A common food and medicine additive has shown it can boost the capacity and longevity of a next-generation flow battery design in a record-setting experiment.
A research team from the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory reports that the flow battery, a design optimized for electrical grid energy storage, maintained its capacity to store and release energy for more than a year of continuous charge and discharge.
The study, just published in the journal Joule, details the first use of a dissolved simple sugar called β-cyclodextrin, a derivative of starch, to boost battery longevity and capacity. In a series of experiments, the scientists optimized the ratio of chemicals in the system until it achieved 60 percent more peak power.
Then, they cycled the battery over and over for more than a year, only stopping the experiment when the plastic tubing failed. During all that time, the flow battery barely lost any of its activity to recharge. This is the first laboratory-scale flow battery experiment to report more than a year of continuous use with minimal loss of capacity.
It's often the case that technologies developed for racing vehicles trickle down to the wider automotive market. With an endurance race in its sights, a team of more than 30 students at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) in the Netherlands has developed a technology that's allowed a 250-km battery pack to be fast-charged in under four minutes.
A few years ago, 10 students from TU/e joined forces to create the InMotion team, with hopes of building a technologically advanced electric racer that could take part in the 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance competition.
Since then, a number of vehicles have been built – and one or two lap records broken along the way. While developing the recent Revolution prototype, the team managed to get the battery pack to 80% capacity in 12 minutes. But that wasn't fast enough, so InMotion embarked on a two-year quest to significantly reduce plug-in times.
RMIT engineers say they've tripled the energy density of cheap, rechargeable, recyclable proton flow batteries, which can now challenge commercially available lithium-ion batteries for capacity with a specific energy density of 245 Wh/kg.
That's as compared to the ~260-odd Wh/kg delivered by the lithium-ion batteries in a current Tesla Model 3 battery pack, but without using any lithium, thus avoiding a forecasted lithium squeeze, as well as geopolitically sensitive dependence on China in the battery supply chain, and all kinds of end-of-life issues.
We've covered this particular team's work before, way back in 2014, when the first proof of concept of a hydrogen-based proton flow battery was announced.
Essentially, it's a different way of using hydrogen for energy storage. The proton battery works something like a reversible fuel cell, accepting water while charging, splitting out positively-charged hydrogen ions and releasing oxygen.
A collaborative effort between the University of Cordoba and the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research (Germany) is making progress on the design of a solar battery made from an abundant, non-toxic and easily synthesized material composed of 2D carbon nitride. The work is published in the journal Advanced Energy Materials.
Solar energy is booming. The improvement of solar technology's capacity to capture as much light as possible, convert it into energy and make it available to meet energy needs is key in the ecological transition towards a more sustainable use of energy sources.
In the process between the collection of light by the solar cell and the on-demand use of energy by household appliances, for example, storage plays a crucial role since the availability of solar energy has an inherent intermittency.
To facilitate this storage process and deal with problems such as the environmental impact of the extraction, recycling or scarcity of some of the materials necessary for conventional batteries (such as lithium), the concept of the "solar battery" was born. Solar batteries combine the solar cells that capture light with the storage of its energy in one single device, which then allows the energy to be used when needed.
Alberto Jiménez-Solano, a researcher at the Department of Physics of the University of Cordoba, together with a team from the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research (Stuttgart, Germany), has carried out a study in which he has explored the design characteristics of a solar battery made from a material based on 2D carbon nitride.
"In Professor Bettina V. Lotsch's group, at the Max Planck Institute, they had managed to synthesize a material capable of absorbing light and storing that energy for later use on demand," explains Alberto Jiménez-Solano, "and it occurred to us to use it to create a solar battery."
'Electrified Cement' Could Turn the Foundations of Buildings Into Giant Batteries by David Neld
August 2, 2023
Introduction:
(Science Alert) Scientists are constantly searching for better ways to store renewable energy, and MIT researchers have now found a way to turn cement and an ancient material into a giant supercapacitor.
Potentially, this electrified cement could turn building foundations and roads into almost limitless batteries.
