tesla Motors pioneered its use in automobiles with the Roadster, and today most all-electric vehicles have batteries that use some sort of lithium chemistry. Although concerns about safety, cost, and durability linger, few would dispute that the lithium-ion battery has been the chief technological enabler of the renaissance of the all-electric vehicle.

The emergence of the lithium-ion battery did not happen overnight. It was shaped for decades by the influence of materials scientists. It was the product not of a singular eureka moment but of many strands of research tracing back to the rise of the US national security state at the dawn of the Cold War. That’s when John Goodenough, a physicist by training, found himself helping to build a sophisticated air-defense computer for the US military. Although he couldn’t have imagined it at the time, he was about to embark on research that would help found solid-state ionics—the science of inserting and storing ions inside solids without changing their fundamental structures—and contribute to revolutionizing automobile transport.

The many twists and turns that ensued illustrate the unpredictability and contingency of innovation. The story of the long road to lithium-ion power shows how changing social, economic, and environmental conditions after World War II altered the R&D priorities of government and industry. It affords insight into how trends in the energy economy shaped science and engineering over time. And it reveals a hidden history of the shifting fortunes of physics, a discipline that has traditionally relied on state patronage.

Physics Today:
Cold War computers, California supercars, and the pursuit of lithium-ion power
Matthew N. Eisler

Model E...

Jaguar Electric Car

...celebrating my son making an "A" yesterday in a college online course in microeconomics!

If I could buy the above car, I would. Luckily, he's a "food-ist." Chinese and breakfast worked for him...

Lithium, Graphene, Your Laptop, and Electric Cars...

Physics arXiv

"But good as they are, lithium batteries are not up to the demanding task of powering the next generation of electric vehicles. They just don't have enough juice or the ability to release it quickly over and over again.

"The problem lies with the cathodes in these batteries. The specific capacities of the anode materials in lithium batteries are 370 mAh/g for graphite and 4200 mAh/g for silicon. By contrast, the cathode specific capacities are 170 mAh/g for LiFePO4 and only 150mAh/g for layered oxides.

"So the way forward is clear: find a way to improve the cathode's specific capacity while maintaining all the other characteristics that batteries require, such as a decent energy efficiency and a good cycle life.

"Today, Hailiang Wang and buddies at Stanford University say they've achieved a significant step towards this goal using sulphur as the cathode material of choice."

This could be a game-changer, geopolitically speaking:

Note: mAh = milliamp hour. Karl Kuhn gives an excellent explanation (click on his name).


Physics arXiv: Graphene-Wrapped Sulfur Particles as a Rechargeable
Lithium-Sulfur-Battery Cathode Material with High Capacity and
Cycling Stability