The California Energy Commission (CEC) has awarded $450,000 in grant funding to Sepion Technologies, an Emeryville, California company that’s developing a composite battery membrane designed to replace ceramic components. Sepion’s composite membranes provide high-flux and ion-selective transport, and the company says they can be processed in large-area formats at a fraction of the cost of ceramics. The project’s… Read more »
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Daimler and thysenkrupp partner to develop bipolar batteries
Under a project sponsored by the German Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, Daimler and the Fraunhofer Institute, together with German conglomerate thyssenkrupp and engineering firm IAV, are co-developing the design and production of bipolar batteries. Bipolar batteries are still in the laboratory stage and have not moved past pilot scale. The project, named EMBATT-goes-FAB,… Read more »
Amprius’s silicon nanowire batteries power the Zephyr S HAPS solar aircraft
Battery manufacturer Amprius is supplying lithium-ion cells to Airbus’s Zephyr program. Using Amprius’s cells, which contain a 100% silicon anode, the Zephyr S solar-powered unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) recently flew more than 25 days, setting a new record for stratospheric flight. The Zephyr S is a high-altitude pseudo-satellite (HAPS), which combines the persistence of a… Read more »
Worcester Polytechnic research team wins award from USABC for battery recycling process
An engineering research team at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Massachusetts recently won a million-dollar contract from the United States Advanced Battery Consortium (USABC) to develop an innovative process for recycling used Li-ion batteries. The team, led by WPI professor Yan Wang, it created a patented closed-loop recycling process that works like this: the batteries… Read more »
University of Michigan researchers develop non-combustible, non-degrading ceramic electrolyte
Scientists at the University of Michigan have developed a solid-state electrolyte which they claim is non-combustible (which is good, because it’s heated to over 1,800° F during manufacturing!) and not vulnerable to dendrite formation due to a stabilizing ceramic layer. The electrolyte has special properties that allow for increased capacities and faster charging rates as well. Current… Read more »
Penn State researchers develop cold-weather fast charging method for Li-ion batteries
Fast charging cold Li-ion batteries comes with the risk of lithium plating. When metallic lithium is formed in a battery, it can severely reduce battery lifespan and increase instability. Researchers from Penn State have suggested a solution to that problem that can provide 15-minute fast charging and a twelve-year battery lifespan in temperatures as low as… Read more »
Cambridge study reveals fast-charging potential of niobium tungsten oxides
Cambridge research has shed light on the potential of a previously ignored class of electrode material: niobium tungsten oxides. These compounds display several promising properties, including a lack of the dendrite formation which plagues graphite-based designs. They have a relatively large particle size and a structure that allows lithium ions to travel freely. This high transport rate can… Read more »
Iron trifluoride cathode could greatly increase energy density
Researchers from the University of Maryland and the DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have developed a cathode material containing iron trifluoride (FeF3) that they say could triple the energy density of Li-ion batteries. Their research was published in Nature Communications. “Compared to the large capacity of the commercial graphite anodes used in lithium-ion batteries, the capacity of the cathodes is… Read more »
New R&D partnership aims to put Québec in the Li-on battery race
Hydro-Québec and Nouveau Monde Graphite (NMG) have reached a research and licensing agreement that they hope will make Québec a contender in the booming battery business. The government-owned utility Hydro-Québec will assist NMG in developing small-scale mining operations to produce graphite which will be used as anode material for Li-on batteries. NMG’s graphite operation began… Read more »
Critical Materials Institute to address lithium and cobalt demand
As the market for plug-in vehicles grows, so does the demand for the materials associated with production, particularly lithium and cobalt, which are used in Li-on batteries. The DOE’s Critical Materials Institute (CMI) is focused on recycling and reducing the demand for rare metals that may experience shortages in the future. The agency is also… Read more »