Scientists Invent 30 Year Continuous Power Laptop Battery

[Nomad559]

http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/next-energy-news-betavoltaic-10.1.html

Your next laptop could have a continuous power battery that lasts for 30 years without a single recharge thanks to work being funded by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory. The breakthrough betavoltaic power cells are constructed from semiconductors and use radioisotopes as the energy source. As the radioactive material decays it emits beta particles that transform into electric power capable of fueling an electrical device like a laptop for years.

Although betavoltaic batteries sound Nuclear they’re not, they’re neither use fission/fusion or chemical processes to produce energy and so (do not produce any radioactive or hazardous waste). Betavoltaics generate power when an electron strikes a particular interface between two layers of material. The Process uses beta electron emissions that occur when a neutron decays into a proton which causes a forward bias in the semiconductor. This makes the betavoltaic cell a forward bias diode of sorts, similar in some respects to a photovoltaic (solar) cell. Electrons scatter out of their normal orbits in the semiconductor and into the circuit creating a usable electric current.

[BlooInBloo]

1. Complete and utter bullshit they rely on the credulous to spread.

[Maq]

2. Electric Car batteries maybe yes; maybe no

Can you imagine an Electric Car with thirty years of fuel.

[Bassic]

26. It would be supressed and never put on the market.

They have to keep us dependent on _something_.

[BadgerLaw2010]

30. Yes, but I can't imagine a car powered by radioactive decay ever allowed on the road.

[Junkdrawer]

3. "Although betavoltaic batteries sound Nuclear they’re not" umm..if they worked...

they would be nuclear and use radioactive decay as the power source.

Doesn't NASA use decaying isotopes for deep-space missions? :shrug:

[Ian David]

4. Are you also saying the "perpetual motion" and "free energy" machines on that site are also bogus?

Damn you and your laws of thermodynamics!

http://www.nextenergynews.com/freeenergy/freeenergyindex101-120.html

[BlooInBloo]

5. They also claimed to creat cold fusion. God American ignorance is embarrassing.

[depakid]

8. Free energy!

My favorite:

Electro-Gravitic Perpetual Motion Machine from Kitchen Items

(gotta make me one o' these things).

[MisterHowdy]

24. I don't believe that.

Batteries that last THIRTY years?
Come on.

[formercia]

45. Pu-238 if I remember correctly

it gives off quite a bit of heat and has a fairly long half-life. They can be made rather small. Handy for situations where it's impossible to go replacing batteries.

SNAP Generators using Strontium 90 as the heat source have also been used by others.

More detailed information on SNAP generators can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator

It's a good way to recycle nuclear waste.

on edit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium

The isotope plutonium-238 (238Pu) has a half-life of 88 years and emits a large amount of thermal energy as it decays. Being an alpha emitter it combines high energy radiation with low penetration (thereby requiring minimal shielding). These characteristics make it well suited for safe electrical power generation for devices which must function without direct maintenance for timescales approximating a human lifetime. It is therefore used in radioisotope thermoelectric generators such as those powering the Cassini and New Horizons (Pluto) space probes; earlier versions of the same technology powered the ALSEP and EASEP systems including seismic experiments on the Apollo Moon missions.

More detailed information on SNAP generators can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator

[Monk06]

6. The good news: the battery lasts 30 years. The bad news: the laptop lasts two years. n/t

[Tesha]

29. Interesting point! (NT)

[WinkyDink]

44. Bwah! 'Tis pity, 'tis true!

[tkmorris]

7. A bit of an exaggeration I think

Betavoltaic batteries are nothing new, but I have not heard of any that have a useful lifetime of 30 years. One of the problems is a very low current output, which limits their application. AFAIK, actually running a laptop off of one is still out of reach although I just read an article that claims using them to trickle charge more conventional batteries for laptop use might be possible.

[Tesha]

12. Depends on how much current you want

> Betavoltaic batteries are nothing new, but I have not
> heard of any that have a useful lifetime of 30 years.

