Better Batteries: Fluoride – Not Just for Toothpaste Anymore

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

At Germany’s Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), researchers have developed a new concept for rechargeable batteries.  Based on a fluoride shuttle – the transfer of fluoride anions between the electrodes – it promises to enhance the storage capacity reached by lithium-ion batteries by several factors.  Operational safety is also increased, as it can be done without lithium. The fluoride-ion battery is presented for the first time in a paper in the Journal of Materials Chemistry by Dr. Maximilian Fichtner, Head of the Energy Storage Systems Group, and Dr. Munnangi Anji Reddy. “In search of new concepts to build batteries with high energy densities, electrochemical cells based on metal fluorides may be promising. Herein, we report the demonstration of secondary battery cells based on fluoride shuttle.  In fluoride ion batteries, [a] fluoride anion (negatively-charged ions moving toward the positive electrode) acts as charge transfer ion between a metal/metal fluoride pair where it will react with metal or evolve from metal fluoride depending on the flow of current.” Presenting on day two of the …

A Pair of Viruses Good for Your Computer – and Maybe Your Electric Vehicle

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants Leave a Comment

To say that your battery is “smoking” would normally be the sign of a failed circuit, but researchers at the A. James Clark School of Engineering and College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Maryland may be putting a virus that’s bad even for tobacco to good use in creating a battery that may be up to 10 times more powerful than today’s best lithium cells.   Professor Reza Ghodssi, director of the Institute for Systems Research and Herbert Rabin Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Clark School,  is “harnessing and exploiting the ‘self-renewing’ and ‘self-assembling’ properties” of the  Tobacco Mosaic Virus (TMV), which in its unrestrained natural state destroys tobacco, tomatoes, peppers and other leafy green things.   The idea that battery creation is a self-directing event is belied by the University’s video. Scientists found, “They can modify the TMV rods to bind perpendicularly to the metallic surface of a battery electrode and arrange the rods in intricate and orderly …