EV BATTERIES TAKE 3.0
ELECTRICITY STORED IN UNIMAGINABLE WAYS
If we think the future of fossil fuel-free transportation comes down to electric or hydrogen, we would be wrong. Those are just fuels. It’s really about how fuel cells and batteries function. In the mad scramble to meet climate targets, we need to focus on the broader picture.
Quickly coming into focus are lots of potential drawbacks, but none more head-slapping than yet another threat of depletion of a natural resource and a glut of environmentally hazardous waste. Sound familiar?
Electric vehicles are the future, at least for now, and are the best bet to be the hero of climate change. Lithium-ion batteries, however, may not end up in that equation. Lithium is an expensive, nonrenewable. Their toxic metals make recycling and disposal an issue.
All of that is not to say technology won’t advance to the point where it becomes a better option, but there is a lot out there to keep an eye on.
Northvolt Ett, a Swedish battery manufacturer founded by two former Tesla execs, specializes in lithium-ion but just announced it made a major breakthrough in improving sodium-ion battery cells. It swaps critical minerals – the source of fire hazards and price fluctuations - for a form of the pigment Prussian blue. This also eliminates sourcing parts offshore (primarily from China).
The problem with sodium-ion is limited capacity, making them more suitable for storage than EVs, but Northvolt is working on that. And sodium? There’s just a whole lot more of it, making up about 3% of Earth’s mass, and it doesn’t need to be mined.
Northvolt gets a shoutout for sourcing 100% of the electricity for its mega operation from hydro and wind, allowing it to produce fuel cells with the lowest carbon footprint in the world. When its facility is fully built, it will be able to produce batteries for about one million EVs annually, which translates to a crazy big amount of avoided emissions for that industry.
If that’s not the predicted game-changer, engineers at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology are working on proton batteries that use a carbon electrode and gain a charge by splitting water molecules. Carbon is cheap and abundant and found just about everywhere. The batteries are safe and easy to recycle. The latest on their progress is a tripled energy density from their original prototype. That puts it at 245 watt-hours per kilogram, compared to conventional lithium-ion at around 260 Wh/kg.
How about CRAB batteries?
You read that right. Scientists at the University of Maryland’s Center for Materials Innovation (how ironic is that?) are combining the chemical, chitin, with zinc to power batteries.
Chitin is a major component of crustacean shells. The bonus here is that a massive source is restaurants all over the world that toss massive amounts of shells, which contributes to a scenario of cheap, at-scale production. They have proven to be 99.7% efficient after 400 hours of use, so that’s also promising.
Here’s the mic drop; they are essentially biodegradable. Bury them for five months, and the chitin will have completely decomposed into the soil. The zinc will remain but can then be recycled, indefinitely, retaining its physical and chemical properties.
