Innovation Will Improve Rechargeable Batteries

A group of investigators from the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) announces the creation of a new design that would swipe away some of the obstacles preventing the creation of improved rechargeable batteries.

The team managed this feat by producing new layouts for sodium-nickel chloride batteries, in which their typical cylindrical shape was replaced with a flat disc design.

This simple modification allows the resulting battery to deliver up to 30 percent more electrical energy, when operated at lower temperatures, the team says.

In a paper published in the October 8 issue of the esteemed journal ECS Transactions, the PNNL group explains that this innovation could be used to finally create electricity substations.

These instruments would sit between solar power plants and wind farms, on one side, and the national power grid, on the other, and balance the generation and delivery of current between the two.

This is necessary because solar panels only produce energy during the day, and wind farms generate power only when wind blows. This means that their output is not constant.

The substations would essentially receive the energy created via renewable resources, and then gradually release it into the grid at a steady pace.

According to experts with the research group, the new batteries are a lot cheaper to produce than their lithium-ion counterparts, because they are based on cheaper materials such as nickel and alumina.

“This planar sodium battery technology shows potential as an option for integrating more solar and wind power into our electric grid,” says PNNL electricity infrastructure sector manager Carl Imhoff.

“The PNNL planar battery's flat and thin design has many advantages over traditional, tubular sodium nickel chloride batteries,” adds PNNL research scientist Xiaochuan Lu, who is also a coauthor of the ECS paper.

Experts say that sodium-beta alumina batteries have been around for about 50 years, but add that lack of relevant technologies have prevented significant advances in making them better for large-scale use.

“Our goal is to get a safer, more affordable battery into the market for energy storage. This development in battery technology gets us one step closer,” Lu concludes.