Batteries & Energy Storage news and discussions

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6 Months for Tesla to Have Fully Ramped 4680 Battery Lines
October 11, 2023 by Brian Wang

Giga Texas made their 20 millionth 4680 cell. This comes just 4 months after Tesla built its 10 millionth 4680 cell at Giga Texas.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2023/10/6 ... lines.html

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Researchers develop way to prevent damage that plagues next-gen lithium batteries

by Daniela Benites, University of Maryland

University of Maryland researchers studying how lithium batteries fail have developed a new technology that could enable next-generation electric vehicles (EVs) and other devices that are less prone to battery fires while increasing energy storage.

The innovative method, presented in a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature, suppresses the growth of lithium dendrites—damaging branch-like structures that develop inside so-called all-solid-state lithium batteries, preventing firms from broadly commercializing the promising technology. But this new design for a battery "interlayer," led by Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Professor Chunsheng Wang, stops dendrite formation and could open the door for production of viable all-solid-state batteries for EVs.

At least 750,000 registered EVs in the U.S. run on lithium-ion batteries—popular because of their high energy storage but containing a flammable liquid electrolyte component that burns when overheated. While no government agency tracks vehicle fires by type of car, and electric car battery fires appear to be relatively rare, they pose particular risks; the National Transportation Safety Board reports that first responders are vulnerable to safety risks, including electric shock and the exposure to toxic gases emanating from damaged or burning batteries.

All-solid-state batteries could lead to cars that are safer than current electric or internal combustion models, but creating a strategy to bypass the drawbacks was laborious, Wang said. When these batteries are operated at the high capacities and charging-discharging rates that electric vehicles demand, lithium dendrites grow toward the cathode side, causing short circuits and a decay in capacity.

https://techxplore.com/news/2023-10-pla ... eries.html

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IIT’s First Ever-made Rechargeable Edible Battery Nominated on TIME’s 2023 List of Best Innovations
October, 2023

Introduction:

(Eurekalert) Genoa/Milan (Italy), 24 October 2023 – From the research lab to TIME’s 2023 list of Best Innovations, IIT-Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Italian Institute of Technology) makes a hit with the first ever-made rechargeable edible battery. The battery has been selected by TIME among the most impactful innovations of the year that are changing how we live, being listed as one of the special mention inventions. This is the first time for a prototype stemming from a research center based in Italy to be acknowledged in TIME’s prestigious list.

In March 2023 the research paper “An Edible Rechargeable Battery” was published by Mario Caironi’s group on the international journal Advanced Materials describing the proof-of-concept battery cell obtained by using materials that are normally consumed as part of our daily diet, such as almonds, capers, and algae. The news was covered by newspapers and magazines worldwide, impressed by the originality of the research result. IIT press office counted more than 250 news articles in 2 months appearing in Italy, UK, USA, France, Spain, Brazil, Germany, Israel, Argentina, and many other countries.

TIME editors also noticed it. Amidst hundreds of other products and proposals, after an evaluation based “on a number of key factors, including originality, efficacy, ambition, and impact”, TIME has decided to acknowledge the first ever-made rechargeable edible battery made at IIT among the 200 most impactful innovations of 2023 that are changing how we live, as a special mention invention.
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Read more of the Eurekalert article here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1005694

See the full list of Time’s Best Inventions of 2023: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/100569423/

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Monolithically integrated photo battery achieves competitive voltage
https://techxplore.com/news/2023-11-mon ... ltage.html
by University of Freiburg

Networked intelligent devices and sensors can improve the energy efficiency of consumer products and buildings by monitoring their consumption in real time. Miniature devices like these being developed under the concept of the Internet of Things require energy sources that are as compact as possible in order to function autonomously.

Monolithically integrated batteries that simultaneously generate, convert, and store energy in a single system could be used for this purpose.

A team of scientists at the University of Freiburg's Cluster of Excellence Living, Adaptive, and Energy-Autonomous Materials Systems (livMatS) has developed a monolithically integrated photo battery consisting of an organic polymer-based battery and a multi-junction organic solar cell.

