Hybrid Batteries in Hybrid Vehicles?

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

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 a thin film that forms on the surface of the lithium-containing anode, and grows until the battery will no longer operate. Rather than trying to stop sulfur leakage from the cathode as others have, PNNL added a protective graphite shield …

Battery Optimization: Working Smarter, Not Harder

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

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 optic monitoring system capable of providing detailed information about the internal condition of batteries. The end goal is to allow batteries to perform better in applications such as electric vehicles (EVs). This smart system will perform on-the-job training, learning the …