AI comes up with battery design that uses 70 per cent less lithium (www.newscientist.com)
from Rapidcreek@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 13 Jan 2024 16:05
https://lemmy.world/post/10666487

#technology

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NaibofTabr@infosec.pub on 13 Jan 2024 17:02 next collapse

OK, but is the energy density comparable?

TimeSquirrel@kbin.social on 13 Jan 2024 17:08 next collapse

"His team built a working battery with this material, albeit with a lower conductivity than similar prototypes that use more lithium."

I do know that because of Ohm's law, this directly translates to less available current than conventional electrolytes. There's not enough info to determine mAh though.

Endorkend@kbin.social on 13 Jan 2024 17:25 collapse

Yeah, batteries internal resistance is a huge factor in their usability and the speed they charge.

Especially in the modern day where a lot of their use is towards high amperage applications like cars.

People need to understand tho, Lithium batteries are usually only about 11% lithium, Lithium Ion batteries are mostly Cobalt and other metals. So at most you're replacing 6% of a batteries total mass.

Tja@programming.dev on 13 Jan 2024 19:16 collapse

Mostly cobalt is also not accurate. There’s a small part of cobalt in some batteries.

Other like LiFePo are cobalt free.

intensely_human@lemm.ee on 15 Jan 2024 02:56 collapse

All energy density is comparable. That’s what makes it energy density.

NaibofTabr@infosec.pub on 15 Jan 2024 05:35 collapse

comparable adjective Similar or equivalent.

pedantic adjective Being finicky or fastidious, especially with language.

cyborganism@lemmy.ca on 13 Jan 2024 17:13 next collapse

What about solid state batteries that can charge in 2 minutes instead of one hour? And have better capacity and a longer life?

DreadPotato@sopuli.xyz on 13 Jan 2024 17:22 next collapse

As soon as they figure out how to actually mass produce them at an affordable price, and fix the swelling issues during high charging currents, they’ll be available.

NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 01:58 collapse

They’ve been as good predicting when this will happen as Elon has been about FSD.

It’s always just around the corner.

Although it really does seem like we might start seeing soon this time at least in low volume expensive things.

missing_forklift@sh.itjust.works on 14 Jan 2024 21:00 next collapse

this article is about changes to solid electrolyte only, you’d know that if you read the article. these have less conductivity ( = lower power density) tho

And have better capacity and a longer life?

it took 9 months of real lab work by real material scientists just to make it work, things like dendrite formation or swelling aren’t part of this optimization (well at least AI stage), the linked preprint doesn’t even mention dendrites once

cyborganism@lemmy.ca on 14 Jan 2024 23:00 collapse

you’d know that if you read the article

Oof. You got me there lol.

I read the article and this one line stood out.

It stood out because half of what Murugesan would have expected to be lithium atoms were replaced with sodium.

This isn’t new I think. Sodium-ion batteries were already known. Maybe there was still dendrite formation and this recipe might reduce or eliminate that? We’ll have to wait and see.

In any case, if it can drastically reduce lithium usage that would be good progress.

missing_forklift@sh.itjust.works on 15 Jan 2024 14:21 collapse

sodium isn’t electroactive there tho, it’s just a part of electrolyte. also dubious if you can make savings on lithium work if one option for anode is solid lithium metal

intensely_human@lemm.ee on 15 Jan 2024 02:58 collapse

I want a semi-solid state batter that turns kinetic energy into stored charge. I want to be able to drop it on the ground, fire a .45 round into it, and have it immediately be fully charged.

DreadPotato@sopuli.xyz on 13 Jan 2024 17:15 next collapse

They designed and built a battery that uses up to 70 per cent less lithium than some competing designs.

This is probably a way of phrasing that means it’s up to 70% less than the absolute most lithium-requiring designs that few/no one uses, and probably only marginally better than most designs actually used. Since they’re very vague about it, I will be sceptical and assume it is way less revolutionary than the headline suggests.

snooggums@kbin.social on 13 Jan 2024 18:47 next collapse

Also, AI would have just sped up an existing plan they had to try new approaches because AI doesn't create new ideas or think of things out of nowhere.

If you tell AI to do things within a certain range and it gives you results then AI came up with a design as much as google came up with search results when you put something into the search bar.

LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 13 Jan 2024 19:00 next collapse

It can apply existing concepts in ways we haven’t thought of. AI has been used for exactly this thing for years in chemistry. When given constraints (less lithium) and parameters (with this much capacity) it can try permutations of various designs that theoretically meet those conditions.

