BOTTLED LIGHTNING (Chapter 1)

Fletcher, Seth.  Bottled Lightning: Superbatteries, Electric Cars, and the New Lithium Economy.  New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.

This book is 273 pages in length (paperback version published by Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux). 

Although I would have preferred a most recently published book on batteries, I could not find one that appears to give as much detail as this, although the focus is on the most commonly used battery type.  I decided to settle on this book because, even though it is 4 years old, its focus, lithium batteries, still dominates the energy storage field from smartphones to Tesla electric cars.

The author is a non-chemist but I did look at the bibliography and scanned through the chapters and noted that he based his information on reputable books and peer-reviewed journal articles.  After a quick review scan of the chapters, I did see some level of detail in the chemistry discussion and it gives me hope that this will be an informative book for me and my search for a more detailed understanding of battery technology.

Seth Fletcher is a science writer and senior editor at Scientific American. http://www.scientificamerican.com/pressroom/expert-directory/

CHAPTER 1: THE ELECTRICIANS

In this chapter, the author gives a brief but detailed history of the discovery of electricity and the battery. There was period in the history of the United States when it looked like the electric car would come out to be a dominant player in transportation.  The long time it took to come up with a better battery and the ease with which the gasoline engine became a more viable option ended the prospect of electric cars coming into the market.  While improving upon his battery designed for cars, adding a lithium compound to the electrolyte was one of Edison’s solution to his first failed attempt.  While this is not how lithium is used in so-called lithium batteries, the author used this as a starting off point to discuss lithium, its discovery, subsequent various uses, and its evolution into one of the most powerful elements to lead to increased energy density in today’s batteries.

·         First documented observation of electricity is by Thales the Greek philosopher who rubbed amber with cloth (elektron is the Greek word for amber) and observed feathers being attracted to it.

·         It was not until the beginning of the 17^thcentury that the term electricity (from elektron) was coined by William Gilbert who observed that many materials can be “electrified” by friction.

·         In the 1740’s, the Leyden jar was invented: a series of metals inside a jar immersed in some kind of electrolyte that acted like a capacitor, something that stores charge.

·         Galvani observed what he attributed to electricity in the twitching of a dissected frog’s legs upon contact with a scalpel.  Volta countered this with his own observation of metals contacting each other producing electricity. The two began a long-distance debate on the basis of this electrical phenomenon.

·         In 1800, Volta reported constructing a device consisting of zinc-copper metal sandwiches immersed in brine that produced electricity. The term battery came from connecting a “battery” of Leyden jars connected in series.

·         When this proved to be successful, bigger batteries were created to carry out all kinds of tests resulting in scientific discoveries: splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen, breakdown minerals into newly discovered elements of potassium, magnesium, etc, electromagnetism, e.g.

·         By the beginning of the 20^th century, lead-acid batteries were being used to “power the telegraph, manage the load in the electrical-lighting substations, and support electric streetcar networks”.

·         In 1898, Thomas Edison began earnest research into a new type of battery that would replace the rechargeable lead-acid batteries commonly used. He believed that an alkaline type would be lighter and more long-lived. In 1904, Edison launched a nickel-iron battery using a potassium alkaline electrolyte that have better properties than the lead-acid batteries:  14 watt-hours per pound and 233 percent “better”.  Soon after, however, leaking and reduced capacities drove Edison to recall his batteries.  The prospect of electric cars followed suit as gasoline engines steadily improved and gasoline cars became more affordable. Edison and his co-workers continued to solve the leaking and capacity reduction problems and in 1909 came out with a much-improved second generation A cell battery.  Just around this time, however, the invention of an automatic starter for gasoline engines essentially wiped out any potential for the electric cars.  The batteries, instead of running cars, became support energy sources for gasoline engines.  Edison’s new battery saw use in running lamps and signals, telegraphy, and submarines but not electric cars.

·         The two improvements that saved Edison’s battery were: the addition of nickel flake to the electrode and lithium hydroxide to the electrolyte.

·         On lithium: as a metal, half the density of water, soft, very reactive with air and water.  The author uses the term “volatile”.  I think he means reactive.

·         Berzelius is credited for having discovered lithium in 1817.  Lithium is from the Greek word lithos meaning “stone”.

·         Lithium salts are now used commonly to treat mental illness, prescribed as mood-stabilizing drugs such as Eskalith, Lithobid, Lithonate, and Lithotabs. It affects neurotransmitters and cell signaling, and is known to increase the production of serotonin.

·         Of the 120,000 metric tons of lithium compounds mined each year, most go to metal alloys, ceramics, and lubricating greases.  In addition its pharmaceutical use, other minor uses of lithium are in compounds that absorb CO₂ in spacecrafts and other vessels, as rocket propellant, and in certain types of thermonuclear reactors.  And, of course, the subject of this book, in batteries.

·         An idea device for storing electricity is the smallest and lightest possible that can provide the largest stream of electrons. In lead-acid batteries, each electron comes from a heavy atom, lead, with an atomic weight of 207.  In lithium batteries, an electron can be squeezed out of a much smaller atom of lithium with an atomic weight of 7.

·         In addition, lithium’s reactivity and willingness to give up an electron means produces batteries that are high in energy density.

·         In 2010, Bill Gates noted that all the batteries in the world can store only 10 minutes of the global energy need.

·         The author has the following to say about the advantages of using electricity to run vehicles: "Mile by mile, it’s cheap compared with gasoline. It’s far more feasible than hydrogen, and in almost all circumstances it’s cleaner than ethanol.  It can come from almost any source – natural, gas, coal, nuclear, hydroelectric, solar, wind.  Even when it is generated by a coal-burning plant, it still produces less carbon dioxide per mile than a mile of gasoline.”