Tesla Acquires Canadian Battery Specialist, Hibar Systems

https://electricautonomy.ca/2019/10/04/tesla-acquires-canadian-battery-specialist-hibar-systems/

by reddotX • 7 years ago

195 92 7 years ago

I have two questions regarding batteries I often wonder about. Maybe the wisdom of the HN crowd can answer one or both of them:

Is there a theoretical limit on how much energy a rechargeable battery of, say, 1 kg mass can hold?

Can a rechargeable battery be discharged and recharged and afterwards be in the same state it was before the cycle? Or is degradation inevitable? Again, I am asking for the theoretical possibility. Not real life challenges to implement it.

vincnetas• 7 years ago

if by battery you mean box with two wires, then for the first one answer is yes. for example batery storing energy in fast spinning mater. for second one i assume theoretical energy dencity limit is much greater than anything that we might need. but for chemical bateries i would also like to find out answers to your questions.

founderling5• 7 years ago

I mean for batteries in general. Independent of the technology.

For the spinning matter battery, the limit might be when the whole matter of 1 kg spins at the speed of light. I wonder if it matters how big the radius is with which it spins around the center?

For a non-rechargeable battery, I guess the limit is 1kg * c^2. As Einstein postulated that e=mc^2. And that guy was right more often then not. Is that also the upper limit for rechargeable batteries?

How long could a Tesla drive on 1kg * c^2?

morley• 7 years ago

Another tangential question I've been struggling with is: is there a human limit to a power density we'll tolerate? Any sufficiently powerful battery is a defect or bad actor away from becoming a weapon. We already see defects in lithium batteries shaping airline policy, and the devices we're talking about are peanuts if we want to enable all our sci-fi dreams.

the84722• 7 years ago

It depends on how easy it is to release the energy. A full petrol tank already contains a scary amount of energy, but you can't release it instantanously since it is bottlenecked by oxygen intake for combustion. Explosives bring their own compact oxidizer to get around that problem.

A chunk of uranium-238 contains a lot of energy but it is only fissionable but not fissile, so you need an external fast neutron source to extract that energy. Comparatively it is a fairly safe energy source for its density. Similarly there are some metastable nuclear isomers that can theoretically be stimulated to release their energy with high energy photons with a precise frequency and would otherwise release their energy relatively slowly through their natural decay modes.

And I think the difficulty of turning a hypothetical portable fusion power plant into an explosive device should be evident from the difficulties of keeping current experiments running for even a few minutes.

ChuckNorris89• 7 years ago

There is a power limit already in place for batteries you can carry on airlines and IIRC it's 100 Wh.

As for weaponizing batteries, pretty sure bad actors have been able to cook dangerous bombs at home for decades that can inflict magnitudes more damage than a battery could ever do. So battery based bombs won't be a thing for the near future.

jacquesm• 7 years ago

I am asking for the theoretical possibility.

That's a nonsense question then. Theoretical limits on power density will revolve around unobtanium and matter-anti-matter explosions; it's off topic as far as I'm concerned in a thread about Tesla acquiring a Canadian Battery Specialist, a company that is engineering batteries in the real world where practical limitations of materials science and chemistry are the ingredients, not your fantasy of what amount of energy one could theoretically store in a given volume if all of natures laws would be lifted. For reference, just the kinetic energy of a couple of liters of Neutron star alone should also figure into such discussions as well as a whole bunch of other nonsense.

JshWright2• 7 years ago

just the kinetic energy of a couple of liters of Neutron star alone should also figure into such discussions

That would have a mass _substantially_ higher than 1kg...

fulafel2• 7 years ago

An efficient (power density within factor of ~ 1e6 of the ideal mc^2 power source) EV battery doesn't need to be rechargeable, because the battery capacity will outlast the vehicle.

Approximately same goes for stuff we already know how to build, vehicle applications of nuclear batteries and reactors. Although IIRC for practical reasons nuclear refueling is done ever 10 years or so in terrestial applications.

zaroth3• 7 years ago

Wait, what? It sounds like you’re saying if cars had fusion reactors for engines then we wouldn’t need rechargeable batteries?

petra2• 7 years ago

The theoretical maximum is higher than gasoline(1700Wh/Kg[2]), and that's what matters:

rechargable Li/CuCl2 could offer 1166.4 Wh/kg[1], while recyclable, non-rechargeable aluminum-air could offer 5200Wh/Kg[1].

