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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Jake J:
At June 26, 2014 at 9:22 pm you say
OK. So, in addition to proclaiming your ignorance of technology, you also proclaim your ignorance of history and you insult many warriors – including Americans – who gave their lives for THEIR countries.
You get full marks for consistency.
Richard
uh? guys?
two things:
1 – pumped hydroelectric storage currently has a higher energy density and lower environmental cost than these things might have if they could be built at scale.
2 – while better batteries would be a good thing, the electric car’s death warrant was signed by Governer Brown more than a year ago. California is moving to a per mile road tax to replace gsoline taxes – Canada already has an inter provincial agreement raising the price of diesel so users pay comparable to gasoline per mile road taxes. With taxes equalizing costs, there are no advantages to electric except low end torque – for high end sports cars.
george e. smith says:
June 26, 2014 at 1:22 pm
While energy density would be essential for a mobile power source to power a vehicle, it would not be essential for a stationary system to store industrial quantities of power. In an industrial system, if you need another acre, you can buy another acre. It affects the economics, but area would not be the expense that drives the economic analysis.
Paul Murphy says:
June 27, 2014 at 6:54 am
Sites for hydro are limited. Your opinion of the environmental cost probably differs greatly from most environmentalists. I would not want to be the one defending such a system.
“too” good to be true
@richard, you must be a Londoner! 🙂
Jake J:
At June 27, 2014 at 10:30 am you say
Nope. I think that when the Almighty created the cosmos He made it stratified.
At the top He put Heaven with all the angels.
Below Heaven He put the Earth with all its people.
Below the Earth He put Hades with all the fallen angels.
And at the bottom, to hold the whole thing up, He put Greater London.
Richard
When I was in the U.K. last year, I could always get a free pint by sighing and saying, “Yeah, I started this trip in London. Now there‘s a city with all four cheeks sucked in!”
Sciguy54 says:
“traditional coal 45% or so
gas turbine about 35%”
That would requre an extremely efficient coal plant and an fairly inefficient gas turbine. Few if any conventional steam turbine plants can top 40% irrespective of fuel, while a two-cycle gas turbine plant is well over 50 % and can reach 60 %.
Incidentally diesel plants are about as effective as steam turbines – about 40%.
“””””…..Jake J says:
June 26, 2014 at 9:43 pm
@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….”””
Jake, none of my comments here are aimed at you, or any position you might take.
My criticism is aimed squarely at the “press release hype.”
We all know that a big issue with sun powered renewables is on demand availability, and hence energy storage.
Hydro-electric, is a sun powered renewable, that works splendidly in most locations, where lake storage is available. Now there might be other eco-reasons why hydro has a bad name, but on demand availability is not one of them.
For wind and solar PV, storage or alternative fueled backup is a big issue and hence battery storage is a subject of front page interest; so everyone is interested in new battery advances.
Announcements of “new” technologies are worthless unless such technologies have a real chance of displacing existing methods.
Cost, performance, and environmental issues, are always key to the reality of some new candidate.
I annually attend significant conferences on alternative energy technologies. If DOE, is there, it is usually of serious enough quality, to justify my attendance.
Without fail, we always have to sit through presentations, by some university group or other, pushing some penny dreadful solar cell technology, that is hyped as dirt cheap; and the accent is always on the dirt.
Either you can roll it on with a paint roller, onto mild steel sheet, and clip a couple of alligator clips onto it, or my tongue in cheek, garden hose spray on.
So it’s too cheap to even bother writing out a sales slip; BUT !! it has a sea level (commonly specified at air mass 1.5, or 2.0) of 3-5% near mid-day. The air mass number, just indicates an inclined path through a longer column of air, which modifies the ground level solar spectrum from the extra-terrestrial spectrum. the cell efficiency is critically dependent on the cell received solar spectrum.
Any real installation, is expected to withstand severe weather, so the structure, even with no cells at all, needs to survive some severe weather limits.
So the cells could cost zero, and there still will be a minimum structural cost per unit area. It costs real money to simply cover a large area with Saran Wrap, if you need it to survive a hundred year storm.
The problem is, the sun realistically only supplies energy at about 1kW per square meter power level, so the only thing that really matters, is conversion efficiency.
