Frances White of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) reports that a new anode quadruples the life of a test lithium-sulfur battery and could lead to much lower costs for electric vehicles and large-scale energy storage. This blog has noted that many researchers focus on development of better cathodes, or anodes, or electrolytes exclusively, neglecting a more holistic, or whole battery approach to their delving. PNNL scientists have a reason for focusing on anodes, having found that a “battery with a dissolved cathode can still work.” What dissolves the electrodes in a battery? “Unwanted side reactions,” according to PNNL, cause the battery’s sulfur-containing cathode to disintegrate slowly and form polysulfide molecules that dissolve into the battery’s electrolyte liquid. This becomes …
Battery Optimization: Working Smarter, Not Harder
We’re often told that we use only a small part of our brains – easily demonstrated in your editor’s case. What if we’re only using a small part of the battery power that’s available to us? Fixing that would lead to smaller batteries working more efficiently, a significant step toward lighter power packages. Hybridcars.com shares this kind of thinking in two recent postings, the first about a $4 million contract beween PARC, a Xerox company, its partner LG Chem Power and the U. S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency Energy (ARPA-E) as part of the Advanced Management and Protection of Energy Storage Devices (AMPED) program. According to hybridcars’ Philippe Crowe, the partners will, “Develop a fiber …