5 New Battery to Revolutionize Everything

The development of safe and effective energy storage systems is the trump card of the electrical revolution. Today's video will be about that, we will talk about next generation batteries, some of which are about to be commercialized to trigger mass adoption of electric vehicles and others. It will

revolutionize

everything

, but it will take a little more time before reaching the market when it comes to the use of the energy storage systems most used today in transportation. Several problems arise. Current lithium-ion batteries have a relatively small energy density, which means that if we want to increase the distance traveled by a vehicle on a single charge it will be necessary to significantly increase the weight and volume of the

battery

, which will deteriorate performance. and the comfort of the vehicle, let alone the increase in price, these are the main factors, for example, for electric aircraft to be taken out of service.

Currently, lithium-ion batteries also face serious safety problems in the event of a hypothetical car accident due to flammable liquid electrolytes. These problems can be overcome by developing new energy storage systems and one of the solutions can be the use of fluoride ion batteries. The main working principle of fluoride ion batteries is similar to that of lithium ion batteries. Ions move between the cathode and anode in the charging and discharging processes, but in this case negatively charged fluoride ions are used instead of lithium ions. Teams of researchers from Kyoto University and Toyota Motor have created a prototype of this type of

battery

that can overcome the disadvantages of lithium-ion batteries mentioned above.

The first big advantage of this prototype is that the electrolyte is solid and inert, which means that this type of battery is less likely to be damaged. catches fire in case of battery damage. The cathode of this battery consists of energy-dense copper and the anode is composed of lanthanum fluoride. These materials are characterized by much higher fluoride ion capacities and greater reversibility compared to lithium-ion batteries. Researchers claim that the use of this system will allow affordable mass electric vehicles with lightweight batteries to travel approximately 620 miles or 1000 kilometers on a single charge. The battery can potentially deliver about three times the energy density, making the idea of ​​electric airplanes a reality.

Solid-state fluoride-ion batteries are also more than three times cheaper than lithium-ion batteries, which offer a price of 30 per kilowatt hour. On the other side of the coin, the electrode materials used are subject to rapid degradation, resulting in shorter battery life. This may be one of the disadvantages of this prototype, although the researchers claim that they have found the solution to this problem by using an alloy of copper, nickel and cobalt, another challenge is the high temperature required for the efficient operation of its electrolyte. solid. There have been some tests where the battery operated successfully even at room temperature, but many experts believe that it will be at least eight years before commercially viable fluoride-ion batteries are available, which is a fairly normal period to carry. a new battery solution from the laboratory.

In parallel, researchers around the world are racing to create better lithium-ion batteries with solid-state electrolytes that will not only increase the safety of a battery cell but also the energy density compared to current lithium-ion batteries with liquid electrolytes, but solid-state fluoride-ion batteries can, in theory, offer much better energy density, decreasing the weight of a vehicle. Replacing the car's rigid structural elements with batteries would take care of two birds with one stone. , simultaneously transforming a battery pack into a charging structure. Tesla has already adopted a technology called structural batteries to produce, for example, the new lightweight model. version of the model and, in parallel, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology are developing an exceptional massless structural battery project with the aim of converting the body of a vehicle into a battery.

The team that has already created several structural battery prototypes now wants to adopt the technology. to the next level by depositing the active cathode material on carbon fiber instead of the aluminum foil currently used, the anode is also carbon fiber and the separator is an ultra-fine fiberglass cloth, in this case the internal parts of The battery, such as current collectors and separators, have load-bearing functions. Carbon fiber is as strong as aluminum but much lighter, allowing a structural battery to be designed with rigidity and better energy storage capacity than the current best prototype, despite having an energy density sometimes lower than the actual.

Oxide-based lithium-ion batteries, this technology will greatly reduce the weight of a vehicle by using the chassis as a battery. This advancement allows for thin and even flexible structural batteries and the possible applications of these new multifunctional systems are only limited by our imagination. And as the research leader says, the next-generation structural battery has fantastic potential. If you look at consumer technology, in a few years it could be very possible to make smartphones, laptops or electric bicycles that weigh half as much as they do today and are much more compact than larger ones. The challenge of this type of structural battery will be flammability, since it uses organic electrolytes like common batteries, so the development of solid-state electrolytes would reinforce the commercialization of structural batteries, there is also the potential to extend the range of a vehicle air by more than 50 percent by displacing the wing panels with energy storage structural elements, this will significantly reduce the glamorous requirements for the gravimetric capacity of aviation electric batteries.

Another amazing massless energy storage project has been introduced as a result of the collaboration between Lamborghini and MIT, the team's ultimate goal. is to convert the next-generation concept car called terzo millennio into an accumulator for energy storage, the technology can make it possible to monitor the car's carbon fiber structure if small cracks appear, for example due to a minor impact or simply fatigue of the material, the charge can pass through the car body and initiate a self-healing process to prevent cracks from growing before moving on to the next amazing technology. Make sure you are subscribed to the channel.

