A Korean research team has developed a soft, mechanically deformable, and stretchable lithium battery that can be used in the development of wearable devices, and examined the battery's feasibility by printing them on clothing surfaces. The research team, led by Dr. Jeong Gon Son from the Soft Hybrid Materials Research Center at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST; President: Seok-Jin Yoon), announced that they had developed a lithium battery wherein all of the materials, including the anode, cathode, current collector, electrolytes, and encapsulant, are stretchable and printable. The lithium battery developed by the team possesses high capacity and free-form characteristics suitable for mechanical deformation.
Owing to the rapidly increasing demand for high-performance wearable devices—such as smart bands, implantable electronic devices such as pace-makers, and soft wearable devices for use in the realistic metaverse—the development of a battery that is soft and stretchable like the human skin and organs has been attracting interest.
The hard, inorganic electrode of a conventional battery comprises the majority of the battery's volume, making it difficult to stretch. Other components, such as the separator and the current collector for drawing and transferring charges, must also be stretchable, and the liquid electrolyte leakage issue must also be resolved.
have some questions about solar-to-electric energy that pertain to some statements one of my county commissioners made recently. Evidently there is some kind of rush to get some of our gov't buildings solar powered.
(TechCrunch) President Joe Biden will trigger the Defense Production Act to secure U.S. sources of critical minerals and materials like lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite and manganese that are used to make batteries for electric vehicles and energy storage.
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The Defense Production Act allows the president to direct private companies to prioritize orders from the federal government, to allocate materials for national defense and take actions to restrict hoarding of needed supplies. Because Biden is calling for a boost in domestic production, his administration might offer loans to American companies that mine and process battery materials, make purchases or even allow companies to coordinate with each other, which in other circumstances might be an antitrust issue.
“The Defense Production Act could provide capital for exploration, mining, processing and production of lithium and other minerals for electric vehicles and stationary grid storage batteries to help strengthen the foundation for a transition to cleaner energy use in the U.S.,” Kelli Hopp-Michlosky, who heads up communications at U.S. chemical manufacturing company Albemarle, told TechCrunch.
Albemarle recently started to assess a potential restart of lithium extraction at its Kings Mountain site, according to Hopp-Michlosky, who also noted the company is open to working with the U.S. government on projects using its Silver Peak, Nevada and Kings Mountain, North Carolina resources.
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Even though “the Department of Defense will implement this authority using strong environmental, labor, community and tribal consultation standards,” some climate activists worry that rushing production of precious minerals via extraction processes will bring about the next gold rush that will ultimately lead to more environmental degradation.
Scientists have created a battery designed for the electric grid that locks in energy for months without losing much storage capacity.
The development of the "freeze-thaw battery," which freezes its energy for use later, is a step toward batteries that can be used for seasonal storage: saving energy in one season, such as the spring, and spending it in another, like autumn.
The prototype is small, about the size of a hockey puck. But the potential usefulness of the science behind the device is vast, foretelling a time when energy from intermittent sources, like sunshine and wind, can be stored for a long time. The work by scientists at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory was published online March 23 in Cell Reports Physical Science.
"Longer-duration energy storage technologies are important for increasing the resilience of the grid when incorporating a large amount of renewable energy," said Imre Gyuk, director of Energy Storage at DOE's Office of Electricity, which funded the work. "This research marks an important step toward a seasonal battery storage solution that overcomes the self-discharge limitations of today's battery technologies."
(Courthouse News) — After five automakers announced battery recalls for their fleet of electric and hybrid vehicles, the U.S. government said it is stepping in as well to determine whether cars powered by high-voltage devices are at more risk than others of going up in flames.
The investigation opened Friday, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which says it will write to the battery giant LG Energy Solution and “ensure thorough safety recalls are conducted where appropriate.”
South Korea-based LG is estimated to have roughly 138,000 batteries in automobiles across the country across various makers. General Motors, Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, Stellantis and Volkswagen are named in the document as having issued recalls with the devices in the last two years.
