HONG KONG UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
A team led by Cheong Ying Chan Professor of Engineering and Environment Prof. ZHAO Tianshou, Chair Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Director of HKUST Energy Institute, has proposed a novel cathode design concept for lithium-sulfur (Li-S) battery that substantially improves the performance of this kind of promising next-generation battery.
Li-S batteries are regarded as attractive alternatives to lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries that are commonly used in smartphones, electric vehicles, and drones. They are known for their high energy density while their major component, sulfur, is abundant, light, cheap, and environmentally benign.
Li-S batteries can potentially offer an energy density of over 500 Wh/kg, significantly better than Li-ion batteries that reach their limit at 300 Wh/kg. The higher energy density means that the approximate 400km driving range of an electric vehicle powered by Li-ion batteries can be substantially extended to 600-800km if powered by Li-S batteries.
While exciting results on Li-S batteries have been achieved by researchers worldwide, there is still a big gap between lab research and commercialization of the technology on an industrial scale. One key issue is the polysulfide shuttle effect of Li-S batteries that causes progressive leakage of active material from the cathode and lithium corrosion, resulting in a short life cycle for the battery. Other challenges include reducing the amount of electrolyte in the battery while maintaining stable battery performance.
To address these issues, Prof. Zhao’s team collaborated with international researchers to propose a cathode design concept that could achieve good Li-S battery performance.
The highly oriented macroporous host can uniformly accommodate the sulfur while abundant active sites are embedded inside the host to tightly absorb the polysulfide, eliminating the shuttle effect and lithium metal corrosion. By bringing up a design principle for sulfur cathode in Li-S batteries, the joint team increased the batteries’ energy density and made a big step towards the industrialization of the batteries.
“We are still in the middle of basic research in this field,” Prof. Zhao said. “However, our novel electrode design concept and the associated breakthrough in performance represent a big step towards the practical use of a next-generation battery that is even more powerful and longer-lasting than today’s lithium-ion batteries.”
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Their research work was recently published in Nature Nanotechnology under the title “A high-energy and long-cycling lithium-sulfur pouch cell via a macroporous catalytic cathode with double-end binding sites”.
Team members from HKUST include Prof. Zhao and his current PhD students ZHAO Chen, ZHANG Leicheng, and former PhD student REN Yuxun (2019 graduate). Other collaborators include researchers from Argonne National Laboratory and Stanford University in the US, Xiamen University in Mainland China, and Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University in Saudi Arabia.
Love this site. Commenters from all over the globe with local knowledge, (mostly) educated and informed people from their field of training and years if experience. They don’t suffer fools. Bravo to you all!!!!!!
“educated and informed people from their field of training and years if experience.”
The thing I like about WUWT is you will find experts on every subject here.
Noone is an expert in every subject. So whenever I see a climate alarmist making what appears to be a good case in a subject I’m not familiar with, I come to WUWT and invariably the subject will come up and the experts will weigh in, and then I know all I need to know about that particular topic. The experts usually spot the flaw in the alarmist’s claim. In fact, I can’t recall a time when the experts at WUWT haven’t spotted the flaw in an alarmists argument.
It’s beatiful ! 🙂
I love stories of magic batteries
Now I can sleep tonight know the problem has been solved
Maybe
Hopefully
Someday
I read a thing a while back, cannot find a link, astronomical footprint of a batter based on current technology to power the puny Alberta 10GW grid for 1min
Square km of battery
Surely that won’t cost much
Although if they can fix the many problems with them there is no shortage of sulphur
All the oilsands Upgraders have massive piles of sulphur that needs to find another use
Like a dozen Costco stores lined up and stacked
Only so much goes to fertilizer
Wait a minute…Where do they insert the pixie dust?
This is research based on reasonable speculation, but speculation none the less. Without a working prototype it is propaganda designed to gin up investment. And we all know how that goes.
I suspect we will get many more of these “incredible breakthrough” possibilities as the green gang starts carpet bombing us with propaganda about the utopian future that awaits us if we will just obey!
“Where do they insert the pixie dust?”
Well first you need to bend over …
HONG KONG UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY. Handy refugees for our decimated economy.
“HONG KONG UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY” Comes from CCP? Its a load of crap. New technology has to be invented then stolen by China, nothing original comes from China.