| From: Eric | 5/28/2024 12:16:47 PM | | | | | | Bringing lithium-sulfur batteries closer to commercialization
Researchers at the University of South Carolina have successfully transitioned their highly-durable lithium-sulfur battery technology from coin to pouch cells and reported competent energy densities.
May 28, 2024 Marija Maisch
Image: University of South Carolina
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From pv magazine EES News
Lithium-sulfur batteries are a promising candidate for high-performance energy storage applications due to their low cost and high theoretical energy density of more than 500 Wh/kg when coupled with lithium metal anodes.
However, developing a highly durable sulfur cathode has been challenging due to the polysulfide shuttling and volume variation of sulfur that leads to chemical and mechanical degradation of the cathode during cycling.
Researchers at the University of South Carolina have made a huge step forward in addressing this issue by developing a simple electrode processing method for producing highly durable sulfur cathodes. These electrodes feature a self-structured binder confinement for sulfur particles using only commercially available sulfur, carbon black, and binder, with no additional components.
The researchers have controlled the dissolution of the binder during the slurry preparation step to form a porous binder/carbon shell structure around the sulfur particles that can entrap the soluble polysulfides and slow down the shuttling mechanism.
The sulfur cathodes achieved through this method offer an outstanding capacity retention of 74% over 1000 cycles, due to a considerable reduction in the lithium-polysulfide shuttling and active material loss. Electrodes with a high areal loading also showed excellent cyclability as well as a high capacity.
The researchers reported these results last year following the completion of the project’s first phase, in which they used coin cells. Now, they are moving to practical battery forms to determine if commercialization is possible.
The team’s current work focuses on pouch cells, which theoretically have the highest energy density since this type has the least amount of waste weight. “Pouch cells usually have lighter and thinner battery casing than the other forms, which leaves most of the volume and weight of the battery for the energy-providing components,” Chemical Engineering Assistant Professor Golareh Jalilvand says.
While the challenges of batteries grow with their size, the USC researchers have reported a fast and successful transition from coin to pouch cells. “We have achieved outstanding lithium-sulfur pouch cells with competent energy densities,” Jalilvand says. “I’m looking forward to seeing the long cycle life and durability of our pouch cells because that’s the last check mark for us and our industrial partner. With that, it might be time to say we have a lithium-sulfur battery that is ready for commercialization.”
Given the long charge-discharge time, the researchers see lithium-sulfur batteries as best suited for applications that do not require fast charging. These include heavy-duty trucks, buses, and other means of transport that need long discharge time, commonly known as milage, and can be kept overnight at charging stations. The technology also shows great potential for stationary applications such as grid-level energy storage as well as space applications.
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| From: Eric | 5/29/2024 3:00:08 PM | | | | | | Solid State Batteries are Closer Than You Think
Undecided with Matt Ferrell
1.41M subscribers
May 21, 2024
Why Solid State Batteries are Finally Here.
If I said that a solid state battery (or SSB) was coming to the market soon, would you believe me? What if I told you that some of the most advanced solid state batteries ever made are right around the corner? And that the pilot programs and production facilities are already in the works?
I wouldn’t believe me either, but it's true. Solid state batteries have been one of those revolutionary breakthroughs that was always just another five or so years away.
But now two companies, QuantumScape and Solid Power, are on schedule for commercialization. So how exactly are they bringing their solid state batteries to the market? And what makes them special?
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| From: Eric | 6/4/2024 2:44:40 PM | | | | | | Recycling
SorbiForce uses agricultural waste to produce low-cost, safe batteries
US-based start-up SorbiForce uses no toxic products or metals in production of its batteries. It claims its systems are cheaper and safer than lithium-ion batteries and have near zero end-of-life waste.
By Marija Maisch
Jun 03, 2024
Finance
Industry
Manufacturing
Recycling
Image: SorbiForce
US-based SorbiForce says it has designed its battery energy storage systems to be completely recyclable, reducing environmental impact and fostering a circular economy.
