We’ve seen so many press releases for a new battery technology that seems almost to good to be true over the years. A lot of them were and never made it past the press release. Here’s to hoping this one isn’t one of those.
From the University of Southern California
USC scientists create new battery that’s cheap, clean, rechargeable… and organic
Scientists at USC have developed a water-based organic battery that is long lasting, built from cheap, eco-friendly components.
The new battery – which uses no metals or toxic materials – is intended for use in power plants, where it can make the energy grid more resilient and efficient by creating a large-scale means to store energy for use as needed.
“The batteries last for about 5,000 recharge cycles, giving them an estimated 15-year lifespan,” said Sri Narayan, professor of chemistry at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and corresponding author of a paper describing the new batteries that was published online by the Journal of the Electrochemical Society on June 20. “Lithium ion batteries degrade after around 1,000 cycles, and cost 10 times more to manufacture.”
Narayan collaborated with Surya Prakash, Prakash, professor of chemistry and director of the USC Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute, as well as USC’s Bo Yang, Lena Hoober-Burkhardt, and Fang Wang.
“Such organic flow batteries will be game-changers for grid electrical energy storage in terms of simplicity, cost, reliability and sustainability,” said Prakash.
The batteries could pave the way for renewable energy sources to make up a greater share of the nation’s energy generation. Solar panels can only generate power when the sun’s shining, and wind turbines can only generate power when the wind blows. That inherent unreliability makes it difficult for power companies to rely on them to meet customer demand.
With batteries to store surplus energy and then dole it out as needed, that sporadic unreliability could cease to be such an issue.
“‘Mega-scale’ energy storage is a critical problem in the future of the renewable energy, requiring inexpensive and eco-friendly solutions,” Narayan said.
The new battery is based on a redox flow design – similar in design to a fuel cell, with two tanks of electroactive materials dissolved in water. The solutions are pumped into a cell containing a membrane between the two fluids with electrodes on either side, releasing energy.
The design has the advantage of decoupling power from energy. The tanks of electroactive materials can be made as large as needed – increasing total amount of energy the system can store – or the central cell can be tweaked to release that energy faster or slower, altering the amount of power (energy released over time) that the system can generate.
The team’s breakthrough centered around the electroactive materials. While previous battery designs have used metals or toxic chemicals, Narayan and Prakash wanted to find an organic compound that could be dissolved in water. Such a system would create a minimal impact on the environment, and would likely be cheap, they figured.
Through a combination of molecule design and trial-and-error, they found that certain naturally occurring quinones – oxidized organic compounds – fit the bill. Quinones are found in plants, fungi, bacteria, and some animals, and are involved in photosynthesis and cellular respiration.
“These are the types of molecules that nature uses for energy transfer,” Narayan said.
Currently, the quinones needed for the batteries are manufactured from naturally occurring hydrocarbons. In the future, the potential exists to derive them from carbon dioxide, Narayan said.
The team has filed several patents in regards to design of the battery, and next plans to build a larger scale version.
This research was funded by the ARPA-E Open-FOA program (DE-AR0000337), the University of Southern California, and the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute.
==============================================================
Here is the paper, which is open access.
An Inexpensive Aqueous Flow Battery for Large-Scale Electrical Energy Storage Based on Water-Soluble Organic Redox Couples
Abstract
We introduce a novel Organic Redox Flow Battery (ORBAT), for meeting the demanding requirements of cost, eco-friendliness, and durability for large-scale energy storage. ORBAT employs two different water-soluble organic redox couples on the positive and negative side of a flow battery. Redox couples such as quinones are particularly attractive for this application. No precious metal catalyst is needed because of the fast proton-coupled electron transfer processes. Furthermore, in acid media, the quinones exhibit good chemical stability. These properties render quinone-based redox couples very attractive for high-efficiency metal-free rechargeable batteries. We demonstrate the rechargeability of ORBAT with anthraquinone-2-sulfonic acid or anthraquinone-2,6-disulfonic acid on the negative side, and 1,2-dihydrobenzoquinone- 3,5-disulfonic acid on the positive side. The ORBAT cell uses a membrane-electrode assembly configuration similar to that used in polymer electrolyte fuel cells. Such a battery can be charged and discharged multiple times at high faradaic efficiency without any noticeable degradation of performance. We show that solubility and mass transport properties of the reactants and products are paramount to achieving high current densities and high efficiency. The ORBAT configuration presents a unique opportunity for developing an inexpensive and sustainable metal-free rechargeable battery for large-scale electrical energy storage.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (CC BY, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse of the work in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Full text: http://jes.ecsdl.org/content/161/9/A1371.full.pdf
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Altair Nano is working on some Lithium Titanate batteries over in Reno. Not as green as this one, but it’s already in production.