The battery, presented by Rodrigo Delgado Andrés and Dr. Uli Würfel, University Freiburg, and Robin Wessling and Prof. Dr. Birgit Esser, University of Ulm, is the first monolithically integrated photo battery made of organic materials to achieve a discharge potential of 3.6 volts. It is thus among the first systems of this kind capable of powering miniature devices. The team published their results in the journal Energy & Environmental Science.

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Efficient Biohybrid Batteries
October 31, 2023

Introduction:

(Wiley Online Library) Formic acid, which can be produced electrochemically from carbon dioxide, is a promising energy carrier. A Chinese research team have now developed a fast-charging hybrid battery system that combines the electrochemical generation of formic acid as an energy carrier with a microbial fuel cell. As the team demonstrate in the journal Angewandte Chemie, this novel, fast-charging biohybrid battery system can be used to monitor the toxicity of drinking water, just one of many potential future applications.

Microbial fuel cells harness bacteria to generate electricity, exploiting the ability of some bacterial species to convert energy-rich molecules into electrical energy. In fully microbial batteries, bacteria also produce the energy carrier molecules during the charging process, which are then used to generate electricity during the discharging process. However, one of the disadvantages of fully microbial batteries is that charging is still rather inefficient and slow.

By coupling the purely inorganic electrochemical generation of a biological active molecule with a microbial fuel cell, Yong Jiang's research team at the Agriculture and Forestry University in Fuzhou, China, and colleagues, have for the first time developed a two-stage hybrid microbial battery system that overcomes many of the challenges faced by fully microbial batteries.

The team also aimed to produce a biohybrid battery using simple and inexpensive components to provide sustainable energy. They found that formic acid is a sustainable biological energy carrier, because it can be produced either biologically or electrocatalytically from carbon dioxide and is then available for consumption by the bacteria in the microbial fuel cell.

Using commercially available components, they designed an electrolysis cell in which inorganic catalysts convert carbon dioxide gas into formic acid. Using this design, the team found that the charging process takes place within a few minutes. Once formic acid has been produced and extracted from the electrolyte, it is fed into a second device—the microbial fuel cell—where bacteria slowly convert it into carbon dioxide and electricity at the bioanode.

Read more here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/j ... ss.html

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Soap May Hold the Secret to Longer-Lasting Batteries
by Juan Siliezar-Brown
November 8, 2023


Introduction:

(Futurity) The key to making batteries last longer may be found in how soap works, new research shows.

Take handwashing, for instance. When someone washes their hands with soap, the soap forms structures called micelles that trap and remove grease, dirt, and germs when flushed with water. The soap does this because it acts as bridge between the water and what is being cleaned away, by binding them and wrapping them into those micelle structures.

As reported in Nature Materials, researchers noticed that a similar process plays out in what has become one of the most promising substances for designing longer lasting lithium batteries—a new type of electrolyte called a localized high-concentration electrolyte.

This new understanding of how this process works might be the missing piece to fully kicking the door open in this emerging sector of technology, the researchers suggest in their paper.

“The big picture is that we want to improve and increase the energy density for batteries, meaning how much energy they store per cycle and how many cycles the battery lasts,” says Yue Qi, a professor in the School of Engineering at Brown University.

Read more here: https://www.futurity.org/author/juan-siliezar

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EnergyX Aims New Solid-State EV Battery At The 500,000-Mile Car Of The Future
November 15, 2023
Tina Casey

Electric vehicles are just like ordinary gas guzzlers in some respects, including their lifespan. They need to be replaced every once in a while. That kicks a whole ecosystem of automotive supply chain activity into gear, with a new carbon footprint piling up along the way. A longer-lasting solid-state EV battery would help cut those lifecycle emissions, and the startup EnergyX is among those hammering away at the problem.
Here’s Some Sustainable Lithium To Go With That New Solid-State EV Battery

https://cleantechnica.com/2023/11/15/en ... he-future/

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Five reasons for optimism on climate

6 hours ago

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All across the UK, large scale battery farms are springing up at amazing speed - this one I visited in Buckinghamshire was completed in just 10 months.

It can power 300,000 homes for up to two hours and is one of the biggest in Europe.

Prices for storage on this scale continue to tumble, and experts estimate that by the end of this decade there will be enough batteries in place to power 18 million homes across the UK. That's an astonishing rate of growth.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-67627242