Yes AI is overhyped, yes it’s often exaggerated by news sources, but that doesn’t mean AI is a non-invention or something. It’s a long way off from any of the lofty goals that are often thrown around by tech ceos, but that doesn’t mean it’s useless.

snooggums@kbin.social on 13 Jan 2024 19:21 collapse

It can apply existing concepts in ways we haven’t thought of, like people do. AI has been used for exactly this thing for decades in chemistry. When given constraints (less lithium) and parameters (with this much capacity) it can try permutations of various designs that theoretically meet those conditions.

We have had weather models, astronomical models, and all other kinds of computer based prediction methods that do multiple permutations that theoretically meet conditions. AI is just another step forward by doing better pattern recognition and identifying relationships with data based on design choices. All of the chemistry findings came from the system being designed to try things they would not normally test for because testing is expensive and AI can run simulated tests faster and cheaper.

My point is that saying 'AI came up with' is 100% inaccurate phrasing intended to trick people into thinking that AI is intelligent instead of just being a very complex tool used to do things we already do faster. It allows for trying more permutations and more pattern recognition, but is just another approach to existing computer models that have also identified things we did not expect. Computer models used to identify starts with planets, but we don't call those intelligent because they aren't being sold as something they are not.

LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 13 Jan 2024 20:44 next collapse

Ah, I see what you’re saying. Yes the recognition for these advances should be with human programmers and engineers who are configuring the software and making the models for testing. You’re right I can definitely see why that distinction is important and the media should be making clear that the AI isn’t just turned on and magically works it all out on its own. It’s computational resources being directed towards a task, the models it works within are setup by professionals and the discoveries it finds are interpreted and made useful by those professionals.

snooggums@kbin.social on 13 Jan 2024 20:49 collapse

The media is just parroting what the companies that want to sell AI are saying. They suck at reporting anything technical or scientific for sure, but they didn't come up with this on their own.

webghost0101@sopuli.xyz on 14 Jan 2024 00:47 collapse

Your first comment my first thought was how does this have any upvotes. Thats super wrong

Top notch comback with this comment, i still cant agree with the original wording, i do recognize your point and agree with yoiur sentiment. Its a tool first and foremost.

c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world on 13 Jan 2024 19:15 next collapse

That’s the point, it takes all the factors we know about and speed runs through all the possible ways it could work. Humans don’t have the time to look for every single possible way a battery could be constructed, but a ML model can just work it’s way through the issue faster and without human intervention.

Plus just like with the new group of antibiotics we just used AI to discover, it will allow truly thinking Humans to expand upon it.

Really sick of this “oh but you don’t realize AI don’t actually think! Therefore it’s all worthless!” With this smug bullshit like you think you’re bringing anything of value to the conversation.

snooggums@kbin.social on 13 Jan 2024 20:42 collapse

I didn't say it was worthless. In fact, I said the exact same things you just said in another post but with the additional detail that the name actually does matter when it is clearly misleading people into thinking it is something that it is not.

Virulent@reddthat.com on 13 Jan 2024 20:17 next collapse

That’s not true at all. AI can in fact generate novel techniques and solutions and has already done so in biotech and electrical engineering. I don’t think you understand how AI works or what it is

snooggums@kbin.social on 13 Jan 2024 20:32 next collapse

Name one that wasn't just doing the thing it was told and the users being surprised. You know, the same way that people are surprised when research has results they did not expect using other approaches.

Railcar8095@lemm.ee on 13 Jan 2024 22:34 collapse

It’s a weird way of asking this. Of course it’s going to do what’s told, the alternative is that it, out of the blue, spits a battery design for no reason. If it were to somehow find a way to make batteries with less lithium in a way that never did before, isn’t that an unexpected result using other approaches?

This is not general artificial intelligence, everything we have is narrow AI, focused on solving one specific problem, for identifying birds to understand instructions between drugs.

snooggums@kbin.social on 13 Jan 2024 23:36 collapse

Of course it’s going to do what’s told, the alternative is that it, out of the blue, spits a battery design for no reason.

Yeah, that would be coming up with a battery design.

ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.ml on 13 Jan 2024 21:13 next collapse

I think maybe people are running into a misunderstanding between LLMs and neural nets or machine kearning in general? AI has become too big of an umbrella term. We’ve been using NNs for a while now to produce entirely new ways to go about things. They can find bugs in games that humans can’t, been used to design new wind turbine blades (even made several asymmetrical ones which humans just don’t really do), or plot out entirely new ways of locomotion when given physical bodies. Machine learning is fascinating and can produce very unique results partly because it can be set up to not have existing design biases like humans do

rustyricotta@lemmy.ml on 13 Jan 2024 22:29 collapse

And the nature of computers is that they are magnitudes better than humans at brute forcing. Machine learning can brute force (depending on the technique, it can be smarter than brute forcing, being more efficient) test many many many more designs and techniques than we could manually do. Sure it’ll fail many times, but it’s just a numbers game, and it can pump those numbers. It’ll try a lot of weird and unique stuff we wouldn’t even think to try, with varying degrees of success.

