Meltdown – not a term one wants to hear when confronting an obstinate boss or while levitating in his or her new Tom Swift Electric Octo-copter. But it is a real specter confronting electric vehicle users, and one amplified to positive levels of terror in flight. Two groups of researchers have come up with novel ways of quelling that terror and getting rid of the normally flammable electrolyte that helps make lithium battery fires truly memorable. If researchers at Chapel Hill and Washington State University are successful in their research, that acid electrolyte can be replaced with something safer and as a bonus in both cases, batteries using these new substances will perform better and longer. Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, led by chemist Joseph DeSimone, Chancellor’s Eminent Professor of Chemistry in UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences and the William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering at N.C. State University and of …
Yet Another Soy Battery
The Blog recently reported on the brilliant work of twin high school students involved with the Brookhaven Institute in creating catalysts with a molybdenum-soy base (MoSoy) that could lead to inexpensive energy storage. Now we learn of efforts at Washington State University at Pullman in eastern Washington state to develop batteries with greater energy and prevent battery fires using the humble soy bean as a base material. Grant Norton, professor in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, is proud of his new lab, designed to build and test lithium battery materials in commercial sizes. “The new laboratory allows us to scale up our research to work that is commercially relevant.’’ Norton works on tin-based electrodes, among other things, while a group of researchers led by Dr. Katie Zhong, a professor in the school, shares the lab’s equipment. She and her graduate students are investigating solid lithium battery electrolytes such as a bio-based solid electrolyte made from environmentally friendly soy …