The Green Optimistic

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Toshiba has developed an advanced type of Lithium-Ion batteries, the SCiB (Super Charge ion Battery). They say it has the capacity of charging within 5 minutes at 90% of its capacity, and it is being able to bear 5000 to 6000 charges until it starts losing capacity. They used the battery to demonstrate these on a laptop.

The Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO4) batteries are based on Lithium Ion, but they offer many advantages over LiCO2 (Lithium Cobalt), frequently used in laptops, mp3 players and cell phones. They also offer a greater range, power and safety, in an electric vehicle - they will not explode or catch fire if overcharged.

Engineers and scientists from the University of Texas at Austin, led by Rod Ruoff, a mechanical engineering professor and physical chemist, have created a one-atom thick layer of carbon, called “graphene”, and they put it to use in electrical storage systems, such as ultracapacitors, a viable way to clean and efficient energy storage.

Plug-In Supply, Inc has just unveiled the “PbA10″ Conversion System last week at the Plug-in 2008 conference in San Jose. Their system is based on the CalCars’Open Source design, and it turns a standard 2004-2008 Toyota Prius into a Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) with an all-electric range of 10-15 miles and improved average mileage of up to 100 miles per gallon (plus 1 cent/mile of electricity).

Here’s a method of producing a battery out of some Cola, salt, aluminum and copper coins. It lights a LED and it can be an interesting source of free energy!

Smart Fortwo Micro Hybrid Drive (MHD) has been available for quite a while on Europe’s car markets. It’s Smart’s way of saying “I am cleaner than the cleanest”, and a quite impressive innovation that brings some kind of a “hybrid” system into play by using a start-stop mechanism of the engine. It uses regenerative brakes, like all hybrids do, to recharge the battery, and it stops the engine when you halt at a stop light (in fact, when your speed drops below 8km/h).

Chrysalix Energy invested several million dollars in a Dutch-based maker of ultrafast battery chargers that aim the market of electric cars and plug-in hybrids. Epyon B.V.,produced a “supercharge” technology that reduces the charge time of lithium-ion batteries 20 times below the times reached by current chargers.

EnerDel, a company who has been on the market since 2004, makes serious promises about more efficient lithium-Ion batteries (LIB) to be manufactured in the very near future. They’re planning to make 300,000 of them by 2010. They also say that their batteries keep their charge capacity for up to 300,000 cycles, or 10 years of life.