So, they keep saying that word. I do not think it means what they think it means. Nickel-63 is one isotope of nickel. I understand that means it has 28 protons, like all isotopes of nickel do,...
Betavolt says that after it has decayed the 63 nuclear isotopes become copper, which would be non-radioactive and not cause any environmental threat.
63 isotopes
So, they keep saying that word. I do not think it means what they think it means. Nickel-63 is one isotope of nickel. I understand that means it has 28 protons, like all isotopes of nickel do, plus 35 neutrons, adding up to 63.
Anyway, the half life of Ni-63 is 100 years, so yeah it'll eventually turn into Copper 63 which is stable, but if you damage the cell before then, it's going to remain hot for quite some time. I don't see this being approved for cellphones anytime soon. Plus 100 microwatts is maybe 1/50000th of what you'd need to run a cell phone. You're going to need quite a few of these things to power anything substantial.
Edit: everything in this comment was wrong read @pseudolobster 's comment below. I think as long as no one eats the unshielded, a beta decay source is pretty innocuous. Beta radiation is stopped...
Edit: everything in this comment was wrong read @pseudolobster 's comment below.
I think as long as no one eats the unshielded, a beta decay source is pretty innocuous. Beta radiation is stopped by things like clothes, paper, and the upper layers of your skin.
If they can effectively charge a lithium battery from something as low current as the 100uW source, that's about 8W a day, which is less than a full battery discharge, but in the ballpark (3.5A x3.7v = 13W) . So the idea could be that the phone could run down if the lithium battery is depleted, but it would recharge itself just sitting there. If they achieve the 1W source mentioned in the article, it would even be pretty fast.
Ehh, I think you're thinking of alpha particles, which have a hard time getting through a piece of paper or the layer of dead cells on top of your skin. Beta particles are blocked by a couple mm...
Beta radiation is stopped by things like clothes, paper, and the upper layers of your skin.
Ehh, I think you're thinking of alpha particles, which have a hard time getting through a piece of paper or the layer of dead cells on top of your skin. Beta particles are blocked by a couple mm of aluminum. As I understand it they can penetrate a couple cm into the body and can mostly only cause skin cancer rather than organ cancer, which is nice, but not reassuring.
about 8W a day
Watts are an instantaneous measurement, which must be multiplied by time to make sense over a per-day period. 24 watts for an hour is 24watthours or 1 watt for 24h is 24Wh. So 100 microwatts is a tenth of a milliwatt or 0.0001W. Multiply that by 24 hours and you've got 0.0024Wh. A typical lithium battery for phones might be 3.7v times 3500mAh (milliamp-hours) = 12950mWh, or about 13 watt-hours.
So yeah, if they do develop a nuclear battery that can produce 1W 24/7, and use that to charge a battery or a capacitor or something while it's not being used, it's totally feasible to run your phone indefinitely. Unfortunately they're promising the next version will be 2000x the capacity of their current device. The current one is 15x15x5mm so unless they've come up with some absurd increase in efficiency, it'll probably be much too large to fit in a cellphone.
Not holding my breath for this to become an economical commercial technology for something as ubiquitous and commoditized as smartphones. Russian researchers were working on the fundamental...
Not holding my breath for this to become an economical commercial technology for something as ubiquitous and commoditized as smartphones. Russian researchers were working on the fundamental technology in 2018, and even then, it wasn't competitive with lithium ion batteries.
Even with improved cell materials, Ni-63 costs about $4,000/gram, and the justifiably tight controls on radionuclides make it unlikely this will drop significantly.
Military applications abound, though, especially when governments run the reactors and don't have to pay attention to market costs.
Awfully written article. Even assuming 10 years, making it 50 and assuming nothing better will be developed over time for the user to replace it for convenience... insane, really. All these...
Awfully written article.
A smartphone has an average life span of 2.58 years. According to reports, iPhones last 4-10 years, while Samsung phones last 3-6 years — source
Even assuming 10 years, making it 50 and assuming nothing better will be developed over time for the user to replace it for convenience... insane, really. All these batteries would get dumped. It sounds like a mad plot to introduce more radionuclides into groundwaters. Thank goodness it's just the author's scientific illiteracy, and Betavolt focuses on medical, military, and space.
It depends what you think of as significant. I've been criticizing the article in other comments based on the headline. This won't power a cellphone anytime soon; That's clickbait. However, if you...
It depends what you think of as significant. I've been criticizing the article in other comments based on the headline. This won't power a cellphone anytime soon; That's clickbait.
However, if you have, say, an underwater sensor that needs to take one temperature measurement per day for years, this could be a great option. For low powered microcontrollers that only need to be powered for seconds per day to take a measurement then log or transmit it, this is actually an ideal power source.
My phone's battery is rated at 2,870mAh. At a nominal 3.7V, that's a hair under 40kJ. That battery lasts me roughly two days (it's probably between 36 and 48 hours; I can skip one overnight...
My phone's battery is rated at 2,870mAh. At a nominal 3.7V, that's a hair under 40kJ. That battery lasts me roughly two days (it's probably between 36 and 48 hours; I can skip one overnight charge, but not two). If we pessimistically assume we'll use all that energy in 24 hours, then the average usage is
You have: (2870mAh * 3.7V) / 24hr
You want: W
* 0.44245833
…under half a watt.
Instantaneous draw is much, much higher than that, obviously. (Probably about an order of magnitude.) But it's easy enough to smooth that out with a small battery (or a big capacitor). 1W continuous is definitely enough to power a cell phone.
