lithium battery industry keeps going, and going ...

If you turn on your phone, laptop or iPad, you will find a lithium battery.
If you have a hybrid or electric car, it may also be powered by a lithium battery.
Lithium, a light and cheap metal, is increasingly becoming the preferred material for battery manufacturers.
In the future, lithium may replace the vast amount of oil we use now for energy.
This raises the question of how much metal we can rely on in real life.
Seth Fletcher, senior editor of mass science, explores this in a new book called bottled lightning: supercells, electric cars, and the new lithium economy.
Fletcher explained to NPR\'s Steve inskye that lithium logistics \"you have to store the metal lithium in oil or it will tarnish . \".
\"In fact, it is so unstable that it does not exist in pure form in nature.
So if you\'re mining lithium, you can never find a big arm.
Veins of the size of lithium metal because they do not exist.
\"Most of the lithium in the world comes from a series of high-content salt lakes,\" Fletcher said.
The elevation of Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.
It is called the \"Lithium Triangle \".
\"Over the years, water has absorbed minerals and precipitated in these huge salt sponges and now has this rich salt water,\" he said . \".
When the water evaporates, it leaves olive oil
Like a substance containing a small amount of lithium, it is then processed into lithium carbonate, a white powder.
Fletcher said it was enough to meet the growing demand.
\"I don\'t know if any serious person in the automotive industry or lithium industry thinks there\'s serious, long term
\"There is a supply problem,\" he said.
\"In fact, lithium may be oversupply over the next 10 years, because there are already a lot of companies in the market.
\"Unlike the impact of the exploitation of other natural resources, lithium concentrate is a\" eco-friendly \"process,\" Fletcher said.
\"It\'s about low.
The impact of mining.
They\'re really just pumping water. . .
There\'s really no toxic chemicals in lithium. ion battery.
\"Using lithium batteries leaves a huge hole in the dirt, which can also improve the efficiency of our energy storage --
Such as from a wind farm or a solar cell library, Fletcher said.
\"What many companies are doing now is building huge lithium banks --
Ion batteries that can store energy from power plants, \"he said.
\"Now we don\'t store energy effectively at all.
This is a big hole in the grid now.
\"However, a limiting factor in the battery is the amount they can store and the speed at which they charge.
Fletcher believes that while the company is trying to produce better lithium batteries, people should take advantage of the current use.
\"The battery will get better, but we don\'t have a battery that will power the car for 500 miles and then charge it in 15 minutes,\" he said . \".
\"It will take a long time for us to have this battery, but the battery we have now can do a lot of very useful things that they can do very efficiently and cost-effectively.
I think it would be wise to use them to do these things when we simultaneously develop future chemicals that might power 500 miles of cars and charge them in 15 minutes.
\"At the beginning of the automotive era, gasoline, electricity and steam-driven cars all shared roads, none of which was a clear winner.
In fact, electric cars have a big advantage in the early days.
They are clean, quiet and civilized. Gas-
Power cars are unreliable, complex, loud, dirty.
They can only be started by starting a solid turn of the crank, and when the crank strikes back, it is very effective in breaking the arm.
However, when they don\'t crash or cause pain, gasoline-
Electric cars provide what electric cars can\'t provide.
Nice driving range, a can of gasoline from regular stores can be expanded in a few minutes.
Thomas Edison likes the idea of electric cars.
Electric cars are natural, stable and profitable cars.
During his career, he has been manufacturing ancillary equipment for the grid.
The wide application of electric vehicles will help maintain his DC current (DC)
Standard, because the battery is charged alternatelycurrent (AC)
The network requires additional equipment, communication equipmentDC converter.
He knows that battery technology will determine whether electric vehicles will thrive in fast-growing gasoline.
He happened to be looking for a new conquest.
He\'s made, lost, made a lot of money.
Stock market machines, light bulbs, phonograph and movies have been invented.
He has just shut down a disastrous attempt to mine iron ore in western New Jersey.
Therefore, in 1898, he began to study the literature on battery research, which is the first step in his exploration of life in the next 11 years.
The battery project was a start for him.
For years, he has opposed the so-called \"battery \".
He sees them as a catalyst for corruption and a tool for cheaters.
Now, he is committed to bringing this technology into a new and respected era, and he is confident in his success.
He wrote to a friend: \"I don\'t think nature will be so ruthless that if it is really a serious search for this, it will hide the secret of a good battery . \".
He does not know what he is doing.