Depends on how much current you want. Tritium (a common
beta decay source) has a half-life of about ten years
so a betaelectric source based on tritium would, after
ten years, be putting out only half the electricity
that it put out on day one. Twenty years: a quarter
of the electricity. Thirty years: an eighth. And so
on. It never really goes dead, it just gets wimpier
and wimpier as the years go by.

At some point, the betaelectric battery stops providing
enough juice to keep the powered object working.

Tesha

[mudesi]

9. Sounds like a perpetual motion machine!

This can't be true.

[Tesha]

13. Nuclear power sources far, far out-power chemical power sources.

It's not perpetual motion, but it can "just keep
going and going and going" for a lot longer than
your average Energizer.

Tesha

[eppur_se_muova]

14. The part about it not being "nuclear" is half-true at best ...

it uses radioactive decay, meaning it contains radioactive isotopes.

Decay of radioisotopes does in fact provide power for a very long time; it's what keeps probes to the outer Solar System running -- they are too far from the Sun for solar cells to provide enough power.

[backscatter712]

10. The closest real power source I can think of is radiothermal power.

That's the power source that went into the Voyager probes, Galileo, Cassini & other spacecraft. Basically, you have a mass of radioactive material, in this case, an isotope of plutonium. The radioactive decay generates heat, and the heat is picked up and turned into electrical current.

It provides enough power to last for decades, but you have to deal with plutonium, which makes it a non-starter for laptops...

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

11. Teachers Invent 30 Year Continuous Scientific Illitearcy.

Your next child could have a continuous scientific literacy that lasts for 30 years without a single thought thanks to work being funded by the No Child Left Behind Act. The breakthrough lack of education is constructed by creationist and woo woo pseudoscientists. As society decays it emits pseudoscience that transforms into ignorance capable of fueling a Republican administraion for years.

Although scientific illiteracy sound complicated, it's not, it's neither use learned nor worthwhile or and so (do not produce any literary or scientifically-active benefit). Pseudoscience generates naivete when an kook posts his latest perpetual motion machine. The Process uses gullibility that occurs when suckers don't pay attention.

[SidDithers]

33. Egg-zactly...nt

Sid

[UncleSepp]

15. More bullshit links on "precursors" to this technology

... like the manufacturer of a product similar to what's being described:

http://www.qynergy.com/products.htm

This is a bit of paranoid loonery from the University of Missouri, way back in 1995, describing such power cells and the partnership with Qynergy:

http://web.missouri.edu/~umcreactorweb/pages/Qynergy.html

And from those whackjobs at the New Scientist, a brief article from 2007 describing a Cornell University partnership with DARPA to further develop betavoltaic power sources:

http://www.newscientist.com/blog/invention/2007/07/betavoltiac-batteries.html

Ha, ha! Those moonbats and their perpetual motion machines made out of spoons!

[NutmegYankee]

16. So many incorrect statements in one article, it almost qualifies as a * speech!

1. If a smoke detector is defined as nuclear technology (It is), then a battery using the same decay feature is also nuclear.

2. The article says it doesn't produce radioactive waste, but it using BETA RADIATION to work. Where the hell does THAT come from if it isn't radioactive?

3. "The profile of the batteries can be quite small and thin, a porous silicon material is used to collect the hydrogen isotope tritium which is generated in the process." Just as a note to #2 above, Tritium(symbol T or ³H) is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen. That qualifies as radioactive waste! And It will need some shielding of Aluminum or sheet metal to prevent beta particles from escaping.

4. The article says it's non-thermal, and yet, it uses radioactive decay. Radioactive decay, you know, what makes the earth belch out boiling hot lava from time to time. Sure, this would be merely warm, but still, so are batteries.

[Tesha]

20. Not all radioactive decay produces "nuclear waste"

For example, the waste product from the beta decay of
Tritium (³H) is ³He, a non-radioactive substance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3

Tesha

[Tesha]

21. The energy of the decay is released as a highly-energetic electron.

It's "non-thermal" because it's not based on the more-
conventional technology of using radioactive decay to
produce heat which is then converted to electricity.
Instead, the energy from the beta decay is released as
a Beta particle, a highly-energetic electron. This
mobile electron is captured as the electrical energy
produced by the battery.