Its technology does not rely on fossil-based resources and instead utilizes agricultural by-products, like straw, and brine from desalination plants, making them a sustainable alternative to lithium-ion batteries.
The company uses its own ultra-porous carbon, water, and salt to develop its battery storage systems. It employs locally sourced raw materials that are abundant in most locations in the USA, thereby mitigating supply chain risks associated with traditional battery components.
According to SorbiForce, its battery is resistant to mechanical damage, non-flammable, non-explosive, has no problem with overcharging, requires no cooling, and has no thermal runaway. “The bromine salt ZnBr2 in our battery is used in firefighting,” the company says.
The cost of 1 kWh is 1.8 times lower than the price of 1 kWh on the lithium-ion battery market, the company claims.
At the end of their lifetime, the batteries can be easily disposed, fully recycled, and repurposed as organic compost, leaving minimal environmental impact.
The technology is touted as easily scalable offering a power range from 120 kW to 1 MW and storage capacity from 500 to 700 kWh.
The system measures 6 meters in length, 2.4 meters in width, 2.6 meters in height and weighs 18.9 tons.
The system needs four hours to charge and as much to discharge. SorbiForce guarantees 5,000 charge-discharge cycles and has a goal to extend this to 10,000.
“At present, we are introducing batteries with 4-hour and 12-hour cycles. That means 4 hours of charging/4 hours of discharging and 12 hours of charging/12 hours of discharging. However, we can manufacture batteries ranging from 30 minutes to 24 hours,” Serhii Kaminskyi, founder and CEO of SorbiForce, tells pv magazine Energy Storage. “We are focused on industrial applications for intraday operations.”
“Currently, the maximum gravimetric energy density is 64 Wh/kg. This is less than lithium-ion batteries but more than lead-acid batteries,” he adds. “For our potential customers, such as solar and wind power plants, data centers, utilities, nuclear power plants, and others, the specific energy density is not as critical as it is for portable electronics or electric vehicles.”
SorbiForce was founded in Arizona in 2022. It originates from Ukraine, where it established its R&D center in 2019. In that same year, it created a prototype with a specific energy density of 45-60 Wh/kg.
In 2020, the company created large prototypes weighing 0.7-1.5 kilograms suitable for scaling and operational through 1,000-plus cycles. A year later, it completed testing for 2 kWh battery system in a residential setting.
Last month, SorbiForce announced the closure of its crowdfunding campaign on Republic, raising $340,000 from 537 investors across 38 countries.
“This successful fundraising round not only validates the potential of our innovative technology but also underscores the urgent need for sustainable energy solutions. With this funding, we are well-positioned to accelerate our development efforts and bring our groundbreaking battery technology to market,” said Serhii Kaminskyi, founder and CEO of SorbiForce.
The funds raised will enable SorbiForce to continue patenting and begin the certification process, optimize manufacturing processes, expand its expert team, and scale production, the company said.
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| From: Eric | 6/4/2024 2:45:55 PM | | | | | | Large scale battery storage on the rise in Chile
Three utility scale battery energy storage projects collocated with solar plants were announced last week in Chile. Enel is building a 67 MW/134 MWh battery, while CJR Renewable and Uriel Renovables are planning 200 MW/800 MWh and 90 MW/200 MWh projects, respectively.
By Luis Ini
Jun 04, 2024
Grid-scale
Markets
Projects & Applications
Image: Uriel Renovables
Last week, three different developers announced separate large-scale battery energy storage (BESS) projects collocated with solar farms in Chile.
Enel Chile, the local subsidiary of Italian energy company Enel, said it will deploy a 67 MW/134 MWh battery at the El Manzano solar power plant. The solar project with a capacity of 99 MW is located in the town of Tiltil, in the Chacabuco Province, Santiago Metropolitan Region. The solar plant is deployed on 185 hectares of land and features 162,000 bifacial monocrystalline panels of 615 W and 610 W.
