Tag Archives: batteries
One of the disadvantages of battery powered planes is that their weight remains the same as they fly whereas liquid fuel aircraft become lighter as they use up their fuel. This realisation led Chip Yates, holder of the world record for the fastest electric motorcycle, to the idea of dropping batteries when their charge was depleted. But having batteries falling out of the sky has obvious drawbacks. So the idea emerged of launching the batteries in small, unmanned guided aircraft and landing them at depots where they could be recharged. An obvious extension of this, is to fly the recharged … Continue Reading
A New York-based company, Eos Energy Storage, is developing a system that refills an electric vehicle’s battery in a way similar to the way petrol cars are refueled at service stations. Eos Energy Storage says that it can make a zinc-air battery in which the used electrolyte can be pumped out and a new electrolyte pumped in, just like filling up a petrol tank. The process would take about three minutes to provide sufficient charge to travel more than 600 kilometres at about one-tenth of the cost of petrol. An electric car, with zinc-air batteries, would have a similar cost … Continue Reading
Envia Systems, a Californian company with prototyping and production facilities in China, has developed a lithium-ion battery with roughly twice as much energy per gram as present batteries. Envia Systems found that by including manganese in a mix of materials for the cathode better energy densities could be achieved. The team then boosted the performance of the anode by incorporating silicon along with the usual graphite. Silicon anodes swell and, until now, have been disintegrated by being charged and recharged as few as ten times. By encasing the silicon in a carbon coating and interlacing the carbon fibres, the Envia … Continue Reading
Scientists at the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute and the University of Southern California, Los Angeles have produced a cheap plastic capable of removing large amounts of carbon dioxide from the air. The material has the potential to be used in large-scale batteries as well as "artificial trees" to remove carbon dioxide from the air. The researchers, led by the Nobel Prize winning chemist, George Olah, started with polyethylenimine, a cheap polymer that attracts carbon dioxide to its surface. They dissolved the polymer in a methanol solvent and spread it on fumed silica, a cheap, porous solid made from microscopic droplets … Continue Reading
Solid-state batteries store energy in thin, solid film, rather than in a liquid like conventional lithium ion batteries. They are much lighter than standard batteries and, unlike standard lithium ion gatteries, they are not prone to catch fire when they are stressed. One company working on developing solid state lithium ion batteries is Sakti3 Inc, a spin off company from the University of Michigan, which has attracted investment from Khosla Ventures and General Motoirs. The company is converting equipment used to make potato chip bags, which consist of thin films of solid material, to make its batteries without have to … Continue Reading
Sony has demonstrated a battery that breaks down paper to generate electricity. The technology was inspired by the way in which termites get energy by breaking down wood. The paper is put into water containing the enzyme cellulase, which breaks down the paper to glucose sugar. The sugar is then processed by additional enzymes and oxygen to produce hydrogen ions and electrons, which provide the fuel for the battery. Yuichi Tokita, senior researcher at Sony’s Advanced Material Research Lab, said that "this is still at the very early stages of its development, but when you imagine the possibilities that this … Continue Reading
Simbol Materials, a Californian company, plans to extract lithium, as well as zinc and manganese, from the brine that is pumped by geothermal power plants. Currently many geothermal plants pump hot brine from deep underground to produce steam and then inject the cooled brine back into the ground. This brine is rich in minerals including lithium, which is abundant in the Earth’s crust but does not often occur in concentrations which can be economically exploited. In 2010, worldwide demand for lithium chemicals was about 102,000 tonnes. This is expected to increase to as much as 320,000 tonnes by 2020 – … Continue Reading
Researchers at Stanford University have used nanoparticles of a copper compound to develop a high-power battery electrode that they believe could help make large-scale batteries sufficently efficient, durable and inexpensive for grid power storage. In laboratory tests, the electrode survived 40,000 cycles of charging and discharging, after which it could still be charged to more than 80 percent of its original charge capacity. In comparison, the average lithium ion battery can handle about 400 charge/discharge cycles before it deteriorates too much to be of practical use. At a rate of several cycles per day, this electrode would have a good … Continue Reading
MIT researchers have found a compound, made from abundant and inexpensive materials, which can store and release solar thermal energy in a chemical form without degrading. The material could be used to make rechargeable thermal batteries which could store the energy for long periods without loss. Thermo-chemical storage of solar energy uses a molecule whose structure changes when exposed to sunlight and remains stable in that form indefinitely. Then, when nudged by a stimulus, such as a catalyst, a small temperature change or a flash of light, it can quickly snap back to its original form, releasing its stored energy … Continue Reading
In what has been described as the biggest battery breakthrough ever, researchers at MIT have come up with a radical new design which could provide a lightweight and inexpensive alternative to existing batteries for electric vehicles and the power grid. The new technology uses an innovative architecture called a semi-solid flow cell, in which the battery’s positive and negative electrodes are made of particles suspended in a liquid electrolyte. These two different suspensions are then pumped through systems separated by a filter. This separates the two functions of the battery -storing energy until it is needed and discharging that energy … Continue Reading
Videos
Renewables News- New Aussie Technology to Clean Polluted WaterScientists from Deakin University, together with French colleagues, say that they have manufactured a lightweight and reusable material that can absorb up to 33 times its weight in a wide range of spilt oils, chemical solvents and dyes, while repelling … Continue Reading → […]
- Aussie Researchers Make Efficient Solar Cells from Low-grade SiliconResearchers at the University of New South Wales have found a way to make very high efficiency solar cells out of cheap, low-grade silicon. It has been known for several decades that hydrogen atoms can be introduced into the atomic … Continue Reading → […]
- First Aussie “Hot Rocks” Power Plant Begins ProducingThe first power plant in Australia to produce electricity using an enhanced geothermal ("hot rocks") system has begun producing electricity in the far north-east of South Australia. The one-megawatt Habanero pilot plant near outback Innamincka is operated by Geodynamics. Geodynamics … Continue Reading → […]
- New Aussie Technology to Clean Polluted Water