To create the new substance, a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University in the US mixed together cement, water and carbon black – a material like a fine charcoal that is created from incomplete combustion processes.
"The material is fascinating, because you have the most-used human made material in the world, cement, that is combined with carbon black, that is a well-known historical material – the Dead Sea Scrolls were written with it," says Admir Masic, a materials scientist at MIT.
"You have these at least two-millennia-old materials that when you combine them in a specific manner you come up with a conductive nanocomposite, and that's when things get really interesting."
A team of battery researchers led by the University of California San Diego and University of Chicago has developed a new methodology to produce the potentially game-changing thin-film solid-state electrolyte called lithium phosphorus oxynitride (LiPON). The team went on to implement their free-standing version of LiPON film in functional battery tests and found that it promotes a uniformly dense lithium metal electrochemical deposition under zero external pressure, with the aid of internal compressive stress and a gold seeding layer. This work, performed by a team of battery researchers led by the University of California San Diego and University of Chicago, was published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology on August 03, 2023.
The research team is led by battery researcher and professor Ying Shirley Meng, who is affiliated with both the University of Chicago and UC San Diego. The first author is Diyi Cheng, a recently graduated Ph.D. in the Materials Science and Engineering Program at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering who is continuing his research efforts at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The team also includes researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and UC Berkeley.
Lithium-ion batteries (LiBs), rechargeable batteries that store energy by leveraging the reversible reduction of Li ions, remain among the most widely used battery technologies worldwide. These batteries power a wide range of devices, ranging from smartphones, headphones and PCs to smart appliances and electric vehicles.
A team of researchers at City University of Hong Kong, Northwestern University, and other institutes in the United States has been trying to devise strategies and solutions that could improve the performance of LiBs, extending their life and increasing their energy capacity. In a recent paper published in Nature Energy, the team introduced a new cathode that could increase the capacity of LiBs, by tackling a well-documented limitation of existing cathodes.
MIT Spinoff Plans Liquid Metal Batteries for Power Grid
Ambri promises lower energy storage costs with batteries that last 20 years.
By Ryan Whitwam August 10, 2023
Governments around the world are investing heavily in renewable energy, but even the most well-considered plans to phase out fossil fuels are missing one crucial ingredient: energy storage. Battery technology is advancing at a snail's pace, as anyone constantly topping up their smartphone can attest. A new startup, which began as an MIT experiment, promises to change that. Ambri says its liquid metal batteries are safe, inexpensive, and perfect for the electrical grid.
Today, most high-capacity batteries use some variation of lithium-ion technology, but these designs rely on rare and expensive materials. The problem is even bigger when you need to power the electrical grid. As a result, MIT estimates the average cost of storing a kilowatt-hour of energy is $405, but that number needs to get closer to $20 to make renewable energy a reality.
CATL launched Shenxing, the world’s first 4C superfast charging LFP battery, capable of delivering 400 km of driving range with a 10-minute charge as well as a range of over 700 km on a single full charge. A 1C charging would mean a full charge in one hour and 4C means a full charge in 15 minutes.
Zinc-air batteries have emerged as a better alternative to lithium in a recent Edith Cowan University (ECU) study into the advancement of sustainable battery systems.
ECU's Dr. Muhammad Rizwan Azhar led the project which discovered lithium-ion batteries, although a popular choice for electric vehicles around the world, face limitations related to cost, finite resources, and safety concerns. The work is published in the journal EcoMat.
"Rechargeable zinc-air batteries (ZABs) are becoming more appealing because of their low cost, environmental friendliness, high theoretical energy density, and inherent safety," Dr. Muhammad Rizwan Azhar said.
"With the emergence of next-generation long-range vehicles and electric aircraft in the market, there is an increasing need for safer, more cost-effective, and high-performance battery systems that can surpass the capabilities of lithium-ion batteries."