Edison\'s goal is to make a new battery that doubles the capacity of state-of-the-art lead
Acid batteries of his time
He wants to go beyond lead-acid by abandoning lead and acid and finding new metals and electrolyte that can not only make more energetic but also make longer batteries --lived.
Part of the reason he chose the material was that he thought it was necessary to make a lighter, longer alkaline instead of an acidic electrolytelived battery.
But he\'s also competing with the market.
Leading electric battery (ESB)
Philadelphia company owned by New York tycoon William C.
Whitney, he controls most of the leading patents. acid batteries.
Edison could not chase them on the road he was familiar.
He must find a different way.
The Romantic Story of Edison\'s life during this period has a proud reaction
Academic inventors scoff at theory, but systematically study every conceivable and appropriate substance --
Numerous grades and forms of copper, iron, cadmium, cobalt, magnesium, nickel water, and any amount of electrolyte formulation.
As Matthew Josephine, his biographer, wrote, \"The number of experiments reaches hundreds, and then thousands;
In their 10,000 S, Edison said, they set the Register back to zero and started again.
Eighteen months have passed. they don\'t even know.
\"In fact, he is not working blindly.
He knows literature.
He may have been building on research by scientists such as Swedish chemist Waldemar Jungner, who himself has done pioneering work on alkaline batteries.
Edison may also be monitoring his competitors on the ESB, which is racing to develop a leading edge for improvement
Acid battery called Exide.
Due to the fierce competition with ESB, Edison chose the basic design for his battery almost in the first place, and he began to promote it.
In 1902, he wrote an article for the North American Review, reporting that his lab work allowed him to \"end up using the battery perfectly\", using batteries with nickel, iron electrodes and potassium
Based on electrolyte.
His critics.
In the Outing magazine, a writer named Ritchie G.
Betts mocked Edison\'s commitment to \"a light, inexhaustible battery, or a battery that can be powered by a twist of the wrist or transmission of the hand, charging from the sky or the atmosphere or elsewhere, look!
All the problems are solved!
The ideal car is right in front of you!
\"But if the media were fascinated by the myth of the wizard Edison, the voice of criticism would be overwhelmed.
By 1903, Edison\'s workers were taking his nickel
Inject iron batteries into the car and logging mileage and by taking the battery from the third-
Their Orange, New Jersey, Lab story window.
By the second year, they have pushed the battery to an impressive new level of capacity: 14 w-
A few hours per pound, 233% higher than the lead
Acid battery for a day.
Not three times, but very close.
Edison introduced his E-nickel.
The hype and overcommitment of iron batteries will make today\'s worst supplier of vaporizers proud.
It\'s a \"revolutionary\" new battery that will last more than four or five cars.
\"It is foreseeable that Edison\'s fans in the media were fascinated. The nickel-
\"Iron batteries\" completely changed the world of electricity.
The era of storage of electricity has arrived.
This happiness does not last long.
Soon the battery began to leak.
Many of them soon lost 30% of their capacity.
So Edison recalled his loud-sounding battery, went back to the lab and started to finish what he called a \"damn problem \".
Five years have passed.
Edison\'s health has deteriorated.
This is a \"frustrating period\", according to Josephine \".
\"It\'s also tough for electric cars for a few years.
The gasoline engine is improving rapidly. In 1907, Rolls-
Royce released 6-
In 1906, Ford launched an affordable, popular Model N car.
With the passage of time, the competition of Edison battery is more and more intense.
One of Edison\'s employees solved the leak problem with a solid sealed container, but the performance was still not what they wanted.
Then they made a breakthrough in 1908.
The next year, Edison wrote in a letter: \"The battery is finally finished.
On July 1909, he released the second one.
Generate a cell
This battery is very successful.
It is almost indestructible and has a longer life span than its competitors, making it particularly attractive to power ownerstruck fleets.
However, the iron-A competitive product of A cell and ESB in Edison-
Charles Kettering invented the automatic starter of the gasoline engine, which is actually the end of the early electric passenger car.
Soon after, ESB began adjusting its lead
Acid discharge used to flip the slave task of the internal combustion engine.
Edison\'s batteries carry lights and signals on mines, trains and ships.
In World War I, it was used for Telegraph and submarine.
In the next few decades, as natural gas
Electric cars have become a symbol of the American dream, electric cars have entered a long dormant state, Edison\'s batteries and competitors began to play a supporting role for oil companiesdriven world.
Two things saved Edison\'s battery in 1908.
The first is to add a nickel sheet to the electrode.
The second is lithium.
