Category: Technology

Breakthrough battery?

Post author By admin
Post date 2023-11-23

A Swedish company has announced a lithium-free sodium-ion battery that is supposed to be cheaper and more sustainable. It has an energy density of 160 Wh/kg.

It will require more development before becoming commercially competitive. Energy density and cost considerations vary from application to application so this sodium-ion battery development is still a good step forward.

Lithium-ion battery densities have improved enormously in the last decade, see this article. (Note, the bar chart shows volumetric energy density, Wh/l, and not mass energy density Wh/kg).

In early 2023 a record of just over 700 Wh/kg (1650 Wh/l) was set for Li-ion batteries. A comparison of energy densities for various battery chemistries is shown here. A history of Li-ion batteries can be found here.

Tags Engineering, Environment, Sustainability

Engineering Technology

IEEE Technical Activities

Post author By admin
Post date 2023-11-17

A message from the IEEE Technical Activities VP, John Verboncoeur, can be found here.

Except: “Our strategic priorities for 2023 include participation in the IEEE-wide efforts in Climate Change and Sustainable Technologies, imagining future products and services and new audiences, providing value to and growing existing audiences, and building on our diverse and inclusive community including implementation of the new IEEE Fellows process. We also take a look at exemplars for leveraging cross-cutting technology areas via collaboration among TA entities, increasingly important for addressing the technology grand challenge problems of our time. Lastly, we will take a look at the TA Tech Talk series.”

Technical Activities Operations also hosted a talk on farm technology (Not Your Grandfather’s Tractor).

Education Engineering Technology

Raspberry Pi Pico

Post author By admin
Post date 2023-11-16

Today there was a talk hosted by the IEEE Madison and SE Michigan CS and YP groups which provided an overview of the Raspberry Pi Pico Hardware and Software.

From the vendor: “The Raspberry Pi Pico series is a range of tiny, fast, and versatile boards built using RP2040, the flagship microcontroller chip designed by Raspberry Pi in the UK”.

From the vendor: “Designed by Raspberry Pi, RP2040 features a dual-core Arm Cortex-M0+ processor with 264kB internal RAM and support for up to 16MB of off-chip flash. A wide range of flexible I/O options includes I2C, SPI, and – uniquely – Programmable I/O (PIO).”

The Pico boards are available for as low as $4.00

The presentation material, reference links, and some programming material can be found here.