Against startling headlines and a dearth of data from a nascent industry, though, the insurance industry’s Highway Loss Data Institute reported in April 2021 that its small sample study showed comparable scores for electric vehicles and gas-run vehicles in the number of non-crash fire claims they see per 1,000 insured vehicle years.
The study focused on fires “that happen not because of a crash but rather when vehicles are sitting still in garages or driveways or parking lots,” explained Russ Rader, a spokesman for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, noting these happen in conventional and electric vehicles alike.
US scientists have developed a battery that can retain 92% of its initial capacity over periods of 12 weeks, with a theoretical energy density of 260 W/hour per kg. It was built with an aluminum anode and a nickel cathode, immersed in molten-salt electrolyte.
Scientists at the US Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) have developed an aluminum-nickel (Al-Ni) molten salt battery that, under thermal cycling, exhibits high retention of cell capacity over periods of weeks.
The scientists described the small prototype as a “freeze-thaw battery” that cuts off the self-charge function when a battery is idling. “It’s a lot like growing food in your garden in the spring, putting the extra in a container in your freezer, and then thawing it out for dinner in the winter,” explained researcher Minyuan Miller Li.
The battery is charged by heating it to around 180 C, with its ions flowing through the liquid electrolyte. The device is then restored to room temperature and the electrolyte becomes solid, thus trapping the ions that transport the stored energy.
A big battery breakthrough to go with it all!
And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
A joint research team from Tohoku University and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has made a significant advancement towards high-voltage metal-free lithium-ion batteries that use a small organic molecule—croconic acid. The breakthrough moves us closer to realizing metal-free, high-energy, and inexpensive lithium-ion batteries.
Unlike conventional lithium-ion batteries, which depend on rare-earth materials such as cobalt and lithium, organic batteries exploit naturally abundant elements such as carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen. In addition, organic batteries have greater theoretical capacities than conventional lithium-ion batteries because their use of organic materials renders them lightweight. Most reported organic batteries to date, however, possess a relatively low (1–3V) working voltage. Increasing organic batteries' voltage will lead to higher energy density batteries.
(Vox) A relatively straightforward way to build a better battery involves incorporating different materials into the conventional lithium-ion technology. New materials come with their own benefits and drawbacks, and some combinations might be better for electric vehicles than others.
One of these combinations is called a lithium iron phosphate battery, which incorporates lower-cost materials into the battery’s cathode. While these batteries can’t pack in quite as much energy as other lithium-ion batteries, they allow automakers to build more batteries for less money and, thus, offer more EVs at a lower price. Lithium iron phosphate batteries are already widely used in China, and Tesla announced last fall that it would start using this chemistry in its standard-range vehicles.
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As its name implies, a solid-state battery uses a solid electrolyte instead of the traditional electrolyte. This solid material isn’t one giant block, but rather a layer of material like glass or ceramic. Solid electrolytes are more compact, which means that solid-state batteries can be smaller and store more energy. Another benefit is that solid electrolytes aren’t as flammable as traditional lithium-ion batteries, and also don’t require the same cooling infrastructure.
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Eventually, lithium-ion batteries may not look like batteries at all. They might just become a part of what they’re powering. That’s the idea behind structural batteries, which would have a battery double as another part of a vehicle, like the body of a car or the fuselage of a plane.
This could address a fundamental challenge with batteries, which is that they’re incredibly large and heavy. Allowing a vehicle part to also serve as an energy source could, theoretically, cut down on an EV’s overall size. It would also mean, potentially, using fewer raw materials overall.
Scientists have discovered a chemical phase of sulfur that stops battery degradation. They were so shocked by the discovery that they checked 100 times to ensure the result was real. As with most accidental discoveries, the scientists haven’t yet figured out what is actually happening. So further research is needed. If successful, lithium-sulfur batteries could give electric vehicles a range of thousands of miles.
And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
(TechCrunch) It’s official: a fully electric Chevy Corvette is coming — with new battery technology to boost its range, acceleration and efficiency.
