Electric Cars for the masses? (MIT Solution)

Could be a game changer if you can refuel just like any car today.

A group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology students may have come up with the perfect solution to our electric vehicle charging woes. Instead of relying on lithium or nickel, the new battery design stores its electrons in semi-solid flow cells. Charged particles are suspended in an electrolyte solution and pumped between compartments used for storing or releasing energy. The tech supposedly makes the batteries up to ten times more efficient than their traditional counterparts, and even more importantly, the new tech is cheaper to produce. Estimates say that the design could cut the size and expense of current batteries by as much as 50 percent.

That’s all well and good, but the really cool part is that charging the cells is as simple as pumping the drained fluid out and pumping fresh charged fluid in. That means that getting on your way could take as little time as a standard gasoline fill-up, greatly reducing the inconvenience and range woes associated with modern EVs. An operational prototype is expected to be completed in the next 18 months or so.

I wonder how many people thought I was going to post a Volt…

So since electricity often comes from coal, what we have here is a fossil fuel based potential energy stored as a liquid we can pump into our cars every time we run out of energy… Brilliant!

Sounds interesting. people love filling up with fluids.
I wonder what the MSDS looks like.

A radically new approach to the design of batteries, developed by researchers at MIT, could provide a lightweight and inexpensive alternative to existing batteries for electric vehicles and the power grid. The technology could even make “refueling” such batteries as quick and easy as pumping gas into a conventional car.

The new battery relies on an innovative architecture called a semi-solid flow cell, in which solid particles are suspended in a carrier liquid and pumped through the system. In this design, the battery’s active components — the positive and negative electrodes, or cathodes and anodes — are composed of particles suspended in a liquid electrolyte. These two different suspensions are pumped through systems separated by a filter, such as a thin porous membrane.

The work was carried out by Mihai Duduta ’10 and graduate student Bryan Ho, under the leadership of professors of materials science W. Craig Carter and Yet-Ming Chiang. It is described in a paper published May 20 in the journal Advanced Energy Materials. The paper was co-authored by visiting research scientist Pimpa Limthongkul ’02, postdoc Vanessa Wood ’10 and graduate student Victor Brunini ’08.

One important characteristic of the new design is that it separates the two functions of the battery — storing energy until it is needed, and discharging that energy when it needs to be used — into separate physical structures. (In conventional batteries, the storage and discharge both take place in the same structure.) Separating these functions means that batteries can be designed more efficiently, Chiang says.

The new design should make it possible to reduce the size and the cost of a complete battery system, including all of its structural support and connectors, to about half the current levels. That dramatic reduction could be the key to making electric vehicles fully competitive with conventional gas- or diesel-powered vehicles, the researchers say.

Another potential advantage is that in vehicle applications, such a system would permit the possibility of simply “refueling” the battery by pumping out the liquid slurry and pumping in a fresh, fully charged replacement, or by swapping out the tanks like tires at a pit stop, while still preserving the option of simply recharging the existing material when time permits.

Flow batteries have existed for some time, but have used liquids with very low energy density (the amount of energy that can be stored in a given volume). Because of this, existing flow batteries take up much more space than fuel cells and require rapid pumping of their fluid, further reducing their efficiency.

The new semi-solid flow batteries pioneered by Chiang and colleagues overcome this limitation, providing a 10-fold improvement in energy density over present liquid flow-batteries, and lower-cost manufacturing than conventional lithium-ion batteries. Because the material has such a high energy density, it does not need to be pumped rapidly to deliver its power. “It kind of oozes,” Chiang says. Because the suspensions look and flow like black goo and could end up used in place of petroleum for transportation, Carter says, “We call it ‘Cambridge crude.’”

The key insight by Chiang’s team was that it would be possible to combine the basic structure of aqueous-flow batteries with the proven chemistry of lithium-ion batteries by reducing the batteries’ solid materials to tiny particles that could be carried in a liquid suspension — similar to the way quicksand can flow like a liquid even though it consists mostly of solid particles. “We’re using two proven technologies, and putting them together,” Carter says.

In addition to potential applications in vehicles, the new battery system could be scaled up to very large sizes at low cost. This would make it particularly well-suited for large-scale electricity storage for utilities, potentially making intermittent, unpredictable sources such as wind and solar energy practical for powering the electric grid.

The team set out to “reinvent the rechargeable battery,” Chiang says. But the device they came up with is potentially a whole family of new battery systems, because it’s a design architecture that “is not linked to any particular chemistry.” Chiang and his colleagues are now exploring different chemical combinations that could be used within the semi-solid flow system. “We’ll figure out what can be practically developed today,” Chiang says, “but as better materials come along, we can adapt them to this architecture.”

Yury Gogotsi, Distinguished University Professor at Drexel University and director of Drexel’s Nanotechnology Institute, says, “The demonstration of a semi-solid lithium-ion battery is a major breakthrough that shows that slurry-type active materials can be used for storing electrical energy.” This advance, he says, “has tremendous importance for the future of energy production and storage.”

Gogotsi cautions that making a practical, commercial version of such a battery will require research to find better cathode and anode materials and electrolytes, but adds, “I don’t see fundamental problems that cannot be addressed — those are primarily engineering issues. Of course, developing working systems that can compete with currently available batteries in terms of cost and performance may take years.”