This will go a long way in providing the latest valuable information on the Foreign appetite for next-generation technologies for the transition from ICE-powered vehicles to EVS challenges the lithium-ion battery industry with the production of a huge amount of battery cells, but lithium reserves are mainly concentrated in a few countries and the acceleration of lithium production for batteries is noticeably This requires a lot of time and this causes companies to delay some of their projects. electric vehicles due to battery cell supply limitations. Meanwhile, the world's largest lithium-ion battery manufacturer catl has announced the production of a sodium-ion battery in 2023.

The working principle of sodium-ion battery is similar to lithium-ion battery, but here the charge is stored by sodium ions which are much more abundant on Earth and widely distributed throughout the world, unlike lithium, furthermore, due to the different properties between sodium and lithium, sodium cathode materials . The ion battery should be a little different, so Catl uses a cheap Prussian white instead of lithium oxides or phosphates. In the case of an anode, the company uses a hard carbon material that is similar to the carbon-based graphite anode in a lithium-ion battery. Graphite has almost reached its theoretical capacity and further improvements can be made by adding silicon or silicon oxide to the hard carbon.

The theoretical capacity depends on many more factors due to a different storage mechanism and may be higher than for lithium-ion graphite. batteries So what does Catl's sodium ion battery offer based on a number of unique material properties? It has the advantage of fast charging performance, so the battery can recover 80 charges in 15 minutes at room temperature, in addition, it offers a capacity retention rate of more than 90 percent in a low temperature environment of -20 degrees Celsius, while challenging many contemporary lithium-ion batteries in these aspects, has the major drawback of low energy density compared to oxide-based lithium-ion batteries that the first generation of lithium-ion batteries can currently offer. sodium ions of Catl. achieves a capacity of 160 watt hours per kilogram, similar to the lithium ion phosphate batteries that, for example, can be found in standard-range Tesla Model 3s, but thanks to their abundance, sodium ion batteries can increase the production of small electric vehicles that offer cheaper prices and all the aforementioned advantages, at the same time that the great interest in sodium-ion batteries stimulates an active search for new electrode materials with superior properties, for example, the Recently discovered vanadium pyrophosphate is a promising candidate because it is characterized by high thermal stability that not only solves safety issues but also helps eliminate an advanced thermal regulation system that usually requires additional volume and impacts the range of electric vehicles.

Additionally, vanadium pyrophosphate can serve as a cathode and anode material, which will further improve safety and provide longer battery life, while maintaining a high voltage similar to that of a flame retardant electrolyte. is the latest piece of fireproof batteries While the attention of scientists is focused on sodium ion batteries, we should not so quickly forget about lithium ion batteries, as they have already proven to be one of the options to increase energy in portable equipment and electric vehicles. The density of a lithium-ion battery is to enrich it with nickel and add silicon to the graphite anode.

This is challenging because these chemical innovations are prone to rapid degradation and have even more serious safety concerns; However, these were incremental improvements that opened an avenue to produce electric vehicles with a range of 600 miles in 2022. Why then is Dalhousie University, Tesla's research partner, focusing its efforts on mid-range batteries? based on old-fashioned nmc-532 cells built with just enough graphite without silicon? It has already been shown that the iodine composition of an NMC-532 cell when nickel is 50, manganese is 30, and cobalt is 20, can maintain more than 90 percent of its initial capacity up to 1 million miles of operation. In 2019, the media called this battery the million mile battery that Micron introduced.

Scaling individual single-crystal nmc particles. This format limits typical degradation processes, such as particle cracking, as well as surface reactivity, but the team did not rest on their laurels, the researchers continued experimenting and during one of the tests they tried to load only the nmc. at half its full capacity while draining the graphite completely, this led to smaller changes in the crystalline structure of the cathode and caused even fewer cracks and side reactions. This is how another three years of research was carried out after the million mile battery, which can be assumed to last 20 years. The battery resulted in the 100-year battery, it is called Sentry battery, which can be achieved thanks to the use of balanced Li FSI electrolyte and operated at 3.8 volts, while offering better energy density than lfp cells which they power the Tesla Model 3.

So, could you imagine the battery life? could exceed a normal human lifespan, firstly, this technology is necessary for Tesla's long-term strategic vision; its autopilot will eventually open the door to autonomous driving and this battery can be used to power Tesla's robotaxi network; In addition, such a long life cycle makes economically beneficial services between the vehicle and the grid when the car is connected to the power grid when parked, eventually the energy storage capacity of electric vehicles will solve themain problem of renewable energy and at the same time will allow electric vehicle owners to sell the extra energy to companies to balance variations in energy production and consumption so that your electric car can also make money for you when it is parked and at the same time help the economy achieve carbon neutrality.

As we can see, carbon neutrality has become a global consensus and more and more research groups are working on the development of an efficient green energy source. For our future energy system and the ideas that can become reality thanks to these next generation batteries are only limited by our imagination. What do you think are the most revolutionary technologies that can become feasible thanks to the commercialization of next-generation batteries?