The bigger problem is that the module this article is discussing doesn't produce "less than a watt"; it's rated for 100 microwatts, or one ten-thousandth of a watt. You'd need a stack of them twenty meters high to power a cell phone. They're claiming to produce 1W by 2025, but a four-order-of-magnitude improvement is… ambitious.
I haven't read through the article, but I suspect it is something like theone that Dave Jones from EEVblog debunked in his video and forum thread. The "battery" works, there is nothing wrong with...
I haven't read through the article, but I suspect it is something like theone that Dave Jones from EEVblog debunked in his video and forum thread.
The "battery" works, there is nothing wrong with that part. It's just that it's usage in things like phones is out of question due to miniscule power it makes. It may have its usecase, phones and overall consumer electronics ain't it.
So, they keep saying that word. I do not think it means what they think it means. Nickel-63 is one isotope of nickel. I understand that means it has 28 protons, like all isotopes of nickel do, plus 35 neutrons, adding up to 63.
Anyway, the half life of Ni-63 is 100 years, so yeah it'll eventually turn into Copper 63 which is stable, but if you damage the cell before then, it's going to remain hot for quite some time. I don't see this being approved for cellphones anytime soon. Plus 100 microwatts is maybe 1/50000th of what you'd need to run a cell phone. You're going to need quite a few of these things to power anything substantial.
Edit: everything in this comment was wrong read @pseudolobster 's comment below.
I think as long as no one eats the unshielded, a beta decay source is pretty innocuous. Beta radiation is stopped by things like clothes, paper, and the upper layers of your skin.
If they can effectively charge a lithium battery from something as low current as the 100uW source, that's about 8W a day, which is less than a full battery discharge, but in the ballpark (3.5A x3.7v = 13W) . So the idea could be that the phone could run down if the lithium battery is depleted, but it would recharge itself just sitting there. If they achieve the 1W source mentioned in the article, it would even be pretty fast.
Ehh, I think you're thinking of alpha particles, which have a hard time getting through a piece of paper or the layer of dead cells on top of your skin. Beta particles are blocked by a couple mm of aluminum. As I understand it they can penetrate a couple cm into the body and can mostly only cause skin cancer rather than organ cancer, which is nice, but not reassuring.
Watts are an instantaneous measurement, which must be multiplied by time to make sense over a per-day period. 24 watts for an hour is 24watthours or 1 watt for 24h is 24Wh. So 100 microwatts is a tenth of a milliwatt or 0.0001W. Multiply that by 24 hours and you've got 0.0024Wh. A typical lithium battery for phones might be 3.7v times 3500mAh (milliamp-hours) = 12950mWh, or about 13 watt-hours.
So yeah, if they do develop a nuclear battery that can produce 1W 24/7, and use that to charge a battery or a capacitor or something while it's not being used, it's totally feasible to run your phone indefinitely. Unfortunately they're promising the next version will be 2000x the capacity of their current device. The current one is 15x15x5mm so unless they've come up with some absurd increase in efficiency, it'll probably be much too large to fit in a cellphone.
You're right. I shouldn't try to do math at the end of a long day. Amending my comment above.
Not holding my breath for this to become an economical commercial technology for something as ubiquitous and commoditized as smartphones. Russian researchers were working on the fundamental technology in 2018, and even then, it wasn't competitive with lithium ion batteries.
Even with improved cell materials, Ni-63 costs about $4,000/gram, and the justifiably tight controls on radionuclides make it unlikely this will drop significantly.
Military applications abound, though, especially when governments run the reactors and don't have to pay attention to market costs.
Awfully written article.
Even assuming 10 years, making it 50 and assuming nothing better will be developed over time for the user to replace it for convenience... insane, really. All these batteries would get dumped. It sounds like a mad plot to introduce more radionuclides into groundwaters. Thank goodness it's just the author's scientific illiteracy, and Betavolt focuses on medical, military, and space.
It depends what you think of as significant. I've been criticizing the article in other comments based on the headline. This won't power a cellphone anytime soon; That's clickbait.
However, if you have, say, an underwater sensor that needs to take one temperature measurement per day for years, this could be a great option. For low powered microcontrollers that only need to be powered for seconds per day to take a measurement then log or transmit it, this is actually an ideal power source.
My phone's battery is rated at 2,870mAh. At a nominal 3.7V, that's a hair under 40kJ. That battery lasts me roughly two days (it's probably between 36 and 48 hours; I can skip one overnight charge, but not two). If we pessimistically assume we'll use all that energy in 24 hours, then the average usage is
…under half a watt.
Instantaneous draw is much, much higher than that, obviously. (Probably about an order of magnitude.) But it's easy enough to smooth that out with a small battery (or a big capacitor). 1W continuous is definitely enough to power a cell phone.
The bigger problem is that the module this article is discussing doesn't produce "less than a watt"; it's rated for 100 microwatts, or one ten-thousandth of a watt. You'd need a stack of them twenty meters high to power a cell phone. They're claiming to produce 1W by 2025, but a four-order-of-magnitude improvement is… ambitious.
It will power a medical implant.
I haven't read through the article, but I suspect it is something like theone that Dave Jones from EEVblog debunked in his video and forum thread.
The "battery" works, there is nothing wrong with that part. It's just that it's usage in things like phones is out of question due to miniscule power it makes. It may have its usecase, phones and overall consumer electronics ain't it.
Why?
Many people get rid of their phones every year or two to get the latest model.