Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have developed a new method that could extend the lifespan of aqueous zinc-ion batteries by several orders of magnitude. Instead of lasting just a few thousand cycles, they could now endure several hundred thousand charge and discharge cycles.
The main innovation is a special protective layer for the zinc anodes of the batteries. This layer addresses previous issues such as the growth of needle-like zinc structures—known as zinc dendrites—as well as unwanted chemical side reactions that trigger hydrogen formation and corrosion.
The research team, led by Prof. Roland A. Fischer, Chair of Inorganic and Metal-Organic Chemistry at the TUM School of Natural Sciences, uses a unique material for this purpose: a porous organic polymer called TpBD-2F. This material forms a stable, ultra-thin, and highly ordered film on the zinc anode, allowing zinc ions to flow efficiently through nano-channels while keeping water away from the anode.
Zinc-ion batteries with this new protective layer could replace lithium-ion batteries in large-scale energy storage applications, such as in combination with solar or wind power plants. They last longer, are safer, and zinc is both cheaper and more readily available than lithium.
Zinc (Zn) emerges as an ideal anode for aqueous-based energy storage devices because of its safety, non-toxicity, and cost-effectiveness. However, the reversibility of zinc anodes is constrained by unchecked dendrite proliferation and parasitic side reactions. To minimize these adverse effects, a highly oriented, crystalline 2D porous fluorinated covalent organic framework (denoted as TpBD-2F) thin film is in situ synthesized on the Zn anode as a protective layer. The zincophilic and hydrophobic TpBD-2F provides numerous 1D fluorinated nanochannels, which facilitate the hopping/transfer of Zn2+ and repel H2O infiltration, thus regulating Zn2+ flux and inhibiting interfacial corrosion. The resulting TpBD-2F protective film enabled stable plating/stripping in symmetric cells for over 1200 h at 2 mA cm−2. Furthermore, assembled full cells (Zn-ion capacitors) deliver an ultra-long cycling life of over 100 000 cycles at a current density of 5 A g−1, outperforming nearly all reported porous crystalline materials.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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The application for this is grid stability / frequency response / short duration reseve balancing on the grid. The capacity would get cycles many times per day as a result and replace the effect of the thousands of tonnes of mass that turbines currently deliver.
This would fit in with balancing responses from the thousands to millions (cars) of batteries that are grid connected and slower to schedule for demand and generation.
Think about a million cars with 50kWh each, which is 50GWh for just a million cars. The daily average for the UK is below 1000GWh per day.
The right pricing feed through are currently the key to making this all work properly.
We are also only thinking in todays energy consuming patterns and technology because it’s too risky to develop today for tommorrows world (unless your Musk).
Brian, always interested in this sort of post thanks. Hoping someone in the know can answer this. Outside of pumped hydro storage in what type of energy storage is actually in use in North America and where? Is there a market? I hear of compressed air,batteries, are there any large scale projects in use?
Yes, You can.
But because this text is about energy storage, I did the same.
Of course, to have a extremely high number of cycles allows other uses. Besides, that usually (although not always) goes with the ability to use faster charge/discharge cycles.
But for energy storage, usually used in combination with solar and/or wind, the common usage is just once cycle per day. The period between overproducing and underproducing doesn’t change faster than that. Even if it’s faster sometimes, it’s just partial cycles so it goes at the same rate in terms of ageing.
While having more cycles is always welcome, the effect diminishes as the number gets too high. It’s just not practical because, for investment purposes, everyone wants to limit the amortization period to a reasonable timeframe (like two decades at most).
Besides, over a very long time, many other factors can come into play, such as accidents, theft, obsolescence and others.
It’s true that current models, with around 2,000 cycles, experience a 20-30% degradation over that period. So, increasing the number of cycles by an order of magnitude still has an economic impact—minor, but still present. However, beyond 20,000 cycles… 50,000 cycles… it just doesn’t matter because, for stationary storage purposes, you only consider one cycle per day.
It’s simply too much. The battery will be retired much sooner for various reasons.
I don’t know much about electronics, but if you did have a battery with massively increased cycles, would you not start getting towards a device that could be both battery and capcacitor? A network of car batteries with multiple daily cycles could be part of a distributed storage grid.
Also, adsorption, rather than absorption, is my new word of the day. Thanks Brian.
Sorry. I wrote the response out of the thread.
Just a mistake because I have a script blocker.
The answer is in the thread.
OK, thats useful. Thankyou.
You talk about amortizing across two decades, but homes are typically amortized over thirty years. Power plants are depreciated over periods of half a century.
You’re not going to pass your car battery onto your grandkids, but a battery that would last 2-3 centuries would be deployed differently than one that needs replacing once a decade. It would be treated more like building a hydropower plant, than stocking up on D cells. Only it’s like a hydropower plant that you can install anywhere, at any scale.
You could start to see load leveling built into homes and the final mile of distribution systems, so that the lines could be sized to run at average load, not peak load, and shorter power outages could be ridden out without disruption.