The laptop computer then turns the energy of the electron
into heat, of course. But all laptops do that.

Tesha

[jmowreader]

17. It says Diehard on the side, right?

[Trillo]

18. University of Rochester -- Must be a SCAM!

I always note when the topic generates such dissent. Hmm, perpetual motion, eh? According to medgadget.com the University of Rochester is mentioned. Hurumph. Must be perpetual motion!

Google shows a U.S. Pat. #4835433. Well, that doesn't mean much, except protection, if it's the same device as the OP, might not be.

Now why would this topic or device generate such contempt?

Perhaps this makes much better sense than nuclear power, with all the waste disposal issues, and danger of operational meltdown. If this technology is 'not' a SCAM, then it'd likely be a threat to the nuclear power industry and all the corporate welfare it seems to demand. Wonder if it can be scaled up to exajoule ranges?

May 12, 2005

New 'Nuclear Battery' Runs 10 Years, 10 Times More Powerful

A battery with a lifespan measured in decades is in development at the University of Rochester, as scientists demonstrate a new fabrication method that in its roughest form is already 10 times more efficient than current nuclear batteries—and has the potential to be nearly 200 times more efficient. The details of the technology, already licensed to BetaBatt Inc., appears in today's issue of Advanced Materials.
-snip-
Betavoltaics, the method that the new battery uses, has been around for half a century, but its usefulness was limited due to its low energy yields. The new battery technology makes its successful gains by dramatically increasing the surface area where the current is produced. Instead of attempting to invent new, more reactive materials, Fauchet's team focused on turning the regular material's flat surface into a three-dimensional one.

Similar to the way solar panels work by catching photons from the sun and turning them into current, the science of betavoltaics uses silicon to capture electrons emitted from a radioactive gas, such as tritium, to form a current. As the electrons strike a special pair of layers called a "p-n junction," a current results. What's held these batteries back is the fact that so little current is generated—much less than a conventional solar cell. Part of the problem is that as particles in the tritium gas decay, half of them shoot out in a direction that misses the silicon altogether. It's analogous to the sun's rays pouring down onto the ground, but most of the rays are emitted from the sun in every direction other than at the Earth. Fauchet decided that to catch more of the radioactive decay, it would be best not to use a flat collecting surface of silicon, but one with deep pits.

A layer of silicon riddled with pits, each of which would fill with the radioactive tritium gas, would be like dropping the sun into a deep well lined with solar panels. Almost all of the sun's rays, no matter which way they were emitted, would strike a well wall. Only those rays that fired straight up and out of the well would be lost. With this reasoning, Fauchet devised a method to excavate pits into a microscopic piece of silicon.
-snip-

Read complete article

Cheers! :toast:

[muriel_volestrangler]

19. I think the 'contempt' is for the badly written article

It claims there is 'no radioactive waste' - but the material powering it is radioactive, by definition. It says "when they eventually run out of power they are totally inert and non-toxic" - well, since the radioactive material will follow the normal pattern of half-life (for tritium, the half-life is about 12 years), then the energy that was enough to power a laptop/whatever after 30 years will be almost as much after 31 years. That cell is still producing energy from a radioactive element at that stage - almost enough to run a laptop with.

You can't just throw away tritium:

A recently documented source of tritium in the environment is tritium exit signs that have been illegally disposed of in municipal landfills. Water, which seeps through the landfill, is contaminated with tritium from broken signs and can pass into water ways, carrying the tritium with it.

http://www.epa.gov/radiation/radionuclides/tritium.htm

[Tesha]

22. The real question in my mind is whether we want tritium circulating around.

The real question in my mind is whether we want tritium
circulating around commercially.

After all, the difference between a low-yield fission
(atomic) bomb and an efficient "boosted" fission bomb
is a well-timed injection of tritium into the core of
the bomb. And the availability of tritium probably helps
in the (much more complicated) production of fusion
("thermo-nuclear", "H-") bombs as well.

Think the government will start letting you buy the
stuff in large quantities at Radio Shack?