In a separate press release, Portuguese EPC contractor CJR Renewable announced that it had been contracted by Ireland-based Atlas Renewable to construct a 200 MW/800 MWh BESS. The system will be paired with the 244 MW Sol del Desierto photovoltaic plant, which is in operation since 2022 and located in the town of María Elena, the Tocopilla Province, in the Antofagasta region.
CJR Renewables will act as the main contractor for the civil and electrical works on the project which will feature 320 battery units provided by Chinese manufacturer Sungrow. “With this project, we’ve reached 523 MW in BESS facilities in Chile,” said Raúl Pérez, business and development manager at CJR Renewables.
With 582,930 solar panels distributed over 479 hectares, Sol del Desierto generates around 714 GWh per year. The PV plant has been operating under a 15-year power purchase agreement (PPA) inked between between Atlas Renewable Energy and Engie Energía Chile, the Chilean unit of French energy giant Engie, supplying 550 GWh of electricity annually.
In another separate development, Spanish developer Uriel Renovables announced it had obtained preliminary approval for the 90 MW Quinquimo solar farm collocated with a 90 MW/200 MWh BESS facility. Construction on this project is expected to begin in 2025 in an area located 150 km north of Santiago de Chile, in the Valparaíso Region.
The project is part of a broader PV project portfolio that Uriel Renovables is currently building in Chile.
In March, Engie Chile finalized the construction of a 139 MW/638 MWh battery. It claimed it was the largest energy storage system to be installed in Latin America. The storage facility is paired with the 181.2 MW Coya PV plant, in Maira Elena, in northern Chile’s Antofagasta region, which has one of the world’s highest levels of solar radiation. Engie announced the project in December 2022.
Chile is set to become the second-largest battery market in the Americas after US. Last year, the Latin American nation switched on 12 storage projects, with a total power output of 1.3 GW. As of August 2023, it had 85 energy storage projects in various stages of development, totaling 6.4 GW.
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| From: Eric | 6/4/2024 2:49:59 PM | | | | | | Manufacturing
Invinity quadruples its vanadium-flow battery manufacturing in UK
UK-based manufacturer Invinity Energy Systems has announced plans to set up a new manufacturing facility which would increase its long duration energy storage (LDES) manufacturing capacity to over 500 MWh per year.
By Marija Maisch
Jun 04, 2024
Finance
Industry
Manufacturing
Image: Invinity
After years of talk about the necessity of LDES for stabilizing and decarbonizing the grid, demand for this type of storage is on the rise. Thus far, flow batteries and compressed air technologies have had the most commercial success, whereas several other LDES concepts have garnered limited attention.
The latest signal of the market’s awakening comes from UK-based vanadium redox flow specialist Invinity Energy Systems. This week, the company has revealed plans to set up a new manufacturing facility in Motherwell, North Lanarkshire, Scotland.
It has leased a 26,000 square foot (2,415 square meter) facility which will be primarily focused on battery assembly. The new production site is expected to become operational in the third quarter of 2024 and increase the company’s long-duration energy storage (LDES) manufacturing capacity to 500 MWh per year.
Invinity already has one manufacturing site in Bathgate, Scotland, which will be able to focus on the production of the company’s patented cell stack when the Motherwell factory is launched.
The company also plans to undertake upgrades to its Bathgate facility later this year, including the installation of a semi-automated production line, anticipated to further boost manufacturing capacity and contribute to a greater reduction in unit production costs.
Inivity says it aims to bolsters its delivery capability to match expected future commercial activity.
“We are seeing the market for LDES in the UK expanding dramatically alongside increasing dependence on renewable energy,” Larry Zulch, Chief Executive Officer at Invinity. “As the UK’s leading domestic energy storage manufacturer, we are looking forward to serving the country’s energy storage requirements with batteries made in Britain. Quadrupling our UK manufacturing footprint is a big step forward in this direction.”
Founded in 2020, Invinity Energy Systems manufactures vanadium flow batteries for large-scale, high-throughput energy storage requirements of business, industry, and electrical networks.
Its flow batteries range in size from less than 250 kWh to tens of megawatt-hours and can run continually with no degradation for over 25 years. The company has 75 MWh of systems already deployed or contracted for delivery across 82 sites in 15 countries.
