Batteries & Energy Storage news and discussions

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caltrek
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Recycled Kevlar Battery Could Boost Electric Car Range by Five Times
by Kate McAlpine
January 18, 2022

https://www.futurity.org/electric-vehic ... r-2683002/

Introduction:
(Futurity) A new biologically inspired battery membrane has enabled a battery with five times the capacity of the industry-standard lithium ion design to run for the thousand-plus cycles needed to power an electric car.

A network of aramid nanofibers, recycled from Kevlar, can enable lithium-sulfur batteries to overcome their Achilles heel of cycle life—the number of times they can be charged and discharged—a new study shows.

“There are a number of reports claiming several hundred cycles for lithium-sulfur batteries, but it is achieved at the expense of other parameters—capacity, charging rate, resilience, and safety,” says Nicholas Kotov, professor of chemical sciences and engineering at the University of Michigan.

“The challenge nowadays is to make a battery that increases the cycling rate from the former 10 cycles to hundreds of cycles and satisfies multiple other requirements including cost.

“Biomimetic engineering of these batteries integrated two scales—molecular and nanoscale. For the first time, we integrated ionic selectivity of cell membranes and toughness of cartilage. Our integrated system approach enabled us to address the overarching challenges of lithium-sulfur batteries.”
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weatheriscool
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Evidence that Tesla ALREADY SOLVED Battery Supply Limitation
January 21, 2022 by Brian Wang
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2022/01/e ... ation.html
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Superabsorption Progress Towards Quantum Batteries
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2022/01/s ... eries.html
January 18, 2022 by Brian Wang

University of Adelaide and their overseas partners have successfully proved the concept of superabsorption, a crucial idea underpinning quantum batteries.

Quantum batteries offer the potential for vastly better thermodynamic efficiency, and ultra-fast charging time, much faster and more efficient than the electrochemical batteries like Nickel Metal Hydride or Lithium Ion, in common use today. By expanding earlier theoretical research into individual, isolated quantum batteries to consider a more realistic, many-body system with intrinsic interactions, the researchers have shown that interacting many-body quantum batteries do charge faster than their non-interacting counterparts.

The bigger the number of quantum batteries, the less time they need to charge. If one quantum battery charge takes an hour, two batteries would take 30 minutes. Increasing the number of quantum batteries to 10,000 and they would pretty much charge instantaneously.
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GM to spend nearly $7B on EV, battery plants in Michigan
Source: AP

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — General Motors is making the largest investment in company history in its home state of Michigan, announcing plans to spend nearly $7 billion to convert a factory to make electric pickup trucks and to build a new battery cell plant.

The moves, announced Tuesday in the state capital of Lansing, will create up to 4,000 jobs and keep another 1,000 already employed at an underutilized assembly plant north of Detroit.

The automaker plans to spend up to $4 billion converting and expanding its Orion Township assembly factory to make electric pickups and $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion building a third U.S. battery cell plant with a joint-venture partner in Lansing.

Michigan’s economic development board on Tuesday approved $824 million in incentives and assistance for Detroit-based GM. The package was unveiled and authorized by the Michigan Strategic Fund Board. It includes a $600 million grant to GM and Ultium Cells, the venture between the carmaker and LG Energy Solution, and a $158 million tax break for Ultium. The board also approved $66.1 million to help a local electric utility and township upgrade infrastructure at the battery factory site.




Read more: https://apnews.com/article/technology-b ... 2d0a1b564f
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To know is essentially the same as not knowing. The only thing that occurs is the rearrangement of atoms in your brain.
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Flexible supercapacitors could boost battery life for Internet of Things
https://phys.org/news/2022-02-flexible- ... -life.html
by University of Surrey
Smartwatches, fitness trackers and other Internet of Things devices could get a significant boost to their battery life thanks to new, environmentally friendly energy research from the University of Surrey's Advanced Technology Institute (ATI) and the Federal University of Pelotas (UFPel), Brazil.

In a paper published in the journal Nanoscale, the research team shows how a supercapacitor can be efficiently manufactured into a high-performance and low-cost power storage device that can be easily integrated into footwear, clothing, and accessories.

Professor Ravi Silva, director of the ATI and Head of the Nano-Electronics Centre at the University of Surrey, said: "Supercapacitors are key to ensuring that 5G and 6G technologies reach their full potential. While supercapacitors can certainly boost the lifespan of wearable consumer technologies, they have the potential to be revolutionary when you think about their role in autonomous vehicles and AI-assisted smart sensors that could help us all conserve energy. This is why it's important that we create a low cost and environmentally friendly way to produce this incredibly promising energy storage technology. The future is certainly bright for supercapacitors."

A supercapacitor is a means to store and release electricity, like a typical battery, but it does so with far quicker recharging and discharging times. In the paper, the research team describe a new procedure for the development of flexible supercapacitors based on carbon nanomaterials. This method, which is cheaper and less time-consuming to fabricate, involves transferring aligned carbon nanotube (CNT) arrays from a silicon wafer to a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) matrix. This is then coated in a material called polyaniline (PANI), which stores energy through a mechanism known as "pseudocapacitance,"offering outstanding energy storage properties with exceptional mechanical integrity.
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Safer, more powerful batteries for electric cars, power grid
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-03-saf ... -cars.html
by Sandia National Laboratories
Solid-state batteries, currently used in small electronic devices like smart watches, have the potential to be safer and more powerful than lithium-ion batteries for things such as electric cars and storing energy from solar panels for later use. However, several technical challenges remain before solid-state batteries can become widespread.

