Sunday, December 5, 2010

No. 207: Use vegetative materials for lithium-ion battery (December 6, 2010)

Sony used vegetative materials for the major components of lithium-ion battery and successfully built a trial product. The company used strained lees of corns and coffee beans, wood for the interior of the container, and biodegradable plastic for exterior of the container. The trial lithium-ion battery has a capacity of 8 mAh. By connecting two units of the trial product, the company operated a mobile music player without LCD screen for one hour. Because the trial product remains usable after it was discharged and charged for 10 times, it is suitable for the remote controller of an electric home appliance. The company used lithium rhodizonate made of corn’s sugar in place of cobalt for the positive electrode, materials created by burning strained lees of coffee beans for the negative electrode, and film made of wood’s cellulose for the separator. The trial product is a thin square battery. Sony plans to increase the capacity of the newly-developed lithium-ion battery by more than 100 times and increase the frequency of discharge and charge to 100 times. It needs lots of experiments to increase its reliability because vegetative materials are heat-sensitive and easily dissoluble. Sony wishes to commercialize the trail product toward 2030.

No comments:

Post a Comment