Batteries & Energy Storage news and discussions

[weatheriscool]

A damage-free way to gauge the health of next-gen batteries for electric vehicles
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-09-dam ... eries.html
by Tokyo Metropolitan University

Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have demonstrated that electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) can be a powerful non-destructive tool to study the degradation mechanisms of all-solid-state lithium metal batteries. They studied ceramic-based all-solid-state Li metal batteries prepared by aerosol deposition and heating, identifying the specific interface responsible for the drop in performance. Published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, their work accurately highlights the engineering hurdles that need to be overcome to bring these top-in-class batteries to the market.

Electric vehicles (EVs) are a crucial part of efforts worldwide to cut carbon emissions. And at the heart of every EV is its battery. Battery design remains a key bottleneck when it comes to maximizing driving range and improving vehicle safety. One of the proposed solutions, all-solid-state lithium metal batteries, has the potential to provide higher energy density, safety, and lower complexity, but technical issues continue to hamper their transition into everyday vehicles.

A major problem is the large interfacial resistance between electrodes and solid electrolytes. In many battery designs, both cathode and electrolyte materials are brittle ceramics; this makes it difficult to have good contact between them. There is also the challenge of diagnosing which interface is actually causing problems. Studying degradation in all-solid-state lithium metal batteries generally requires cutting them open: this makes it impossible to find out what is happening while the battery is operating.

[weatheriscool]

Researchers unveil mystery inside lithium oxygen batteries
https://phys.org/news/2022-09-unveil-my ... eries.html
by University of Science and Technology of China

With a high energy density, Li-O2 batteries have become a state-of-the-art battery technology. Inside the Li-O2 battery, the generation and disintegration of the discharged product solid lithium peroxide (Li2O2) have a significant effect on the battery's performance. Previous research has shed little light on Li2O2 's form and distribution inside, leaving questions regarding the trend and contributing factor of internal Li2O2 's change in form and size unanswered.

Recently, a team led by Prof. Tan Peng from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences designed a carbon-coated anodic aluminum oxide (C-AAO) air electrode with a highly-ordered, array-like structure. The team gained new insights into the sudden death and reaction routes of Li-O2 batteries. The work was published in Nano Letters.

The research team designed a special C-AAO electrode that breaks easily yet preserves its distribution of products, enabling Li2O2 observations throughout the entire electrode. Using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), the team determined the contributing factor to sudden voltage drop and death at various current densities.

[wjfox]

[weatheriscool]

China turns on the world's largest compressed air energy storage plant
By Loz Blain
October 04, 2022
https://newatlas.com/energy/china-100mw-compressed-air/
The world's largest and, more importantly, most efficient clean compressed air energy storage system is up and running, connected to a city power grid in northern China.

The clean energy revolution will require huge amounts of energy storage, to buffer against the intermittent power delivered by solar and wind. Some of that will come in the form of big battery installations – but there's a huge lithium supply shortage coming that'll raise the price of lithium-based batteries and make it very tough for Tesla-style operations to handle a big chunk of the work.

China has diversified its efforts, and indeed just this week it switched on the world's largest flow battery, a 100-MW, 400-MWh vanadium flow battery installed in Dailan that offers relatively low-cost energy storage without using any lithium. But according to Asia Times, China is planning to lean heavily on compressed air energy storage (CAES) as well, to handle nearly a quarter of all the country's energy storage by 2030.

Now, after several years of development by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, it has connected the world's first 100-MW advanced CAES system to the grid, ready to begin commercial service in the city of Zhangjiakou in northern China. By designating it as "advanced," the Academy is distinguishing it from the McIntosh Plant that's been online since 1991 in Alabama – a 110-MW CAES facility that burns its stored air with natural gas to recover energy, and is thus not a green energy storage solution.

[weatheriscool]

Watching lithium in real time could improve performance of EV battery materials
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-10-lit ... rials.html
by University of Cambridge

Researchers have found that the irregular movement of lithium ions in next-generation battery materials could be reducing their capacity and hindering their performance.

