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
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Current density is discussed throughout. Power density once. Energy density is not discussed at all.
You’re right. I stand corrected.
They are not being honest when they say: “The new battery – which uses no metals or toxic materials
Yes, that would be an issue, because if they lied about that, then it would undermine them in general. Apart from that, though, I don’t see that toxicity is an issue. All batteries are pretty toxic, aren’t they?
Something else about wind and EVs.
I don’t see any inherent connection at all. I look at the grid and its sources. I view EVs as another appliance that gets plugged in. If there were 100 million or 250 million of them, I think much of the charging would be done at night, and perhaps that could be more likely satisfied by wind, but once the electrons are in the system they’re not labeled.
As I wrote earlier, we’re not going top have 100 million (or more EVs) without big advancements beyond lithium-ion, and I tend to think that if that happens, we’ll also see movement at the grid level. Which would mean little, if any differentiation between power sources depending on time of day. Grid-scale storage would enable “night-time solar” and “day-time wind,” regardless of when the energy was generated.
This is better than any of the metal systems (except for sodum-sulfur) because all the known metal systems use fairly rare metals. Which would mean that their prices would skyrocket as soon as demand exceeded supply. Developing a mine is a 20 year obstacle course filled with alligators.
With this it should be easy to make more battery active material since it can be synthesised on demand, and doesn’t have to be mined.
The downside is the energy density will be at best a tenth of a tankful of liquid fuel, so it would make little sense for vehicles, since the tank would have to be ten times bigger than your gas tank is now. With lots of extra weight to carry around.
It would probably be better to produce hydrogen from water using nuclear power, then convert it to methanol. A tankful of methanol would be nearly as energy dense as a tank of hydrocarbons, and therefore car designs would need little modification.
BTW: sodium-sulfur batteries have an advantage that sodium and sulfur are common, so there isn’t much issue with supply/demand price shocks. Unfortunately its a molten system requiring a temperature around 200 C. Not practical for cars in a US winter.
The downside is the energy density will be at best a tenth of a tankful of liquid fuel, so it would make little sense for vehicles, since the tank would have to be ten times bigger than your gas tank is now. With lots of extra weight to carry around.
A couple things to remember.
1. An electric vehicle gets 3 to 3-1/2 times the mileage as an equivalent gas car. So the “10 times” becomes 3 times.
2. Acceptable commuter car range is half that of a full-service car, maybe even less. So now we’re down to a battery that’s maybe 50% bigger than a gas tank.
If the performance characteristics were acceptable, i.e. rate of current flow, speed of recharging, then (at least in theory) this battery sounds like a potential quantum leap for EVs. Devil’s in the details, of course.
Jake J says:
June 26, 2014 at 3:03 pm
However, most people will plug them in as soon as they get home from work, so they will begin charging in the evening when the residential electric demand is approaching it’s evening peak.
However, most people will plug them in as soon as they get home from work, so they will begin charging in the evening when the residential electric demand is approaching it’s evening peak.
I’ve owned an EV for 19 months. Please believe me when I say this is not some exercise in smugness. I’m a car nut and a curious sort, and got the thing in a bankruptcy close-out sale. Anyway, the earliest I can ever recall plugging it in is 5:30 p.m., but it’s much more common to plug it in at 10 or 11 p.m.
If we get 100 million of them out there, I think the re-charging patterns will change. It would depend heavily on battery capacity and recharge rates. Today’s new EVs will charge off of an electric dryer circuit at a rate of about 6.5 kWh per hour, which will fill today’s Nissan LEAF from 20% to 100% of capacity just over 3 hours.
I think the commuter car market will need a battery of at least 60 kwh — and much cheaper than today’s batteries — to go mainstream. If we had a cheap 60 kWh battery, an 80% charge would be a 7-1/4 hour charge, and would last for a year-’round average of 140 miles. Which means that a typical commuter would recharge it maybe three times every two weeks. Probably overnight, and probably from the electric dryer circuit (240v, 30 amp rated).
Anything larger than that would need special wiring, or one of those Tesla “super chargers.” I don’t think widespread commuter car adoption, presuming 60 kWh batteries, would change current charging patterns much — 90%+ of charging is done at home, off of 240 volt wiring.
