Lithium Iron Phosphate Breakthrough: Better Batteries for Hybrids and Electric Cars
by Michael Graham Richard, Gatineau, Canada on 07.29.08
Cheaper and more Powerful Batteries for Hybrids and Electric Cars
Scientific progress often moves in a seesaw pattern. You have a technology, you then discover a new one that is better in some aspects, and worse in others. Then you find out how to mitigate the downsides of that second technology, finally supplanting the first one, and so on.
Iron vs. Cobalt
It seems to be what is happening with lithium iron phosphate batteries. They have many benefits over the lithium cobalt oxide used in current li-ion batteries; iron costs much less than cobalt, they can deliver large bursts of power (useful in hybrids and electric cars), and they are safer (they are used in the One Laptop Per Child project, for example).
But, it's not all rainbows and puppies. The manufacturing process of iron phosphate batteries is complex and expensive, requiring hours and temperatures as high as 700 °C. That's where the breakthrough comes in...
Reducing Manufacturing Costs of Lithium Iron Phosphate Batteries
Arumugam Manthiram, a professor of materials engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, has shown that a new technique that uses microwaves can reduce both the amount of time it takes, and the temperatures required to make li-iron phosphate batteries.
Manthiram's method involves mixing commercially available chemicals--lithium hydroxide, iron acetate, and phosphoric acid--in a solvent, and then subjecting this mixture to microwaves for five minutes, which heats the chemicals to about 300 °C. The process forms rod-shaped particles [see image above] of lithium iron phosphate. The highest-performing particles are about 100 nanometers long and 25 nanometers wide. The small size is needed to allow lithium ions to move quickly in and out of the particles during charging and discharging of the battery.
It's still too early to tell how this will impact battery production, but it certainly is very promising.
Plug-in Hybrids and Electric Cars that will use Iron Phosphate Batteries
We already know that Chinese automaker BYD will use lithium iron phosphate batteries in its F6DM and F3DM plug-in hybrids, and in its E6 electric car. A123 Systems is also working on them, as well as GM.
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Very cool stuff. Any chance this stuff would also make for better laptop/cellphone batteries?
"Very cool stuff. Any chance this stuff would also make for better laptop/cellphone batteries?"
Definitely, if only for the safety issues.
"Very cool stuff. Any chance this stuff would also make for better laptop/cellphone batteries?"
Sure, if you want your cell phone battery to last half as long as it does now. LFP-based batteries have about half (or less) of the total energy of NMC-based cells. They're safer on overcharge and in some other situations, which is why the auto guys look at them. But they've been out for years and no laptop or cell phone company uses them, because your runtime would be terrible. OLPC uses them due to the safety issue and the fact that the OLPC uses almost no energy to begin with...
"Very cool stuff. Any chance this stuff would also make for better laptop/cellphone batteries?"
The upside is better safety and the downside is weight. The iron phosphate lithium's are generally 20% heavier for the same energy density.
Yet another win for safe, long-lasting EV batteries. People who say they're chock full of toxic metals need to get with the times.
I just read in this blog that Li-ion batteries have a tendancy to explode, have severe import restrictions and are much more expensive to produce than traditional nickel batteries... why isn't there a better alternative?