How do you store renewable energy so that it is available when you need it, even when the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing? Giant batteries designed for the power grid - called flow batteries, which store electricity in liquid electrolyte
How do you store renewable energy so that it is available when you need it, even when the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing? Giant batteries designed for the power grid - called flow batteries, which store electricity in liquid electrolyte tanks - could be the solution, but so far utilities have not found a viable battery yet can reliably feed thousands of life cycles from 10 to 20 years.
Now, a battery membrane technology developed by researchers at the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) may be a solution.
As reported in the Joule Journal, researchers have developed a versatile and affordable battery membrane from a class of polymers known as AquaPIM. This class of polymers allows for low-cost, durable network batteries based solely on readily available materials such as zinc, iron and water. The team also developed a simple model showing the impact of different battery membranes on battery life, which should accelerate the early stages of R & D on DC battery technologies, in particular in the search for a membrane adapted to the different types of chemical composition of the batteries.
"Our AquaPIM membrane technology is well positioned to accelerate the introduction of flow batteries that use scalable, low-cost water-based chemical compositions," said Brett Helms, Principal Investigator at the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research. (JCESR). and scientist at the Molecular Foundry of Berkeley Lab who led the study. "By using our technology and the corresponding empirical models for battery performance and life, other researchers will be able to quickly assess the readiness of each component entering the battery, from the membrane to the battery. This should save time and resources for researchers and product developers.
Most of the chemical compositions of grid batteries have strongly alkaline (or basic) electrodes - a positively charged cathode on one side and a negatively charged anode on the other side. However, state-of-the-art membranes are designed for acidic chemicals, such as fluorinated membranes in fuel cells, but not for alkaline batteries. (In chemistry, pH is a measure of the hydrogen ion concentration of a solution.) The pure water has a pH of 7 and is considered neutral.The acidic solutions 