In a patent application filed in May 10, 1907, Edison explained that adding two grams of hydroxide to each electrolyte solution of 100 cc would result in a 10% surge in his battery capacity, and extend the amazing amount of time the battery charges.
Today, we know that it is most likely to help avoid some harmful, unexpected chemical reactions that weaken the strength of the battery.
However, Edison does not know why it works, and he may not care.
Edison did not make anything like a real lithium battery.
Lithium is the salt in his stew.
But beyond that, it\'s a poetic choice: a century later, after scientists spent decades searching for better battery materials on the periodic table, we know that lithium is the best foundation, storage for electric energy.
The universe has not given us anything better.
Lithium is now used for many uses such as treating bipolar disorder and strengthening aircraft frames, and is one of the three original elements created in the first minute after the Big Bang.
Lithium atoms in laptops and mobile phones are one of the oldest substances in the universe.
Lithium, composed of three neutrons, three protons and three electrons, is the third element on the periodic table, previously only hydrogen and helium.
A metal whose density is half that of water and in its elemental form is too unstable in nature.
Pure lithium is silver.
Like cold Camembert cheese, white and soft, must be stored in oil to prevent it from reacting with air or water.
Like heavy alkali.
Sodium and potassium and lithium were separated for the first time in the early 19 th century.
In 1800, a Brazilian chemist visited a mine on the island of Yudo in Sweden and discovered the crystal minerals he named lithium pyroxene and petal stones. We now know that both minerals are
17 years later, in August, young Swedish chemist John alfwyderson worked in the laboratory of Yos Jacob berzerius, who broke petalit down into lithium salt, which
Berzelius specifies new minerals, and Arfwedson has never been able to separate its pure form \"lithos\" from Greek because of \"stone \". \"By the mid-
1800 s, lithium salt was first used to treat gout and later for various diseases.
Lithium therapy became popular in the late 19 th century because diseases from gout to asthma to depression were caused by uric acid.
Acid imbalance, lithium can help solve all these problems by dissolving uric acid.
Soon, lithium salt and lithium-based beverages, such as products from brands such as Buffalo Liya spring water, were widely sold as curators.
A brewery in Wisconsin brewed draft beer from mineral-rich springs.
In 1929, the most lasting and influential Lihua beverage came out, called Bib-
Label: LemonLime Soda.
Howdy company of St.
Louis will be listed as a hangover therapy with lithium citrate.
An early slogan was \"It took grou out of grouch \".
Soon the founder of the company changed the name of the drink to 7-
Lemon Powder-
Lime, today, we know that its offspring are over 7 years old. (
The latest ad campaign: \"ridiculous bubble! \")
A lithium soda can be suspicious, but it\'s harmless.
The next major medical application of lithium is far from benign.
In the 1940 s, some doctors began to give the heart
Lithium chloride in patients with disease as a replacement for their usual sodium
The result is a lot of lithium excess, a few deaths, and a lot of data on how much lithium is needed to kill a person.
The timing is unfortunate.
On 1949, news of lithium poisoning broke out in the same year, with Australian psychiatrist John Cade reporting dramatic results of the frenzy of lithium salt treatment using a safe dose. Yet the toxic-
The overdose brought such a bad reputation to lithium that the FDA did not approve lithium carbonate as a spiritual drug until 1970.
Lithium is now one of the most effective drugs for mental illness. Mood-
Stable drugs, such as escali, lesobaid, Lesso, and purple grass tablets, are essential to regulate the bipular disorder.
Scientists are still not sure how they work, but they know that lithium will affect the neurotransmission and cell signals and increase the production of serum --
Raise the shortage of compounds related to depression. (
Interestingly, lithium seems to stimulate the brain as well. cell growth. )
A study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry in 2009 compared suicide rates and lithium content in drinking water in 18 towns in Japan and found that \"even if lithium content in drinking water is low\"0.
7 to 59 micrograms per liter, compared to nearly 340 mg of elemental lithium delivered at the normally prescribed daily 1,800 mg drug lithium carbonate dose
\"May play a role in reducing the risk of suicide in the general population.
\"In an invited comment article published in the same issue, a Canadian psychiatrist suggested that lithium could be added to drinking water one day, just like adding fluoride to the public water supply system to prevent dental diseases.
Government youeugen scientists hope to control the minds of the masses by using the water supply distributed on paranoid websites.
Although lithium is significant as a mental tool, the pharmaceutical industry absorbs only a small fraction of about 120,000 metric tons of lithium --
Contains compounds that are mined, processed and sold annually.
