Sumitomo Electric May Expand Sodium Battery Sales to CarmakersSumitomo Electric Industries Ltd. plans to sell a sodium-ion battery it is developing to makers of electric and hybrid passenger cars, expanding beyond the original target of commercial-vehicle fleet operators. “We can expect overall sales of the batteries to be boosted because we are now targeting a much big sector of the automotive market.”
Sumitomo, which supplies electrical wiring to Toyota Motor Corp. and Volkswagen AG, said in March it developed a cheaper alternative to lithium-ion batteries that uses liquefied salt as an electrolyte. It aims to begin production of the batteries in 2015 and targets revenue of more than 1 trillion yen ($13 billion), Chief Executive Officer Masayoshi Matsumoto said at the time.
Sumitomo Electric said its new battery can be made cheaper and safer compared with lithium-ion batteries because liquefied salt costs less and is noncombustible.
GE Launches Durathon Sodium-Metal Halide Battery for UPS MarketGE Energy Storage Technologies, a unit of GE Transportation, introduced its Durathon sodium-metal halide battery for critical backup power. The battery can be used in uninterruptible power supply (UPS) applications for large data centers, hospitals, and other areas where a continuous supply of power is necessary. GE has also introduced Durathon batteries for applications in the telecom and utility industries. GE is also using the technology to develop advanced transportation energy storage systems.
Because of its proprietary chemistry, the Durathon battery has the ability to provide back-up service for up to two decades. The battery has a high energy density that, along with its ability to replace current technology, minimizes installation costs.
Arista Power selects GE Durathon Battery for new Power on Demand SystemsArista Power, a manufacturer, designer and integrator of renewable energy generation, management and distribution systems, has selected GE's new Durathon Battery system for use in its new Power on Demand Systems. GE's Durathon Battery is the product of a $100 million investment in next-generation battery technology. Durathon™ is a nickel salt battery that is marketed for telecommunications, utilities and uninterruptable power supply (UPS) applications.
GE's Durathon is 50 percent smaller and 25 percent lighter than traditional batteries, enabling more energy to be stored in a smaller space. In addition, Durathon Batteries can last up to 20 years, operate effectively in extreme temperatures, are recyclable, and require no cooling and only minimal maintenance.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
A Virginia Tech research team has developed a battery that runs on sugar and has an unmatched energy density, a development that could replace conventional batteries with ones that are cheaper, refillable, and biodegradable.
The findings from Y.H. Percival Zhang, an associate professor of biological systems engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the College of Engineering, were published today in the journal Nature Communications.
While other sugar batteries have been developed, this one has an energy density an order of magnitude higher than others, allowing it to run longer before needing to be refueled, Zhang said.
In as soon as three years, Zhang's new battery could be running some of the cell phones, tablets, video games, and the myriad other electronic gadgets that require power in our energy-hungry world, Zhang said.
"Sugar is a perfect energy storage compound in nature," Zhang said. "So it's only logical that we try to harness this natural power in an environmentally friendly way to produce a battery."
In America alone, billions of toxic batteries are thrown away every year, posing a threat to both the environment and human health, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Zhang's development could help keep hundreds of thousands of tons of batteries from ending up in landfills.
This is one of Zhang's discoveries in the last year that utilize a series of enzymes mixed together in combinations not found in nature. He has published articles on creating edible starch from non-food plants and developed a new way to extract hydrogen in an economical and environmentally friendly way that can be used to power vehicles.
In this newest development, Zhang and his colleagues constructed a non-natural synthetic enzymatic pathway that strip all charge potentials from the sugar to generate electricity in an enzymatic fuel cell. Then, low-cost biocatalyst enzymes are used as catalyst instead of costly platinum, which is typically used in conventional batteries.
Like all fuel cells, the sugar battery combines fuel — in this case, maltodextrin, a polysaccharide made from partial hydrolysis of starch — with air to generate electricity and water as the main byproducts.
"We are releasing all electron charges stored in the sugar solution slowly step-by-step by using an enzyme cascade," Zhang said.
Different from hydrogen fuel cells and direct methanol fuel cells, the fuel sugar solution is neither explosive nor flammable and has a higher energy storage density. The enzymes and fuels used to build the device are biodegradable.
The battery is also refillable and sugar can be added to it much like filling a printer cartridge with ink.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
A new ammonia-free means of manufacturing vertically aligned carbon nanofibers (VACNFs) has been developed by researchers at North Carolina State University.
This new process is based instead on the use of ambient air — allowing for the phasing out of the use of toxic ammonia gas, as well as reducing of costs.
VACNFs are currently being investigated as a material of potential use in everything from batteries, to energy generation, to gene-delivery tools. But, until now, the methods used for creating VACNFs was relatively expensive and relied on toxic materials.
“This discovery makes VACNF manufacture safer and cheaper, because you don’t need to account for the risks and costs associated with ammonia gas,” states Dr Anatoli Melechko, an adjunct associate professor of materials science and engineering at NC State, and lead author of a new paper describing the work. “This also raises the possibility of growing VACNFs on a much larger scale.”
Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a new and unconventional battery chemistry aimed at producing batteries that last longer than previously thought possible.
In a study published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, ORNL researchers challenged a long-held assumption that a battery's three main components -- the positive cathode, negative anode and ion-conducting electrolyte -- can play only one role in the device.
The electrolyte in the team's new battery design has dual functions: it serves not only as an ion conductor but also as a cathode supplement. This cooperative chemistry, enabled by the use of an ORNL-developed solid electrolyte, delivers an extra boost to the battery's capacity and extends the lifespan of the device.
"This bi-functional electrolyte revolutionizes the concept of conventional batteries and opens a new avenue for the design of batteries with unprecedented energy density," said ORNL's Chengdu Liang.