Single crystal silicon can reach into the 25-30% efficiency region from the best manufacturers.
5% efficiency is useless, even at zero cost for the cells.
Well a similar situation applies to the battery energy storage problem, Even at zero cell cost, there are installation costs, that vary directly, with energy density considerations.. These installations, have to be safe, and environmentally kosher, and able to withstand severe weather.
So “efficiency” or energy density are always an important consideration, so they are the first thing one wants to know, about something new.
Any top tier paper on alternative energy or battery technology, better quote the achieved efficiency, or energy density performance, right there in the paper’s published abstract; and be up front in any PR releases, or it will be simply ignored, as of no value.
A much more promising technology for large energy storage is the vanadium redox system, which uses the same electroactive solution on both sides, just in different redox states. This makes it much more durable and tolerant of tiny leaks in the separator. Storage capacity is determined by tank size, power by fuel cell active area. systems up to 4 MW are already in service.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery
http://www.vrb.unsw.edu.au/about-us/history-of-vanadium-redox-battery.html
http://www.vrb.unsw.edu.au/technology-services/vanadium-redox-flow-batteries.html
@george e smith, thanks for the followup. At this same time I’ve been posting here making a series of qualified positive statements about EVs and renewables, I post in an EV group with a high “Church of Climatology” contingent. So I do wind up with a little bit of battle fatigue. The discussion here is of a significantly higher quality, so I take some pains to point out that I’m not a member of any Church of Anything.
Anyway, I hear you about the dreamers. They drive us all nuts, but every now and then one of them is real.
Efficiency sometimes isn’t as simple as it seems. The concept works very well for fossil fuels and nuclear, because you can do a straight-ahead heat calculation. For renewables, it gets a bit stickier. For solar, it’s a conversion of photons to electrons, or so I understand anyway. With wind, a calculation I don’t understand, but I’d expect to be the ratio of some calculation of the force of the wind hitting the blades vs. electrons coming out the wire?
In those cases, and with hydro too, I’d be inclined to interpret “efficiency” as as much an economic variable as anything, i.e., is it worth the materials in light of what gets produced? That strikes me as siomewhat different than the calculation for coal, methane, and uranium. Yes, there is definitely the economic component, but in those cases “efficiency” has an engineering basis that’s tied to heat, whereas with renewables it’s not.
(If my vocabulary lacks adequate precision, well, it’s because I’m a “curious amateur” and not an “energy scientist.” We do the best with what we have and who we were, integrity and basic intelligence being our primary resources when specific expertise is lacking.)
Anyway, from the DOE numbers I linked above, my best guess — based on looking at their numbers and then tracking down the mix of types of natural gas plants in the U.S. — is that coal, petroleum power plants (a miniscule 1% of the mix) and nukes are about 35% efficient, and the weighted average for natural gas is 42%. I score hydro, wind, and solar (together, about 11.5%) at 100% efficiency, not because they convert 100% of the energy coming in to electrons, but because — this is hard to verbalize — “they are what they are.”
This puts the efficiency of the U.S. generation mix somewhere just below 45%. The efficiency of a gas car is on the lower side of 25%, and the conversion efficiency of gasoline production is 85%, making gasoline burned in cars about 20% efficient. EVs are, from my best research (which might not be good enough) about 77% efficient in converting electricity at the plug to motive power. This would make EVs 33% “efficient” at the U.S. generation mix.
I’m interested in your critique. You strike me as intelligent and fair minded, and to be someone who’s not confusing me for an EVangelist or member of the Church of Windmills and Solar Panels.
p.s.: I don’t wish to imply a lack of discipline on renewables. I’m just not sure that conversion rates necessarily compare well the fossil fuels and uranium. I think they need to be looked at somewhat differently.
Costs of inputs vs. value of output, i.e. “net present value,” is one parameter.
Another would be “net energy budget” — do you invest more energy in building, placing, and using a solar panel, wind turbine, or dam than you derive from it?
From what I understand, crude oil and uranium do very well on those parameters; wind does pretty well; solar positive, but less so. Conversion rates would obviously have a significant bearing on these calculations, but I still balk at the idea of, say, “scoring” a solar panel as 25% and a wind turbine at 35% and a dam at 90% for inclusion in an overall efficiency calculation for all electric generation. It seems like mixing apples and oranges.