A Renewable Energy Battery Plant Will Rise in West Virginia Where a Steel Mill Once Stood by Dharna Noor
August 14, 2023
Introduction:
(The Guardian) A cutting-edge energy storage company is building its main manufacturing plant where a once-thriving West Virginia steel mill once stood in the city of Weirton. According to lawmakers, the much-lauded project was made possible by incentives from 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), signed by President Biden one year ago this Wednesday.
For supporters, it’s a sign that climate policies can also breathe life back into deindustrialized coal and steel communities with green jobs. The symbolism is compelling but how much those communities benefit will depend on a wide array of factors.
Form Energy, a Massachusetts-based company helmed by a former Tesla vice-president, broke ground on its iron-air battery manufacturing plant this past May. Workers will produce batteries capable of storing electricity for 100 hours, which will run on iron, water and air instead of the more common but less-abundant metal lithium. The $760m project will create 750 well-paying permanent jobs, the company said.
The plant is being constructed on the ashes of the old Weirton steel mill, once the beating heart of the steel economy in the Ohio River valley
Further extract:
The IRA’s carbon-cutting incentives were touted as a way to reduce the nation’s carbon emissions by 40% from 2003 levels while bringing manufacturing jobs back onshore. Since the law’s passage last year, manufacturers have announced 83 new or expanded major clean energy manufacturing facilities, including 14 battery manufacturing facilities, according to the American Clean Power Association.
New ‘Droplet Battery’ Could Pave the Way for Miniature Bio-integrated Devices August 30, 2023
Introduction:
(Eurekalert) University of Oxford researchers have made a significant step towards realising miniature bio-integrated devices, capable of directly stimulating cells. The work has been published today in the journal Nature.
Small bio-integrated devices that can interact with and stimulate cells could have important therapeutic applications, including the delivery of targeted drug therapies and the acceleration of wound healing. However, such devices all need a power source to operate. To date, there has been no efficient means to provide power at the microscale level.
To address this, researchers from the University of Oxford’s Department of Chemistry have developed a miniature power source capable of altering the activity of cultured human nerve cells. Inspired by how electric eels generate electricity, the device uses internal ion gradients to generate energy.
The miniaturized soft power source is produced by depositing a chain of five nanolitre-sized droplets of a conductive hydrogel (a 3D network of polymer chains containing a large quantity of absorbed water). Each droplet has a different composition so that a salt concentration gradient is created across the chain. The droplets are separated from their neighbours by lipid bilayers, which provide mechanical support while preventing ions from flowing between the droplets.
The power source is turned on by cooling the structure to 4°C and changing the surrounding medium: this disrupts the lipid bilayers and causes the droplets to form a continuous hydrogel. This allows the ions to move through the conductive hydrogel, from the high-salt droplets at the two ends to the low-salt droplet in the middle. By connecting the end droplets to electrodes, the energy released from the ion gradients is transformed into electricity, enabling the hydrogel structure to act as a power source for external components.
Gotion, a major Chinese battery company will be mass producing the Astroinno L600 LMFP battery cell in 2024. It has 15% more energy density than this years ground breaking CATL M3P battery. In May, 2023, it was announced that the L600, which has passed all safety tests, has a weight energy density of 240Wh/kg, a volume energy density of 525Wh/L, a cycle life of 4000 times at room temperature, and a cycle life of 1800 times at high temperatures. The the volumetric cell to pack ratio has reached 76% after adopting the L600 cell, and the system energy density has reached 190Wh/kg, surpassing the pack energy density of current mass-produced NCM (nickel) cells.
The CATL M3P is reportedly being used in the Tesla Model 3 Highland. It can provide thousands of dollars of costs savings versus current nickel batteries.
CATL will improve the M3P to match the Gotion L600. Reviewing the capabilities of batteries in the lab and in development indicates a continued steady march of 10-20% cost and range improvements.
We have plotted out the specifications of the CATL M3P, the Gotion L600, current nickel, likely near term improved nickel batteries and possible improved batteries through 2030 and beyond.