(The amount used in self-luminous exit signs is
pretty trivial by comparison to the amount that
would be needed to power a laptop for 30 years.)

Tesha

[Selatius]

25. No, we shouldn't. It would be health hazard as far as disposing issues go.

Knowing how America consumes goods, if it entered the commercial markets, a ton of it will end up inside landfills because people would be too lazy to properly dispose of it at disposal centers, and many waterways will end up becoming polluted with radioactive tritium.

[Tesha]

27. Good point! I wonder what fraction of NiCd batteries get recycled versus chucked?

(In the Tesha household, we haven't bought a new NiCd
for years because of the problems posed by the cadmium;
it's been NiMH and LiIon only for a long time.)

Tesha

[Trillo]

42. Our local 'water department' has started a battery recycling program.

Maybe it'll help if enough other localities implement similar programs.

I recently caught our trash collectors placing recycled greenery into the same truck the rest of the garbage goes into, they're supposed to use two different trucks. What a waste.

~~Also~~

Thanks to muriel_volestrangler, Tesha, and Selatius for being genuine long enough to explain the downsides of this device without expressing contempt or casting aspersions regarding the device's authenticity.

[ThomWV]

23. Pure horseshit

In order for this to be true one of two things must also be true, the first is that the computer to be powered would have to use hundreds of not thousands of times LESS power than current models or that battery glows in the dark.

By the way, if it used any sort of power source, radioactive or other, it would not be a battery. Batterys store power, they do not make it.

[Tesha]

28. Stored nuclear energy is still stored power.

It's a real shame so many DUers have such a weak grasp
of basic science, especially physics.

Tesha

[BlooInBloo]

31. Indeed.

[formercia]

35. You can't get any more energy out of a system that what's put in.

Energy isn't conjured out of thin air.

[Tesha]

37. No, it isn't. Tritium is conjured out of nuclear reactors. (NT)

[formercia]

38. and Nuclear Reactors are very expensive and take a lot of energy to create.

show me the free energy....

[Tesha]

40. I almost think that you're being deliberately obtuse.

The truth is, there's no energy available to us that
isn't a result of stellar fusion.

Some of it we get directly from our local star as
solar, wind, wave, or OTEC energy.

Some of it we get indirectly from our local star
as our stored solar energy in the form of fossil
fuels.

Some of it we get as stored stellar energy from
long-dead primordial stars that became supernovae.
These formed the heavy elements from which we now
get nuclear fission energy and geothermal energy.

What's your point?

It requires an energy investment to obtain further
energy from all of these sources.

Tesha

[formercia]

41. It's takes energy to create the battery.

From whatever source, the sum of the energy expended to create the battery will be greater than its output.

[BadgerLaw2010]

46. That would be the energy they convert from mass via nuclear reactions...

You are badly butchering Thermodynamics here. The energy expended in, say, pouring concrete for a reactor containment building has nothing to do with the energy derived from the nuclear fuel.

As an extreme example, you could ignore the containment building completely. Would that somehow effect how much energy nuclear fission gave off?

[Trillo]

43. I believe that if all K-12 schools

could figure out how to eliminate the preponderant use of negative reinforcement and extreme psychological distress and compulsion, in a few generations you would see less ignorance, though I'm quite sure you would still see aptitude differences, but they would likely be celebrated instead of condemned.

[MilesColtrane]

32. The new energizer...it keeps glowing, and glowing, and glowing.

The perfect laptop for those who have no future use for their testes.

[Tesha]

34. Presumably you're joking.

Beta radiation needs very little shielding. Because it's
just high-energy electrons, a very thin layer of metal
(such as the case of the battery) will absolutely stop it.

We're not taking neutrons or Gamma rays here.

Tesha

[MilesColtrane]

36. You presume correctly.

Unless there's a leak.

[ecstatic]

39. Is it safe to be around or will internal organs slowly fry upon exposure? nt

hehe

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

47. I suggest you sell this idea to Microsoft. -nt

[spanone]

48. but your laptop is obsolete in a few years

[BlooInBloo]

49. Do your noocleear Wessels also have dilithium creestals?

sheesh.