Aquion Energy has a saltwater electrolyte battery, targeting renewable energy storage.
Interesting times we live in.
http://www.aquionenergy.com/energy-storage-technology
Quinones are horribly toxic highly reactive organic chemicals, currently used (with care!) in the dye and photographic industry. Part of the toxicity of benzene is caused by the body converting absorbed benzene into toxic quinone metabolites.
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002732.htm
I’d rather go with the lithium.
Keywords: “Mega storage”, If you can’t store enough to never require a fossil plant to be in backup, what have you done except tear up more land and chop/fry more birds? On a more practical note, can it fit in my car?
Some engineering issues that these may have (good thing there are lots of talented engineers in the world).
I may be reading the graphic wrong, but it appears that this produces electricity at a voltage of less than one volt. Better have very short wires to the inverter or a number of these in series to produce a decent voltage. I may be recalling incorrectly, but a lead acid battery produces about 2 volts per cell, so this is not a big issue.
Are those pumps I see? I assume these are needed for charge and discharge. What powers the pumps? Is the electricity generated by the reaction greater than the power necessary to operate the pumps? This might be a tech killer.
Though symbolically “bad”, lead is highly recyclable at very low cost. I vaguely recall that more than half the lead used for new things comes from recycled lead. Lead is also a dense storage. How does this compare to lead in terms of cost. Also mass and volume required for equivalent storage capacity? This may make the tech noncompetitive with lead acid. Other battery types are much less environmentally benign than lead acid which is why most “home” solar still uses lead acid.
As the owner of an electric car, I’m very focused on the energy density, cost per kWh, longevity, and performance of batteries. The technology of batteries is phenomenally primitive, so you’d think there’d be low-hanging fruit out there. However, I am even more aware of the flood of press releases that, in the end, serve as little more than grantsmanship.
I’ll delve into this study, mainly because of the credibility that WUWT has achieved with me. But I’ll do so with low expectations and high skepticism. That said, cheap, effective , high-performance energy storage would definitely be a game-changer of historic importance, be it grid-level or portable.
Meh. A year ago I read about super-cheap solar cells made from carbon that were going to revolutionize the industry. Since then, zilch.
Wake me when it’s actually something I can buy at Walmart.
The first thing to point out is that these batteries have a very low energy density, although actual figures are not provided, and are not suitable for automobiles. The second problem is that
batteries can displace energy from one part of the day to another, but that doesn’t solve the unreliability characteristics of solar or wind energy. These power sources can die off for days or weeks, far beyond the storage capacity of any battery system, and even if there existed a large capacity, exactly how are you going to replenish it and at the same time provide power from the solar/wind source? While in a desert solar power be pretty much guaranteed, but it only takes a couple of cloudy days to require backup power generation capacity. In general, if a renewable source is interrupted, that means your system is not providing enough energy. Batteries don’t solve that problem, since they cannot generate electricity by themselves. I would say that , at most, storage systems prevent the grid operator from having to throw away power or power
controllable sources up and down, but a lot depends upon the percentage that comes from renewable sources – the greater the percentage, the bigger the problems.
Now for some REALLY exciting battery news – here we’re talking Ryden dual carbon (eventually organic) cotton batteries from Japan Power Plus and a Japanese university after 7 years of development.
