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Scientists have developed a long-lasting battery made with nickel.
The discovery could reduce or even eliminate the use of cobalt in the batteries that power electric cars and other products.
Cobalt is often mined using child labor.
“Nickel doesn’t have child labor issues,” says Huolin Xin, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Irvine.
The method could usher in a new, less controversial generation of lithium-ion batteries.
Until now, nickel wasn’t a practical substitute because large amounts of it were required to create lithium batteries, Xin says. And the metal’s cost keeps climbing.
To become an economically viable alternative to cobalt, nickel-based batteries needed to use as little nickel as possible.
“We’re the first group to start going in a low-nickel direction,” Xin says. “In a previous study by my group, we came up with a novel solution to fully eliminate cobalt. But that formulation still relied on a lot of nickel.”
To solve that problem, Xin’s team spent three years devising a process called “complex concentrated doping” that enabled the scientists to alter the key chemical formula in lithium-ion batteries as easily as one might adjust seasonings in a recipe.
The doping process, Xin explains, eliminates the need for cobalt in commercial components critical for lithium-ion battery functioning and replaces it with nickel.
“Doping also increases the efficiency of nickel,” says Xin, which means EV batteries now require less nickel to work—something that will help make the metal a more attractive alternative to cobalt-based batteries.
Xin says he thinks the new nickel chemistry will quickly start transforming the lithium-ion battery industry. Already, he says, electric vehicle companies are planning to take his team’s published results and replicate them.
“EV makers are very excited about low-nickel batteries, and a lot of EV companies want to validate this technique,” Xin says. “They want to do safety tests.”
The study appears in the journal Nature Energy.
Source: UC Irvine
The post Can new batteries eliminate need for cobalt mined by kids? appeared first on Futurity.
Battery materials and recycling startup Redwood Materials is expanding a partnership with Volkswagen of America in its bid to collect more end-of-life batteries from consumer electronics and strip out the valuable materials so they can be used to make batteries for electric vehicles.
Redwood has said its technology can recover more than 95% of the critical minerals from batteries (like nickel, cobalt, lithium and copper) and then manufacture the metals into battery components that are supplied to U.S. battery manufacturers for new electric vehicles and energy storage products. Co-founder and CEO JB Straubel, who was formerly the co-founder and CTO at Tesla, has long argued that creating a closed-loop system will reduce battery costs and the need to mine and ship raw materials.
Volkswagen of America and sibling brand Audi contracted with Redwood last year to recover and recycle end-of-life EV battery packs from its thousand-dealership network in the United States. Audi then expanded its partnership with Redwood to launch a consumer-focused recycling program.
Now Volkswagen of America has agreed to set up bins at certain dealerships to collect consumer electronics. The batteries and devices, including cell phones, cordless power tools, electric toothbrushes, wireless headphones and other lithium-ion-powered devices that are collected in the bins, will be sent to Redwood’s Nevada facility to be repurposed as EV batteries.
The consumer recycling program officially launches at 14 dealerships April 22, including locations in New Jersey and Wisconsin. Volkswagen will also set up a bin during the New York International Auto Show, which will be held from April 5 to April 16. Additional dealerships will be added throughout the year.
Redwood has largely been a B2B enterprise since its founding. The company has locked in deals with companies like Panasonic to recycle and process the scrap to recycle scrap from battery cell production. In early 2021, Redwood quietly opened a recycling program to everyday consumers and all of the old electronics sitting in their junk drawers. Redwood posted a “recycle with us” tab on its website, along with an address, where consumers can send their e-waste, and a “contact us” button.
The program has collected tens of thousands of pounds of electronics from consumers, according to Redwood.
VW and Redwood want to turn your old laptops into EV batteries by Kirsten Korosec originally published on TechCrunch
Enlarge / Each of those white structures contains lots of batteries that were built for cars. (credit: B2U)
Last week, a company called B2U Storage Solutions announced that it had started operations at a 25 Megawatt-hour battery facility in California. On its own, that isn't really news, as California is adding a lot of battery power. But in this case, the source of the batteries was unusual: Many of them had spent an earlier life powering electric vehicles.
