Take These Batteries with Grains of Sodium

Dean Sigler Batteries, Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

“The goal of the Laboratory for Energy Storage and Conversion (LESC), at the University of California San Diego Nanoengineering Department, is to design and develop new functional nano-materials and nano-structures for advanced energy storage and conversion applications.”  Their focus on sodium (salt) batteries seems to promise much. UC San Diego is carrying out that mission with new and different approaches to creating “safer and less expensive alternatives to lithium ion batteries.”  One such approach is commercializing an advanced sodium ion battery using a tin anode instead of hard carbon. Cost, of course, is a major factor in turning to sodium.  OneCharge lists the comparative prices of lithium and sodium precursors as of June, 2023: Sodium carbonate costs approximately $290 per metric ton. Lithium carbonate (99.5% battery grade), on the other hand, commands a significantly higher price of approximately $35,000 per metric ton (even after a sharp decline since mid-July 2022). The same source notes sodium is 1,180 times more abundant in …

Charging Carbon Dioxide Batteries and Clearing the Air

Dean Sigler Announcements, Batteries, Electric Aircraft Materials, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

We would love to find ways to reduce carbon dioxide as a threat to our climate with an ever-decreasing timeline for accomplishing that task.  University of Illinois at Chicago and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have made inroads into creating a carbon dioxide battery that uses CO2 as an energy storage component. Amin Salehi-Khojin, associate professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at UIC’s College of Engineering, explains, “Lithium-carbon dioxide batteries have been attractive for a long time, but in practice, we have been unable to get one that is truly efficient until now.” A 7X Battery The incentive to use CO2 comes from lithium-carbon dioxide batteries having a specific energy density more than seven times greater than conventional lithium-ion cells.  Unfortunately, until now, Li-CO2 batteries haven’t been rechargeable – at least for a reasonable number of cycles. Now, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have demonstrated, “lithium-carbon dioxide batteries can be designed to operate in a fully rechargeable …