Non-Heating Lithium-Ion Batteries in the Works

Fremont, California-based company Leyden Energy is currently working on developing a new type of chemistry for lithium-ion batteries. If these efforts succeed, then experts here may develop batteries that do not overheat like traditional ones do, leading to new applications.

One of the most exciting prospects is the use of Li-Ion batteries in electric vehicles. This could mean that the automotive industry might become more receptive to creating such vehicles in the near future.

Generally, in hybrid and electric cars, high-density batteries come with safety risks, mostly caused by the fact that they overheat. But the Leyden team developed a new version of the Li-Ion battery, which can store more power than usual, and also function efficiently at high temperatures.

In order to achieve this ability, the company turned to using a graphite current collector, while inserting sodium imide inside the battery's electrolyte. What these materials do is they allow the power storage unit to last longer, and withstand higher operations temperatures.

The company is however keeping its lips sealed on how its engineers managed to achieved higher energy densities, of up to 225 watt-hours per kilogram. This level of efficiency is about 50 percent higher than that achieved by existing electric vehicle batteries.

The efficiency is comparable to that of high-end laptop batteries, Technology Review reports. Leyden CEO Aakar Patel says that the new technology could be employed on tablet PCs as early as this winter.

“Leyden's cell technology presents a very real advantage for a vehicle battery pack in terms of thermal management, life-cycle performance, and energy density,” explains Brian Wismann.

He is the director of product development at Brammo, a company which is very interested in the new technology. Brammo is a developer of electric motorcycles, and could therefore put the new batteries to good use.

Employing such a technology could be the optimum stepping stone between cars fueled by conventional fossil fuels and vehicles that operate with hydrogen stored in fuel cells. This would still be only an intermediary step though.