When it arrives, the battery-electric sports car will benefit from a new energy-recovery feature GM announced on Monday for the Ultium battery platform underpinning its EVs. The upgraded system uses a patented heat pump that GM says will help electric vehicles charge and accelerate faster and boost range by up to 10%.
General Motors will release a hybridized version of its iconic Chevrolet Corvette sports car next year, with a battery-electric model to follow, General Motors President Mark Reuss announced Monday on LinkedIn.
“Yes, in addition to the amazing new Chevrolet Corvette Z06 and other gas-powered variants coming, we will offer an electrified and a fully electric, Ultium-based Corvette in the future,” Reuss posted on LinkedIn. “In fact, we will offer an electrified Corvette as early as next year. Details and names to come at a later date.”
The new Ultium energy recovery system already powers the automaker’s Hummer EV and Bright Drop EV600 commercial van and will be used in forthcoming all-electric models, including the Hummer SUV and Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck and Blazer SUV.
It doesn't come on fast. It may take weeks to notice. You have the newly recharged lithium-ion AA batteries in the wireless kitty water fountain, and they last two days. They once lasted a week or more. Another round of charging, and they last one day. Soon, nothing.
You would be forgiven if you stood there and questioned your own actions. "Wait, did I recharge these?"
Relax, it's not you. It's the battery. Nothing lasts forever, not even the supposed long-lasting rechargeable batteries, be they AAs or AAAs bought in store or the batteries inside our cellphones, wireless earbuds, or cars. Batteries decay.
(EurekAlert) For scientists working to create the next generation of batteries, water has typically been the enemy. For example, lithium-ion batteries typically need to be produced under extremely dry conditions for them to hold large amounts of charge. But a new discovery may show that a specific type of lithium-ion battery can literally hold water.
In a battery, ions move between the two electrodes to balance the electrical charge created during charging and discharging. Electrolytes are the battery component that makes this happen. Based on detailed models of water in different electrolyte environments created through earlier computer simulations, U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory researchers developed a new battery electrolyte that can hold a thousand times more water than conventional electrolytes, according to Argonne senior battery chemist Zhengcheng “John” Zhang.
“We’ve always thought that water was going to cause major problems for a lithium-ion battery. However, it turns out that our formulation can hold dramatically more than previously known, which could help reduce costs in battery fabrication,” Zhang said.
Because lithium-ion batteries are “dry-cell” batteries, they can only contain trace amounts of moisture, which requires the need for special manufacturing facilities. However, by using an electrolyte composed of two kinds of salts — a lithium salt and an ionic liquid — the team was able to create a situation in which vastly more water molecules could be stably absorbed by the electrolyte.
To support the experiment results and investigate the underlying chemical mechanism, Argonne computational scientist Wei Jiang used the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility’s (ALCF’s) Theta supercomputer to perform simulations of the electrolyte near the electrode surface to get a picture of the behavior of the water molecules. The ALCF is a DOE Office of Science user facility.
A new approach to battery design could provide the key to low-cost, long-term energy storage, according to Imperial College London researchers.
The team of engineers and chemists have created a polysulfide-air redox flow battery (PSA RFB) with not one, but two membranes. The dual membrane design overcomes the main problems with this type of large-scale battery, opening up its potential to store excess energy from, for example, renewable sources such as wind and solar. The research is published in Nature Communications.
In redox flow batteries, energy is stored in liquid electrolytes which flow through the cells during charge and discharge, enabled through chemical reactions. The amount of energy stored is determined by the volume of the electrolyte, making the design potentially easy to scale up. However, the electrolyte used in conventional redox flow batteries—vanadium—is expensive and primarily sourced from either China or Russia.
The Imperial team, led by Professors Nigel Brandon and Anthony Kucernak, have been working on alternatives that use lower cost materials which are widely available. Their approach uses a liquid as one electrolyte and a gas as the other—in this case polysulfide (sulfur dissolved in an alkaline solution) and air. However, the performance of polysulfide-air batteries is limited because no membrane could fully enable the chemical reactions to take place while still preventing polysulfide crossing over into the other part of the cell.