The idea of repurposing electric vehicle batteries has been around for a while. To work in a car, the batteries need to be able to meet certain standards in terms of capacity and rate of discharge, but that performance declines with use. Even after a battery no longer meets the needs of a car, however, it can still store enough energy to be useful on the electric grid. So it was suggested that grid storage might be an intermediate destination between vehicles and recycling.
But there are some significant technical and economic challenges to implementing the idea. So we talked with B2U's CEO, Freeman Hall, to find out why the company decided it was the right time to put the concept into action.
A new technique uses liquid metal to create an elastic material that is impervious to both gases and liquids.
Applications for the material include flexible batteries and other packaging for high-value technologies that require protection from gases.
“This is an important step because there has long been a trade-off between elasticity and being impervious to gases,” says Michael Dickey, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at North Carolina State University.
“Basically, things that were good at keeping gases out tended to be hard and stiff. And things that offered elasticity allowed gases to seep through. We’ve come up with something that offers the desired elasticity while keeping gases out.”
The new technique makes use of a eutectic alloy of gallium and indium (EGaIn). Eutectic means that the alloy has a melting point that is lower than its constituent parts. In this case, the EGaIn is liquid at room temperature.
The researchers created a thin film of EGaIn, and encased it in an elastic polymer. The interior surface of the polymer was studded with microscale glass beads, which prevented the liquid film of EGaIn from pooling. The end result is essentially an elastic bag or sheath lined with liquid metal, which does not allow gases or liquids in or out.
The researchers tested the effectiveness of the new elastic material by assessing the extent to which it allowed liquid contents to evaporate, as well as the extent to which it allowed oxygen to leak out of a sealed container made of the material.
“We found that there was no measurable loss of either liquid or oxygen for the new material,” says Tao Deng, professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and co-corresponding author of the study in the journal Science.
The researchers are also conscious of costs associated with manufacturing the new material.
“The liquid metals themselves are fairly expensive,” Deng says. “However, we’re optimistic that we can optimize the technique—for example, making the EGaIn film thinner—in order to reduce the cost. At the moment, a single package would cost a few dollars, but we did not attempt to optimize for cost so there is a path forward to drive cost down.”
The researchers are currently exploring testing options to determine whether the material is actually an even more effective barrier than they’ve been able to show so far.
“Basically, we reached the limit of the testing equipment that we had available,” Dickey says.
“We’re also looking for industry partners to explore potential applications for this work. Flexible batteries for use with soft electronics is one obvious application, but other devices that either use liquids or are sensitive to oxygen will benefit from this technology.”
Additional coauthors are from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and NC State.
The National Science Foundation, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Innovation Program of the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University supported the work.
Source: NC State
The post Elastic material could protect flexible batteries from gases appeared first on Futurity.
Enlarge / We don't have to rely on megacorp obelisks to operate the things we buy. We don't have to learn their language. We can break free. (credit: PonyWang/Getty Images)
For many people, an automated smart home is about little things that add up to big conveniences over time. Lights turning on when you pull into the driveway, a downstairs thermostat adjustable from your upstairs bedroom, a robot vacuum working while you're at the grocery store—you put in a bit of setup work and your life gets easier.
What most smart homes also include, however, is a voice assistant, the opposite of a quiet, unseen convenience. Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant: They demand that you learn specific device names and structures for commands, while they frequently get even the most simple command astoundingly wrong. And they are, of course, an always-listening corporate microphone you're allowing inside your home.
There are ways to keep that smart home convenience while cutting out the conversation. Some involve your phone, some dedicated devices, but none of them involve saying a device's name. Here's an overview of the best options available.
The growth keeps coming for Tesla’s energy storage business.
On Wednesday, the automaker said its home and utility-scale battery deployments reached 6.5 gigawatt hours (GWh) during its fiscal 2022, calling it “by far the highest level of deployments we have achieved.” That’s up from about 4 GWh in 2021.
For context, the average American home consumes 10,632 kilowatt hours — just over 0.01 GWh — per year, according to the U.S. Energy Department.
In the fourth quarter alone, Tesla said energy storage deployments reached 2.5 GWh — up from 2.1 GWh in Q3. Tesla’s energy storage business includes its Powerwall home batteries and its much larger Megapacks.