With the rapid growth of the smart and wearable electronic devices market, smart next-generation energy storage systems that have energy storage functions as well as additional color-changing properties are receiving a great deal of attention. However, existing electrochromic devices have low electrical conductivity, leading to low efficiency in electron and ion mobility, and low storage capacities. Such batteries have therefore been limited to use in flexible and wearable devices.
On August 21, a joint research team led by Professor Il-Doo Kim from the KAIST Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) and Professor Tae Gwang Yun from the Myongji University Department of Materials Science and Engineering announced the development of a smart electrochromic Zn-ion battery that can visually represent its charging and discharging processes using an electrochromic polymer anode incorporated with a "π-bridge spacer," which increases electron and ion mobility efficiency.
Lithium-sulfur Batteries Could Provide High Energy, Low Cost and Long Life Alternative September 7, 2023
Introduction:
(Eurekalert) Scientists discover surprising pathway to better lithium-sulfur batteries by visualizing reactions at the atomic scale.
The road from breakthrough in the lab to practical technology can be a long and bumpy one. The lithium-sulfur battery is an example. It has notable advantages over current lithium-ion batteries powering vehicles. But it has yet to dent the market despite intense development over many years.
That situation could change in the future thanks to the efforts of scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory. Over the past decade, they have made several pivotal discoveries related to lithium-sulfur batteries. Their latest revelation, published in Nature, unlocks a previously unknown reaction mechanism that addresses a major shortcoming — the batteries’ very short lifetimes.
Gui-Liang Xu, chemist in Argonne’s Chemical Sciences and Engineering division, stated that “Our team’s efforts could bring the U.S. one large step closer to a greener and more sustainable transportation landscape.”
Lithium-sulfur batteries offer three significant advantages over current lithium-ion batteries. Firstly, they can store two to three times more energy in a given volume, resulting in longer vehicle ranges. Secondly, their lower cost, facilitated by the abundance and affordability of sulfur, makes them economically viable. Lastly, these batteries do not rely on critical resources like cobalt and nickel, which may face shortages in the future
Unlimited Power and Nearly Unlimited Batteries
September 11, 2023 by Brian Wang
CATL of China is mass producing generation one sodium ion batteries starting next month. The first factory has about a 40 GWH per year capacity.
China has 16 out of 20 globally planned or built sodium battery factories according to Benchmark Minerals.
CATL’s first-generation sodium battery generates 160-watt-hours per kilogram. This is 10% less energy than iron LFP batteries and 40% less than mass produced nickel batteries. CATL plans to increase the energy density of next generation sodium ion to 200 Wh/kg. CATL’s sodium-ion batteries will be used by China’s Chery, the first automaker to use the technology.
New Battery Recycling Rules Could be a Game-changer in the EU’s Search for EV Minerals by Maddie Stone
September 19, 2023
Introduction:
(Grist) The clean energy transition will require lots of batteries — primarily to power electric vehicles and to store renewable energy that can be dispatched to the electric grid on demand. European Union policymakers are growing more concerned about where the bloc will get all the metals required to build those batteries. One potential source? Dead lithium-ion batteries from EVs, e-bikes, and consumer electronics, which contain lithium, cobalt, nickel, and other ingredients needed to make new ones.
Recycling the metals used in batteries has the potential to limit the need for environmentally damaging mining while also reducing electronic waste. But Europe’s lithium-ion battery recycling industry is in its infancy. While manufacturers sold nearly 700,000 tons of lithium-ion batteries into the European market last year, recyclers only had the capacity to process about 17,000 tons of battery waste, according to Circular Energy Storage, a data analysis firm for the battery industry.
New rules that entered force last month could help change that. After years of negotiations, the EU just adopted a comprehensive battery regulation that could spur battery recycling at a scale never seen before outside of China. Battery industry experts say the policy has the potential to supercharge lithium-ion battery recycling across the bloc.
The EU’s new battery rules “will make a very big impact for the whole supply chain not only in Europe but also globally,” Xiao Lin, CEO of the Chinese battery metal recycling consultancy Botree Cycling, told Grist.