Some batteries may have 200K recharge cycles[3].

Innolith is talking about a battery with 50K recharge cycles[4], but for the grid.

They also talk abuot building a 1000Wh/Kg battery for cars.

But who knows , they're a startup, so we'll need to wait and see.

And phinergy, another startup working on recyclable aluminum-air battery - is planning to open a factory in India in 2020.

[1]https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/4328/whats-t...

[2]https://phys.org/news/2018-10-catalyst-high-energy-aluminum-...

[3]https://www.pcmag.com/news/343967/researchers-stumble-on-a-2...

[4]https://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/10/10/innolith-launches-inf...

geogra4• 7 years ago

That wouldn't be a huge problem, and probably much better for the world if we "gased up" with aluminum

Retric5• 7 years ago

It’s important to realize gasoline is measured in thermal energy which is much harder to convert to useful work than electricity. A reasonable comparison cuts gasoline’s energy density in half at a minimum while a more practical analysis includes the much higher weight of gasoline engines.

new_realist• 7 years ago

What about volumetric density?

gigatexal2• 7 years ago

Fascinating. I’m always intrigued in these style of answers. Where do super-capacitors fit in this?

jiggawatts• 7 years ago

It helps to simplify the problem into a more fundamental thing instead of focusing specifically on batteries.

Essentially, all practical energy storage can be thought of as putting some sort of strain on chemical bonds. That is, you're taking things away from a low-energy configuration to a high-energy configuration and back to store and retrieve the energy.

The insightful part is that all energy storage systems (aside from Nuclear) are fundamentally this! They're all made of matter, and they all "strain" chemical bonds of one type or another.

People think of "batteries" as something special, but they're fundamentally the same as explosives, compressed gas cylinder, superconducting magnetic storage, flywheels, or whatever.

All of them are limited by chemical bond strengths and start going BOOM if you push them too far.

Explosives... explode if the stored chemical potential energy is too great. A lot of research goes into finding novel compounds that approach such limits as close as possible without actually going bang.

Compressed gas cylinders can store energy, but explode when the pressure ruptures the walls -- which have a tensile strength dependent on the chemical bonds of the material used to make them.

Magnetic storage is an exotic approach, but used in MRIs and some power stations. The ultimate storage limit is that strong magnetic fields produce significant forces that can rip even steel apart.

Flyweels are typically made of materials with high tensile strengths to allow them to be spun up to higher RPMs. Again, the tensile strength depends on the internal chemical bonds of the material.

In all cases, the upper limit is ultimately bounded by the available chemical bond strengths of the known elements, one way or another.

There are only very few ways past this limit. Anti-matter storage is probably the most "practical" energy storage method currently known that significantly exceeds chemical bond strength limits.

In practice, separating chemicals helps a lot. Liquid fuels can store much more energy than explosives. People think a stick of TNT has a lot of energy, but a candle the same size releases vastly more when it burns. There are grid-scale battery systems that rely on this approach, using tanks of chemicals to keep things apart.

Still though, the maximum energy you can recover from a fuel and an oxidizer is limited by the difference in chemical bond strengths between the reagents and the end product. I'm not quite sure what the maximum possible energy release is, but chances are that it's whatever the Caesium-Fluorine reaction produces, or close to it.

PS: This is why I chuckle when people are shocked to hear about exploding phone batteries. Well... duh. That's literally what a "high capacity battery is", it's a chemical system that's packed full of energy. Literally ready to explode, held back from the brink only through careful arrangement of its constituent parts.

HeWhoLurksLate• 7 years ago

Username checks out.

Thank you for the insightful comment.

magicalhippo• 7 years ago

Is there a theoretical limit on how much energy a rechargeable battery of, say, 1 kg mass can hold?

As with most things, you can find some fairly irrelevant theoretical maximum. It's fairly irrelevant because real life implementations will invariably involve compromises. It can be nice to know the limit, but it's not terribly useful for making an actual device.