What would change things would be general purpose EVs with larger batteries and therefore longer ranges. At that point, you’d see a spread of those Tesla-style “superchargers,” which today are few and far between and exist mostly for promotional purposes. Put people in EVs all over the place, and you’d see more high-power daytime charging. But that’s all theoretical, because I really don’t think we’re going to see EVs in the general purpose car market for quite a while.
But I do think we’ll see then 60 kWh battery in the next five or six years, and at a lower price. I think commuter EVs will start becoming mainstream in the ’20s. If the battery we’re commenting on is real and could be adapted for EV use, it sounds like it’d be a pretty big deal.
Finally got a chance to read the article. As usual, the Uni PR flack is not even in left field…he/she is somewhere around Mars.
The article is a pretty a standard e-chem study with some interesting results. As others have commented, the concept is no different from other flow batteries that have been around for years.
The twist is the organic component, which only means the redox agent is now susceptible to irreversible over-oxidation. I have no idea where the “5000 cycles” claim came from, since the only data I see shows 12 cycles, and even those never showed a plateau (i.e. degradation was evident in every cycle.) The other thing that caught my eye is they could only discharge the system to around 50% of its capacity. Severe over-potential and what not. And like lead acid and inorganic flow batteries, it operates at a pH of around zero. (The term “battery acid” has the connotation it has for a reason.) As far as “natural hydrocarbon” and the “potentially made from CO2” nonsense, I suppose we could say nuclear power plants get fuel from “natural radioactivity” and that gold could be “potentially made from seawater” (all you need is plenty of energy).
Conclusion—standard ECS-type publication, but if that PR release had been put out by a corporation, they’d have the SEC and FTC breathing down their necks.
Your “source” is a .gov website. They are NOT trustworthy with regard ANY information from this administration on ANY “factoid” promoting or promoted for/by/or from ANY of their energy management schemes.
Conclusion—standard ECS-type publication, but if that PR release had been put out by a corporation, they’d have the SEC and FTC breathing down their necks.
What’s an “ECS type publication?” The acronyms around here get confusing.
Your “source” is a .gov website. They are NOT trustworthy with regard ANY information from this administration on ANY “factoid” promoting or promoted for/by/or from ANY of their energy management schemes.
Oh please. I own an EV, remember? The EPA fuel economy numbers are solid. There are some variations, of course, given the large regional climactic variations. And the DOE production numbers are reliable. An anti-government screed is no more credible than, say, the b.s. we’ve seen from the climate alarmists.
If you want to take issue with the EPA and DOE numbers I’ve been citing, I’m happy to listen, but you will have to come up with more than you cynicism about the Evil Gub’mint.
p.s.: Are you challenging the energy equivalent formula used to translate the energy in gasoline to kWh? If so, I’m definitely all ears.
Are you challenging the energy consumption numbers for EVs, i.e., miles per kWh? If so, you’re just wrong.
Are you challenging the energy consumption numbers for gas-powered vehicles, i.e., miles per gallon? If so, you’re wrong there, too. The EPA numbers were too high for a while, but they changed their testing a while back and now they’re quite accurate.
Or is this just some wingnut ranting about “anything government?”
“What’s an “ECS type publication?” The acronyms around here get confusing.”
The type of paper one sees published by the ECS. Not meant to be derogatory.
Someone who read the paper might have noticed the name of the journal and the big honkin’ logo just to the left of the title.
Jake wrote;
“You seem vehement. And condescending. Do you live in London?”
No. Jake I have never lived in London (fine city that it is, and hopefully always will be; “Our finest hour…” Winston somebody…).
With all due respect, i find it very condescending that someone who has never even attempted to build a battery is quite sure that all the other folks that attempted said task only came up with “primitive” solutions. You admit that you have not and probably cannot build a battery, but you are quite smug asserting that those folks that attempted this “primate task” have FAILED.
And you also assert that these folks are “dummies” since they are way too stupid to look for the “low hanging fruit”…..
I suggest you try to build a battery first before you criticize those that actually do, The electric car is a STUPID idea as shown over a century ago by folks that tried it (Ford, Edison), and the periodic table of elements does not have very many more elements than back then when they tried it,
“Mega storage” via batteries is a tricky business..
Common types of rechargeable cells range from about 1.0 to maybe 3.0 open circuit Voltage.
