A northern California lithium-ion battery company has devised an electric vehicle (EV) battery that reaches a full charge in just over ten minutes.
Enovix’s specialty is a silicon-anode lithium-ion battery it calls 3D Silicon. The name refers to a proprietary 3D architecture and constraint system, as well as the cells’ 100 percent active silicon anode. Enovix has previously used this technology to create batteries for smartphones, laptops, smart watches, and mobile radios. Its latest development, however, is a super fast-charging EV battery that will put even the Lucid Air to shame.
The company has demonstrated its 0.27 Ah test cells to be capable of charging from 0 to 80 percent “in as little as 5.2 minutes,” according to a press release. They’re able to reach 98 percent capacity within 10 minutes. Enovix conducted the tests as part of a three-year Department of Energy grant program challenging the company to create high-capacity, fast-charging EV batteries—an achievement it seems so far to have met. Even after 1,000 charge cycles (some under particularly high temperatures), the 3D Silicon batteries retained 93 percent of their capacity. Enovix therefore estimates its batteries will last at least 10 years.
Is Sodium the Future for the Electric Mobility Transition? by Kushan Mitra
June 17, 2022
Introduction:
(Observer Research Foundation) The warnings are everywhere, too much sodium is bad for your health as we have been told by adverts and even doctors suggest that patients move to low-sodium salts. However, it is sodium that might turn out to be an environmental saviour in the green energy transition. Until now, a vast majority of batteries that have been used in electric vehicles are of various lithium-ion chemistries. Whilst lithium-based batteries take advantage of the light elemental weight of lithium, there are significant issues around thermal stability and more importantly, going forward major issues around resources, since lithium is not used alone in batteries but in conjunction with other metals and minerals that have their own resource problems.
The most popular battery chemistry used by the global automotive industry currently is known as Lithium-Nickel, Manganese and Cobalt (Li-NMC). The dramatic growth of demand for electric vehicles across the world has led to a shortage of lithium and prices per ton touching US$60,000 and more on the spot markets recently, quadrupling in under a year. Persistent concerns about the ethical sourcing of cobalt, primarily mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo also are not going away. The recent war in Ukraine has led to prices of Nickel shooting skywards increasing 10 times in the space of a few days which even led to the London Metals Exchange stopping the trade in the metal, has led to a situation where prices for battery packs for electric vehicles which after years of decline have increased between 10-20 in the past few months.
Lithium-NMC batteries which cost US$ 1,200 per kWh of capacity in 2010 had fallen to as low as US$ 132/kWh in 2021 (and on a per-cell basis for unfinished batteries, prices were as low as US$ 100/kWh) and have seen prices nearing US$ 200/kWh in global markets in 2022, but a shortage of lithium coupled with a global semiconductor shortage has meant that there will be a shortage of batteries by 2024-2025, followed by a lack of raw materials by 2027–2028.
The remainder of the article includes a discussion of “Sodium-Ion (Na-Ion) battery chemistry development.”
New Membrane Improves Reversibility of Zinc-air Batteries June 20, 2022
Introduction:
(EurekAlert) The long-standing challenges to the practical implementation of rechargeable zinc-air batteries (ZABs) are the electrochemical irreversibility of the Zn anode and degradation of the air cathodes in alkaline electrolyte, which eventually results in poor cycle life and low cell voltage.
To improve the reversibility of ZABs, exhaustive efforts have been made to exploit highly survivable catalysts for the air cathode while weakening the corrosion of the Zn anode through electrode design or electrolyte additives. These strategies can alleviate but not completely overcome the core challenges associated with the strongly alkaline electrolyte.
Taking a different approach, a research team led by ZHANG Xinbo from the Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry (CIAC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences recently developed a high-voltage, stable hybrid ZAB by using a neutral Zn anode, an acidic cathode, and a dual-hydrophobic-induced, proton-shuttle-shielding membrane to separate the two electrodes.
Their findings were published in Joule.
The researchers found that highly reversible Zn plating/stripping can be achieved in neutral electrolytes, while acidic electrolytes are essential for making the air cathode immune to CO2 poisoning issues. Therefore, they proposed a hybrid ZAB by decoupling the functional environments of the acidic air cathode and neutral Zn anode.