For rechargeable batteries, it's not just about how much energy the battery can store, but how fast can you charge and discharge, what's the recharge efficiency like, does it degrade when recharged, can it be deep cycled without adverse effects, how sensitive it is to physical and electrical disturbances, does it have high or low self-discharge and so on.

Different applications have different demands and so there's usually not a single optimal battery technology.

mrfusion2• 7 years ago

I’ve always wondered what the energy density of superconducting rings is? I guess no one has ever tried to optimize one for weight or size.

andrewtbham3• 7 years ago

"It is not feasible to get much more energy into a material than 1 eV per atom. Most solids have atomic weights of 30 GeV/c^2 [*] which yields E/m = 3x10^-11 c^2. When you convert this into the more human Watt-hour/kg, you get 850 W-hr/kg. "

https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-battery-energy-density...

I believe.. this is true, but not 100% sure. However the limit is higher with air batteries... as stated in another answer. The energy density of gasoline is high because it uses air intake for oxidation.

Also... part of why rockets are so big is because they also don't use oxygen from the atmosphere, they carry their oxidizer in the rocket.

marcosdumay• 7 years ago

This is an orders of magnitude approximation.

alexis_fr• 7 years ago

Tesla Model 3’s batteries are 207 Wh/kg. It strikes me as so close to the limit, whereas we usually are an order of magnitude under, in physics.

At one point the only improvement beyond the physical barrier will be to throw electrons into a void sphere and call that a battery.

andrewtbham3• 7 years ago

Interestingly your two questions point towards a trade off in battery design. Current research is adding more silicon to the batteries to increase energy density but doing so makes the battery degrade.

https://phys.org/news/2019-01-tiny-silicon-particles-power-l...

"Silicon shows promise for building much higher-capacity batteries because it's abundant and can absorb much more lithium than the graphite used in current lithium ion batteries. The problem is that silicon is prone to fracturing and breaking after numerous charge-and-discharge cycles, because it expands and contracts as it absorbs and releases lithium ions."

naasking2• 7 years ago

Is there a theoretical limit on how much energy a rechargeable battery of, say, 1 kg mass can hold

A sufficiently high energy density will collapse into a black hole, so a theoretical limit on ordinary energy storage definitely exists. But it might still be possible to use black holes since they radiate energy as Hawking radiation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_starship

founderling5• 7 years ago

A battery with 1 kg of mass would only collapse into into a black hole if it is very small. A bottle of water is 1 kg and I never saw one collapsing.

kleton• 7 years ago

A lithium/air battery is 40.1 MJ/kg. There are people working on aprotic liquid electrolytes that could be used with secondary (rechargeable) cells with a metallic lithium anode.

gniv• 7 years ago

This distributor’s page gives more color on Hibar’s business: http://www.unicontrols-asia.com/category/hibar-pumps/

In particular: "The pumps are used by battery manufacturers from all over the world for filling batteries with electrolytes, and have set the global standard in the battery industry."

zackmorris• 7 years ago

A few thoughts on this:

* There's a slight monopoly danger of having so many batteries manufactured from one source, although Tesla would be better than say, an oil company.

* Can we please get standard battery form factors, voltages and connectors: like AA, AAA, C, D, 9 volt, etc, but in a larger size similar to lantern batteries and car batteries?

* Can we please get batteries with built-in protection circuits? I want to wire them in series or parallel at any voltage and have them "just work" and never explode. Bonus: please do this with solar panels as well.

* Can we please get batteries with prepaid postage or a recycling refund (similar to aluminum cans) that can be taken to any post office, propane exchange or even gas station for recycling?

craigcabrey• 7 years ago

Can we please get standard battery form factors, voltages and connectors: like AA, AAA, C, D, 9 volt, etc, but in a larger size similar to lantern batteries and car batteries?

This exists already. 18650 is in widespread use and now 2170 is gaining traction. Each cell is already a standard voltage, 4.2V at the top end, 2.75V on the bottom end (or lower depending on whether you want to risk permanent damage).

Can we please get batteries with built-in protection circuits? I want to wire them in series or parallel at any voltage and have them "just work" and never explode. Bonus: please do this with solar panels as well.

These also already exist. Tesla will never use them because the BMS handles that job, which is more effective and cheaper.

