In July, when members in the Obama administration fanned out across the country to promote initiatives to support growth of a U.S. electric-vehicle market, the president himself announced a national goal of capturing 40 percent with the world’s industry for state-of-the-art battery power for automotive use by 2015.
Appropriate now, the United States makes less than two percent of these electric batteries, according to the U.S. Department of Strength (DOE)
This element two of the two-part guest post on advanced battery technologies. For component one, see: Development of new battery tech vital.
Battery power based on standard liquid or polymer electrolyte lithium-ion technological innovation do not scale, or offer the overall performance or variety important to create electric automobiles practical and inexpensive. And also the presence of liquid electrolytes makes them unstable and unsafe, requiring costly and sophisticated battery management solutions.
New tech essential
New, transformational energy-storage technological know-how is required to create electrical autos mass marketable. To that end, the DOE’s Advanced Investigation Project Agency-Energy Initiative (ARPA-E) announced $106 million in power analysis project grants earlier this year.
Included within the DOE funding was nearly $35 million for that Electric batteries for Electrical Strength Storage in Transportation (BEEST) program that “seeks to develop a new generation of ultra-high power density, low-cost battery technologies for long variety plug-in hybrid and all-electric automobiles.”
A look at two approaches
Systematic innovation that addresses supplies, device and manufacturing challenges is what will drive game-changing, state-of-the-art battery technologies in the future, which ARPA-E Director Dr. Arun Majumdar told Federal News Radio last April “will make today’s lithium-ion power packs obsolete.”
Let’s look at two in the 10 BEEST-supported approaches: lithium metal-air, which has numerous supporters inside the energy storage community, and my own company’s solid-state lithium, also regarded as extremely promising and, we believe, an even more practical approach.
The PolyPlus Battery Company
This Berkeley, Calif., technologies company, which has been developing single-use, lithium metal-air battery power for your U.S. government, now has begun to adapt its technological innovation platform to create rechargeable batteries suitable for efficiently powering electric automobiles. It currently is collaborating with Corning to create ultra-high particular vitality lithium metal-air battery power dependent on protected lithium steel electrodes (PLEs) for transportation applications.
To generate PLEs that enable ultra-high vitality density electric batteries with lithium metal semi-fuel cells, PolyPlus says that it employs a solid electrolyte membrane that is impervious to liquids and gases, along having a unique seal, to encapsulate the lithium metal core. As a result, the electrochemically active lithium core remains isolated from the external electrolyte, enabling the formation of lithium metal-air battery power with power density comparable to gasoline.
PolyPlus says it expects this technological know-how platform to also lead to high-energy, nontoxic and environmentally friendly lithium metal-air power packs which are lightweight and commercially scalable.
Recognizing the charge, efficiency and security limitation of conventional lithium-ion electric batteries, my firm has developed both distinctive methodology and engineering for achieving solid-state storage cells in which the plastics, binders, powders and liquids of lithium-ion electric batteries are replaced with durable, nanostructured films.
Our technologies couples innovative next-generation electrolyte resources with a proprietary low-cost, chemical deposition platform and manufacturing course of action to deliver large-format, solid-state, ceramic-like battery power at half the price and triple the overall performance of present lithium-ion power packs.
The only solid-state lithium battery corporation funded by ARPA-E out of thousands of applicants, Planar Vitality employs a non-vacuum, ambient roll-to-roll deposition process performed at room temperatures which will sharply reduce manufacturing charges.
Called Streaming Process for Electroless Electrochemical Deposition—or SPEED— it’s dramatically additional flexible and scalable than current techniques, allowing Planar Energy to generate self-assembled, nano-structured electrolyte and electrode materials with superior chemistries and to overcome production barriers to low-cost solid-state battery power.
Planar Vitality expects that this deposition procedure also will cut down capital charges by half compared with solid-state battery production using high-vacuum machinery, further reducing the fee of its large-format and high-power power packs.
These and other innovative battery technologies that ARPA-E is supporting are not targeting incrementally improved effectiveness and security.
They in fact leapfrog what current lithium-ion electric batteries deliver and, in my estimation, represent the best opportunity to effect the transformational change in strength storage needed for mass market place electric autos to be profitable for your automobile market and affordable for consumers.
Scott Faris is founder and CEO of Orlando-based Planar Vitality, a spin-out from the DOE’s National Renewable Electricity Laboratory in Golden, Colo., and recipient of a $4-million ARPA-E grant to accelerate the growth and commercialization of its solid-state lithium battery technology.