Largest Share of metal alloys, ceramics and lubricants and various rare applications --
A device that absorbs excess carbon dioxide in the air on spacecraft and submarines, rocket propellant and certain types of nuclear reactors.
Because we have stopped replacing the old ones, lithium is no longer useful for the manufacture of hot nuclear weapons.
However, the lithium isotope did trigger the largest thermal nuclear device ever in the United States, and in the 1954 Castle Bravo test, the explosive power was 12 times that of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, radioactive dust was cast on a inhabited South Pacific island.
However, of all uses of lithium, the most far-reaching use for the future --
Apps that have affected the lives of billions of cellsphone-, laptop-, and iPod-
Use people, and people who change the way we drive and the way we use energy --
In the battery.
Think of electricity as an electronic stream.
The ideal tool for storing electricity squeezes the maximum number of electrons into the smallest and lightest possible equipment.
But you can\'t cram loose electrons into the jar.
To get an electron, you have to pry it out of the atom.
In this way, every electron you get from the battery carries a burden of proton and neutron form, both of which are eighteen times more mass of electrons. In the lead-acid 12-
The Volt battery under the hood of your car, each available electron is tied to a giant lead atom
There are 82 protons and 125 neutrons in the nucleus, with a total atomic weight of 207. 2.
In contrast, each electron you take away from the lithium atom in your phone has only 3 protons and 4 neutrons;
The atomic weight of lithium is 6.
941, 30 times less than lead atoms.
The lithium atom is eager to get rid of its outer electrons, which also means that it can serve as a basis for batteries that are more powerful and have higher energy density than batteries based on any other element.
In essence, the battery is a high
Hijacked is an energy chemical reaction that provides useful results rather than flame bursts.
Recall that lithium is too passive to exist in its pure form in nature;
Combine the active ingredients of lithium
The two electrodes of the ion battery, you have an excellent high explosive under the right conditions.
However, the battery has frustrated these violent tendencies.
By building an electrolyte bridge between the two electrodes, the battery keeps the bomb parts at a safe distance from each other and places an explosion in the suspended animation, create a chemical system that can be redirected and used to beat Energy.
This system is used correctly and can help plug a loophole in our technology ecosystem --
Our original ability to store energy.
As Bill Gates said in his 2010 speech, all the batteries in the world can only store ten minutes of our global electricity demand.
In an era of serious concern about the future of energy, this is a rather obscene weakness.
Today, we are almost entirely powering our cars by burning fossil remains of prehistoric plankton, converting the energy that those hydrocarbon molecules gather together into energy, allowing us to be in town
Oil has many advantages: it is powerful, versatile and easy to store
We can simply put it in the bucket or in the tank and let it sit down.
However, many of the consequences of oil (
Environmental degradation in Greenhouse
Gas emissions, dictators get rich, enemies of civilization)
Combined with the fact that we will eventually run out of affordable resources, finding alternatives is clearly a priority.
Electricity is the cleanest and most flexible option in the alternative.
It enters every family in the country through pipes.
A mile cheaper than gasoline.
It is more viable than hydrogen, and in almost all cases it is cleaner than ethanol.
It can come from almost any source.
Natural gas, coal, nuclear energy, water and electricity, solar energy, wind energy.
Even if it\'s made of coal
Burning power plants still produce less carbon dioxide per mile than a mile driven by gasoline.
The problem is that electricity is hard to store, which is why lithium-
Ion batteries have attracted great attention.
It has proved to be a powerful driving force for modernization.
Largely because of the arrival of lithium.
In the 1990 s, mobile phones became popular, and then became portable computers.
Then it becomes a computer connected to the Internet wirelessly.
It then turns into a computer, camera, MP3 player, GPS navigator, movie player, etc.
Extend the influence of the information revolution to our pockets.
Now, hope is lithium.
Both ions and later more advanced batteries can make electricity a viable transport fuel and help fill the gaps in the grid that are currently hindering renewable energy implementation.
The company has started to produce tractors.
Lithium trailer size
Ion battery banks and connect them to wind and solar farms.
The ability to store intermittent energy like this (
The sun goes down at night, the wind does not always blow)
Make them more practical and affordable as alternatives to pollution sources such as coal.
This is a shift in mind for scientists who lay the intellectual foundation for rechargeable lithium batteries.
They have both scientific curiosity and motivation.
Focus on social issues.
More than 40 years ago, they began to solve the troublesome problem of energy storage, which, like our own, is scarce and uncertain.
Bottle lightning: Super battery, electric car and new lithium economy from Seth Fletcher.
All rights reserved. Seth Fletcher, 2011.