New Model Offers Potential Solutions for Next-generation Battery Challenges June 20, 2022
Introduction:
(EurekAlert) A new study by Stanford University researchers lights a path forward for building better, safer lithium-metal batteries.
Close cousins of the rechargeable lithium-ion cells widely used in portable electronics and electric cars, lithium-metal batteries hold tremendous promise as next-generation energy storage devices. Compared to lithium-ion devices, lithium-metal batteries hold more energy, charge up faster, and weigh considerably less.
To date, though, the commercial use of rechargeable lithium-metal batteries has been limited. A chief reason is the formation of “dendrites” – thin, metallic, tree-like structures that grow as lithium metal accumulates on electrodes inside the battery. These dendrites degrade battery performance and ultimately lead to failure which, in some instances, can even dangerously ignite fires.
The new study approached this dendrite problem from a theoretical perspective. As described in the paper, published in the Journal of The Electrochemical Society ( https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10. ... 111/ac7978), Stanford researchers developed a mathematical model that brings together the physics and chemistry involved in dendrite formation.
This model offered the insight that swapping in new electrolytes – the medium through which lithium ions travel between the two electrodes inside a battery – with certain properties could slow or even outright stop dendrite growth.
New Biobatteries Use Bacterial Interactions to Generate Power for Weeks June 28, 2022
Introduction:
(EurekAlert) BINGHAMTON, N.Y. -- Researchers at Binghamton University, State University of New York have developed a “plug-and-play” biobattery that lasts for weeks at a time and can be stacked to improve output voltage and current.
As our tech needs grow and the Internet of Things increasingly connects our devices and sensors together, figuring out how to provide power in remote locations has become an expanding field of research.
Professor Seokheun “Sean” Choi — a faculty member in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Binghamton University’s Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science — has been working for years on biobatteries, which generate electricity through bacterial interaction.
One problem he encountered: The batteries had a lifespan limited to a few hours. That could be useful in some scenarios but not for any kind of long-term monitoring in remote locations.
In a new study, published in the Journal of Power Sources and supported by a $510,000 grant from the Office of Naval Research, Choi and his collaborators have developed a “plug-and-play” biobattery that lasts for weeks at a time and can be stacked to improve output voltage and current. Co-authors on the research are from Choi’s Bioelectronics and Microsystems Lab: current PhD student Anwar Elhadad, and Lin Liu, PhD ’20 (now an assistant professor at Seattle Pacific University).
To power our increasingly electrified society, energy storage technology must evolve and adapt to meet the growing demand. Lithium-ion batteries, already essential to myriad technology, will require dramatic improvements in high-energy density, safety, temperature resilience, and environmental sustainability in order to provide the type of emission-free future that so many envision.
Now, a team of engineers led by Y. Shirley Meng, professor at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, have demonstrated liquefied gas electrolytes that can simultaneously provide all four essential properties. The research, performed between Meng's University of California San Diego and UChicago labs, provides a path to sustainable, fire-extinguishing, state-of-the-art batteries that can be developed at scale. Their work was published in Nature Energy.
Yijie Yin, a nanoengineering Ph.D. student and co-first author of the paper, shares how this work came about.
"In 2017, a team of UC San Diego nanoengineers discovered hydrofluorocarbon molecules that are gases at room temperature and will liquefy under a certain pressure," Yin said. "They then invented a new type of electrolyte, which is called Liquefied Gas Electrolyte (LGE)." The related results were published in Science.
Finnish researchers have installed the world's first fully working "sand battery" which can store green power for months at a time.
The developers say this could solve the problem of year-round supply, a major issue for green energy.
Maybe this could replace some of the Russian gas used for heating in Europe. You could fill the sand batteries in the summer, with energy coming from solar, and use it to heat buildings in winter. It seems cost effective (maybe?).
Thermally regenerative ammonia batteries can produce electricity on demand from low-grade waste heat. A new process for creating these batteries improves their stability and affordability and may help address the country's growing grid-scale energy storage problem, according to a team led by Penn State researchers.
