Originally Posted by
Leisesturm
Why should gasoline still be held up as the gold standard for energy storage? Its sad that just because LiFe is the current state of the art in battery technology that we have to be impressed with it. Does anyone know the energy storage capacity of the batteries in the Lunar Rover that the Apollo missions took to the moon 40 years ago? Even if it was only equivalent to LiFe, its a crying shame that we haven't managed to improve capacity, weight and/or cost in two generations.
H
Here you go:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver-oxide_battery
Silver-zinc batteries were used. At least in the projects I know of, the Grumman Apollo modules being an example.
These batteries provided performance fairly close to what lithium does, although they had complications and drawbacks. Granted, for its time these were the best, although comparatively lithium chemistries now provide better performance in a much cheaper package, and new lithium revisions have become quite safe as well.
Oh, the wiki article is a little opinionated about its "demise"
Improvements have been made recently, one company called "ZPower" has apparently improved the lifespan and reliability of the battery. ZPower claims that their product currently has 30% more wh/l, and that their batteries are only becoming more efficient as time goes on. Still, doesn't help the cost of silver these days, which would be prohibitively high for most applications.
http://electronicdesign.com/Articles...rticleID=17084
Are these batteries dead? Maybe, maybe not. Hey, i'm not a technology analyst!
And if I was, my job would be to tell you whatever you wanted to hear anyways