Tesla also updated investors on its solar business, saying deployments totaled 348 megawatts in 2022. In the final quarter of the year, the automaker’s solar deployments fell just short of recent highs, hitting 100 MW in Q4.
The disclosures cap a supremely wobbly fiscal 2022 for Tesla.
In July, the automaker’s solar energy arm announced its “strongest” quarter in four years, with 106 megawatts deployed in Q2. Tesla said something similar about its energy storage business in Q3, declaring in October that it recorded “by far the highest level [of growth it has] ever achieved,” with home and utility-scale battery deployments rocketing 62% year over year. Tesla also dipped its toes in the Texas retail electricity market with an invite-only plan called Tesla Electric.
Yet, Tesla reportedly put solar roof installations on ice during this timeframe, and one of its Megapack batteries caught fire at a California power storage site in September, state utility PG&E said. Tesla also missed some Wall Street analysts’ expectations in recent quarters — falling short on revenue in Q3 and deliveries in Q3 and Q4. Earlier on Wednesday, Tesla’s stock price was trading at a two-year low.
Tesla’s energy storage arm caps 2022 with ‘highest level’ of deployments ever by Harri Weber originally published on TechCrunch
Welcome back, climate tech readers! Like last week, we’ve got a full slate once more, from food waste to wastewater and more. Let’s dive in.
Image Credits: Mill Industries
After selling Nest to Google for $3.2 billion, Matt Rogers is no stranger to scaling fast. But unlike last time, Rogers isn’t interested in selling so quickly. “This is the next 20 years of my life. This is not like, build the company in four or five years and sell to Google. This is a big, long journey,” he told TechCrunch.
Rogers is on a quest to end food waste, which accounts for 6% to 8% of all greenhouse gas emissions, and his tool to accomplish that is the humble kitchen trash can. Mill Industries’ bin is sleek and tech enabled, dehydrating and grinding food until it resembles dried coffee grounds. Then, when it’s full, it automatically requests a box to mail the dried food scraps to one of Mill’s facilities, where it’s turned into chicken feed. How does it get there? That part surprised Rogers the most.
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Image Credits: Guillermo Legaria Schweizer/Getty Images
Industrial facilities from semiconductor plants to automotive factories use surprising amounts of water. What comes out the other end can be challenging to treat and even more challenging to reuse. Which is why Membrion has developed a ceramic membrane that can filter out heavy metals like lead, arsenic and lithium. The startup is $7 million into a Series B round that it hopes will bring in another $3 million.
Image Credits: Britishvolt (opens in a new window)
Britishvolt was always a bit of a long shot, but the battery manufacturing startup appears to have missed its target completely. This week, it announced it was declaring bankruptcy, having made little headway on its planned $4.7 billion gigafactory.
The company’s fall echoes what happened here in the U.S. just over a decade ago, when A123 Systems stumbled and entered bankruptcy itself. But the British version of the story may not have a happy ending. With A123, the U.S. had time to cover. With global battery supply chains solidifying, the U.K.’s domestic battery industry might never catch up.
Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Space programs pride themselves on developing far-out technologies that end up proving their worth here on Earth. Apollo helped catapult computing, and the Space Shuttle did wonders for avionics and materials science. Now, it’s Mars rover Perseverance’s turn.
The MOXIE experiment was built to prove that carbon dioxide can be turned into oxygen on Mars. Chris Graves, who worked on the instrument, thought it could help make use of carbon dioxide on Earth, so he started Noon Energy. The company’s carbon-oxygen battery promises to store electricity for long periods of time at fairly low cost. The startup announced a $28 million Series A this week.
Image Credits: Getty Images
Heat pumps and home energy retrofits have been getting a lot of attention as a result of incentives contained within the Inflation Reduction Act. That makes it a good time to be Sealed. The company predicts how much energy a retrofit will save and converts the up-front installation costs, billing homeowners based on the savings.
For a company that depends so heavily on data, Sealed’s acquisition of Burlington, Vermont-based InfiSense makes, well, sense. Neither company disclosed the terms of the deal. Sealed plans on offering, though not requiring, InfiSense’s sensors to customers to monitor both energy use and indoor air quality.
Climate tech roundup: Food waste, wastewater and the UK’s troubled battery industry by Tim De Chant originally published on TechCrunch
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