"We can use ammonia as an energy carrier to harness waste heat and recharge some battery chemistries," said Derek Hall, assistant professor of energy engineering. "But previous battery chemistries used metallic zinc or copper electrodes, which had major setbacks in terms of electrode stability. What we did was replace these deposition-based reactions with a novel copper complex chemistry to solve a lot of the major problems facing previous researchers."
Low-grade waste heat is a significant source of unused energy in the U.S. and around the world, with 60 terawatt-hours of energy discarded into the environment each year by power plants and industry, according to recent studies. Technologies exist that can turn this low-grade waste heat into energy, including thermo-electrochemical cells (TECs), thermally regenerative electrochemical cycles (TRECs), and thermally regenerative ammonia batteries (TRABs); however, there are still a lot of limitations to these battery configurations.
Solid-state TECs are simpler to operate than electrochemical systems but exhibit exceptionally low power densities and lack the ability to store energy. TECs and TRECs have higher thermal efficiencies but still suffer from low power densities, limiting their viability. Of them, TRABs have the largest power densities with energy efficiencies that are competitive with the other low-grade heat technologies but have relied on either cost-prohibitive precious metals like silver or used metal electrodes that degraded quickly, the scientists said.
Panasonic Energy is building a pipeline of 2 terawatt-hours (TWh) of battery and raw material supplies for Tesla as part of a new mandate from the Elon Musk-led company, according to Chief Technology Officer Shoichiro Watanabe.
2 Terawatt-hours per year is enough for about 26 million electric cars per year.
Panasonic will need to build up its battery supply chain including mining to meet the goal, Watanabe said at the Sydney Energy Forum. Panasonic plans to spend $4 billion to build a second gigafactory in Kansas to target growth in the US auto market.
Korea Institute of Science and Technology has Developed a Core Technology for Aqueous Zinc Batteries July 25, 2022
Introduction:
(EurekAlert) Most energy storage systems (ESSs) have recently adopted lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), with the highest technology maturity among secondary batteries. However, these are argued to be unsuitable for ESSs, which store substantial amounts of electricity, owing to fire risks. The instability of the international supply of raw materials to construct LIBs has also emerged as a crucial concern. By contrast, aqueous zinc-ion batteries (AZIBs) use water as the electrolyte, which fundamentally prevents battery ignition. Furthermore, the price of zinc, the raw material, is only one-sixteenth of that of lithium.
The research team led by Dr. Minah Lee at the Energy Storage Research Center in the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST; President Seok-Jin Yoon) announced that they had succeeded in developing a technology for manufacturing “high-density zinc metal anodes,” which is key to commercializing AZIBs. This manufacturing technology is expected to act as a catalyst for the mass production of AZIBs because zinc metal anodes with high energy density and long lifespan can be produced through a simple electroplating process by using low-cost and ecofriendly solutions.
With lithium prices over five times higher than they were a year ago, researchers from Skoltech and Lomonosov Moscow State University have developed a material for sodium-ion batteries that offer an alternative to the increasingly expensive lithium-ion tech. The new material is a powder of sodium-vanadium phosphate fluoride with a particular crystal structure. Used in the battery cathode, it provides record-high energy storage capacity, eliminating one of the bottlenecks of the emerging sodium-ion technology. The research findings are reported in Nature Communications.
Lithium-ion batteries are everywhere: Among other things, they power portable electronics and electric vehicles, and store the energy produced by wind farms to even out irregular wind patterns. However, relying on lithium alone is risky, because its chemicals are growing ever more expensive, their production is rather dirty, and the ore deposits are unevenly distributed around the world. One step down in the periodic table, the much more abundant alkali metal sodium lends itself as a possible alternative to lithium.
Rensselaer Researchers Propose Calcium-ion as an Affordable and Sustainable Alternative to Lithium-ion Batteries
August 2, 2022
Introduction:
(EurekAlert) TROY, N.Y. — Concerns regarding scarcity, high prices, and safety regarding the long-term use of lithium-ion batteries has prompted a team of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to propose a greener, more efficient, and less expensive energy storage alternative.