Chiang, whose earlier insights on lithium-ion battery chemistries led to the 2001 founding of MIT spinoff A123 Systems, says the two technologies are complementary, and address different potential applications. For example, the new semi-solid flow batteries will probably never be suitable for smaller applications such as tools, or where short bursts of very high power are required — areas where A123’s batteries excel.

The new technology is being licensed to a company called 24M Technologies, founded last summer by Chiang and Carter along with entrepreneur Throop Wilder, who is the company’s president. The company has already raised more than $16 million in venture capital and federal research financing.

The development of the technology was partly funded by grants from the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E). Continuing research on the technology is taking place partly at 24M, where some recent MIT graduates who worked on the project are part of the team; at MIT, where professors Angela Belcher and Paula Hammond are co-investigators; and at Rutgers, with Professor Glenn Amatucci.

The target of the team’s ongoing work, under a three-year ARPA-E grant awarded in September 2010, is to have, by the end of the grant period, “a fully-functioning, reduced-scale prototype system,” Chiang says, ready to be engineered for production as a replacement for existing electric-car batteries.

!!!

^ on the contrary. If we sway more towards using wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, and nuclear based electricity this is the perfect solution. We don’t like any of the forms of renewable energy cause they are ugly or loud or ugly and loud and we don’t want them anywhere near where we live. But lets say we have a wind farm or nuclear plant in a place like, i dunno, mexico, we can then produce the energy in some place we don’t give a shit about and still be able to reap the benefits at the local level. I think the fact that this “should be” so easy, and would leave the recharging and stuff like that to the fuel companies is awesome cause it won’t destroy our current “culture” and method of fueling and transportation, and would allow the fuel companies to still profit and thus develop this kinda technology. With some serious money behind this, which the government and oil industry would put in cause they can still profit from this if they make the switch, this could actually prove feasible and could change things.

It would take years to perfect and implement but i think this is a serious step forward. Its the next oil.

I think mexico would want to keep the power for themselves?

fuck em, or use Japan or africa or greenland or… australia or something.

I hope this was joke. I mean you are an engineer, correct? I am pretty sure there is a huge efficiency difference. Or should I be running my generator right now to power my AC in my house?

So where do we put the millions of liters of drained battery slurry?

^^ i would imagine it will be reusable. Otherwise its just another non-renewable resource. And if it is reusable it can just be evacuated at the pump.

“while still preserving the option of simply recharging the existing material when time permits.”

Now that that’s sorted. It does seem like a very good idea, but there’s been a lot of “good ideas” in the past decade and non of them have caught.

^^ thats what i’m saying! This looks promising cause using our existing infrastructure, ie pump station and tankers and all that, the oil industry could just switch modes and go electric. Its not quite that simple but if they put enough money and research into it, it could catch on and go pretty far i think.

this is the biggest problem with electric cars being the savior. of course you would post this! you just think too much fry!!

also, this is pretty interesting, and im shocked it didnt get more press. cheap hydrogen baby!!

And this artificial leaf, he says, is capable of generating enough electricity with one gallon of water to power a house in a developing country for an entire day.

Problem? and there is no way this scientist has created something that is more efficient than billions of years of evolution.

:ham:

yeah, new ideas dont come from nature, like velcro being based on burrs, ect ect…

god there are so many more i cant think of

But the research was partially funded by the DOD, so it must be evil, and we can’t embrace the technology. (sarcasm)

Pretty cool, if we can get over our Japanese inspired fear of nuclear power. Wind is a joke in terms of output per sq/mile and cost per turbine while cheap scalable solar power seems almost as elusive as cold fusion. Safe modern nuclear reactors (not built in fault zones and tsunami effected coastal regions) are the only viable oil replacement energy source available in the near term.

Perfect the recharging of the battery slurry and provide a cheap clean way of getting power to the filling station and you have a great way to fuel cars. The filling station simply pumps charged slurry in while pushing the uncharged slurry out and charges you $X for the convenience. The station then charges your uncharged slurry and uses it to fill the next car. I’m sure it would be a little more complicated because I doubt this slurry is any more capable than a battery of being recharged infinitely, but if the station can identify this they could just charge more for people who come in with old slurry.

:smiley: I’m a crappy engineer, but yeah I was being an ass. Sort of. Just pointing out that electricity isn’t an energy source it’s an energy transport method, so before you go hugging that maple in your yard you should take a look at where the energy behind the electricity is coming from. Wind, water, solar, nukes? Rock on. The Huntley plant? Wipe that superiority smirk off your Prius.

What’s my point? I have no idea. I’m just rambling. We should build more nukes. And nuke the whales.

!

---------- Post added at 09:06 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:04 AM ----------

I’ll be impressed when they make it small enough so that you just swap a battery pack. Pumping is messy.

Pumping does seem cumbersome, maybe just have some sort of exchange unit like propane do tanks now. Instead of waiting for your slurry to get pumped just change tanks or whatever. :gotme:

Seriously guys? Pumping is an issue? Something even complete idiots are capable of doing at self service stations even though currently we’re pumping a highly unstable and explosive fuel? We’ve all been pumping gas since we got our licenses. Simply change the nozzle to have an in and an out and all our gas pumping mastery transfers over to battery juice pumping skillz.