NotSammyHagar• 7 years ago

Tesla has the built in protection circuits. The more important thing is on top of that cool and heat batteries in extreme temps and when charging. That's why teslas don't lose range, and most other batteries do. latest gen from germany cars finally have cooling system, leaf still doesn't.

And connectors. There are multiple worldwide standards because companies keep pushing their own for attempt at proprietary advantage. J1772 is the worldwide standard for ac that everyone supports. It has a flaw of not going to high enough power. Tesla is the only company that supports upto 80 amps 220v. Most companies support much lower voltages, some barely 30 amps and 220 v. Current gen tesla support 220v and 45 amps (can't remember the exact number). There are multiple worldwide standards for high power dc. Chademo (Japanese standard, doesn't go to high enough power, only like 50kw), leafs support these in the us. ccs in europe is a successful cross company standard that everyone uses, including tesla model 3 and later. So good job there. The us stupidly has a different ccs plug. Not many cars support it.

Teslas own proprietary plug is better than all the standards, supports higher power. Only just now are there cars on the new euro high power ccs plugs that match and exceed tesla's powerful plug. My 2012 tesla model s car is basically better than all existing competitors in range, ability to charge, etc. The brand new cars from porsche (but you can't go out and buy one, coming soon maybe, the taycan has a higher theoretical charging speed, they need to build a charging network.

Tesla offered to share their plug tech to other companies if they agreed not to sue each other, but no companies took them up on it.

Waun• 7 years ago

You don't necessarily want all batteries to come with built in protection. Today, you have the option of with or without.

Each protection circuit comes with a power cost. Consider the most basic protection: a resettable fuse (real protection circuitry is more complex).

If you put a resettable fuse on every battery in a pack that tiny voltage drop across a single battery will occur across each and every battery in your pack.

A small number of batteries and you wouldn't notice. But if you're looking at hundreds or thousands of cells it gets to be a major issue. Looking at string of batteries in series, if you draw a large current from the pack you'd find your pack voltage drops and you generate a lot of useless heat.

When building custom packs beyond hobbyist stuff it's often better to source (or design) your own battery management system than to rely on safety circuitry in each cell.

And that's not even mentioning the pack management and communications capabilities that custom pack- or string- based management circuitry would have.

anoncareer0212• 7 years ago

Tesla doesn't manufacture the batteries, Panasonic does, this acquisition is strategic for Tesla to mitigate the impact of Model 3 sales falling far short of projections [1, 2] on its relationship with Panasonic. Elon and the Panasonic CEO had some tough conversations earlier this year [2], Panasonic has stopped investing capex in Tesla [1], and Panasonic has pivoted to other automakers long-term [3], particularly Toyota [4]

[1] https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Tesla-and-Panason... [2] https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Cover-Story/Sparks-fly-Ins... [3] hard to find a singular link that back this up, note the constant drumbeat of agreements/movement over the last year and contrast with 1 & 2: c.f. https://www.google.com/search?q=panasonic+toyota&rlz=1CAUWRX... [4] https://sciencebusiness.net/network-updates/commission-clear...

andrewtbham3• 7 years ago

It is an open secret that Tesla has been working on manufacturing their own batteries for years, and especially since Maxwell acquisition. This is the more likely explanation.. that Tesla is developing their own in house... and they don't need or want Panasonic's help.

https://electrek.co/2019/06/26/tesla-cells-in-house-secret-b...

Bayart2• 7 years ago

Can we please get batteries with built-in protection circuits?

I'd much rather have batteries fail in a predicable way than trust failure from abusive usage can be prevented (and then fail unpredictably).

jammygit• 7 years ago

Ah, the dream of all Canadian companies: get acquired by a bigger American one. I wish there were at least a few more Canadian mega corps to sell to.

If it had to be anyone though, glad it’s one of Musks moonshot companies. Uh, not his literal moonshot, figure of speech!

empyrical• 7 years ago

Uh, not his literal moonshot, figure of speech!

Starship and its fins it uses for re-entry will need top of the line battery tech. The prototype Starship uses Tesla batteries[1], wouldn't surprise me if that continued to be the case

[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1176586684751908872

Tesla Acquires Canadian Battery Specialist, Hibar Systems

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