Influit Energy, a spinoff from Illinois Institute of Technology, is going commercial in a big way. They claim to have developed a “rechargeable electrofuel – a non-flammable, fast-refueling liquid flow battery that already carries 23 percent more energy than lithium batteries, at half the cost.” Reporting by Loz Blain in New Atlas.com notes the company plans “to commercialize its ultra-high density liquid batteries.” The firm’s “nanoelectrofuel,” a motor-oil consistency liquid, would refuel a vehicle with a special four-point nozzle. The process would allow users to be on the road or in the air in a few minutes, rather than a few hours as with batteries. Like a battery, the liquid comes with a positive and negative component – two liquids – an anolyte and a catholyte instead of a more solid anode and cathode. The system requires four tanks – one each for incoming positive and negative liquids and one each for spent liquids that return to the supply source …
Liquid Batteries for Aircraft?
NASA is investigating “the integration of nanoelectrofuel (NEF) flow batteries with rim-driven electric motors to produce a safe, clean and quiet propulsion system for aircraft,” according to Aviation Week. That is the promise of an early-stage rechargeable liquid battery technology under investigation by NASA. The agency is researching the integration of NEF flow batteries with rim-driven electric motors to produce a safe, clean and quiet propulsion system for aircraft. The rim-driven motors are used on boats as thrusters, and may have applications on small unmanned aircraft, although researchers have seen disappointing results so far. Tying these motors to more promising research into” non-explosive energy storage technology” is part of NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center’s Aqueous Quick-Charging Battery Integration for Flight Research (Aquifer) project, along with NASA Glenn Research Center’s co-principal investigation. A spin-off of research at Argonne National Laboratory and Illinois Institute of Technology, Influit Energy has “developed a novel type of rechargeable battery that features active energy-storing materials in …
Cheaper Hydrogen and Fuel Cells
Hydrogen would be a wonderful fuel if it were easy to get and easy to use. It makes up 90 percent of all atoms in the universe, equal to about 75 percent of all the mass. Hydrogen has been expensive to obtain because quite often its extraction from other matter entails using expensive catalysts such as platinum. Russia and America Team Up to Get Cheap Hydrogen Scientists from the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, working with researchers at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) and in Jinan, China combined efforts to produce hydrogen using sunlight and photosensitive lipids. We associate lipids with getting blood drawn at the clinic, and waiting patiently to see how our cholesterol and triglycerides are doing. Lipids are water insoluble fats, and are a key to this inexpensive method of extracting hydrogen. Using titanium dioxide as a photocatalyst, the teams “inserted a photosensitive protein into nanodiscs — made from circular fragments of cell membrane …
Superoxides May Be New Super Materials for Batteries
A significantly large and geographically diverse group of researchers has invested a large amount of time and intellectual capital investigating superoxides, an innovative way to keep lithium-air batteries refreshed and ready for more. Groups at Argonne National Laboratory, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Hanyang University in Seoul, South Korea; the University of Utah and the University of Kentucky all contributed to the ongoing project. While still serving as U. S. Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu called on academia and industry to develop a battery five times as powerful as then available lithium cells, at one-fifth the cost of then current batteries. We may not have arrived at that ambitious goal yet, but Argonne and UIC see a possible breakthrough in making lithium-air batteries – theoretically the most energetic of lithium chemistries – into long-lasting, energy-dense energy storage units. So far, lithium air batteries have a limiting weakness, the use of lithium peroxide, something that ends up being “an insoluble …
Milking Magnesium for All It’s Worth
Magnesium carries two positive charges for every one which lithium carries. This simple fact was inspiration for Jordi Cabana, a University of Illinois at Chicago assistant professor of chemistry in developing a magnesium-based battery. Using magnesium in place of lithium led to this thought: “Because magnesium is an ion that carries two positive charges, every time we introduce a magnesium ion in the structure of the battery material we can move twice as many electrons,” He added, “We hope that this work will open a credible design path for a new class of high-voltage, high-energy batteries.” Cabana and his associates have shown they can replace the lithium ions, each of which carries a single positive charge, with magnesium ions, which have a plus-two charge, in battery-like chemical reactions, using an electrode with a structure like those in many of today’s devices. According to the University, the research is part of the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, a Department of …
Lighter, More Powerful, Cheaper. Can J-CESR Bring Us Better Batteries?
