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Batteries

 

   

Battery types 

This list has been copied from Wikipedia and is very hard to improve.

 

Primary cells or non-rechargeable batteries Secondary cells or rechargeable batteries Batteries by application

Batteries commercially available

Sodium sulfur

Sodium sulfur batteries are being used in some power stations and for leveling the output from wind farms. The advantage is that it is a liquid metal battery and crystals do not grow and push the plates out of shape.

 

 

Zinc Bromine battery

Redflow make a battery for storing electricty. It is a flow battery meaning the electricity is stored in the dissolved salts and the electrodes do not wear out. More storage capacity can be added by making the liquid storage tank larger.

RedFlow ZBM module: 5 kW and 10 kW·h.

75% Round trip peak efficiency at DC Point-of-Connection (POC)

Cell stack replacement at >75,000 kWh – approximately 5 years (per 50kWH module)
20+ years service design life.

​However they are not selling or talking to domestic customers at present.

 

From Wikipedia

The zinc–bromine flow battery is a type of hybrid flow battery. A solution of zinc bromide is stored in two tanks. When the battery is charged or discharged the solutions (electrolytes) are pumped through a reactor stack and back into the tanks. One tank is used to store the electrolyte for the positive electrode reactions and the other for the negative. Zinc bromine batteries from different manufacturers have energy densities ranging from 34.4–54 W·h/kg.

The predominantly aqueous electrolyte is composed of zinc bromide salt dissolved in water. During charge, metallic zinc is plated from the electrolyte solution onto the negative electrode surfaces in the cell stacks. Bromide is converted to bromine at the positive electrode surface of the cell stack and is immediately stored as safe, chemically complexed organic phase in the electrolyte tank. Each fully recyclable high-density polyethylene (HDPE) cell stack has up to 60 bipolar, plastic electrodes between a pair of anode and cathode end blocks.
The zinc–bromine battery can be regarded as an electroplating machine. During charging zinc is electroplated onto conductive electrodes, while at the same time bromine is formed. On discharge the reverse process occurs, the metallic zinc plated on the negative electrodes dissolves in the electrolyte and is available to be plated again at the next charge cycle. It can be left fully discharged indefinitely without damage.

The primary features of the zinc bromine battery are:
High energy density relative to lead–acid batteries
100% depth of discharge capability on a daily basis
High cycle life of > 2,000 cycles at 100% depth of discharge, at which point the battery can be serviced to increase cycle life to over 3,500 cycles[citation needed]
No shelf life limitations as zinc–bromine batteries are non-perishable, unlike lead–acid and lithium-ion batteries, for example.
Scalable capacities from 10 kW·h (0.036 GJ) to over 500 kW·h (1.8 GJ) systems
The ability to store energy from any electricity generating source
Three examples of zinc–bromine flow batteries are ZBB Energy Corporation's Zinc Energy Storage System (ZESS), RedFlow Limited's Zinc Bromine Module (ZBM), and Premium Power's Zinc-Flow Technology.
These battery systems have the potential to provide energy storage solutions at a lower overall cost than other energy storage systems such as lead-acid, vanadium redox, sodium–sulfur, lithium-ion and others.

Vanadium flow battery

Vanadium redox batteries have a solution of vanadium salt. It is a flow battery. One of the first in the world was at Huxly Hill wind farm on King Island Tasmania

http://www.gefc.com

 

Lithium battery

Ther are over 24 types of Lithium batteries under development or in use.

Zen is selling Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries for $1,500 per kWh with a minimum purchase of 20kWh. 1megawatt hour batteries are $1,000 per kWh. Later in 2012r there will be a 10kWh battery.

http://www.zenhomeenergy.com.au

 

Micro lithium battery

Newly created “micro-batteries” that are only a few millimeters in size are now the most powerful batteries in the world. The new batteries, created by researchers at the University of Illinois, greatly out-power “even the best supercapacitors,” while being only a fraction of their size.

“They pack such a punch that a driver could use a cellphone powered by these batteries to jump-start a dead car battery – and then recharge the phone in the blink of an eye,”  University of Illinois press release.

The unusual property of these batteries is they have high power transmission and high energy storage. Until now there had to be a choice of one only.

Clean technica

April 16 issue of Nature Communications.

 

The graphic illustrates a high power battery technology from the University of Illinois. Ions flow between three-dimensional micro-electrodes in a lithium ion battery.

Image credit: Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology

Lead acid - Ultrabattery

CSIRO has developed a new type of lead acid battery.

UltraBattery® is a completely new class of lead-acid technology: a hybrid, long-life lead-acid energy storage device that operates very efficiently in continuous Partial State of Charge (PSoC) use, without frequent overcharge maintenance cycles.

