This past weekend while I was at the Syracuse Nationals auto show, my digital camera chewed through my extended-life rechargeable batteries. More than once I found myself without enough energy to get that last, important shot. The recharger I used took 3 hours to recharge them as well, so if I hadn’t have had eight of the batteries I would have been poop outta luck.
But a new idea for rechargable batteries might change all that. Need some power? Just shake your battery and it recharges itself! Or at least that is the concept behind the ShakEnergy from Mintpass.
By Andrew Williams •
March 12, 2009
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed battery cells capable of charging in under a minute, an astonishing 100 times faster than a regular rechargable battery.
The breakthrough could revolutionize electric car battery technology and pave the way for ultra-fast charging electric vehicles in as little as two years.
The discovery came when MIT researchers Byoungwoo Kang and Gerbrand Ceder found out how to get a common lithium compound to release and take up lithium ions in a matter of seconds. According to Ceder, the compound, known as lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4), has a crystal structure that creates “perfectly sized tunnels for lithium to move through,” allowing the team to reach “ridiculously fast charging rates.”