We are most familiar with the ordinary lead acid car battery. Basically you have two lead plates in a dilute sulfuric acid solution; H2SO4. Well actually one plate is lead , and the other is lead peroxide. I think that’s Pb3O4, a brown substance.
We made a lead acid cell in high schools starting with two plane sheets of pure lead, Pb. First you have to “form” the plates. Passing a charge through it till the exposed surface of one plate is completely converted to brown lead peroxide. Then you reverse the polarity, and discharge the cell, and charge it in the opposite direction. The lead peroxide gets reduced to lead, and the other plate gets coated with the brown stuff. But the reduced lead surface of the first plat is now porous, so a greater surface area of lead is now contacting the electrolyte. Each time you reverse it, the porous surface area on both plates increases, and this is how you get a huge area and a large charge storage capacity.
Well these days, they simply squeeze a lead peroxide paste into a lead grid on one plate and perhaps Pbo into the other plate. that stuff is not brown. On fully charging it, the Pbo is reduced to Pb , and the Pb3O4 remains on the other plate. I forget which one is which but you can find it all in the weblit.
This reversibility of the lead acid cell, is one of its Achilles heels.
With a 6 cell series 12 Volt battery, the normal cell Voltage on moderate discharge loads, is 2.0 Volts, and about 2.1 V open circuit.
On discharge, one cell is going to run out of Pb3O4 before the others do, and is going to stop putting out any power. If the battery is still on load, it cannot put out more than 10 Volts, but it will try to supply current to the load anyway.
So this ends up running current thr wrong way, through the discharged cell, and being symmetrical, it simply starts charging in the reverse direction, which will further lower the battery Voltage to 8 Volts.
So now when you try to charge the battery, one cell is partially charged backwards, and it will have to completely discharge again, before it can start charging in the correct direction.. Eventually the other five cells will be fully charged, so their cell Voltage will now rise, as the process starts to electrolyze the water, and give off H2 and O2, and hence losing electrolyte. The charger will shut off, and that will leave the one errant cell, with a smaller Ampere hours of charge compared to the other five..
Guess which cell is going to go flat first on the next discharge under load cycle..
That will happen even sooner, because that cell never got fully charged.
This thing is worse than a pitcher plant. The weak cell, goes steadily downhill, with each charge/discharge cycle; it’s totally diabolical.
So SERIES STRINGS of lead acid cells, are a problem, and the more in series, the worse the problem.
The cognoscenti, who use 24 Volt or 36 Volt lead acid systems ( bass boats for example) have a sophisticated charger system, where each 12 Volt battery is isolated and charged by a separate circuit, dedicated to that battery to redcuce the cell reversal problem.
So if you parallel up say four car batteries, and run them at 12 Volts and 4x amps, well once again, one battery is going to go flat first, and its Voltage will drop, so the remaining three good batteries, will start trying to charge the errant battery, instead of supplying all their juice to the load.
Well the pestilence is different, but once again the effect is cumulative.
So large arrays of cells, in either serial or parallel strings, are quite difficult to retain in equal charge status, without self destructing.
So charging systems have to get more complex, and costly.
Well of course Diesel electric subs, have dealt with this kind of problem.
But even they don’t think of being “mega storage” systems.
So good luck with your organic carbon based batteries.
The type of paper one sees published by the ECS. Not meant to be derogatory.
I absolutely, positively swear on a stack of ’em that the following question is not meant in a snarky or dilatory way. In fact, it’s probably stupid and lazy, but it’s a quarter to 9 in Seattle and I’m both hungry and have had a Manhattan. (I only say this because so much Internet dialogue is exactly that.) What is “the ECS?” Thanks, and please take pity on me 🙂
I will believe this new battery if it can be commercially produced cheaper than lead acid battery. It’s really a cost game in the market. There are many wonderful technologies in laboratories. Only the economical ones make it to the market.
“””””…..Jake J says:
June 26, 2014 at 1:34 pm
I didn’t see one word about energy density, in Wh / kg or Wh /m^3.
Energy density is discussed throughout the study……”””””
Well Jake; maybe so.
But imagine I am john q public, with a texting attention span.
Listening to, or reading a press release or publicity announcement, I expect to hear those numbers, in just the first 30 seconds of the hype session.
