Batteries & Energy Storage news and discussions

weatheriscool
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Engineers solve a mystery on the path to smaller, lighter batteries
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-11-mys ... eries.html
by David Chandler, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
A discovery by MIT researchers could finally unlock the door to the design of a new kind of rechargeable lithium battery that is more lightweight, compact, and safe than current versions, and that has been pursued by labs around the world for years.

The key to this potential leap in battery technology is replacing the liquid electrolyte that sits between the positive and negative electrodes with a much thinner, lighter layer of solid ceramic material, and replacing one of the electrodes with solid lithium metal. This would greatly reduce the overall size and weight of the battery and remove the safety risk associated with liquid electrolytes, which are flammable. But that quest has been beset with one big problem: dendrites.

Dendrites, whose name comes from the Latin for branches, are projections of metal that can build up on the lithium surface and penetrate into the solid electrolyte, eventually crossing from one electrode to the other and shorting out the battery cell. Researchers haven't been able to agree on what gives rise to these metal filaments, nor has there been much progress on how to prevent them and thus make lightweight solid-state batteries a practical option.

The new research, being published today in the journal Joule in a paper by MIT Professor Yet-Ming Chiang, graduate student Cole Fincher, and five others at MIT and Brown University, seems to resolve the question of what causes dendrite formation. It also shows how dendrites can be prevented from crossing through the electrolyte.
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Novel single-atom catalyst boosts zinc-air battery to record power density
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-12-sin ... ttery.html
by Simon Schmitt, Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres
The long-term transformation towards renewable energies is inconceivable without modern energy storage technologies. These include batteries, in which electricity is temporarily stored in the form of chemical energy.

Essential for their efficiency is the availability of suitable catalysts that allow the associated chemical reactions to proceed in an optimized manner. Scientists in Dresden have now taken a closer look at the zinc-air battery, a well-known type of battery that is nowadays mainly used as button cells, for example in hearing aids. To this end, they have developed a novel catalyst with the base metal zirconium. It can replace platinum, the precious metal most commonly applied as a catalyst to date, and still transform the battery into a powerhouse.

The new catalyst significantly improves the battery's charging and discharging performance. It is also very durable: after 130 hours of operation, the test battery still retained 92 percent of its original current.

"This is an excellent value considering that we are still in the early development stages," says Dr. Agnieszka Kuc from the Institute of Resource Ecology at Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR). She explores the chemical-physical properties of battery catalysts.
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‘Significant breakthrough’: This new sea salt battery has 4 times the capacity of lithium
By Charlotte Elton •   14/12/2022
Your electronics could soon be powered by an ultra cheap sea salt battery.

Researchers have built a new cheap battery with four times the energy storage capacity of lithium.

Constructed from sodium-sulphur - a type of molten salt that can be processed from sea water - the battery is low-cost and more environmentally friendly than existing options. 

It could be a ‘breakthrough’ for renewable energy, according to lead researcher Dr Shenlong Zhao, from the University of Sydney.

“Our sodium battery has the potential to dramatically reduce costs while providing four times as much storage capacity [as Lithium],” he said
https://www.euronews.com/green/amp/2022 ... of-lithium
johanliebert
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Re: Batteries & Energy Storage news and discussions

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Currently, the energy supply highly depends on the fossil fuels that make the environment vulnerable inducing pollution in it.
3 Challenges to beat in energy storage
High cost of implementation.
Lack of standardization in storage systems.
Outdated regulatory policy and market design.
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caltrek
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Re: Batteries & Energy Storage news and discussions

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johanliebert wrote: Thu Dec 29, 2022 12:28 pm Currently, the energy supply highly depends on the fossil fuels that make the environment vulnerable inducing pollution in it.
3 Challenges to beat in energy storage
High cost of implementation.
Lack of standardization in storage systems.
Outdated regulatory policy and market design.
Interesting.

I hope that you are planning to elaborate. ;)
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
weatheriscool
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By growing uniform lithium crystals, engineers progress toward fast-charging lithium-metal batteries
https://techxplore.com/news/2023-02-uni ... metal.html
by University of California - San Diego
In a new Nature Energy study, engineers report progress toward lithium-metal batteries that charge quickly—as fast as an hour. This fast charging is thanks to lithium metal crystals that can be seeded and grown—quickly and uniformly—on a surprising surface. The trick is to use a crystal growing surface that lithium officially doesn't "like." From these seed crystals grow dense layers of uniform lithium metal. Uniform layers of lithium metal are of great interest to battery researchers because they lack battery-performance-degrading spikes called dendrites. The formation of these dendrites in battery anodes is a longstanding roadblock to fast-charging ultra-energy-dense lithium-metal batteries.