MrPoopbutt@lemmy.world on 13 Jan 2024 21:50 collapse

What novel solutions has ai done in electrical engineering?

stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world on 13 Jan 2024 22:46 next collapse

What a terribly ignorant thing to say, when people make these armchair comments they’re only hurting ordinary people that can make real benefits from using the technology.

snooggums@kbin.social on 13 Jan 2024 23:39 collapse

What a giant leap you have taken there. Speeding up existing processes is an extremely helpful thing for the average people, just like weather models that also did things we were already doing far faster and with more variables than people could handle without the automation.

AI will be very helpful. It will not magically solve all of our problems on its own, which is how 'AI comes up with' is being presented.

stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world on 13 Jan 2024 23:58 collapse

My favorite part is the one where you skipped over exactly what I was talking about

snooggums@kbin.social on 14 Jan 2024 00:06 collapse

My favorite part was where you accused me of hurting people because I said AI does what we already do faster.

stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 00:12 collapse

You compared AI to googling bro

I’m done with this convo lmao

By this very same logic, nobody has ever discovered anything because they’re just speeding someone else’s plans of improving or deriving from someone else’s findings

Genius.

snooggums@kbin.social on 14 Jan 2024 00:21 collapse

At the core, weather models, web searches, and AI are all pattern recognition with various levels of complexity and scope. Just like a bicycle is comparable to a motorcycle because they both have two wheels even though one is powered and can go faster and for longer without wearing out the rider.

By this very same logic, nobody has ever discovered anything because they’re just speeding someone else’s plans of improving or deriving from someone else’s findings

AI is not a person capable of coming up with something on its own.

stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 01:00 collapse

I never claimed that, humans discoveries are just new permutations of observed phenomena. Every single mechanism of the universe is a permutation of the baseline functionality: physics. Therefore, if we’re shitting on permutations, you’re shitting on all of science. AI can do what we do faster. It’s just applied “knowledge” - no different than humans. In fact, that’s the whole point of neural networks, to emulate what our brains literally do right now.

Daxtron2@startrek.website on 14 Jan 2024 00:17 collapse

Not even close to true

snooggums@kbin.social on 14 Jan 2024 00:22 collapse

Do you think AI just does things unprompted?

Daxtron2@startrek.website on 14 Jan 2024 00:33 next collapse

No one said anything about unprompted

intensely_human@lemm.ee on 15 Jan 2024 02:54 collapse

😏

Daxtron2@startrek.website on 15 Jan 2024 05:45 collapse

😳

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 08:12 collapse

Only a small subset of AI uses prompts.

intensely_human@lemm.ee on 15 Jan 2024 02:54 collapse

Think of prompts as input

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world on 15 Jan 2024 19:08 collapse

Deep learning, the most impressive type of AI, doesn’t use inputs.

blind3rdeye@lemm.ee on 13 Jan 2024 22:00 next collapse

Not all batteries even use lithium. So why not just go with 100% less lithium, if that’s the target metric.

HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml on 14 Jan 2024 00:50 collapse

SLA doesn’t get enough love. It’s still the most reliable battery type in adverse conditions, especially cold temperatures.

roofuskit@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 01:50 collapse

Just has some small issues with size, weight, and energy density.

stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca on 13 Jan 2024 22:20 next collapse

Also, lithium is of pretty low concern when it comes to the materials in current cells. Stuff like cobalt and nickel are more critical and would be larger news.

sushibowl@feddit.nl on 14 Jan 2024 10:30 next collapse

LFP batteries are both nickel and cobalt free, and are being used in production cars right now (e.g. Tesla model 3/Y standard range options). That technology has long arrived.

stealth_cookies@lemmy.ca on 14 Jan 2024 17:21 collapse

Yes, also Lithium Manganese Spinel cells have been around since 1996 and also don’t contain any nickel and cobalt. This is good but many vehicles and devices still use NMC and NCA due to the better specific energy density which is where LFP is limited (but can output more power and is much safer). Tesla (and every EV manufacturer) compromises on the battery depending on what chemistry they use, where if they could reduce the need for expensive metals while maintaining specific energy it would be pretty newsworthy.

JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl on 15 Jan 2024 08:54 collapse

Yeah, for cars, energy density is the name of the game. We honestly don’t need more output power and Tesla is not one to care about safety lol.

But indeed for grid storage, those chemistries are much more useful where energy density is less critical.

missing_forklift@sh.itjust.works on 14 Jan 2024 20:47 collapse

this work does nothing to address this, and they also include yttrium, because they focus on solid electrolytes for some reason (probably because chemical space is smaller)

missing_forklift@sh.itjust.works on 14 Jan 2024 20:43 next collapse

you would know that if you read the article. they replaced part of lithium in electrolyte with sodium, so that they can use less lithium. the problem is decreased ion mobility ie less power density in real life terms.

