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.
