By : Franyi Sarmiento, Ph.D., Inspenet, December 28, 2022
Engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have designed a battery made from abundant and inexpensive materials that could provide low-cost backup storage for renewable energy sources.
Less expensive than lithium-ion battery technology, the device uses aluminum and sulfur as its two electrode materials with a molten salt electrolyte in between.
The new battery is described in the journal Nature, in a paper by MIT professor Donald Sadoway, along with 15 others. Sadoway, who is the John F. Elliott Professor Emeritus of Materials Chemistry, said, “I wanted to invent something that was better, much better, than lithium-ion batteries for small-scale stationary storage and, ultimately, for Automotive industry.”
In addition to being expensive, lithium-ion batteries contain a flammable electrolyte, making them less ideal for transportation. So they devised a battery with three inexpensive and readily available ingredients: aluminum, not unlike aluminum foil in the supermarket; sulfur, which is often a waste product from processes such as oil refining; and widely available salts.
The research team included members from Peking University, Yunnan University, and Wuhan University of Technology in China; the University of Louisville, in Kentucky; the University of Waterloo, in Canada; Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee; and MIT. The work was supported by the MIT Energy Initiative, the MIT Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation, and the ENN Group.
This material from the es.postus.com portal was edited for clarity, style and length.
Source: https://es.postsus.com/business/1152067.html
Photo: ShutterStock
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