Researchers have developed a low-cost device that can selectively capture carbon dioxide gas while it charges. Then, when it discharges, the CO2 can be released in a controlled way and collected to be reused or disposed of responsibly.
The supercapacitor device, which is similar to a rechargeable battery, is the size of a two-pence coin, and is made in part from sustainable materials including coconut shells and seawater.
Designed by researchers from the University of Cambridge, the supercapacitor could help power carbon capture and storage technologies at much lower cost. Around 35 billion metric tons of CO2 are released into the atmosphere per year and solutions are urgently needed to eliminate these emissions and address the climate crisis. The most advanced carbon capture technologies currently require large amounts of energy and are expensive.
The supercapacitor consists of two electrodes of positive and negative charge. In work led by Trevor Binford while completing his Master's degree at Cambridge, the team tried alternating from a negative to a positive voltage to extend the charging time from previous experiments. This improved the supercapacitor's ability to capture carbon.
A team of researchers at Dalhousie University has found evidence that suggests a variation of a lithium nickel manganese cobalt battery (Li[Ni0.5Mn0.3Co0.2]O2) could last a hundred years. In their paper published in Journal of The Electrochemical Society, the group describes the battery and why they believe it could last so long.
As the planet continues to warm due to humanity's inability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, scientists around the world continue to look for ways to prevent disaster. Once such way involves switching CO2-emitting automobiles from using gasoline to another source—hydrogen, for example—or electricity, courtesy of batteries. Thus far, use of batteries has proven to be an effective alternative, though there are issues to be hammered out, such as the installation of nationwide charging stations. Another is improvement in battery technology. Currently, batteries used in electric cars are very expensive and they do not hold as much charge as consumers would like. They also do not last long enough. In this new effort, the team in Halifax has been working on the latter problem, and now claim that they have developed a battery that could last for a century.
The new battery is a variation of lithium nickel manganese cobalt batteries that have been under study for quite some time. What is new in this effort is that the researchers found that if such batteries are modified to allow for using them at a lower voltage, they will last a lot longer than other similar batteries, and longer than lithium iron phosphate batteries. Specifically, testing showed that if it such batteries are run at 3.8 volts instead of the standard 4.2, (and they are maintained at a temperature of 25 degrees Celsius) they could be expected to last for approximately one hundred years.
With the rapid reduction in the costs of renewable energy generation, such as that of wind and solar power, there is a growing need for energy storage technologies to make sure that electricity supply and demand are balanced properly. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) researchers have come up with a new energy storage concept that could turn tall buildings into batteries to improve the power quality in urban settings.
The world's capacity to generate electricity from solar panels, wind turbines, and other renewable technologies has been steadily increasing over the last few years, and global renewable electricity capacity is expected to rise still further by more than 60% from 2020 levels by 2026. This is equivalent to the current total global power capacity of fossil fuels and nuclear combined. According to the International Energy Agency, renewables are in fact set to account for almost 95% of the increase in global power capacity through 2026, with solar PV alone providing more than half. Transitioning to a low- or zero-carbon society, however, requires innovative solutions and a different way of storing and consuming energy than traditional energy systems.
In their study published in the journal Energy, IIASA researchers propose a novel gravitational-based storage solution that uses lifts and empty apartments in tall buildings to store energy. This original idea that the authors call Lift Energy Storage Technology (LEST) stores energy by lifting wet sand containers or other high-density materials, which are transported remotely in and out of a lift with autonomous trailer devices. LEST is an interesting option, because lifts are already installed in high-rise buildings, which means there is no need for additional investment or space occupancy, but rather using what is already there in a different way to create additional value for the power grid and the building owner.
University of Houston Researchers Identify Alternative to Lithium-based Battery Technology May 31, 2022
Introduction:
(EurekAlert) Lithium-ion batteries are currently the preferred technology to power electric vehicles, but they’re too expensive for long-duration grid-scale energy storage systems, and lithium itself is becoming more challenging to access.
