14 DAY TRIAL // Batteries are one of the cleanest forms of energy storage, but they are also limited in their charge, and can be pretty expensive when it comes to large quantities of energy, like those provided by solar and wind power plants. An MIT professor has a way around that though.
A professor of materials science at MIT, who goes by the name of Yet-Ming Chiang, has invented a nanoparticle network that promises to allow for the creation of cheaper batteries for renewable energy sources.
The new system allows the nanoparticle network to form in a liquid and maintain electrical connection even as liquid flows. This is different from conventional batteries, where nanoparticles are used with solid electrodes.
Liquids with a flowing network of nanoscale particles promise to make batteries cheaper to create, which is the only thing standing between us and cost-effective sunlight and wind harnessing.
This is the main problem with renewable sources of energy today: while it's straightforward enough to harvest sunlight and wind, storing the power is a different matter entirely.
Conventional batteries have materials that store energy, and the equipment for getting electricity in and out of them, all packed in one container. This means that electricity is extracted only from the part of the materials that directly contact a flat metal plate. This is a severe limitation.
Flow batteries, however, use liquids to store the energy. The liquids stay in large tanks and are pumped into more or less small devices that extract the power or recharge the liquid.
The normal solution to increasing the energy storage is to build bigger tanks, but the materials are expensive.
The new system from MIT, however, the nanoparticle network, creates new electricity paths through the liquid. Technobabble aside, Yet-Ming Chiang says that his method can increase the energy that can be taken out of a battery by a factor of five or six.
He has even demonstrated it, more or less, on an experimental type flow battery made of lithium and sulfur.
This all may very well be the break needed by the world to step forward into a new age of renewable, non-pollutant energy.
Fossil fuel plants and water dams can handle humanity's current needs, but that won't last forever, not with oil supplies dwindling. And the environment could really use a break too.
Maybe now we'll finally get to see batteries that cost $100 / €75 per kilowatt-hour, instead of hundreds of dollars per kilowatt-hour. They should also last at least a decade.
Chiang's invention meets the cost condition, but it's not clear if the flow batteries can be recharged enough times to last 10 years or more.