It can be utilized to continually manage energy intermittencies, smooth power, and shift energy, using a band of charge that is neither totally full nor totally empty.

The UltraBattery® combines the advantages of the most tried and tested advanced lead-acid battery technology with the advantages of an asymmetric capacitor – enabling an optimal balance of an energy-storing lead-acid battery with the quick charge acceptance, power discharge, and longevity of a capacitor.

Battery research

  

Magnesium-ion battery

Toyota and Pellion are separately researching magnesium ion batteries. Magnesium has the advantage of having two charges per atom versus one for lithium. 

Pellion paper: Moving Beyond Lithium with Low-Cost, HighEnergy, Rechargeable Magnesium Batteries

 

This raises the question of whether we will see an aluminium ion battery with 3 charges per atom.

Lithium meta​l-air battery

 

Lithium-air battery can theoretically deliver an astonishing 10 times more energy density than even today’s best lithium ion technology. That is about the energy density of petrol / gasoline.  

The problem is water in the air will react with lithium so it needs a membrane to allow only oxygen through.

POLYPLUS has made a major breakthrough in the development of protected lithium metal electrodes that enable the development of batteries with unprecedented energy density. The protected lithium electrode (PLE) developed at POLYPLUS is remarkably stable in aggressive environments including almost all aqueous and non-aqueous electrolytes. POLYPLUS currently is focused on the development of rechargeable and non-rechargeable Lithium-Air, Lithium-Seawater and Lithium-Sulfur batteries.

Lithium water battery

With the lithium protected from water it is possible to make a 3 V battery with an high energy density of about about 1,500 Wh/kg

Lithium Sulfur battery

With an average voltage of about 2 V, the theoretical energy density of the Li-S couple is about 2,600 Wh/l and 2,500 Wh/kg. Source Polyplus

IBM lithium air battery

IBM is also researching this field 

PolyPlus is developing rechargeable and non-rechargeable Li-Air, and Li-Seawater batteries based on protected Li electrodes.

At a nominal potential of about 3 volts, the theoretical specific energy for a lithium/air battery is over 5,000 Wh/kg for the reaction forming LiOH and 11,000 Wh/kg for the reaction forming Li2O2 or for the reaction of lithium with dissolved oxygen in seawater, rivaling the energy density for hydrocarbon fuel cells and far exceeding Li-ion battery chemistry that has a theoretical specific energy of about 400 Wh/kg.

PolyPlus intends to first commercialize non-rechargeable Li/Air and Li/Seawater batteries followed by the introduction of rechargeable Li/Air.

The projected energy density and specific energy for commercial Li-Air batteries is on the order of 1000 Wh/l and 1000 Wh/kg.

Lithium/Seawater batteries which use the ocean as the positive electrode are even more energy dense and should be introduced commercially at about 1500 Wh/l and 1500 Wh/kg.

Source

Next-​generation lithium-ion batteries

Next-generation lithium-ion batteries that hold more than 3 times the charge that current batteries do and can recharge in around 10 minutes are now within reach. The new design, created by researchers at USC, may be commercially available within only 2-3 years according to those involved.

The design is based on replacing the currently used graphite anodes with porous silicon nanoparticles. This follows work done by the same researchers last year using silicon nanowires. The nanowire version actually lasts much longer (2000 recharge cycles) than the current nanoparticle version (200 recharge cycles) and conventional graphite-based designs (500 recharge cycles). But the researchers are confident that the lifespan of the nanoparticle design can be greatly improved in the near future. The problem with nanowires is just that they are relatively hard to mass manufacture, while silicon nanoparticles are readily available. Clean Technica

  

Lithium metal air battery

Early this year, IBM revealed that it was launching a major research program into what looks like an even more promising technology — the lithium metal-air battery. Last month, a company called PolyPlus announced that it had already succeeded in developing one.

The PolyPlus battery and the IBM technology  Chandrasekhar Narayan, manager of science and technology at IBM’s Almaden Research Center near San Jose, Calif., has suggested that it will take five to 10 years to develop an effective membrane that will let oxygen into the battery while keeping moisture out.   