http://powerjapanplus.com/
These batteries , which have an energy density equal to current li ion batteries used in Tesla cars, are the answer to every prayer (except perhaps cost, which will not exceed current batteries
but is otherwise unknown). These batteries can be recharged 3000 times before they even begin
to detriorate (if in a auto with a 300 mile pack, would last over 900,000 miles before beginning to deteriorate), can be recharged 20 TIMES FASTER THAN lithium batteries (in a couple of minutes) , can be discharged completely without damaging the cell (which destroys a Tesla battery pack) ,
allowing greater actual capacity, are impossible to catch fire or explode (don’t require heavy metal container) , do not vary thermally when charged or discharged (don’t need a cooling system, as Tesla uses and can accept 100% of electricity fed to them , unlike the 85% that actually gets into a Tesla battery ). Team TAISAN of Japan, which has won LeMans races
and worked with electric cars, is now about to test the batteries in a go-kart in August, followed by
testing in one of their race cars. It won’t be long before the world will know whether we have a
perfect battery or not with the Ryden. Price may be,as usual, the killer, but if the battery pack can be quickly recharged, then you can get by with a lot smaller battery pack. The Tesla Model S
battery pack , for example (cost – around $38,000) holds 85 kWhrs and can do 250 miles around town, but on the highway roughly 210 miles and requires over an hour at a super charger station to recharge. It has actually too much capacity for around town driving but not so much for an extended trip. A fast recharging battery would allow the owner to get by with a smaller battery
pack. And since the Ryden can be fully discharged without harm, a Ryden battery with the same nominal capacity as a Tesla battery actually has 10% more usuable capacity and 10% greater
driving range. Here’s hoping it works as advertised and is not too expensive. If cheap enough,
that’s the end of gas powered vehicles, by and large.
The real test is if it works on an appropriate test scale. Report back when I can try one myself for a system cost of 10K.
I was looking at UK power generation grid statistics today and noticed the massive swings in wind generation statistics between Summer and Winter. So my question about these batteries is how big would they actually be to smooth out the flow from wind generation. Of course you would have to store the power for several months!! Does this really make sense?
With pumps to feed and losses in the inverter and rectifier (from wind?) the losses must be large, solar and wind are rubbish for the grid stop putting lipstick on a pig!
I am not sure how they intend to recharge these batteries? We had an electric powered tourist bus in Armidale, that kept breaking down, and the only place it could be charged up was at the TAFE college. They found that this was too expensive. So they switched to a diesel or petrol bus.
It is the same with electric cars run on batteries. They need electricity to re charge. From a coal powered system?
Currently, the quinones needed for the batteries are manufactured from naturally occurring hydrocarbons.”
There are non ” naturally occurring hydrocarbons”?
Col Mosby says:
June 25, 2014 at 6:52 pm
“If cheap enough, that’s the end of gas powered vehicles, by and large.”
Although I confess I didn’t read the article in detail, I didn’t see any discussion of vehicle range vs temperature which restricts range in cold climates. I also assume all specified ranges are without the use of auxiliary equipment such as air conditioning which can also significantly restrict range. Niche markets already exist for electric vehicles and will in all probability expand. Unless I missed something in these discussions, IMO nothing here gives reason to believe electric vehicles will significantly expand beyond niche markets in the foreseeable future.
The redox chemistry is reasonable but as col mosby points out, the energy density is low: not ever going to be seeing them in portable electronics or cars. And what would be the cost and land area taken up to store a few weeks worth of energy equivalent to the output from a power station? We’ll see… or not.
They’re also a bit sketchy about the details of the electrodes. At least one of them is still using lead. Hmmm…
The first thing to point out is that these batteries have a very low energy density, although actual figures are not provided, and are not suitable for automobiles.
I didn’t see any mention of cars, so it doesn’t surprise me.
batteries can displace energy from one part of the day to another, but that doesn’t solve the unreliability characteristics of solar or wind energy. These power sources can die off for days or weeks, far beyond the storage capacity of any battery system
Perhaps true, but depending on the specifics on this kind of battery, it could still (at least theoeretically) have a big impact on the dispatchability issue, if not, say, an extended period of calm winds.
even if there existed a large capacity, exactly how are you going to replenish it and at the same time provide power from the solar/wind source?
If I understand the question correctly, the battery gets replenished during times of high production (i.e. at night with wind) and discharged during times of high demand. Wouldn’t the purpose be to level out short-term production fluctuations? Yes, I realize that longer-term fluctuations are a different issue, but “dispatchability” has a major short-term component, no?
Do we detect a cultural component to the innovative thinking that led to this design? So much non-PC thinking. Can’t possibly have any truth to it.
And what would be the cost and land area taken up to store a few weeks worth of energy equivalent to the output from a power station?
Hard to imagine this being a big issue given the application to renewables. Surely there’s enough room within most windmill farms for them.
And what would be the cost and land area taken up to store a few weeks worth of energy equivalent to the output from a power station?