Last week, Invinity raised GBP 57.38 million ($72.9 million) gross from a share offering, including a GBP 25 million investment into Invinity by UK Infrastructure Bank. The company plans to use the proceeds for both organic and inorganic growth investments.
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| From: Eric | 6/4/2024 2:53:46 PM | | | | | | R&D
High-efficiency, high-energy all-solid-state sodium-air battery
Researchers in South Korea have successfully demonstrated the use of free ambient air as a fuel leveraging a sodium-based solid electrolyte to tackle the carbonate issue that has been holding back the rollout of metal-air batteries. Their sodium-air battery cell has demonstrated high efficiency, incresed energy density, and a broad voltage range.
By Marija Maisch
Jun 03, 2024
R&D
Technologies
Image: POSTECH
Metal-air batteries, utilizing lithium or sodium, have been of great interest owing to their exceptionally high theoretical gravimetric energy densities. These batteries predominantly rely on the utilization of pure oxygen for the formation and decomposition of metal oxides, rather than ambient air.
While ambient air is a more practical option, CO2 and H2O present in air cause severe irreversible reactions, such as the formation of carbonates and hydroxides, which typically degrades a battery. To address this, metal-air batteries usually require additional equipment, such as an oxygen permeation membrane to either purify oxygen or selectively use atmospheric oxygen.
Now, researchers from Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) in South Korea have developed a high-energy, high-efficiency all-solid-state sodium-air battery which can reversibly utilize sodium and air without requiring special equipment.
The team employed Nasicon, a sodium superionic conductor and a solid electrolyte, to tackle the carbonate issue. Nasicon, comprising elements like sodium, silicon, and zirconium, allows ion movement in the solid state while demonstrating high electrochemical and chemical stability.
Leveraging this solid electrolyte, the team protected sodium metal electrodes from air and facilitated the breakdown of carbonate formed during electrochemical cell operation.
This has led to an increase in the cell’s energy density by increasing a working voltage while significantly reducing the voltage gap during charging and discharging, thus enhancing energy efficiency.
The researchers have reported that their Nasicon solid electrolyte delivers a much higher discharge potential of 3.4?V than other metal-air batteries resulting in high energy density and achieves more than 86% energy efficiency at 0.1?mA?cm-2 over 100 cycles.
Moreover, the team’s all-solid-state sodium-air cell exhibited superior kinetic capability through in-situ formed catholyte, which has a fast sodium ion conduction to the inside of the electrode.
Namely, the formation of the catholyte as the product of the reaction with ambient air allows the cell to undergo the same electrochemical reaction pathway with sodium carbonates in both the charge and discharge without forming any intermediate phases.
As a result, the potential gap between charge and discharge reaction shrinks, leading to a high round-trip energy efficiency. The resulting solid-state sodium-air battery delivers high reversible energy density for 100 cycles with high Coulombic and energy efficiencies, the researchers said.
Importantly, the cell operated solely on metal and air without additional special equipment or an additional oxygen filtration device.
“We’ve devised a method to harness carbonate, a longstanding challenge in the development of high-energy metal-air batteries,” said Professor Byoungwoo Kang, who led the research. “We hope to lead the field of the next generation all-solid-state metal-air batteries, leveraging a solid electrolyte-based cell platform that remains stable in ambient conditions and offers a broad voltage range.”
The findings of this research have been published in the paper titled Activating reversible carbonate reactions in Nasicon solid electrolyte-based Na-air battery via in-situ formed catholyte, which was published in the international journal Nature Communications.
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| From: Eric | 6/4/2024 3:04:19 PM | | | | | | Long-duration energy storage poised to outcompete lithium-ion batteries
While most long-duration energy storage (LDES) technologies are still early stage and costly compared to lithium-ion batteries, some have already, or are, set to achieve lower costs for longer durations, finds BloombergNEF.