This new approach, led by University of California San Diego engineers, enables charging of lithium-metal batteries in about an hour, a speed that is competitive against today's lithium-ion batteries. The UC San Diego engineers, in collaboration with UC Irvine imaging researchers, published this advance aimed at developing fast-charging lithium-metal batteries on Feb. 9, 2023, in Nature Energy.
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Europe’s largest transmission-connected BESS begins ‘world first’ reactive power services contract

By Andy Colthorpe
February 13, 2023

A battery storage system in the UK has begun delivery of reactive power services to the grid in what has been claimed as a world first contract of its kind.

Developer-investor Zenobe Energy also said that its 100MW/107MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) in Capenhurst, Chester, is currently the largest battery project directly connected to the transmission grid anywhere in Europe.

The company said on Saturday (11 February) that the project has been commissioned, highlighting how it will offer value for the UK’s grid and wider energy sector. Zenobe began construction on the project in June 2021, having secured a financing deal with partner Santander. The pair began working together on other deals in 2019.

The BESS will reduce the amount of curtailment of renewable energy, particularly wind, in the Mersey region of north-west England where it is located, as well as reducing the amount of gas-fired generation needed to balance the supply and demand of electricity.

Zenobe noted that in December alone, UK transmission system operator (TSO) National Grid spent £82 million (US$99.1 million) in payments to generators which were curtailed due to their produced energy exceeding network hosting capacity.

https://www.energy-storage.news/europes ... -contract/


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caltrek
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Speeding Up Extreme Fast Charging Capability in Lithium-ion Batteries
March 3, 2023

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) Ishikawa, Japan -- Current society is transitioning en masse from fossil fuels to renewable resources and electric batteries. Despite the urgency to switch to greener methods, core challenges related to efficiency and sustainability pose a hurdle to overcome. For instance, the mass market adoption of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries for use in electric vehicles is being hindered by their slow charging speeds. “Extreme” fast charging (wherein 80% of the battery is charged within 10 min), high energy density, and cycle life are the “holy grail” of features that the automobile industry seeks out in batteries.

In order to enable the fast-charging ability in batteries, researchers have long attempted to enhance the mass transfer of electrolytes and charge transfer in electrodes, with extensive research carried out on the former compared to the latter. Now, a study by a team of researchers, led by Professor Noriyoshi Matsumi from Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST), showcases a new approach to facilitate fast charging using a binder material which promotes Li-ion intercalation of active material. The binder material leads to improved diffusion of desolvated Li ions across the solid electrolyte interface (SEI) and within the anode material and yields high conductivity, low impedance, and good stability.

Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/981584
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weatheriscool
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Iran says it's discovered what could be the world's second-largest lithium deposit
Iran says it's discovered a massive deposit of lithium — a key element in batteries for devices and electric vehicles — in one of its western provinces.

"For the first time in Iran, a lithium reserve has been discovered in Hamedan," a mountainous province in the country's west, Mohammad Hadi Ahmadi, an official at Iran's ministry of industry, mines and trade, was quoted as saying on Iranian state television Saturday.

The ministry believes that the deposit holds 8.5 million tons of lithium, which is often called "white gold" for the rapidly growing electric vehicle industry. If the claimed figure is accurate, that would make the deposit the second-largest known lithium reserve in the world after Chile, which holds 9.2 million metric tons of the metal, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The lucrative element is a crucial component in the cathodes of lithium-ion batteries in EVs, as well as in rechargeable batteries like those used in cell phones. The metal's price has skyrocketed in the last year due to higher demand for electric vehicle parts, global supply chain problems and inflation, but fell more recently, undergoing a correction amid a fall in EV sales and slow business activity in China, the fastest-growing EV market.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets ... r-AA18hinz
weatheriscool
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Researchers develop an oxygen-ion battery
https://techxplore.com/news/2023-03-oxy ... ttery.html
by Vienna University of Technology
Lithium-ion batteries are ubiquitous today, but that does not mean that they are the best solution for all areas of application. TU Wien has now succeeded in developing an oxygen-ion battery that has some important advantages. Although it does not allow for quite as high energy densities as the lithium-ion battery, its storage capacity does not decrease irrevocably over time: it can be regenerated and thus may enable an extremely long service life.

In addition, oxygen-ion batteries can be produced without rare elements and are made of incombustible materials. A patent application for the new battery idea has already been filed together with cooperation partners from Spain. The oxygen-ion battery could be an excellent solution for large energy storage systems, for example to store electrical energy from renewable sources.
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