Altairnano, Nanosafe

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qdos
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Altairnano, Nanosafe

Postby qdos » Sun Jul 08, 2007 10:12 pm

I was shown some data on a new battery today at the Bristol Microcar Club meet in Keynsham by one of our members. We both were pretty amazed by the claims on the data sheet and we thought we’d post the claims on the website from the company’s data sheet to see what you think too.

See the information here

Is this the answer to the search for the holy grail? Or did we miss something? Any one elese know anything about these?

MalcolmB
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Postby MalcolmB » Mon Jul 09, 2007 7:50 am

Hi Kelvin

I believe these are similar in performance to the other 'nano-chemistry' batteries: A123 and Valence Saphion, both of which use nanophosphate, rather than nanotitanate. There's a wiki page with a little information about these batteries here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanobatteries. As usual with such pages the information should not be taken as gospel.
There's also a blog here http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2006/09/altair_nanotech.html which gives some more information and further links.

Seems that the manufacturers of these 'nano' batteries aren't interested in selling to the general public yet, although A123 does sell (very expensive) developer's kits and individual 18650 cells, which could be made up into a pack but would require a battery management system. These look like the batteries we've been hoping for, but until the price comes down and they become generally available, Thunder Sky and Kokam seem to be the next best thing.

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qdos
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Postby qdos » Mon Jul 09, 2007 8:27 am

Indeed, there's a lot of vapourware about and until I see things for my own eyes I'm generally sceptical. (I think in this world today you learn very much to be a sceptic) none the less I thought it worth starting a thread to see what other members of the BVS had come across and folks' thoughts.

Any idea of what the costs are for these type of batteries? I'm sure they must be expensive but then so were computers and digital cameras once upon a time

MalcolmB
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Postby MalcolmB » Mon Jul 09, 2007 9:39 am

$129 for a six-cell developer kit from a123. Each cell is 2.3 Ah/3.3 V.
http://www.buya123systems.com/prdeki.html
The same cells are also sold individually, but without solder tabs, for $17.50 here http://www.aircraft-world.com/shopexd.asp?id=5041

These cells are also used in DeWalt 36V power tool batteries. In the states people have been buying them up off eBay and using them to power ebikes.

TonyM
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Postby TonyM » Tue Jul 10, 2007 12:27 pm

A123 are fairly helpful if you drop them an email although when I contacted them they were having fun playing with export certificates which I believe they have now overcome

They seem to have targetted the remote control market as a better bet than EVs at present (presumably due to the fairly low Ah per cell) and the remote control forums have lots of info re usage, abuse, how to get the cells out of the DeWalt packs etc

Fair bit about A123 cells at www.visforvoltage.net with a number of contributors running their bikes with them (also links to some of the RC forums which I havent got on me as I'm at work)

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qdos
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Postby qdos » Tue Jul 10, 2007 10:43 pm

Excellent information guys. I've seen people in the USA were raiding Dewalt battery packs for some reason and didn't know why.

Anyone out there actually tried these over here in the UK ?


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