The concept of efficiency for EV vs Internal Combustion autos depends on what you are trying to conserve, and the precise details of your particular situation. Any generalization would be similar to announcing that the fuel efficiency of your car should be taken as the national auto fuel economy value.
Are you primarily interested in reducing CO2? Are you primarily concerned with fossil fuel use? Want to preserve pristine nature? Are you worried about grid stability and optimum utilization?
As has been discussed in this thread, there are several ways to supply the grid. What is the mix where you live? If additional demand is added to the grid, how is that marginal demand met? For instance, its possible that 80% of your local supply is hydroelectric, but all additional demand could be met with simple gas turbine topping packages, with fairly low energy efficiency but relatively low C02 output as compared to coal. In that case, how efficient is that EV if it represents new marginal demand supplied solely by nat gas topping packages?
And as always, be aware that what is considered ideal by you may be less loved by someone else. For instance, hydroelectric is considered an abomination by some folks. And while an EV has zero tailpipe emissions, someone who lives near that gas turbine will not be as lucky.
@sciguy54, I’m interested in answering an efficiency question. Really, that’s all. Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar.
In this case — same as when I talk to “EVangelists” who regard EVs as a holy grail solution to whatever ails them — I use the U.S. energy mix. This is a vast country with lots of variation. I could completely skew the numbers by using, West Virginia (all coal) or Seattle (all hydro and wind). What I’m trying to do is look at the question as if EVs were to become “mainstream” — distributed all over the place — at the current generation mix.
Yep, it’s theoretical, but I think it’s an o.k. question to ask. In doing so, I’m quite purposely avoiding any kind of value judgments about the fuels. Good God, that’s all everyone ever does here in Seattle. The question for virtue becomes nauseating. So for a brief, shining moment, I’ve decided to do my damndest to be clinically nerdy about it. 🙂
@JakeJ Ha! Its nice to hear that you are having some fun. The hardest thing about being retired is choosing the next shiny thing I always wanted to study but never had the time to do so…. good luck with your exercise!
For the moment, the closest I think I’ve gotten is that EVs are 34% efficient and gas cars are 21% efficient, when the powerplant losses and refinery losses are accounted for. Diesel? Closest I can get is 31% efficient.
“””””…..Jake J says:
June 27, 2014 at 9:14 pm
For the moment, the closest I think I’ve gotten is that EVs are 34% efficient…….”””””
I’ll assume your numbers are correct.
Presumably, an “EV” runs on electricity. So what is the source of that electricity ?
What is the “output” for either the electric, or gas car ? Are we talking say passenger miles; and does time to achieve that, come into play ?
I would assume that a fair measure of “efficiency” would demand an equal result for all options. Would that be; passenger miles per hour, or what would you suggest ?
And I’m not talking top speeds. A lot of cars simply have much higher possible top speeds than is necessary.
I encountered a beautiful European performance standards (as opposed to US) Mercedes Benz 5 passenger sedan with a 6.5 litre turbocharged Vee-12, 950 horse power engine, last Wednesday.
Didn’t ask the owner what top speed was, but I imagine that the first four seconds from a standing start, would be quite a rush. After that, it is just a car, on a 70 mph top speed hiway.
But what is your measure of practical car output performance, that efficiency is based on ??
The Tesla Model S, also has a totally un-necessary max HP output. I don’t mind that, if that’s what sells. But when will there be a practical EV ?
I should add, that I drive a standard 2 litre Subaru Impreza 5 seater hatchback.. Driving by myself, I easily get > 50 mpg, when driving SF Bay area hiways, unless unnecessarily inhibited by ever multiplying, and unnecessary mandated traffic stoppage nuisances.
And for a 750 mile SFBA to LA round trip with three adults plus luggage, in a 2.5 litre Subaru Legacy, I get > 40 mpg, for the entire round trip via the hiway 5 route. ( at > 62 mph average) for the entire moving trip..
Well Jake I see you already dealt with some of my queries. I wouldn’t worry much about your lingo; I don’t see any of the hair standing up variety.