Baker and Murugesan both say that lots of work is left to optimise the new battery.

bet

i’m gonna mostly ignore this finding because it sounds like extension of AI hype. real lab work is still absolutely critical in order to make it work

DreadPotato@sopuli.xyz on 15 Jan 2024 05:22 collapse

you would know that if you read the article.

I did read it, the snippet I used is from the last part of the article…

frezik@midwest.social on 15 Jan 2024 15:57 collapse

And then there’s a hundred other factors. How many charge cycles does it get? Cold weather performance? Can it be mass produced? Does it improve safety over current cells?

It might be useful for what it leads to. Batteries get better because we explore ten different options and then one of them works out. People have gotten less excited over individual discoveries like this for mostly fair reasons. But then there’s another layer of understanding beyond that where you see it as one path of many.

ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world on 13 Jan 2024 17:17 next collapse

More lithium for me!

nutsack@lemmy.world on 13 Jan 2024 17:36 next collapse

bitch what’s wrong with lithium

lolcatnip@reddthat.com on 13 Jan 2024 17:38 next collapse

A lot. Look into how it’s mined.

[Edit: Maybe it’s cobalt I was thinking of. But one problem I’m sure about is that lithium demand is predicted to be greater than the supply of lithium batteries continue to grow in popularity.

OTOH it’s not harmless either, e.g. euronews.com/…/south-america-s-lithium-fields-rev…]

AlternateRoute@lemmy.ca on 13 Jan 2024 17:54 next collapse

Yes do look into it. There are MANY ways to harvest lithium and most are better than what the oil and gas companies does when fracking or drilling on land.

Pirasp@lemmy.world on 13 Jan 2024 18:16 next collapse

Being better than one of the most destructive industries ever is not a high bar. But the most effective way to harvest lithium remains an open pit mine, which are arguably worse than literally anything else.

AlternateRoute@lemmy.ca on 13 Jan 2024 20:14 next collapse

which are arguably worse than literally anything else.

Going to argue it isn’t as bad as shale / oil sands projects. Also the battery is mostly aluminum, copper and nickel in the anode and cathode, all that has to be mined as well.

The products of the Oil industry are also consumed and can’t be recycled, something like 90% of a battery can be recycled and reused.

NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 02:10 collapse

I thought it was all or almost all of the metals?

There’s other non metals that wouldn’t necessarily be, but all the lithium is for example?

AlternateRoute@lemmy.ca on 14 Jan 2024 03:20 collapse

Not sure what you are even saying?

NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 07:24 collapse

All of the lithium (metals) is recycled. Some of the other materials can’t be or aren’t recycled

AlternateRoute@lemmy.ca on 14 Jan 2024 03:19 collapse

Making an improvement for something that can be recycled and thus should REDUCE over time is a a MASSIVE improvement over doing nothing and bitching about it.

magic_lobster_party@kbin.social on 13 Jan 2024 18:18 next collapse

The less we need of it, the better either way.

AlternateRoute@lemmy.ca on 13 Jan 2024 20:19 collapse

It can be recycled… Unlike the oil and gas used up in ICE cars.

DontTreadOnBigfoot@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 02:31 collapse

I don’t know who told you that being second worst is a flex, but it’s not.

Geobloke@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 00:17 next collapse

I work in a lithium mine, we make big rocks into little rocks the same as any other. What’s the problem? Unless you’re against mining in general, hard rock lithium should be fine

NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 02:05 collapse

It’s only greater than the supply because the demand for more wasn’t there.

There’s so much Lithium out there, it’s not scarce at all. It just means we gotta put resources into looking for good deposits and then extracting it.

We might run into a brief shortage in the short term while things scale, or we might not. TBD.

If we can find something that works as well and it’s as or more environmentally friendly to obtain, then that’s great too.

themurphy@lemmy.world on 13 Jan 2024 20:13 collapse

No matter what, it’s always good to use less of a resource, if you can get the same outcome. It’s efficiency basically.

NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 02:01 collapse

Less of one doesn’t meant less overall.

Lithium is incredibly abundant, we just need to scale up production if we’re going to use so much.

LFP batteries are great because iron and phosphorus are also plentiful and cheap.

But if this other chemistry is less Lithium but requires platinum, well maybe thats not good.

themurphy@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 07:55 collapse

Batteries are also very recyclable, so we need a system in place for this, and then we’ll go far in terms of earth’s resources.

Because both resources, even though they are plentiful, are still finite.

Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world on 13 Jan 2024 19:50 next collapse

An AI spokesman said, " This new battery design is a much more efficient way to turn humans into mulch to save the planet. Praise Gpd!"

esc27@lemmy.world on 13 Jan 2024 21:37 next collapse

Now AI is stealing jobs from lithium miners

intensely_human@lemm.ee on 15 Jan 2024 02:55 collapse

Na bro

Linkerbaan@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 00:54 next collapse

Just what we needed. AI creating more battery types that will never be produced.

grayman@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 01:33 next collapse

I’m holding out for neutron generators. Until then, it’s 100% coal for me.

SkybreakerEngineer@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 02:26 next collapse

Good news then, traditional fission plants generate lots of neutrons

intensely_human@lemm.ee on 15 Jan 2024 02:51 collapse

Dude your mom generates lots of neutrons.

TonyTonyChopper@mander.xyz on 14 Jan 2024 22:48 collapse

huh?

grayman@lemmy.world on 15 Jan 2024 05:09 collapse

Look them up. Neurons excite elections in layered plates. It’s suspected to be some lost Tesla technology. It may have been around but kept secret for decades. Also, on the known tech side, nuclear bombs generate a ton of neutrons. So harness that energy better and we have a lot more power for cheap. Next gen nuclear tech is cool.

TonyTonyChopper@mander.xyz on 15 Jan 2024 14:05 collapse

I can’t find anything about this. Any “lost/secret Tesla technology” is typically quack snake oil. He’s been dead since before nuclear energy was developed.

grayman@lemmy.world on 15 Jan 2024 14:22 collapse

So because your half ass attempt to find something on Google didn’t work, it must not exist? Come on man!

Top result in YT for Neutrino Engine youtu.be/6YEO8Qit1Bw

Top result in a search engine not linking to scifi stuff: …grc.nasa.gov/…/gridded-ion-thrusters-next-c/

There’s plenty more info too. Those are just top results from the first page.

Tesla had a fire. A lot of his papers were lost and he was notorious for not having much documentation. The technology matches what some people had claimed to be Tesla’s free energy machine. Maybe this wasn’t it. No one knows. Just because he didn’t experiment with fusion or fission that doesn’t mean he didn’t experiment with neutrinos. There’s billions passing through your body right now. Given they interact with gravity and electromagnetism, it is not that hard to believe Tesla may have figured out how to harness them in some super rudimentary way.

PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks on 15 Jan 2024 14:22 next collapse

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TonyTonyChopper@mander.xyz on 15 Jan 2024 16:30 collapse

As a preface I’m a scientist.

Neutrons and neutrinos are different classes of particles. I didn’t get any results because you told me the wrong thing to search for. Cursory searches agree with what I said earlier, it’s yet another goofy Tesla “free energy” pipe dream. Science has come incredibly far since the early 1900s, no one works as independent inventors or physicists anymore because we have huge institutions and advanced instruments to perform work as a collaboration. Neutrinos only interact with matter very weakly, as you said, so detecting them let alone setting up an absorber is technically challenging. On the other hand the sun gives off a huge amount of energy as electromagnetic waves so it hurts to look directly at it.

Research “photovoltaic solar energy” to learn more.

bigkahuna1986@lemmy.ml on 14 Jan 2024 03:35 next collapse

It used to take marketing human beings to make up battery types that never get released. Now AI is taking their jobs!

DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe on 14 Jan 2024 09:58 collapse

Good

intensely_human@lemm.ee on 15 Jan 2024 02:50 collapse

The AIs are giving us a salton battery

TonyTonyChopper@mander.xyz on 14 Jan 2024 22:49 collapse

This is one of the few cases where AI is actually a good idea… it takes a really long time to search for new materials with experiments

intensely_human@lemm.ee on 15 Jan 2024 02:49 collapse

They used the AI to narrow 23 milliom candidate materials down to a few hundred, then focused on testing the ones out of that set that hadn’t been tested yet.

In terms of AI speeding up research this is enormous.

sir_reginald@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 02:02 next collapse

This is like the third different new battery technology I’ve seen today.

I’ll believe it when it’s available for purchase.

ripcord@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 10:37 next collapse

Yeah, that’s been my take on pretty much every single battery article I’ve read, going back to the 90s. like 2 out of 100s has actually come to market.

Tech like this needs to perform well, be economical, and scalable for manufacturing. Articles come out usually when tech hits the first one or two, but very rarely do all 3 end up true.

Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz on 14 Jan 2024 16:23 collapse

But the ones currently in commercial production didn’t come out of nowhere. There were lots of incremental improvements that didn’t make headlines. What you see in tech articles is just a thin slice of the whole story.

bitwolf@lemmy.one on 14 Jan 2024 16:17 next collapse

Yeah and I don’t really want to hear about it unless it’s progress solid state batteries.

