Lithium from water, a little sugar for batteries and a weapon that will stop people talking
September 16
This week we will examine a new patent filed by the US Navy for a weapon that will stop people from talking. Several similar products already exist. We also discover a new way to extend the performance of lithium-sulfur batteries by adding a little sugar. With all the lithium based batteries being used we need more and more lithium. We investigate a new membrane for removing lithium from waste water. We find out the origin of a healthy sugar that is only found in the honey of an Australian stingless bee. A healthy sugar? Yes one that does not provide a sudden spike in blood glucose. Finally we give a brief update to a couple of stories that we have covered in the past few months.
A new Weapon that stops you from Talking
The US Navy has invented an electronic device that is designed to stop people from talking. The non lethal device effectively repeats a speaker’s own voice back at them, and only them, while they attempt to talk. Only the speaker will be able to hear the rebroadcast. The idea is to disorient a target so that they will be unable to effectively communicate.
Called Acoustic Hailing and Disruption the weapon is able to record speech and instantly broadcast it at a target in milliseconds. The speech is delivered to the target twice, once immediately and once after a short delay. This alters the speakers concentration and it becomes difficult to continue speaking. This Japanese video demonstrates a similar product (the Navy included this video in their patent application).
The product is most likely to be used in crowd control or in disrupting enemy combatants. Sorry Gents, I have no idea when this product will be available in your local Bunnings.
Can you improve a Battery’s performance by adding a little sugar?
The answer is yes. Researchers from the Monash Energy Institute have created a longer lasting, lighter and more sustainable lithium-sulfur battery by adding sugar. The performance increase has the potential to give an electric vehicle the range to travel from Sydney to Melbourne on a single charge (1,000 kilometers).
The researchers, supported by the CSIRO, have managed to stabilize lithium sulfur battery technology by using a glucose based additive on the positive electrode. In theory, lithium sulfur batteries could store up to 5 times the energy of lithium ion. There are however two issues, the positive sulfur electrode suffers from substantial expansion and contraction causing weakness and an inability for the electrode to access the lithium. The negative lithium electrode also became contaminated by sulfur compounds.
In 2020 the team showed that they could solve the expansion problems and now by incorporating sugar into the web like architecture of the electrode they have stabilized the sulfur, preventing it from moving and blanketing the lithium electrode.
Prototypes with a charge discharge cycle life of at least 1,000 cycles have been developed. Enserv Australia (a subsidiary of the Enserv Group of Thailand) has been one of the supporters of the research and hopes to have a lithium-sulfur battery using the technology on market within 5 years.
Lithium from Water
The world demand for Lithium is massive and only going to get bigger. Most lithium is mined however extracting it is a challenging and inefficient process. Lithium is also sourced by solar evaporation of salt brines in South America. This however is expensive, slow and also inefficient.
A team from the University of Texas in Austin and University of California, Santa Barbara have designed membranes for the separation of lithium-ions over other ions (e.g. sodium) that significantly improves the efficiency of gathering lithium from salt brine. The process uses a novel polymer membrane with crown ethers. These ethers have specific chemical functionality to bind certain ions.
In most polymers sodium travels though the membrane faster than lithium however in this new material lithium travels faster than sodium. The sodium ions bind with the crown ethers slowing the speed of the sodium. The lithium remains unbound enabling them to move quickly through the polymer.
In addition to salt brines the process can also be used on waste water from oil and gas production. A single weeks processing of the water from Texas’ Eagle Ford Shale mine has the potential to produce enough lithium for 300 electric vehicle batteries.
The Origin of a rare Healthy Sugar
Trehalulose is a rare sugar that is more slowly digested in the gut therefore it does not give the sudden spike in blood glucose that you get from other sugars. It was known that an Australian stingless bee produced honey containing Trehalulose, however it was not known if it was a function of the type of nectar consumed by the bee or some biological process within the bee itself that produced this unique honey.
Researchers at the University of Queensland have discovered a process within the gut of the Tetragonula carbonaria Australian stingless bee that gives this bee a unique capability to convert sucrose to trehalulose. The bees usually feed on native plants high in sucrose such as Grevillea and Banksia. The team is now working to identify different crops that have nectar high in sucrose to see if the trehalulose content in the honey could be increased and thus making the honey more commercially valuable.
Updates on Previous Stories
AI as an Inventor
We previously discussed the Australian court decision that allowed an AI to be named as an inventor on a patent. The Australian Government is currently appealing this decision however a US court has just found that AI can not be named as an Inventor. The US court found that the AI had to be able to have the ability appear in court and testify about the invention in order for it to be considered an inventor.
I guess that the next step is for an AI to demonstrate its’ ability to discuss and defend its’ invention. Given the current rate of progress in this field it won’t be long before the courts will have to listen to AI’s presenting their inventions and defending their uniqueness.
Air Taxi Landing Ports
We have spoken about the potential for eVTOLs or electric flying taxis in our cities at length (see here, here and here). Melbourne based startup Skyportz, is set to build taxi landing ports in Melbourne. They are focusing on key suburban and urban locations including business parks, shopping centers and industrial sites. Now that the eVTOLs are getting closer and closer to reality, the infrastructure is quickly starting to follow.
Paying it Forward
If you have a start-up or know of a start-up that has a product ready for market please let me know. I would be happy to have a look and feature the startup in this newsletter. Also if any startups need introductions please get in touch and I will help where I can.
If you have any questions or comments please email me via my website craigcarlyon.com or comment below.
I would also appreciate it if you could forward this newsletter to anyone that you think might be interested.
Till next week.