Talking about solar PV, and photons>electrons; the current demonstrated record for a real triple junction (triple band gap too) solar cell, is around 43.5% Energy (or power) conversion efficiency. I hope that is sea level solar, and not extra-terrestrial, but I would have to check up on that. That’s a DOE recognized result.
Such cells are bloody expensive, BUT, they are almost invariably intended for multiple sun, high concentration optics systems, where the cell cost is irrelevant. Roland Winston, at UC Merced, likes playing with that stuff, he’s a master of it . Wrote the book on non-imaging optics. His concentration record is more than 50,000 suns; 56,000 as I recall.
But NOT onto any solar cell; would melt the darn thing.
@Col Mosby
“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. ”
One way to approach this issue is to consider the way wind powered water pumping systems are designed. After a few centuries of practice, it is pretty well known that in order to have a reliable water supply you need 4 days pumped volume in storage.
On a farm the cattle need water everyday and to provide it, the wind regime is studied using a wind rose and all that. For any region, the reliability of supply can be determined using a statistical analysis of that wind rose (direction, speed and duration). This provides an answer that has a statistically determined reliability, or you can specify what reliability you want and the answer will be there in the form of a volume to store.
The same things is done with the flow-demand/offtake calculations to create dams that will reliably supply water to a community. In many places the standard results is a 4 day supply without wind. Looking at the reliable output of a 2 MW windmill, that gives you an idea of how much to store to be wind and battery dependent.
Presumably, an “EV” runs on electricity. So what is the source of that electricity ?
The source is the wall plug. The wall plug gets it from the grid. The U.S. grid gets 39% from coal, 28% from natural gas (three-quarters of which is combined-cycle plants), 19% nuke, 1% petroleum, 7% hydro, 4% wind, 0.2% solar, and 1.8% a combo of municipal waste and geothermal.
What is the “output” for either the electric, or gas car ? Are we talking say passenger miles; and does time to achieve that, come into play ? I would assume that a fair measure of “efficiency” would demand an equal result for all options. Would that be; passenger miles per hour, or what would you suggest ?
The output would be “miles per gallon equivalent.” In other words, how far will the EV go on the amount of kWh contained in a gallon of gasoline? The equivalency formula comes from Dept of Energy data that I adjusted a smidgen to reflect the amount of purchased electricity and fuels used to make electricity used to refine gasoline. That number is 34.8 kWh = 1 gallon of gasoline.
But what is your measure of practical car output performance, that efficiency is based on ??
I wouldn’t be doing the exercise if EVs were golf carts. A Nissan LEAF’s performance is close enough to a Nissan Versa’s to be considered equivalent, in my view. A Tesla roadster was the equivalent of a Lotus Elise. A Tesla Model S = a Mercedes E class, I’d say. And so on. Not in range of course, but in other respects.
@ur momisugly george e smith … let me try it a different way.
For EVs, I calculated the efficiency at the power plant level (44%), then multiplied it by the efficiency between the plug and wheels (77.5%) to get 34%.
For gas cars, there’s the efficiency at the refinery level (86%), multiplied by the efficiency in converting gasoline’s energy to motion (24%) to get 21%.
This assumes that a gas car is equivalent in performance (other than range) to an EV of similar size and weight.
@ur momisugly george e. smith, I keep thinking about “efficiency” as it applies to renewables vs. to fossil fuels. I am frustrated because I can’t find the wording to reflect my thought, which is unusual for me. I mean, there I weant, using the worst of the cliches, “it is what it is.” Ugh.
Maybe it’s that, with hydrocarbons and uranium, we’re talking about thermal efficiency, i.e. a ratio of heat in to electrons out. But with renewables it’s not thermal efficiency. With them, it’s a conversion. Solar, from photons to electrons. Wind and hydro, kinetic energy to electrons.
We render these ratios equivalent by calling them “efficiency,” but they really aren’t equivalent, interchangeable, or combinable. Therefore, the electrons coming from wind, solar, and hydro need to be “scored” at 100% efficiency, with an asterisk noting that they still must be evaluated for viability, but using other techniques.
Maybe some engineer has come up with something more a succinct label to describe what I just conveyed. I sure hope so.
One more thing. I re-checked, and refinery efficiency for gasoline production is 88%, not 86%. But I’ve been rounding to the nearest 1%, so the rounded numbers don’t change.