  

News

Hot battery news

 

We’ve said it before (well, last week, actually) and we’ll say it again – energy storage really is shaping up to be the new cleantech frontier. And so, to the basements of MIT-spinoff Liquid Metal Batteries, where the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based start-up is working to make batteries that can cheaply store wind power generated at night – the time when wind most consistently blows – for use during times of peak demand during the day. MIT’s Technology Review reports that the Liquid Metal Battery concept – powders in battery cells (thick-walled steel cans) are heated to the melting point, causing them to separate into three layers: positive and negative electrodes, and electrolyte sandwiched inbetween. These liquid materials are highly conductive, so the batteries can be discharged and charged quickly, to help stabilise fluctuations of supply and demand on the power grid – has attracted millions of dollars in early-stage investments from the likes of Bill Gates, French oil company Total, and the US Advanced Research Projects Agency.  Energy.RenewEconomy

 

  

 

Power maker: This component is part of a new, cheaper process to make ionic liquids (upper left) that could greatly boost the storage capacity of batteries. 
Boulder Ionics

ENERGY

Is This the Key to Vastly Better Batteries?

One company thinks it's solved a key problem that's been holding back new energy technology.

 

http://www.technologyreview.com/images/audio-icon.gif); line-height: 12px; background-position: 0% 1px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; " target="_blank">Audio »
    • THURSDAY, MAY 31, 2012
    • BY KEVIN BULLIS

Researchers are experimenting with a handful of ideas that could make batteries vastly better than they are today, which could lead to more affordable electric cars and cheaper ways to store solar power to use at night. But many of these approaches have one thing in common: they aren't practical because of the shortcomings of existing battery electrolytes.

Jerry Martin, CEO and cofounder of a small startup in Colorado, says his company—Boulder Ionics—is developing a way of making a type of electrolyte that would enable high-performance batteries. The electrolyte, made from ionic liquids—salts that are molten below 100 ⁰C—can operate at high voltages and temperatures, isn't flammable, and doesn't evaporate. Ionic liquids are normally expensive to produce, but Boulder Ionics is developing a cheaper manufacturing process.

Replacing conventional electrolytes with ionic liquids could double the energy storage capacity of ultracapacitors by allowing them to be charged to higher voltages. That could make it possible to replace a starter battery in a car with a battery the size of a flashlight, Martin says.

The electrolytes could also help improve the storage capacity of lithium-ion batteries, the kind used in electric vehicles and mobile phones; and they could help make rechargeable metal-air batteries practical. In theory, such batteries could store 10 times as much energy as conventional lithium-ion batteries.

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Boulder Ionics, which is a year-and-a-half old, has built and demonstrated the key pieces of equipment needed for its process and used them to make evaluation samples for battery manufacturers. Earlier this year, it raised $4.3 million in venture capital.

Martin says his company's process could actually make ionic liquids that are cheaper than conventional electrolytes per watt-hour of energy storage in the batteries they enable.

The company is reducing the cost of making them in two main ways. First, it's switching from a batch process to a continuous one. This is far faster—it takes six minutes to make ionic liquid electrolyte, compared to three days for a conventional process—and allows the company to produce more material with a given-size piece of equipment, which reduces capital costs. Instead of building a large chemical plant, it would be possible to make enough ionic liquid for 100,000 electric cars in a space the size of a living room, Martin says.

The continuous process also gives Boulder Ionics more precise control over the chemical reactions involved, which reduces impurities. Martin says this makes costly purification steps unnecessary. Scaling up continuous production could prove a challenge, however.

For use in ultracapacitors, the new ionic liquid electrolyte can simply replace a conventional one. "It's a nearly drop-in replacement, compatible with existing production lines," Martin says. But battery makers will need to switch to new electrode materials that operate at higher voltages to take advantage of the high-voltage resistance of ionic liquids in lithium-ion batteries.

Ionic liquids are suitable for rechargeable metal-air batteries because the electrolyte in such a battery is exposed to the air, and ionic liquids do not evaporate. At least one company, Fluidic Energy, is hoping to make metal-air batteries practical by using ionic liquids.

Source: Technology Review

  

Hydro Tasmania is to install a 3MW battery storage facility on King Island – the largest battery array in the country – in what it expects could give a glimpse into how the National Electricity Market will operate some time in the future.

The 3MW battery array will feature Australian designed technology supplied by Ecoult, the local subsidiary of the US-based East Penn Manufacturing Co, and is part of the $46 million project to build a fully renewable integrated grid on the island, located in Bass Strait to Tasmania’s north.

The “ultra battery” array was chosen not just for its ability to balance the output of wind, and fill in the gaps, but also because of its ability for all of the island’s power needs for up to 45 minutes.

It means that the island’s diesel generators, which have underpinned the electricity supply for decades, will be able to be switched off completely at certain times. This delivers a considerable saving, because if generators are used at all, they usually need to run at a minimum output of around 30 per cent.

The battery system will be integrated with wind and solar power, and a newly opened system that improves the integration of diesel generators with renewables. Over time, the imported diesel will be substituted with a locally sourced biodiesel, and total emissions will be cut by 95 per cent.

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