While lithium does have many advantages – high energy density and capacity to be combined with renewable energy sources to support grid-level energy storage – lithium carbonate prices are at an all-time high. Contributing to the rising cost are pandemic-related supply-chain bottlenecks, the Russia-Ukraine conflict and increased demand from businesses. Additionally, many governments are hesitant to green light lithium mines because of the high environmental costs and the potential of human rights violations.
As governments and industries all over the world are eager to find energy storage options to power the clean energy transition, new research conducted at the University of Houston and published in Nature Communications suggests ambient temperature solid-state sodium-sulfur battery technology as a viable alternative to lithium-based battery technology for grid-level energy storage systems.
Yan Yao, Cullen Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and his colleagues developed a homogeneous glassy electrolyte that enables reversible sodium plating and stripping at a greater current density than previously possible.
“The quest for new solid electrolytes for all-solid sodium batteries must concurrently be low cost, easily fabricated, and have incredible mechanical and chemical stability,” said Yao, who is also principal investigator of the Texas Center for Superconductivity at the University of Houston (TcSUH). “To date, no single sodium solid electrolyte has been able to achieve all four of these requirements at the same time.”
Scientists at the University of Cambridge Have Created an Algae “Battery” Which Powered a Computer for Over a Year.
Abstract:
(Royal Society of Chemistry) Sustainable, affordable and decentralised sources of electrical energy are required to power the network of electronic devices known as the Internet of Things. Power consumption for a single Internet of Things device is modest, ranging from μW to mW, but the number of Internet of Things devices has already reached many billions and is expected to grow to one trillion by 2035, requiring a vast number of portable energy sources (e.g., a battery or an energy harvester). Batteries rely largely on expensive and unsustainable materials (e.g., rare earth elements) and their charge eventually runs out. Existing energy harvesters (e.g., solar, temperature, vibration) are longer lasting but may have adverse effects on the environment (e.g., hazardous materials are used in the production of photovoltaics). Here, we describe a bio-photovoltaic energy harvester system using photosynthetic microorganisms on an aluminium anode that can power an Arm Cortex M0+, a microprocessor widely used in Internet of Things applications. The proposed energy harvester has operated the Arm Cortex M0+ for over six months in a domestic environment under ambient light. It is comparable in size to an AA battery, and is built using common, durable, inexpensive and largely recyclable materials.
(My Modern Met) Under temperature fluctuations and natural light, the algae produced energy through photosynthesis. The electrodes picked up this energy to power the mini computer. “We were impressed by how consistently the system worked over a long period of time—we thought it might stop after a few weeks but it just kept going,” said first author Dr. Paolo Bombelli in a University statement. The team submitted their paper when the device had passed six months of run time, but it is still going strong after over a year as of May 2022.
Will you be able to buy algae batteries anytime soon? Probably not, but the researchers are hopeful that combining algae cells may provide power for remote, low-usage devices. This research was in partnership with Arm, the company that design microprocessors; and funded by the UK's National Biofilms Innovation Centre. While not an immediate consumer solution, this research provides impressive results which will hopefully encourage further innovation in the field of sustainable, bio-energy.
I find that they managed to create gamma-phase sulphur which had previously been seen only in extremely high temperature environments at room-temperature.
Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Cambridge, have developed a new method to dramatically extend the lifetime of organic aqueous flow batteries, improving the commercial viability of a technology that has the potential to safely and inexpensively store energy from renewable sources such as wind and solar.
"Organic aqueous redox flow batteries promise to significantly lower the costs of electricity storage from intermittent energy sources, but the instability of the organic molecules has hindered their commercialization," said Michael Aziz, the Gene and Tracy Sykes Professor of Materials and Energy Technologies at SEAS. "Now, we have a truly practical solution to extend the lifetime of these molecules, which is an enormous step to making these batteries competitive."
The research is published in Nature Chemistry.
Over the past decade, Aziz and Roy Gordon, the Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Materials Science, have collaborated to develop organic aqueous flow batteries using molecules known as anthraquinones, which are composed of naturally abundant elements such as carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, to store and release energy.
Over the course of their research, the team discovered that these anthraquinones decompose slowly over time, regardless of how many times the battery has been used.
