Eco Special New Battery Design Key To Green Energy

NEW BATTERY DESIGN KEY TO GREEN ENERGY

A NEW BATTERY DESIGN THAT IS MADE WITH LOW-COST MATERIALS AND IS SCALABLE TO A LARGER FORMAT, COULD MAKE SOLAR AND WIND POWER GRIDS MORE RELEVANT BY ADDING A ROBUST BACKUP

Researchers from the US Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have designed a low-cost, longlife battery that could enable solar and wind energy to become major suppliers to the electrical grid.

"For solar and wind power to be used in a significant way, we need a battery made of economical materials that are easy to scale and still efficient," said Yi Cui, a Stanford associate professor. "We believe our new battery may be the best yet designed to regulate the natural fluctuations of these alternative energies."

Cui and colleagues report their research results in the May issue of Energy when charging, they losethembackintotheliquid.Theentiremolecular stream is dissolved in an organic solvent, which doesn't have the corrosion issues of water-based flow batteries.

"In initial lab tests, the new battery also retained excellent energy-storage performance through more than 2,000 charges and discharges, equivalent to more than 5.5 years of daily cycles," Cui said. To demonstrate their concept, theresearcherscreatedaminiaturesystemusing simple glassware. Adding a lithium polysulfide solution to the flask immediately produces electricity that lights an LED. (see video)

Autility version of the new battery would be scaled up to store many megawatt-hours of energy. In the future, Cui's group plans to make a laboratory-scale system to optimise its energy storage process and identify potential engineeringissues,andtostartdiscussionswithpotential hosts for a full-scale field-demonstration unit. MM130426

Source: cleanpowerlife.blogspot.com