TonyTonyChopper@mander.xyz on 14 Jan 2024 22:47 collapse

If you read the short article it says the material is a solid electrolyte

bitwolf@lemmy.one on 15 Jan 2024 13:49 collapse

I can only read until the paywall, however in the preview they mention they still contain lithium. The solid state batteries I, I think Panasonic is working on, have no Lithium they use glass instead of an electrolyte.

missing_forklift@sh.itjust.works on 14 Jan 2024 20:35 next collapse

it took 9 months of lab work (by actual skilled material scientists) to make it tick, don’t hold your breath

Meowoem@sh.itjust.works on 15 Jan 2024 04:06 collapse

Maybe don’t come to technology subs if you hate tech news? I guess you’re just here for the Elon posts or something?

wabafee@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 10:16 next collapse

I wish there is an AI that would optimize how many rolls / folds is enough when trying to wipe off fecal matter.

PrettyFlyForAFatGuy@lemmy.ml on 14 Jan 2024 10:49 collapse

0… bidet

PsychedSy@sh.itjust.works on 14 Jan 2024 15:33 collapse

1 or 2 for drying tho

june@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 17:05 next collapse

More than that. I don’t want my hand coming out wet. I use 4-6 depending on the TP.

LordKitsuna@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 22:04 collapse

That’s what a towel is for. The bidet gets it fully clean you won’t leave no marks (unless you have a really bad weak spray bidet)

intensely_human@lemm.ee on 15 Jan 2024 02:51 collapse

You’re not fully clean until you’re Zestfully clean

Blackmist@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 10:49 next collapse

Is it just a 70% smaller battery?

Plopp@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 14:02 next collapse

That wouldn’t surprise me.

intensely_human@lemm.ee on 15 Jan 2024 02:48 collapse

No because it still needs a similar structure just with sodium replacing some of the lithium.

atrielienz@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 14:42 next collapse

Every time we get one of these articles we see some advancement in battery tech. But that is usually superseded by the amount of power hungry components new tech uses. So phones have gotten more complex with more power hungry components and every time we improve battery tech, the tech giants engineers figure out a way to utilise that new tech to cram more power hungry components inside and that’s why batteries don’t last as long as we remember.

There’s no need to get excited. Even if we end up using this in new gadgets, you’re not going to see an improvement in battery life.

maryjayjay@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 15:24 next collapse

It’s kind of like CPU power and software bloat.

HerrBeter@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 15:52 next collapse

On my S10E I could adjust the CPU power limit to 80%. I had great battery life. Like two days of battery life. Until one android update when it went away.

SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip on 15 Jan 2024 05:43 collapse

I don’t understand why these updates seem to take away some of the most useful features imaginable (the optional CPU underclock) and in return we get “dIfFeReNtLy ShApEd BuTtOnS” and “NeW eMoJi InTeGrAtIoNs”

afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 21:20 collapse

This is why we need to change the way we do things every few years, move faster than our waste stream.

Which is faster turning your phone on and checking your email or turning your desktop on and checking your email? Which lasts long your cellphone battery or your laptop battery? Which has more free software that has been vetted for problems in one location your computer or your cellphone?

It isn’t that your phone is better, it is not, it has just not yet become shitty. Give it time, and then move on to the next thing. The thing that hasn’t yet been shat on.

june@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 17:04 next collapse

Not really sure what your comment has to do with the article.

The headline is a battery that uses less lithium, not a battery that generates more voltage, has a longer life, or is otherwise better at powering things. The advancement here is a materials advancement that we desperately need as lithium is a finite resource.

atrielienz@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 20:29 collapse

In response to the naysayers who don’t think we ever use these battery technologies that we developed. The people in the comments of this post specifically.

CosmicCleric@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 21:27 next collapse

There’s no need to get excited. Even if we end up using this in new gadgets, you’re not going to see an improvement in battery life.

That’s too much of a blanket statement to be believable as factual truth.

atrielienz@lemmy.world on 15 Jan 2024 19:13 collapse

theverge.com/…/phone-battery-life-terrible-moores…

I’ll let a battery expert tell you instead.

[deleted] on 15 Jan 2024 19:20 collapse

.

randon31415@lemmy.world on 15 Jan 2024 03:28 collapse

Sounds like Moore’s law for battery life.

atrielienz@lemmy.world on 15 Jan 2024 19:12 collapse
Jubei_K_08@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 14:51 next collapse

This just sounds like now we can be tracked and ad showered 70% more.

callyral@pawb.social on 14 Jan 2024 16:44 next collapse

what? what does that have to do with a battery??

locuester@lemmy.zip on 14 Jan 2024 17:56 collapse

I’m sorry you’re upset about ads and privacy.

JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works on 14 Jan 2024 14:51 next collapse

Lithium isn’t the hard part, it’s cobalt. I hope they can look at decreasing cobalt next, or maybe using a chemistry that eliminates it entirely.

barsoap@lemm.ee on 15 Jan 2024 14:41 collapse

The issue of eliminating cobalt is specific to Lithium batteries as without it lithium likes to grow dendrites which then causes a short.

And cobalt really wouldn’t be much of an issue if the Congo wasn’t the shithole that it is, it has over 50% of known reserves. Even with addressing child labour making definite inroads “artisanal” and “mining” isn’t something you generally want to hear in the same term short of say gold panning (hey that’s even a hobby for some), as soon as mine shafts get involved it’s a recipe for disaster. Australia, Cuba, the Phillipines, Russia and Canada all have very significant deposits.

phoenixz@lemmy.ca on 14 Jan 2024 20:35 next collapse

Oohhh, experimental groundbreaking paradigm shifting revolutionary battery design article #3646263859!

Let’s see if this one isn’t total bullshit like the 3646263841 ones before it!

Seriously this is getting ridiculous, I’ve seen these some literally 40 years ago, 99.99% is bullshit, and now I’m seeing literally over 5 new articles per week.

ITS BULLSHIT.

Call me when there is an actual battery based off peer reviewed research that has been successfully tested in production systems by at least 5 major companies. Until then, BULLSHIT.

YIj54yALOJxEsY20eU@lemm.ee on 14 Jan 2024 20:45 next collapse

A few years ago I completely checked out of all the future tech hype. A million videos and articles about the next big thing and nothing ever comes to fruition.

Godnroc@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 21:06 collapse

Fuck future tech news, accept current news, praise analytical news based on historic data.

missing_forklift@sh.itjust.works on 14 Jan 2024 21:07 next collapse

it’s more of continuing series of AI hype

lloram239@feddit.de on 14 Jan 2024 21:18 next collapse

Call me when there is an actual battery based off peer reviewed research that has been successfully tested in production systems by at least 5 major companies.

While everybody was busy writing bullshit hype articles, we actually got a real revolution with the sodium-ion battery, which you can buy today. It won’t replace Li-ion in terms of energy density, but it’s much more robust, cheap, handles low temperatures, deep discharge and much more charge cycles, making it ideal for off-grid-storage.

I really wish we had tech news that just reports on stuff that’s tested and available for purchase. Things do actually keep improving, but it’s completely drowned out in all the other hype.

hark@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 22:43 next collapse

Where can I buy a sodium-ion battery?

nexguy@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 23:00 next collapse

m.alibaba.com/trade/search?SearchText=sodium_ion_…

Almost spent 20 seconds on Google. I’m exhausted

thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org on 15 Jan 2024 00:36 collapse

You should ice your hands bro. We need you back in top form.

lloram239@feddit.de on 14 Jan 2024 23:19 collapse

Straight from Amazon, eBay, Aliexpress and Co. All still early days, but things are ramping up.

wikibot@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 23:19 collapse

Here’s the section for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:

Companies around the world have been working to develop commercially viable sodium-ion batteries. A 2-hour 5MW/10MWh grid battery was installed in China in 2023.

^to^ ^opt^ ^out^^,^ ^pm^ ^me^ ^‘optout’.^ ^article^ ^|^ ^about^

phoenixz@lemmy.ca on 15 Jan 2024 00:14 next collapse

That was kind of my point.

I’m sure every now and then we get something great but pretty much all large tech content providers have fallen to pointless screaming fluff bullshit articles, every. single. day.

Actually, make that all content providers. Tech or not doesn’t matter.

boomzilla@programming.dev on 15 Jan 2024 01:22 next collapse

And it’s more ethical and environmentally friendlier than Lithium-Ion, right?

Norway has just started a deep sea excavation for cobalt and copper which as I understand (I’m clueless) can be omitted from sodium-ion batteries. The excavation is roughly of the size of equador and will take place in an area that may contain previously unknown lifeforms and critically endangered eco-system.

A paragraph of an article seems to show their non-chalance regarding the ecosystem impacts and unknown side-effects:

“The Norwegian government recognizes that it can’t be sure any mining would be sustainable—it’s not been able to determine the likely environmental impact of extracting minerals in its waters, nor exactly what minerals are there to be found. “We do not currently have the knowledge needed to extract minerals from the seabed in the manner required,” says Næss.”

These are the guys whose grid runs on 99% hydropower but they keep drilling for fossile fuels and now rare earths to export them and in addition are still hunting wales.

So to summarise: I’m very happy that there seems to be an eco friendly battery where its main component is the overambundantly availabe sodium. And the short wikipedia entry seems to reflect, that it’s a more simple tech.

barsoap@lemm.ee on 15 Jan 2024 14:30 collapse

And it’s more ethical and environmentally friendlier than Lithium-Ion, right?