$70,000 is a sizable base price for a car. That sum for the simplest of Tesla S sedans makes a bigger than average debt load for most of us, probably more than most can responsibly assume. Even the much anticipated model “E” at half that price is more stunning than the average sticker shock these days. What if, by some act of art or science, that $70,000 could be slashed to $14,000 for an electric vehicle that could travel 265 miles on a charge? That tall order is the order of the day for the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, started two years ago under Dr. Steven Chu, who was then U. S. Secretary of Energy. He and his “teams” were charged with establishing the cooperative enterprise at “Argonne National Laboratory with a budget of $120 million over five years to create a battery five times more powerful and five times cheaper than today’s norms – all within five …
EAS VIII: Ultra High Energy Density Lithium Battery
Qichao Hu is Cofounder, President and interim CEO of SolidEnergy, a battery company with a different technology and a unique business plan. According to his company’s web site, he “Cofounded SolidEnergy while a PhD student at MIT, and led it through early stage business plan competition, fundraising, licensing and collaboration negotiation, and technology development. 2012 Forbes 30 Under 30 in Energy, and is a graduate of MIT and Harvard University.” His team was also the Deployment and Infrastructure Category Winner in the 2012 MIT Clean Energy Prize competition. In his presentation to the eighth annual Electric Aircraft Symposium on April 25, Hu told about his Waltham, Massachusetts startup’s strategic partnership with A123, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory. The firm’s laboratory and intellectual depth enables creating a battery that is safer, lighter and smaller, as Hu told attendees at the Symposium. Solid Energy Systems Corp. is now affiliated with A123 Venture Technologies Corp. This allows Hu and his …
Ready or Not, Hydrogen Cars Are Coming
Toyota will sell hydrogen fuel cell- powered cars in the United States in 2015, Bob Carter, senior vice president of automotive operations for Toyota Motor Sales (TMS), USA, Inc. claims, emphasizing, “Fuel cell electric vehicles will be in our future sooner than many people believe, and in much greater numbers than anyone expected.” Despite there being only 10 public hydrogen fueling stations in the US, with nine of those clustered in and south of San Francisco, and only one on the east coast, Toyota claims that they will be installing up to 100 additional stations in the Golden State in the next decade. Already, 19 are under development, 20 more are “expected” in 2015, and the state has allocated $29.9 million for further infrastructure creation. Carter is upbeat, telling an audience at the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, “Stay tuned, because this infrastructure thing is going to happen.” Toyota showed off its FCV Concept and an engineering …
Record Conversion Efficiency for Plastic Solar Cells
Megan Fellman, reporting for Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, explains a possible breakthrough in obtaining power conversion efficiency for polymer (plastic) solar cells close to those for more expensive silicon cells. Fellman lists the benefits of the plastic cells: “Among the various photovoltaic technologies, polymer (plastic) solar cells offer unique attractions and opportunities. These solar cells contain Earth-abundant and environmentally benign materials, can be made flexible and lightweight, and can be fabricated using roll-to-roll technologies similar to how newspapers are printed. But the challenge has been improving the cells’ power-conversion efficiency.” Faculty members and students led by Professor Tobin J. Marks designed and synthesized new polymer semiconductors, “and reports the realization of polymer solar cells with fill factors of 80 percent – a first. This number is close to that of silicon solar cells.” “Fill factor” is a measure of the ratio of the maximum power from the solar cell to the product of Voc (open-circuit voltage) and Isc (short-circuit current). The link …
I’ll Take Manhattan
While much of battery research goes into crafting the ultimate anode, cathode or electrolyte, there seem to be few efforts, at least to outside observers, of integrated approaches to making a better total battery. That may change soon, with the Department of Energy announcing formation of a new Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (J-CESR, or J-Caesar). Dr. Steven Chu, U. S. Secretary of Energy, has established the Center at Argonne National Laboratory with a budget of $120 million over five years to create a battery five times more powerful and five times cheaper than today’s norms – all within five years. For those of us who’ve grown wary of those “breakthough” announcements that almost always include the line, “researchers say the new product could become a commercial reality in the next five to 20 years,” this may seem too hopeful. Secretary Chu’s announcement included several factors that may alleviate this wariness. The Department is putting up the money, …
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