They don’t appear in this WUWT post. I’ve already lost interest, and am not going to search elsewhere to find the most important known facts about ANY new technology.
Low cost is meaningless if it is also low performance.
Solar cell cost is totally irrelevant. But air mass 1.5 solar conversion efficience, is the only important parameter.
After all, the weak link in the renewable energy system, IS THE SUN.
At 100 watt per square foot, that is all you have to work with. So if I can spray on solar cells from a garden hose onto plywood, at $0.01 per square foot, at 5% solar conversion efficiency, they are not even worth the trouble to put them on my roof., specially with 100 year storms happening every two or three years.
With all due respect, i find it very condescending that someone who has never even attempted to build a battery is quite sure that all the other folks that attempted said task only came up with “primitive” solutions. You admit that you have not and probably cannot build a battery, but you are quite smug asserting that those folks that attempted this “primate task” have FAILED.
And you also assert that these folks are “dummies” since they are way too stupid to look for the “low hanging fruit”
I plead Guilty As Hell to not being able to build a battery, but Innocent As The Pure Driven Snow to calling anyone “dummies.” The “primitive” label was meant to be purely descriptive, and not in any way judgmental. I am very, very grateful for the fruits of honest science and engineering. Now: Have I bowed and scraped and walked backwards enough for you?
I have never lived in London (fine city that it is, and hopefully always will be; “Our finest hour…” Winston somebody…)
Let’s Make A Deal: You don’t throw Churchill westward, and I don’t throw “we saved your asses” eastward. 🙂
@ur momisugly george e. smith, this has been a long thread. In my very first comment, I expressed strong skepticism about energy via press release. So please don’t think I’m somehow promoting this. I follow these announcement, or at least some of them, but — again, please believe me — I am very, very strictly in “(dis)trust but verify” mode. I hope this convinces you that I am not some eco-faking dreamer. I am anything but.
Noaaprogrammer said:
“During December and January In the valleys of southeastern Washington state we can go weeks with no wind and heavy fog from temperature inversions. To tide us over, batteries accompanying our wind farms would match the size of large water tanks.”
Jake J said:
Call me wrong — please — but last time I looked, they were weren’t sticking the windmills in valleys. But if I’m wrong and they are doing that, what’s wrong with “the size of large water tanks” once you’ve ruined the landscape?
I’ll oblige: Jake, you are wrong. Valleys have rims over which wind may readily flow when present. River gorges through mountain ranges experience winds when the ranges momentarily separate significant pressure differentials. The Stateline Wind Farm which I see from my house in the Walla Walla Valley was one of the earliest (2001) large scale wind farms, and is destined to be the largest wind farm in the world with 365 turbines when completed. The farm is fed by winds from the Columbia Gorge.
(I’ll concede your comment “what’s wrong with ‘the size of large water tanks’ once you’ve ruined the landscape?” as I left out the qualifying phrase: “further ruining the landscape.”)
More data on electrical power plant and transmission efficiency from a UK site here:
http://www.mpoweruk.com/energy_efficiency.htm
A chart of various plant types is provided along with some ballpark transmission losses, but they boil down to:
traditional coal 45% or so
gas turbine about 35%
Transmission loss 5-10% (7-8% average given for the U.S.)
So a traditional coal plant would net about 40-35% efficiency from rail-car or pipeline to your outlet, while natural gas turbine might manage 30-25% from pipeline to outlet.
In the U.S. these two provide the bulk of our electrical supply. While a gasoline powered car throws away 66% or so of the energy in its tank, the electrical generation/distribution system loses a similar amount before anything comes from your outlet. Looks to me like EV vs gasoline is a matter of taste and a virtual energy toss-up in today’s world.
@SciGuy, very interesting! Thanks. If you have something “official,” I’d love to see it. This is not an to deflect or be dilatory. Rather, what you’ve provided is sufficiently important to want a second source. Thanks very much for the link.
By the way, with “solar photovoltaic,” it looks like they combined thin-film and silicon. Ther silicon-based cells are somewhere near 25% from what I understand, with thin-film about half that.
@noaaprogrammer, I’ll take your word on this. Yep, in the right configurations, valleys can be windy.
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?
So you have a problem with frying birds?
@sciguy54, no need to find a second source. All I needed to do was formulate the question. Thanks for the push. Learn something new every day.
http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=107&t=3