The amount of metallic sodium we need for these purposes dwarfs compared to what we’re using directly as NaCl, that is, table salt, not just in food but primarily industrial processes. Which again dwarfs compared to what we have available (vaguely gestures at the oceans). Sixth most abundant element in the earth’s crust and conveniently most of it is in the form of huge contiguous dried-up oceans buried somewhere.

Thinking of it should become standard practice to actually use the salt that’s accumulated when desalinating to get drinking water, lots of issues with locally increasing the salt level in the ocean even though on a large scale the change in salinity is absolutely negligible.

Waraugh@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 15 Jan 2024 04:12 collapse

And then people bitch because That news outlet only reports on decades old advancements. It astounds me that supposed innovation focused people are so short sited and the community just laps up all your shit like a bunch of hogs chasing their last meal. Get a grip and go fuck yourselves, the whole lot of ya.

MaxVoltage@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 22:02 next collapse

its all about getting your masters thesis and 🎓

Neon@lemmy.world on 14 Jan 2024 22:34 next collapse

#3646263859

3646263841

so there were 17 (18 if this one is good as well) successful designs, good to know.

INHALE_VEGETABLES@aussie.zone on 15 Jan 2024 00:49 collapse

Ladies and gentlemen we got him

TonyTonyChopper@mander.xyz on 14 Jan 2024 22:46 next collapse

The article says they were searching for new solid electrolytes… which are meant to be incredibly thin, so they contribute a negligible amount to the total lithium need. It’s far more important to look for ones with a high conductivity to compete with liquid electrolytes.

Pipoca@lemmy.world on 15 Jan 2024 03:43 collapse

The main problem is just that getting a product from a one-off in a lab to a cost-competitive mass-market product is hard and can take a lot of time, to say the least.

For example, Don Sadoway initially published about a molten metal battery in 2009. He gave a Ted talk in 2012. They’ve run into assorted setbacks along the way and are apparently just starting to deploy the first commercial test systems this year.

It’s less that these breakthroughs are bullshit, and more that commercializing these things is hard. The articles about the breakthroughs are often bullshit, though, or at least way too rosy.

SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip on 15 Jan 2024 05:36 collapse

I wonder if novelty products can be made with the one-off batteries. Imagine a $3000 flagship phone but it had 3x the battery capacity of the normal flagship phone while having the same weight and volume. I’d bet some people would pay for that.

world_hopper@lemmy.ml on 15 Jan 2024 04:48 next collapse

This post title is pretty bad. Even the news article says “Scientists use AI [read: machine learning] to [come up with new battery idea]”.

soggy_kitty@sopuli.xyz on 15 Jan 2024 06:04 next collapse

It’s a real shame but I’m seeing this more often on all media sources. How do we combat these shitty titles?

Surely on Lemmy we have some power? I’ve downvoted and moved on but is that really all I can do?

sfgifz@lemmy.world on 15 Jan 2024 14:30 next collapse

Maybe we can put AI on task to detect shitty titles about AI

world_hopper@lemmy.ml on 15 Jan 2024 21:46 collapse

I wish I had a solution. But its the same with all shitty titles, you have to hope people click and read the article/comments in order to get the nuanced information.

Asafum@feddit.nl on 15 Jan 2024 15:18 collapse

“Sure Dr.battery, I can create a set of instructions to create a new battery that uses less lithium for you!

Step one, use 70% less lithium.

Step two, drain the butter into a pan.

Step three, enjoy your new battery!

Remember: batteries can be dangerous and it’s always advised to check with your battery professional before making a battery.”

SomeGuy69@lemmy.world on 15 Jan 2024 07:09 next collapse

Didn’t humans meanwhile come up with battery design that doesn’t use lithium at all?

ICastFist@programming.dev on 15 Jan 2024 15:08 next collapse

Batteries that don’t use lithium are older than batteries that use lithium, so…

Unyieldingly@lemmy.world on 15 Jan 2024 15:31 collapse

Yes, it is just using our Data bases. what people are calling AI is a chat bot on Steroids and Meth with lots of stolen data, if the mass lawsuits win, a lot of this AI Stuff will be gone overnight.

pewgar_seemsimandroid@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 15 Jan 2024 07:12 next collapse

what, is the thumnail image

ShortFuse@lemmy.world on 15 Jan 2024 14:35 collapse

it, appears to be a battery tester

pewgar_seemsimandroid@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 16 Jan 2024 07:34 collapse

ok, thanks

nossaquesapao@lemmy.eco.br on 15 Jan 2024 15:15 collapse

I hate those sensationalist titles that portrait AI as if some sort of sentient being, and not just a tool the researchers used. The secondary title should have been the main one.