Batteries for hybrids and plug-in vehicles are growing fast, more than tripling over the past three years to reach 1.4 GWh per quarter, according to the Automotive Battery Tracker from Lux Research. Panasonic has emerged as the leader thanks to its partnership with Tesla, capturing 39% of the plug-in vehicle battery market, overtaking NEC (27% market share) and LG Chem (9%) in 2013.
Among the Lux findings:
The electric vehicle drivetrain is the most lucrative for battery developers. Hybrids move the most cars—the Toyota Prius is the best-selling car in Japan and California—but their small battery packs mean they require less energy storage in total than full electric vehicles like the Nissan Leaf. Hybrids demanded 481 MWh of batteries in Q1 2014, while electric vehicles called for 774 MWh. Nonetheless, in terms of demand by OEM, hybrid leader Toyota (28%) edges EV providers Tesla Motors (24%) and Renault-Nissan (21%).
Japanese power company, Power Japan Plus has announced the development of a new type of battery intended for use in automobiles and other applications, the Ryden or dual carbon battery. The company claims the battery charges 20 times faster than current lithium ion batteries, doesn't heat up, so it doesn't require cooling and is cost competitive with other current batteries used in cars and trucks. They believe the battery will be a game-changer, leading to a surge in sales of hybrid and all electric vehicles.
Representatives for Power Japan say the battery is actually something completely new—it's made of carbon instead of nickel, cobalt or manganese. Not only does that make it cheaper to make but it does away with the thermal change that exists with current batteries that necessitate the installation of cooling systems (and does away with the associated fire hazard in crashes). They add that the carbon they use is new as well—it's an organic compound grown from cotton fibers. That means that when the battery is no longer useful, it can be easily recycled. Due to its structure, it's also able to be fully discharged without damage, which means more power can be used before recharging, slightly increasing distance capabilities. The new battery can also be configured to fit in a standard 18650 cell and the unique design also lends itself to higher than average reliability, with a lifespan of 3,000 charge/discharge cycles.
What we must remember folks is the availability of lithium, as an element it`s quite rare:
Researchers at the University of California, Riverside have developed a novel nanometer scale ruthenium oxide anchored nanocarbon graphene foam architecture that improves the performance of supercapacitors, a development that could mean faster acceleration in electric vehicles and longer battery life in portable electronics.
The researchers found that supercapacitors, an energy storage device like batteries and fuel cells, based on transition metal oxide modified nanocarbon graphene foam electrode could work safely in aqueous electrolyte and deliver two times more energy and power compared to supercapacitors commercially available today.
The foam electrode was successfully cycled over 8,000 times with no fading in performance. The findings were outlined in a recently published paper, "Hydrous Ruthenium Oxide Nanoparticles Anchored to Graphene and Carbon Nanotube Hybrid Foam for Supercapacitors," in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.
At a small solar power plant near Modesto, in California’s Central Valley, a startup called Enervault recently unveiled battery technology that could increase the amount of renewable energy utilities can use. The technology is based on inexpensive materials that researchers had largely given up on because batteries made from them didn’t last long enough to be practical. But the company says it has figured out how to make the batteries last for decades.
The technology is being demonstrated in a large battery that stores one megawatt-hour of electricity, enough to run 10,000 100-watt light bulbs for an hour. Enervault says its batteries could compete with the cheapest form of electricity storage available today—pumping water up a hill so that it can spin turbines as it flows back down, which is feasible only in certain locations. The company has been testing a similar, though much smaller, version of the technology for about two years with good results. It has raised $30 million in funding, including a $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.
In a small lab, near a lake at the edge of West Berkeley, sits the prototype of what could revolutionize battery power as we know it. The secret to this power? Algae.
OK, just hang with me here. Lots of research has already been done on algae’s possible power capabilities. Prototype creator Adam Freeman says this new kind of battery, the one he’s working on, could power even a Tesla. And he says it could do it 200X greater than the current lithium-based battery used today.
He’s created a research company called alGAS that aims to prove just that.
Freeman says the algae battery also charges faster and lasts longer than current ion batteries used in, say, your cell phone, iPad… or a Tesla. As Freeman explains, paper-thin fibers in algae provide an easier surface for ions to get through, resulting in a charge in as little as 11 seconds, not minutes or hours.
Researchers at Vanderbilt University are developing a new generation of supercapacitors that can function even when they are subject to weight and vibration stress. Translation: the drywall of the future will store enough electrical energy to power your home electronics and appliances. In a classic case of having your clean tech cake and eating it too, you won’t even need any power cords.
This is yet another reason why fossil fuels are toast. By toast we don’t mean that fossil fuels will totally disappear because for that matter, after thousands of years plenty of people are still burning firewood and they will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. However, just as coal, oil, and natural gas marginalized firewood in industrialized nations, the twin trends toward more efficient energy storage and cheaper, more sustainable energy sources make the marginalization of fossil fuels a historical inevitability.
That’s because under the current state of the technology, supercapacitors don’t give you anywhere near the storage capacity-for-weight deal that you can get from the gold standard, lithium-ion batteries (according to the Vanderbilt team, supercapacitors store ten times less than Li-ion).
The key advantage is that supercapacitors can last thousands of cycles longer than Li-ion batteries, which makes them likely to outlast whatever structure they are integrated into.
As the demand for rechargeable lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries has grown, the battery industry has found itself facing a problem of supply-and-demand. Lithium is not an abundant element, and most lithium deposits are found in only a handful of countries. Both problems make its long-term availability and cost uncertain. In a paper published in the June 4 issue of Nature Communications, University of Maryland professors Chunsheng Wang and John Cumings explain how a modified version of a Li-ion battery anode could allow manufacturers to replace the lithium with a more common element.
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