Jeff_Chamberlain

Truth is I am hoping to be full of life-preserving batteries 30 years from now, and live until I am 150.

Plus, That's Dr. Chamberlain to you. :)

Kind of. The real answer is, we can vary battery chemistry, cell design, and pack design for whatever application you are aiming for. Meaning, I could give you a battery today that charges in 5 minutes. Problem is, as I'm sure you know, you need both power (fast charging and discharging) and high energy capacity. With most chemistries, you have to trade these off – you want high power, you give up capacity, and vice versa. What we're working on is a way to get chemistry that can give you both. So, a timetable? Difficult to give one. How's this. Certainly in our lifetime.

Great question from an investor in our research (assuming you pay U.S. taxes)… If the JCESR team across the country is reading this, of course I am happy with the research from all quarters. But, my immediate response to your question is this: From the applied side of the research spectrum, there are two battery chemistries that we are making progress on: 1) magnesium ion batteries and 2) lithium sulfide semi-flow batteries. Magnesium releases 2 electrons per reaction, compared to one for lithium ion. At Argonne and University of Illinois-Chicago, we've recently found a combination of electrolyte that enables us to experiment simultaneously with Mg metal at the anode, and a cathode host that intercalates Mg. Very exciting. With the lithium sulfide, there has been some really good work by our Hub members at SLAC/Stanford, MIT, and U. Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Note Mg is aimed at electric transport, and Li-sulfide will be aimed at grid applications. On the more basic side, we are really excited about the development and use of what we call the "Electrolyte Genome" (EG). This effort is led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, with Argonne and MIT. In the EG, we use sophisticated computational models to "invent" molecules and predict computationally their behaviors. We've performed computations for thousands of molecules the last six months – this gives us a catalogue of new materials to choose from to synthesize and test, not only to find winning technology, but also to verify and improve the models. It is worth noting that, outside of the JCESR project, Argonne and many other national labs and universities are also working to develop new, breakthrough materials for lithium ion technology. Our aggressive reach in JCESR to discover chemistry that takes us beyond lithium ion is complemented by research we do in lithium ion that we believe will double the performance and halve the cost of lithium ion technology.

My personal stance is that it is really too bad we backed away from nuclear in the 70s and 80s. Nuclear technology has improved dramatically in both performance and safety since then, and we are just slow to adopt the technology. Nuclear, assuming safe operation and waste handling, is a superb way to generate electricity, generally speaking. (Remember I am not an expert…) I have often thought that, when the aliens land centuries from now, and we're still burning coal, they'll say "You learned how to harness atomic energy in the 1900s and you're still burning coal??"

We have to remember that one of the main problems in Fukishima was the on-site storage of hot waste. If we can solve that problem, the technology is well worth using.

All my opinions…

Clarification: I am 48 years old, and hope to live another 40 (35 at least)… So, that's what I mean by "our" lifetime!