A Sandia National Laboratories-led study, published on March 7 in the scientific journal Joule, tackled one of these challenges—a long-held assumption that adding some liquid electrolyte to improve performance would make solid-state batteries unsafe. Instead, the research team found that in many cases solid-state batteries with a little liquid electrolyte were safer than their lithium-ion counterparts. They also found, if the battery were to short-circuit, releasing all its stored energy, the theoretically super-safe, all-solid-state battery could put out a dangerous amount of heat.

"Solid-state batteries have the potential to be safer, and they have the potential for higher energy density," said Alex Bates, a Sandia postdoctoral researcher who led the study for the paper. "This means, for electric vehicles, you could go farther in between charges, or need fewer batteries for grid-scale energy storage. The addition of liquid electrolyte may help bridge the gap to commercialization, without sacrificing safety."
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Ionic Liquids Make a Splash in Next-gen Solid-state Lithium Metal Batteries
March 19, 2022

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/946554

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) Tokyo, Japan – Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have developed a new quasi-solid-state cathode for solid-state lithium metal batteries, with significantly reduced interfacial resistance between the cathode and a solid electrolyte. By adding an ionic liquid, their modified cathode could maintain excellent contact with the electrolyte. Their prototype battery also showed good retention of capacity. Though finding the best ionic liquid remains challenging, the idea promises new directions in solid lithium battery development for practical applications.

Lithium-ion batteries have become ubiquitous, finding a place in our smartphones, laptops, power tools, and electric vehicles. But as we look for better solutions with higher energy density, scientists have been turning to solid-state lithium metal batteries. Li metal batteries potentially have much higher energy density than their Li-ion counterparts. They are seen as the future of batteries, powering vehicles and grids on massive scales.

However, technical issues keep solid-state lithium metal batteries from making their way into demanding applications. A major one is the design of the interface between electrodes and solid electrolytes. Electrolytes in Li-ion batteries are usually liquid and highly flammable, posing a safety hazard. That’s why people have been trying to use a solid-state electrolyte instead. However, it is difficult to achieve good contact between electrodes and solid electrolytes. Any surface roughness on either side leads to high interfacial resistance, which plagues battery performance. There has been some work looking at the design of the solid electrolyte, but cathode design remains an open issue.

A team led by Prof. Kiyoshi Kanamura of Tokyo Metropolitan University have been developing new ways of improving the contact between the cathode and solid-state electrolyte in solid-state lithium metal batteries. Now, they have succeeded in creating a quasi-solid-state lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO2) cathode which contains a room-temperature ionic liquid. Ionic liquids consist of positive and negative ions; they can also transport ions. Importantly, they can fill any tiny voids at the cathode/solid electrolyte interface. With the voids filled, the interfacial resistance was significantly decreased.
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caltrek
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Pivotal Battery Discovery Could Impact Transportation and the Grid
March 24, 2022

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/947595

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) Researchers uncover new avenue for overcoming the performance decline that occurs with repeated charge-discharge cycling in the cathodes of next generation batteries.

Battery-powered vehicles have made a significant dent in the transportation market. But that market still needs lower cost batteries that can power vehicles for greater ranges. Also desirable are low-cost batteries able to store on the grid the intermittent clean energy from solar and wind technologies and power hundreds of thousands of homes.

To meet those needs, researchers around the world are racing to develop batteries beyond the current standard of lithium-ion materials. One of the more promising candidates is the sodium-ion battery. It is particularly attractive because of the greater abundance and lower cost of sodium compared with lithium. What’s more, when cycled at high voltage (4.5 volts), a sodium-ion battery can greatly increase the amount of energy that can be stored in a given weight or volume. However, its fairly rapid performance decline with charge-discharge cycling has stymied commercialization.

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have discovered a key reason for the performance degradation: the occurrence of defects in the atomic structure that form during the steps involved in preparing the cathode material. These defects eventually lead to a structural earthquake in the cathode, resulting in catastrophic performance decline during battery cycling. Armed with this knowledge, battery developers will now be able to adjust synthesis conditions to fabricate far superior sodium-ion cathodes.
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caltrek
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How a Few Geothermal Plants Could Solve America’s Lithium Supply Crunch and Boost the EV Battery Industry
by Bryant Jones and Michael McKibben
March 21, 2022

https://theconversation.com/how-a-few-g ... try-179465

Introduction:
(The Conversation) Geothermal energy has long been the forgotten member of the clean energy family, overshadowed by relatively cheap solar and wind power, despite its proven potential. But that may soon change – for an unexpected reason.

Geothermal technologies are on the verge of unlocking vast quantities of lithium from naturally occurring hot brines beneath places like California’s Salton Sea, a two-hour drive from San Diego.

Lithium is essential for lithium-ion batteries, which power electric vehicles and energy storage. Demand for these batteries is quickly rising, but the U.S. is currently heavily reliant on lithium imports from other countries – most of the nation’s lithium supply comes from Argentina, Chile, Russia and China. The ability to recover critical minerals from geothermal brines in the U.S. could have important implications for energy and mineral security, as well as global supply chains, workforce transitions and geopolitics.

As a geologist who works with geothermal brines and an energy policy scholar, we believe this technology can bolster the nation’s critical minerals supply chain at a time when concerns about the supply chain’s security are rising.
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