In research published recently in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), corresponding author Nikhil Koratkar, the John A. Clark and Edward T. Crossan Professor of Engineering at Rensselaer, and his team, assert that calcium ions could be used as an alternative to lithium-ions in batteries because of its abundance and low cost.
“The vast majority of rechargeable battery products are based on lithium-ion technology, which is the gold standard in terms of performance,” said Dr. Koratkar. “However, the Achilles’ heel for lithium-ion technology is cost. Lithium is a limited resource on the planet, and its price has increased drastically in recent years. We are working on an inexpensive, abundant, safe, and sustainable battery chemistry that uses calcium ions in an aqueous, water-based electrolyte.”
New Magnesium Superionic Conductor Towards Lithium-free Solid-state Batteries August 4, 2022
Extract:
(EurekAlert) Magnesium ion (Mg2+)-based batteries have gained momentum as an alternative to Li+ (lithium ion). The earth’s crust holds ample magnesium, and Mg2+-based energy devices are said to have high energy densities, high safety, and low cost. But the wide application of Mg2+ is limited by its poor conductivity in solids at room temperature. Mg2+ has poor solid-state conductivity because divalent positive ions (2+) experience strong interactions with their neighboring negative ions in a solid crystal, impeding their migration through the material.
This hurdle was recently overcome by a research team from the Tokyo University of Science (TUS). In their new study published online on 4 May 2022 and on 18 May 2022 in volume 144 issue 19 of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, they report for the first time, a solid-state Mg2+ conductor with superionic conductivity of 10−3 S cm−1 (the threshold for practical application in solid-state batteries). This magnitude of conductivity for Mg2+ conductors is the highest reported to date.
National University of Singapore Researchers Invent Self-charging, Ultra-thin Device that Generates Electricity from Air Moisture August 17, 2022
Summary:
(EurekAlert) A team of researchers from the National University of Singapore has developed a new moisture-driven electricity generation device made of a thin layer of fabric, sea salt, carbon ink, and a special water-absorbing gel. The device works by keeping one end of the fabric dry, while the other end is perpetually wet. The difference in moisture content of the wet and dry regions of the carbon-coated fabric creates an electric current. This rechargeable fabric-like battery can produce electricity for more than 150 hours and provides higher electrical output than a conventional AA battery, potentially powering everyday electronics.
A New Concept for Low-cost Batteries
August 24, 2022
Introduction:
(EurekAlert) As the world builds out ever larger installations of wind and solar power systems, the need is growing fast for economical, large-scale backup systems to provide power when the sun is down and the air is calm. Today’s lithium-ion batteries are still too expensive for most such applications, and other options such as pumped hydro require specific topography that’s not always available.
Now, researchers at MIT and elsewhere have developed a new kind of battery, made entirely from abundant and inexpensive materials, that could help to fill that gap.
The new battery architecture, which uses aluminum and sulfur as its two electrode materials, with a molten salt electrolyte in between, is described in the journal Nature, in a paper by MIT Professor Donald Sadoway, along with 15 others at MIT and in China, Canada, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
“I wanted to invent something that was better, much better, than lithium-ion batteries for small-scale stationary storage, and ultimately for automotive [uses],” explains Sadoway, who is the John F. Elliott Professor Emeritus of Materials Chemistry.
Toyota invests in EV battery production in Japan, US
Source: AP
TOKYO (AP) — Toyota is investing 730 billion yen ($5.6 billion) in Japan and the U.S. to boost production of batteries for electric vehicles, the Japanese automaker said Wednesday.
Production is set to start between 2024 and 2026. In Japan, 400 billion yen ($3 billion) will go into the Himeji Plant of Prime Planet Energy & Solutions Co. in Japan, as well as in Toyota plants and property. In the U.S., about 325 billion yen ($2.5 billion) will be invested in Toyota Battery Manufacturing in North Carolina, Toyota Motor Corp. said.
Toyota has scored success with the Prius and other hybrid models, which have an engine as well as a battery-driven electric motor, and so the company has at times been seen as a laggard on electric vehicles. But the global demand for electric vehicles is expected to grow in coming years as gas prices rise and concerns grow about the environment.
