Batteries & Energy Storage news and discussions

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weatheriscool
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Battery 'dream technology' is a step closer to reality with new discovery

by University of Texas at Austin
https://techxplore.com/news/2021-12-bat ... overy.html
A sodium-sulfur battery created by engineers at The University of Texas at Austin solves one of the biggest hurdles that has held back the technology as a commercially viable alternative to the ubiquitous lithium-ion batteries that power everything from smartphones to electric vehicles.

Sodium and sulfur stand out as appealing materials for future battery production because they are cheaper and more widely available than materials such as lithium and cobalt, which also have environmental and human rights concerns. Because of this, researchers have worked for the past two decades to make room-temperature, sodium-based batteries viable.

"I call it a dream technology because sodium and sulfur are abundant, environmentally benign, and the lowest cost you think of," said Arumugam Manthiram, director of UT's Texas Materials Institute and professor in the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering. "With expanded electrification and increased need for renewable energy storage going forward, cost and affordability will be the single dominant factor."

In one of two recent sodium battery advances from UT Austin, the researchers tweaked the makeup of the electrolyte, the liquid that facilitates movement of ions back and forth between the cathode and anode to stimulate charging and discharging of the batteries. They attacked the common problem in sodium batteries of the growth of needle-like structures, called dendrites, on the anode that can cause the battery to rapidly degrade, short circuit, and even catch fire or explode.

The researchers published their findings in a recent paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
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Sodium-based material yields stable alternative to lithium-ion batteries
https://techxplore.com/news/2021-12-sod ... ative.html
by University of Texas at Austin
University of Texas at Austin researchers have created a new sodium-based battery material that is highly stable, capable of recharging as quickly as a traditional lithium-ion battery and able to pave the way toward delivering more energy than current battery technologies.

For about a decade, scientists and engineers have been developing sodium batteries, which replace both lithium and cobalt used in current lithium-ion batteries with cheaper, more environmentally friendly sodium. Unfortunately, in earlier sodium batteries, a component called the anode would tend to grow needle-like filaments called dendrites that can cause the battery to electrically short and even catch fire or explode.

In one of two recent sodium battery advances from UT Austin, the new material solves the dendrite problem and recharges as quickly as a lithium-ion battery. The team published their results in the journal Advanced Materials.

"We're essentially solving two problems at once," said David Mitlin, a professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering's Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Research Laboratory who designed the new material. "Typically, the faster you charge, the more of these dendrites you grow. So if you suppress dendrite growth, you can charge and discharge faster, because all of a sudden it's safe."
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A promising anode material for lithium-ion batteries
https://phys.org/news/2021-12-anode-mat ... eries.html
by Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
The proposed stable anode material, made with a bio-based polymers, could unlock extremely fast battery charging for electric vehicles.

With the climate change concerns, an ever-increasing number of researchers are currently focusing on improving electric vehicles (EVs) to make them a more attractive alternative to conventional gas cars. Battery improvement for EVs is therefore a key issue. In addition to safety, autonomy and durability, most people want quickness in charging. Currently, it takes 40 minutes for state-of-the-art EVs to recharge while gas cars can be 'recharged' in no longer than five minutes. The charging time needs to be below 15 minutes to be a viable option.

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), which are used everywhere with portable electronic devices, are an option in the field of EVs, and new strategies are always being sought to improve their performance. One way to shorten the charging time of LIBs is to increase the diffusion rate of lithium ions, which in turn can be done by increasing the interlayer distance in the carbon-based materials used in the battery's anode. While this has been achieved with some success by introducing nitrogen impurities (technically referred to as nitrogen doping), there is no method easily available to control interlayer distance or to concentrate the doping element.

Against this backdrop, a team of scientists from Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST) recently developed an approach for anode fabrication that could lead to extreme fast charging of LIBs. The team, led by Prof. Noriyoshi Matsumi, consists of Prof. Tatsuo Kaneko, Senior Lecturer Rajashekar Badam, JAIST Technical Specialist Koichi Higashimine, JAIST Research Fellow Yueying Peng, and JAIST student Kottisa Sumala Patnaik. Their findings were published online on 24 Nov 2021 in Chemical Communications.
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Re: Batteries & Energy Storage news and discussions

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Carbon-air battery as a next-generation energy storage system
https://techxplore.com/news/2021-12-car ... orage.html
by Tokyo Institute of Technology
One of the barriers to generating electricity from wind and solar energy is their intermittent nature. A promising alternative to accommodate the fluctuations in power output during unfavorable environmental conditions are hydrogen storage systems, which use hydrogen produced from water splitting to generate clean electricity. However, these systems suffer from poor efficiency and often need to be large in size to compensate for it. This, in turn, makes for complex thermal management and a lowered energy and power density.

In a study published in Journal of Power Sources, researchers from Tokyo Tech have now proposed an alternative electric energy storage system that utilizes carbon (C) as an energy source instead of hydrogen. The new system, called a "carbon/air secondary battery (CASB)," consists of a solid-oxide fuel and electrolysis cell (SOFC/ECs) where carbon generated via electrolysis of carbon dioxide (CO2), is oxidized with air to produce energy. The SOFC/ECs can be supplied with compressed liquefied CO2 to make up the energy storage system.