And who’d need a few weeks worth of storage? I’d think a few days — maybe less — would do the trick for the short-term component of dispatchability.
Price may be,as usual, the killer, but if the battery pack can be quickly recharged, then you can get by with a lot smaller battery pack. The Tesla Model S battery pack , for example (cost – around $38,000) holds 85 kWhrs and can do 250 miles around town, but on the highway roughly 210 miles and requires over an hour at a super charger station to recharge. It has actually too much capacity for around town driving but not so much for an extended trip. A fast recharging battery would allow the owner to get by with a smaller battery pack.
Sorry, but this is an issue that I am quite deeply familiar with.
There are 168,000 gas stations in America. There are 100 Tesla “superchargers,” most located along interstate freeways. The car’s range to prudent refill is anywhere from 160 miles to 220 miles depending on weather. And a lot less if the temperature is below zero.
Yes, Tesla’s $100,000 car has a great range for around town. More than adequate in most cases. But when it comes to road trips, it’s a very different story, the promotional excursions by enthusiasts notwithstanding.
EVs currently occupy a very small niche of enthusiasts, early adopters, and status-symbol display. To become viable city commuter vehicles, they need much bigger batteries than today’s 24 kWh battery in the Nissan LEAF, the largest selling EV. In my view, a minimum of 60 kWh is needed — and at a far lower cost per kWh than today’s models.
The publicity and niche enthusiasm for EVs has greatly outstripped the practical realities. As the owner of an EV and a standard gas-powered vehicle, I am aware of the differences and similarities in great detail. Electric power is about three times as efficient as gasoline power, because not nearly as much energy is coverted to heat and sent out through the engine, tailpipe, and radiator. However, the cost of batteries is sky-high, and the energy density is very low.
This includes Tesla’s halo car, whose basic difference with a Nissan LEAF is a much bigger battery and therefore a far higher sticker price. EVs are a game of battery energy density and cost, period. We’re not there yet, as far as the mainstream car market is concerned.
I was looking at UK power generation grid statistics today and noticed the massive swings in wind generation statistics between Summer and Winter. So my question about these batteries is how big would they actually be to smooth out the flow from wind generation. Of course you would have to store the power for several months!! Does this really make sense?
I believe that most pressing issue is short-term fluctuations. If summer-to-winter imbalances were disabling, there wouldn’t be many hydroelectric dams. Part of the problem in this discussion is all-or-nothing thinking. We already have a diverse energy generation mix. No one source does it all, and no one source will do it all.
But if a cheap and practical means of smoothing out shorter-term fluctuations is developed, I think it’ll be a very big deal indeed. Not the holy grail, which is a myth anyway. But a big advance.
“The batteries last for about 5,000 recharge cycles, giving them an estimated 15-year lifespan,” “Lithium ion batteries degrade after around 1,000 cycles, and cost 10 times more to manufacture.”
In terms of watt-hour/$, lead acid is a fraction of the cost of lithium ion. In other words, they start out by comparing themselves to the most expensive (in terms of energy stored for a given amount of money) instead of the least expensive, to create the impression of a quantum leap when none exists. Not to mention that if they actually had something as viable as they claim, they’d be quietly patenting their $1 Trillion dollar idea, not publishing papers about it. My expectation is that this is press release to secure more funding by creating the impression of a quantum leap where none exists.
This is right up there with the MIT under water spheres. Lotsa hype but when you look at the actual numbers, nothing but an academic exercise with zero practical value. I’d LOVE to be wrong about this. I just don’t think I am.
There was a super capacitor battery start up that stayed alive for about 10 years touting their technology. Never went beyond theory even though they showed production lines ready to make the product. Electric car companies went out of business giving them money and waiting for a product that never materialized. They continually sold themselves with a modeled theory that never materialized. I bet they are still in business. From what I’ve read this battery has been proven in theory but not practical application and cost is the biggest concern.
I did not read the article, but so far in the comments there are very few numbers. If this really works, the cost will probably drop considerably, and the efficiency will increase somewhat. But for right now, what is the capacity in kilowatt hours per kilogram? Yes, include the fluids and the hardware.
It’s a pumped electrolyte battery, been around for decades. They are the cheapest stationary battery around. High capacity but not fast discharge like Li+.
Why are they making a big deal about no metals and non-toxic. Lead-acid batteries are neither, but they are not destroying the environment. The high cost of lead insures most are recycled.