The team, led by the University of Cambridge, tracked the movement of lithium ions inside a promising new battery material in real time.

It had been assumed that the mechanism by which lithium ions are stored in battery materials is uniform across the individual active particles. However, the Cambridge-led team found that during the charge-discharge cycle, lithium storage is anything but uniform.

When the battery is near the end of its discharge cycle, the surfaces of the active particles become saturated by lithium while their cores are lithium deficient. This results in the loss of reusable lithium and a reduced capacity.

The research could help improve existing battery materials and could accelerate the development of next-generation batteries. The results are published in Joule.

[weatheriscool]

Researchers develop efficient oxygen catalysts for lithium-oxygen batteries
https://phys.org/news/2022-10-efficient ... eries.html
by Li Yuan, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Lithium-oxygen (Li-O2) batteries are promising due to their high theoretical energy density. However, the poor catalytic performance of the technology's air cathode impeded its commercialization.

Recently, a joint research group led by Prof. Bao Xinhe and Prof. Wu Zhongshuai from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) fabricated two-dimensional (2D) Mn3O4 nanosheets with dominant crystal planes on graphene (Mn3O4 NS/G) as efficient oxygen catalysts for Li-O2 batteries, achieving ultrahigh capacity and long-term stability.

This study was published in ACS Catalysis.

Designing oxygen catalysts with well-defined shapes and high-activity crystal facets can effectively regulate the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) at the three-phase interfaces, but it is still remains challenging.

The researchers indicated that the Mn3O4 NS/G with the (101) facets and enriched oxygen vacancies offered a lower charge overpotential of 0.86 V than that of Mn3O4 nanoparticles on graphene (1.15 V).

[caltrek]

Basic Research for High-performance Batteries: The Leopoldina’s Greve Prize Awarded to Physicist Kerstin Volz and Physical Chemist Jürgen Janek

October 20, 2022

Introduction:

(EurekAlert) Physicist Prof. Dr. Kerstin Volz and physical chemist Prof. Dr. Jürgen Janek will receive the 2022 Greve Prize from the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina for their fundamental insights into rechargeable batteries. The newly established prize, which is worth 250,000 euros, is donated by the Helmut and Hannelore Greve Foundation for Science, Development and Culture. This year’s prize honours outstanding research into the scientific foundations of sustainable energy supply.

Kerstin Volz, Director of the Materials Sciences Center (WZMW) at the Philipps-Universität Marburg, and Leopoldina member Jürgen Janek, Director of the Center for Materials Research at the Justus Liebig University Gießen (JLU), investigate issues relating to electrochemical energy storage. Their research, both as individuals and as a team, has helped to improve high-performance batteries and develop new, resource-saving electrochemical energy storage concepts. “Kerstin Volz and Jürgen Janek are advancing the research into and development of the battery systems of the future. They are thus making important contributions to sustainable energy storage, which is urgently required to tackle the climate crisis,” says Leopoldina President Prof. (ETHZ) Dr. Gerald Haug.

Kerstin Volz (born in 1971) is a leading international scientist in the area of solid-state physics. She examines the production of novel functional materials and their quantitative characteristics. She enables high-resolution insights into batteries and semiconductors using electron microscope methods. Her fundamental insights into separation and structure have helped, for example, to develop energy materials and make them more powerful, and to significantly improve solar cells and devices for photo-electrochemical water splitting. Volz studied physics at the University of Augsburg and after completing her doctorate did her habilitation at the Philipps-Universität Marburg, where she has been Professor of Experimental Physics since 2009 and Managing Director of the Materials Sciences Center since 2015. There she is head of a Collaborative Research Center (Sonderforschungsbereich) funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), which examines fundamental aspects of charging and energy transfer at and over interfaces, which then also play an important role in devices.

Jürgen Janek (born in 1964) is an expert in the field of solid-state electrochemistry and specialises in materials research for batteries.

Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/968553

[caltrek]

Breakthrough by Hong Kong University Engineering Researchers in Post Lithium-ion Batteries
October 26, 2022

Introduction:

(EurekAlert) Despite their popular use today, lithium-ion batteries have the drawbacks of being toxic and expensive, with a global supply shortage of metal. And for decades, researchers have tried to look for alternatives which are more environmental-friendly, safer, and of lower cost.

A team of researchers led by Professor Dennis Leung from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) has discovered a new possibility – a rechargeable aqueous battery with a magnesium metal anode. The innovation opens a new direction for the development of post-lithium-ion batteries.

The team’s findings, which were published in ACS Energy Letters, in an article titled “Reversibility of a high-voltage, Cl-assisted, aqueous Mg metal battery enabled by a water-in-salt electrolyte”, bring attention to the overlooked rechargeable aqueous Magnesium (Mg) metal batteries.

“With a high theoretical capacity and negative electrochemical potential, magnesium is an attractive anode material,” said Professor Leung. “Magnesium is also non-toxic and earth-abundant.”

Mg makes up over 2% of the earth’s crust, which is more abundant than lithium by 1000 times. For long, Mg metals were considered hard to be used in batteries because of their high reactivity. Mg is passivated when exposed to moisture, forming an impermeable oxidation film that blocks redox reactions. Most researchers study Mg batteries with non-aqueous organic electrolytes, but they are often costly, unstable, and poorly conductive.

Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/969339

[weatheriscool]

Engineers develop a rechargeable aqueous battery with a magnesium metal anode
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-10-rec ... metal.html
by The University of Hong Kong

Despite their popular use today, lithium-ion batteries have the drawbacks of being toxic and expensive, with the added complication of a global supply shortage of the metal. For decades, researchers have tried to look for alternatives that are more environmentally friendly, safer, and of lower cost.

A team of researchers led by Professor Dennis Leung from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) has discovered a new possibility—a rechargeable aqueous battery with a magnesium metal anode. The innovation opens a new direction for the development of post-lithium-ion batteries.

The team's findings, which were published in ACS Energy Letters in an article titled "Reversibility of a high-voltage, Cl-regulated, aqueous Mg metal battery enabled by a water-in-salt electrolyte," focus attention on the overlooked rechargeable aqueous magnesium (Mg) metal batteries.

"With a high theoretical capacity and negative electrochemical potential, magnesium is an attractive anode material," said Professor Leung. "Magnesium is also non-toxic and earth-abundant."

Mg makes up over 2% of the Earth's crust and is 1,000 times more abundant than lithium. Mg metals were long considered difficult to use in batteries because of their high reactivity. Mg is passivated when exposed to moisture, forming an impermeable oxidation film that blocks redox reactions. Most researchers study Mg batteries with non-aqueous organic electrolytes, but they are often costly, unstable, and poorly conductive.

[weatheriscool]

Novel molecular orbital interaction that stabilizes cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries
https://phys.org/news/2022-11-molecular ... thode.html
by Susan Bogle, Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO)

A large international team led by scientists from the Institute for Superconducting and Electronic Materials at the University of Wollongong has verified that the introduction of novel molecular orbital interactions can improve the structural stability of cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries.

The production of better cathode materials for high-performance lithium-ion batteries is a major challenge for the electric car industry.

In research published in Angewandte Chemie, first author Dr. Gemeng Liang, Prof Zaiping Guo and associates, used multiple capabilities at ANSTO and other techniques to provide evidence that doping a promising cathode material, spinel LiNi0.5 Mn1.5 O4 (LNMO), with germanium significantly strengthens the 4s-2p orbital interaction between oxygen and metal cations.

"The 4s-2p orbital is relatively uncommon, but we found a compound in the literature in which germanium has a valence state of + 3, enabling an electron configuration ([Ar] 3d104s1) in which 4s transition metal orbital electrons are available to interact with unpaired electrons in the oxygen 2p orbital, producing the hybrid 4s-2p orbital."

[weatheriscool]

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.

[weatheriscool]

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.

[weatheriscool]

‘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]

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.

[caltrek]

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.

[weatheriscool]

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.

[wjfox]

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/

[caltrek]

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

[weatheriscool]

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]

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.