"Similar to a battery, the CASB is charged using the energy generated by the renewable sources to reduce CO2 to C. During the subsequent discharge phase, the C is oxidized to generate energy," explains Prof. Manabu Ihara from Tokyo Tech.
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Re: Batteries & Energy Storage news and discussions

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Scientists reduce all-solid-state battery resistance by heating
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-01-sci ... tance.html
by Tokyo Institute of Technology
All-solid-state batteries are now one step closer to becoming the powerhouse of next-generation electronics, as researchers from Tokyo Tech, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), and Yamagata University introduce a strategy to restore their low electrical resistance. They also explore the underlying reduction mechanism, paving the way for a more fundamental understanding of the workings of all-solid-state lithium batteries.

All-solid-state lithium batteries have become the new craze in materials science and engineering as conventional lithium-ion batteries can no longer meet the standards for advanced technologies, such as electric vehicles, which demand high energy densities, fast charging, and long cycle lives. All-solid-state batteries, which use a solid electrolyte instead of a liquid electrolyte found in traditional batteries, not only meet these standards but are comparatively safer and more convenient as they have the possibility to charge in a short time.

However, the solid electrolyte comes with its own challenge. It turns out that the interface between the positive electrode and solid electrolyte shows a large electrical resistance whose origin is not well understood. Furthermore, the resistance increases when the electrode surface is exposed to air, degrading the battery capacity and performance. While several attempts have been made to lower the resistance, none have managed to bring it down to 10 Ω cm2 (ohm centimeter-squared), the reported interface resistance value when not exposed to air.

Now, in a recent study published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, a research team led by Prof. Taro Hitosugi from Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech), Japan, and Shigeru Kobayashi, a doctoral student at Tokyo Tech, may have finally solved this problem. By establishing a strategy for restoring the low interface resistance as well as unraveling the mechanism underlying this reduction, the team has provided valuable insights into the manufacturing of high-performance all-solid-state batteries. The study was the result of a joint research by Tokyo Tech, AIST, and Yamagata University.
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Re: Batteries & Energy Storage news and discussions

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1,000-cycle lithium-sulfur battery could quintuple electric vehicle ranges
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-01-cyc ... ctric.html
by University of Michigan

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 it can be charged and discharged—a University of Michigan team has shown.

"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. 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," said Nicholas Kotov, the Irving Langmuir Distinguished University Professor of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, who led the research.
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Rubber material holds key to long-lasting, safer EV batteries
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-01-rub ... safer.html
by Georgia Institute of Technology
For electric vehicles (EVs) to become mainstream, they need cost-effective, safer, longer-lasting batteries that won't explode during use or harm the environment. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology may have found a promising alternative to conventional lithium-ion batteries made from a common material: rubber.

Elastomers, or synthetic rubbers, are widely used in consumer products and advanced technologies such as wearable electronics and soft robotics because of their superior mechanical properties. The researchers found that the material, when formulated into a 3D structure, acted as a superhighway for fast lithium-ion transport with superior mechanical toughness, resulting in longer charging batteries that can go farther. The research, conducted in collaboration with the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, was published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

In conventional lithium-ion batteries, ions are moved by a liquid electrolyte. However, the battery is inherently unstable: even the slightest damage can leak into the electrolyte, leading to explosion or fire. The safety issues have forced the industry to look at solid-state batteries, which can be made using inorganic ceramic material or organic polymers.
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Light could boost performance of fuel cells, lithium batteries and other devices
https://phys.org/news/2022-01-boost-fue ... eries.html
by Elizabeth A. Thomson, Materials Research Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Engineers from MIT and Kyushu University in Japan have demonstrated for the first time that light can be used to significantly improve the performance of fuel cells, lithium batteries and other devices that are based on the movement of charged atoms, or ions.

Charge can be carried through a material in different ways. We are most familiar with the charge that is carried by the electrons that help make up an atom. Light has long been used to excite electrons to make them more conductive. Common applications include solar cells, and even supermarket doors that automatically open when a customer passes through. The latter rely on sensors in the door activated by the infrared radiation—light—naturally emitted by the customer.

"But there are many devices that depend on the motion of the ions themselves rather than just their constituent electrons," says Harry L. Tuller, the R.P. Simmons Professor of Ceramics and Electronic Materials in MIT's Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE). Examples include lithium batteries, which depend on the movement of lithium ions during battery charge and discharge. Similarly, fuel cells depend on the movement of hydrogen and oxygen ions to create electricity.
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Re: Batteries & Energy Storage news and discussions

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Batteries Get Hyped, but Pumped Hydro Provides the Vast Majority of Long-term Energy Storage Essential for Renewable Power
by Andrew Blakers, Bin Lu, and Matthew Stocks

https://theconversation.com/batteries-g ... rks-174446

Introduction:
(The Conversation) To cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in half within a decade, the Biden administration’s goal, the U.S. is going to need a lot more solar and wind power generation, and lots of cheap energy storage.

Wind and solar power vary over the course of a day, so energy storage is essential to provide a continuous flow of electricity. But today’s batteries are typically quite small and store enough energy for only a few hours of electricity. To rely more on wind and solar power, the U.S. will need more overnight and longer-term storage as well.

While battery innovations get a lot of attention, there’s a simple, proven long-term storage technique that’s been used in the U.S. since the 1920s.

It’s called pumped hydro energy storage. It involves pumping water uphill from one reservoir to another at a higher elevation for storage, then, when power is needed, releasing the water to flow downhill through turbines, generating electricity on its way to the lower reservoir.

Pumped hydro storage is often overlooked in the U.S. because of concern about hydropower’s impact on rivers. But what many people don’t realize is that most of the best hydro storage sites aren’t on rivers at all.
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