An easy flow battery for the energy dense
Yes the game of thrones in the battery kingdom continues with a new beast, this time a kind of flow battery that has a much greater energy density. With all the new batteries looming on the never-ending horizon, will this be yet another glimpse of high-energy hope that will fade into the hydrogen or diesel mire that most folks would rather talk about?
In the energy-dense flow battery developed by MIT, discharge is handled separately from storage, i.e., separately compartmentalized porous membranes meaning a more efficient delivery of power/cycle life and extended shelf life. Having a semi-consistency, it could be juice for batteries, in that a battery pack is filled at a nano-fuel station and the battery cases themselves merely containers such as we have for gas tanks.
Given the black tar-like substance turning the noses of several competitors who claim it is merely scat energy for go carts, one could be fooled into thinking this is another (digested) pie in the sky.
Reminding me of what I ate last night and paid for this morning, the battery is in a permanent state of semi-solidity, the carrier liquid making me too sick just to think of it since solids are passed at a straining high C to get one going. And with a percolating network of nano-scale conductor particles this technology really has me running.
More efficient than current thin-film LiCoO2 batteries, a higher-graded charged suspension ‘fluid’ will not damage the alkyl carbonate electrolytes, while the battery structure, or container itself can be customized to suit energy demand behavior, cold or hot climates and so on.
Check it out here and decide for yourself.
Meanwhile Better Place still get a pasting…
A friend who just emailed me wrote, “MIT have solved the problem of long recharge times for electric vehicles by swapping the electrolyte rather than recharging or replacing the whole battery. Go Juice is to be made obsolete by Go Poop (so what’s new?). Better Place is to be renamed Better Paste, (rather than my omega3-powered Batter Plaice). Service stations are to become mud marts and 4×4′s will be able to mud-wrestle”.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
How come you write so well? You have an amazing knack to simplify confoundedly complicated information. thank you for making my mind race with ideas for converting my berlina, the club guys will love it. Bill
next they should do some clever alchemy to turn the tar into flowing gold, imagine that
This really is a superb article. Many thanks for taking the time to describe this all out for folks. It is a great guide!