Professor-John-B-Goodenough
Professor B. Goodenough, 94 Year Old Lithium-ion Battery Inventor Could Have Just Invented The Future… Again
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We are ignorant people here at DCB Towers, when we heard of Professor John B Goodenough we thought it is was some type of joke found on a meme website I mean nobody has a name that is so easy to pun… and then some. Professor John B Goodenough is a real person, the 94 year old is a real professor and is still working for Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas, Austin. Goodenough invented the lithium ion battery which is used from energising mobile phones to electric cars. His invention gave all of us the future today.  Goodenough also developed the first solid state battery cell so that your mobile phone or electric car can recharge and store energy safely and last longer between each charge. And if you think all 94 year olds wither away physically and mentally then Goodenough is a demonstration that his mind and body is as active as it has ever been. As he closes in on his centenary Goodenough has given what will most probably be his last parting gift to the future with more breakthrough research. Imagine a low cost battery that has a longer battery life, stores more energy, has faster rates of charge and discharge. Goodenough along with fellow researchers may well have cracked the holy grail of battery/cell technology and if the research is scale-able then, for example, electric cars will be able to match the efficiency of the fossil fuel era for gas/petroleum powered cars but without the emissions. So instead of waiting four hours for your electric car to fully charge from zero, as is the case today, with Goodenough’s new battery you could wait a mere 10mins and you would have a longer electric range, your iPhone could in theory last three times longer between charging and charge in seconds. The research suggests that their new battery has indeed 3 times more energy density than today’s lithium-ion batteries. It’s all to do with a battery’s energy density, in simple terms the more energy you can store the more life you get. Sounds simple right? The problem with all current battery technology is how do you store more energy into say a AA battery, it seemed the limits had been reached and could never be exceeded in the same way Einsteins law of relativity says that it is impossible to travel faster than the speed of light. Goodenough’s battery research is saying that it is possible to break limits of ”the speed of light” analogy. The research uses glass electrolytes and low cost sodium as a substitution for the more expensive and rare earth metal, lithium. Sodium can be extracted from sea water. The research is very complex so we will spare you of the details, Goodenough and fellow researchers are accelerating their research and plan to work alongside battery manufactures to further test and advance their laboratory results into real world working examples. How long this will take is not clear, however Goodenough’s research could spell the beginning of the end for the internal combustion engine and a new era of cleaner, smart energy.  Professor-John-B-Goodenough
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