Earlier this week, Japanese rival Honda Motor Co. announced with major South Korean battery maker LG that they were investing $4.4 billion in a joint venture in the United States to produce batteries for Honda electric vehicles in the North American market, with mass production of advanced lithium-ion battery cells to start by the end of 2025.
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have a long history of breakthrough discoveries with lithium-ion batteries. Many of these discoveries have focused on a battery cathode known as NMC, a nickel-manganese-cobalt oxide. Batteries with this cathode now power the Chevy Bolt.
Argonne researchers have made another breakthrough with the NMC cathode. The team's new structure for the cathode's micro-sized particles could lead to longer-lasting and safer batteries able to operate at very high voltage and power vehicles for longer driving ranges. A paper on this research appeared in Nature Energy.
"The present-day NMC cathode has posed a major barrier to operation at high voltage," said Guiliang Xu, assistant chemist. With charge-discharge cycling, performance rapidly declines due to cracks forming in the cathode particles. For several decades, battery researchers have been seeking ways to eliminate these cracks.
One past approach involved microscale spherical particles consisting of numerous much smaller particles. The large spherical particles are polycrystalline, with differently oriented crystalline regions. As a result, they have what scientists refer to as grain boundaries between particles, which cause cracking upon battery cycling. To prevent this, Xu and Argonne colleagues had previously developed a protective polymer coating around each particle. This coating surrounds the large spherical particles and smaller ones inside them.
A different approach to avoid this cracking involves single-crystal particles. Electron microscopy of these particles indicated they have no boundaries.
10 alternatives to lithium-ion batteries: Which new tech will power the future?
September 7, 2022
Lithium-ion batteries have taken over the world. Tesla has bet big on them and built a Gigafactory that is now knocking out Tesla car batteries, as well as Powerwall and Powerpacks for homes and business. many other manufacturers are working on their own supply chains of lithium-ion batteries.
But battery tech is cutting-edge. We are one breakthrough away from one of the multitude of lithium-ion battery alternatives taking over. Lithium-ion batteries could be yesterday’s news and take their place next to the floppy disk in the dust bin of history.
Also read: The best electric motorcycles – The best electric cars – The best electric scooters
So what are the likely contenders for the title of power source of the future? Here are our picks for the top lithium-ion alternatives, but bear in mind it could be a combination or a development of any one of these technologies that could eventually win the race to replace lithium-ion.
'Game-changing' new battery for electric cars charges in 3 minutes and lasts for 20 YEARS - more than twice as long as current EV batteries
Daily Mail ^ | Published: 21:24 EDT, 15 September 2022 | Updated: 21:46 EDT, 15 September 2022 | Jonathan Chadwick
A 'game-changing' new battery for electric vehicles (EVs) that charges in three minutes and lasts for 20 years could soon be coming to new cars.
Adden Energy, a start-up based in Waltham, Massachusetts, has been granted a licence and $5.15 million in funding to build the battery design at scale to fit in EVs.
The battery, developed by Harvard scientists, is lithium metal, rather than lithium ion found in EVs that are already on the market.
Its intricate design, inspired by a BLT sandwich, prevents the growth of troublesome 'dendrites' that grow in lithium-metal batteries and shorten their lifespan.
The new technology has been created by Xin Li and colleagues at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS).
Adden Energy was co-founded in 2021 by Li, along with William Fitzhugh and Luhan Ye, both of whom contributed to the development of the technology as graduate students in Li’s Harvard lab.
The startup aims to scale the battery up to a palm-sized 'pouch cell' – which has components enclosed in an aluminium-coated film – and then toward a full-scale vehicle battery in the next three to five years.
'We have achieved in the lab 5,000 to 10,000 charge cycles in a battery's lifetime, compared with 2,000 to 3,000 charging cycles for even the best in class now, and we don’t see any fundamental limit to scaling up our battery technology,' said Li. 'That could be a game changer.'
Lithium-metal batteries hold substantially more energy in the same volume and charge in a fraction of the time compared to traditional lithium-ion batteries.
But they're prone to the formation of 'dendrites' – tiny, rigid tree-like structures that speed up battery failure.
Researchers have therefore tried to harness the potential of solid-state, lithium-metal batteries, using a unique BLT-inspired design.