June 4, 2024 Marija Maisch
Image: BloomberNEF
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From pv magazine ESS News site
Interest in long-duration energy storage (LDES) is rising rapidly as demand for clean firm capacity grows. With most LDES technologies still nascent, information about their cost is not widely available. In its inaugural LDES cost survey, BloombergNEF is bringing transparency to the matter.
BNEF has surveyed seven LDES technology groups and 20 technology types in its report and found that the least expensive technologies are already providing cheaper storage than lithium-ion batteries for durations over eight hours.
Thermal energy storage and compressed air storage had an average capital expenditure, or capex, of $345/kWh (USD 232) and $437/kWh, respectively. For comparison, lithium-ion systems had an average capex of $454/kWh for four-hour duration systems in 2023, so generally shorter-term storage.
Storage duration, project size, and location are key factors affecting LDES capex. Gravity energy storage systems, which elevate weights when charging and controllably drop them when discharging, have the highest average capex, at $960/kWh.
The cost reduction rate of LDES technologies will largely depend on the expansion of deployment and the development of routes to market in major regions, BNEF notes.
The demand for LDES is expected to grow in the future as the technology could help intermittent renewables act like baseload fossil fuel generators year-round. It is already being created through public procurement processess, such as the one launched in New South Wales last week.
However, LDES costs are unlikely to fall as fast as those of lithium-ion batteries this decade. This is primarily due to the fact that lithium-ion batteries are extensively used in both the transport and power sectors.
China v world
Presently, China leads the way on cost-effectiveness for established technologies like compressed air energy storage, flow batteries, and thermal energy storage.
The average capex in non-Chinese markets is 68% higher for compressed air storage, 66% higher for flow batteries, and 54% higher for thermal energy storage, BNEF finds.
“The significant cost disparity is largely due to China’s far greater adoption of LDES technologies,” said Yiyi Zhou, BloombergNEF’s Clean Energy Specialist. “While other nations are still in the early stages of commercializing LDES technologies, China is already developing gigawatt-hour scale projects, driven by favorable policies. This is particularly true for compressed-air energy storage and flow batteries, where China has set new project size records in the past two years. The rate of LDES installations in China is astounding.”
However, China is also producing lithium-ion batteries that are the cheapest in the world. Therefore, it may be more difficult for LDES to compete with the incumbent technology on the Chinese soil. According to BNEF, there are only a few LDES technologies, like natural cavern-based compressed air storage, that can outcompete lithium-ion batteries in terms of per-unit capital costs today.
LDES technologies have a better chance of competing with lithium-ion batteries in non-Chinese markets, where the lithium-ion batteries are more expensive. “While costs for LDES technologies outside of China are higher, the US and Europe have a chance to invest in their own industries and drive innovation and deployment,” says Evelina Stoikou, Energy Storage Senior Associate at BloombergNEF.
“Markets outside of China are developing a wider range of technologies compared to China, including more technology types within flow batteries, compressed air, compressed gas, thermal, gravity and novel pumped hydro. We’ve seen interest in those regions driven by ambitious clean energy targets, higher lithium-ion battery costs and an effort to develop alternative technologies that do not rely on lithium,” Stoikou said.
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| From: Eric | 6/18/2024 4:50:50 PM | | | | | | 
Image of Toyota's first US battery factory in Liberty, NC. Courtesy of Toyota.
Battery Cell Production in North America Expected to Exceed 1,200 GWh per Year by 2030 030
10 hours ago
US Department of Energy 10 Comments
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1,200 GWh per year of battery cells would be enough cells for at least 12 million new EVs annually.
Argonne National Laboratory projects that battery cell production in North America will exceed 1,200 GWh of capacity by 2030. That is enough to supply 12 to 15 million new EVs annually assuming average battery capacities of 80 to 100 kWh per vehicle.
In the United States, much of the battery production is expected to take place near vehicle assembly locations, primarily in the Midwest and Southeast. The close proximity of battery production and vehicle assembly is critical for minimizing shipping time and transport costs for EV manufacturers.
Fact #1347 Dataset. Fact of the Week. Courtesy of Department of Energy
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