"What do mean? A ton of feathers from African or European swallows?"
Posted on 08/16/2019 10:56:35 AM PDT by Red Badger
Transitioning to renewable energy across society will require many changes, including more batteries. Energy storage is crucial for making sure that inconsistent renewable sources, like wind or solar, can stay humming even when the weather isn't going their way. But batteries have their own problem in the form of the commonly used lithium. Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras have come up with what could be a possible replacement: a rechargeable iron ion battery that uses mild steel as the anode.
“The major limitations of lithium-ion batteries are the unavailability of lithium in conjunction with the safety issues," said M.V. Sangaranarayanan, a chemistry professor at IIT Madras, in a recent talk. "It is hence imperative to look for new and abundantly available electrode materials in order to make the energy storage devices commercially viable, devoid of safety limitations."
Lithium, in many ways, is the dirty secret of many environmental efforts. Analysts have called electric car company's demand for lithium "increasingly ravenous," and the mineral is used in everything from smartphones to glass ceramics to airbag ignitions.
But while lithium mining is relatively cheap, it comes with huge downsides. When brine mining, miners need to let the water surrounding lithium evaporate in order to reach it, which means using 500,000 gallons of water per tonne of lithium. And when digging the mineral out of rock, it requires toxic chemicals, which can lead to disastrous results.
So the need for an alternative is a pressing one, and iron could be a strong option.
“Iron has favorable physico-chemical properties like lithium,” Ramaprabhu Sundara, an IIT Madras physics professor, told The Hindu. "The redox potential of iron ion is higher than lithium ion and the radius of the Fe2+ ion is nearly the same as that of the lithium ion."
Redox refers to "reduction potential," or the tendency for a chemical substance to lose or gain electrons and have their effectiveness lowered.
"These two favorable properties of iron have been overlooked for so many years. And that’s the reason why we don’t have iron ion rechargeable batteries,” Ramaprabhu says.
The team's iron battery successfully withstood 150 cycles of charging and discharging under controlled conditions. And after 50 cycles, it still had 54 percent capacity retention, which is a sign of stability.
“Iron is more stable during the charging process and therefore prevents short-circuiting of the batteries," study coauthor Sai Smruti Samantaray, a Ph.D. student at IIT Madras, told The Hindu. "Thus, when compared with the popular lithium metal-based batteries, we are able to cut down the cost and make it safer to handle."
The next step for the team is to increase the iron battery's performance. One challenge could be cathodes, or the way currents move out of a battery. While cathodes can be replaced in some batteries, that's not the case in iron.
“We are trying out different metal oxides to increase the amount of iron ions that can bind to the cathode," said Ajay Piriya,a Ph.D. student at IIT Madras and the first author of the paper showing the team's findings. "When more iron ions bind to the cathode, more energy can be stored in the battery, leading to improved performance."
There's a global hunt for the next lithium battery. Even the creator of the original lithium battery, 97-year old John Goodenough, has developed an improvement.
Source: The Hindu
But, the possibility that batteries can be made of rust instead of lithium is worth investigating to see if it can be made a practical reality.
If it goes somewhere, that would be fantastic.
“”These two favorable properties of iron have been overlooked for so many years. And that’s the reason why we don’t have iron ion rechargeable batteries,” Ramaprabhu says.”
No it wasn’t. Not as funding in research and development grants, awards and write offs could be had with Iron. Too common of a material. It had to be something rare to make any real money in the game. The ancient Baghdad battery used iron.
I’m sure they can iron out all the other problems, soon.................
This is research. It’s not a product yet. Most high tech goes thru a phase of “doable but not viable yet”.
Lol, Thanks for the post. :)
Drives me nuts when so few can see through “why” they go certain directions in science. Is there more money in researching this irrational thing instead of that rational thing? Well then this is “why” without a doubt. The more impractical it is the more taxpayer money can be milked trying to prove it practical, if even ever. Some should never even be started at all based on realty and true practicality. Especially in the environmental science industry.
It’s kinda like the guys who won a Nobel Prize in Medicine for ‘discovering’ that ulcers were the result of bacteria in the stomach and not stress, alcoholism or nerves.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2005/press-release/
When it could have been ‘discovered’ a hundred years earlier, with some basic tools............
Yep, sure does. They have to drag out milking the system as much as they can for grants and funding first. Even if they know for a fact it is viable before they start.
Yep, and there are thousands of these scams. Many now days know for a fact that it is all fruitless even before they start. But with a good sales pitch, a lot of money can be made skimming because they have now created a tax shelter for money laundering, let alone the grants and awards on top of that. This is exactly what Tesla did to the tune of billions and billions.
Sodium is much more so, and is one of the preferred techs for grid-scale battery storage. There is also a strong possibility that sodium can displace lithium in solid-state batteries that have a glass electrolyte.
I just had to replace a 50ah 48v LiFePO4 battery in my hot-dogging electric wheelchair (15mph! Wahoo!) Manufacturer wanted $3500! I found replacement cells on Ebay (Korean, top-of-the-line) for $725 including a new BMS board, delivered. Said to be good for 1-2000 cycles. The original died due to being flooded in a downpour, not wear and tear.
A perfectly modest proposal.
Reading through your recent battery threads, it becomes apparent that you have a large following of some incredible experts from many disciplines.
It is so obvious that you and your followers should form a start-up in battery technology.
Soon it would be the Musk and Red Badger TERA Battery factory.
What could possibly go wrong?
"What do mean? A ton of feathers from African or European swallows?"
A ton of feathers weighs more, but an ounce of gold weighs more than an ounce of feathers (avoirdupois vs troy weight).
“What do you get when you put an Edison battery in a Tesla?” sounds like a joke in search of a punchline.
Thanks Red Badger.
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