New types of cathodes, suitable for advanced energy storage, can be developed using beyond-lithium ion batteries.
The rapid development of renewable energy resources has triggered tremendous demands in large-scale, cost-efficient and high-energy-density stationary energy storage systems.
Lithium ion batteries (LIBs) have many advantages but there are much more abundant metallic elements available such as sodium, potassium, zinc and aluminum.
While the ID Buzz, aka the electric Microbus, isn’t quite production-ready, it may not be the only iconic vehicle Volkswagen’s rebooting into an EV. 2019 saw the release of the final Volkswagen Beetle. Despite its styling and long history, consumer interest lagged, and VW discontinued it. But now, there’s rumors of a new Volkswagen Beetle—an electric one.
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This news comes courtesy of the electric Volkswagen forum VW ID Talk, Autoblog reports. Forum users discovered several VW trademark applications submitted to the EU Intellectual Property Office.
They suggest next steps in search for large-scale energy storage solution.
Lithium-ion batteries are recognized for their high energy density in everything from mobile phones to laptop computers and electric vehicles, but as the need for grid-scale energy storage and other applications becomes more pressing, researchers have sought less expensive and more readily available alternatives to lithium.
Batteries using more abundant multivalent metals could revolutionize energy storage. Researchers review the current state of multivalent metal-ion battery research and provide a roadmap for future work in Nature Energy, reporting that the top candidates – using magnesium, calcium, zinc and aluminum – all have great promise, but also steep challenges to meet practical demands.
Engineers have developed a new type of hybrid solar energy converter, which uses energy from the Sun to create both electricity and steam. The device reportedly has high efficiency and runs at low cost, allowing industry to make use of a wider spectrum of solar energy.
The most common way of collecting energy from the Sun is through photovoltaics. These solar cells produce electricity from sunlight, and they’re so simple that they’re built into everything from garden lights to the grid itself.
But it’s not the only way. Solar concentrators collect heat instead of light, focusing the Sun’s rays to heat up a contained fluid. This can then be used to generate electricity – say as steam turning a turbine – or more directly, to heat homes or for other industrial processes.
The concept isn’t entirely new. In March, Musk posted a poll on Twitter asking his gigantic following if they were interested in a “mega rave cave” below Giga Berlin. 90.2 percent responded with the option “hell yes!”
Musk has plenty of reasons to celebrate. His car company’s valuation sky-rocketed to a high of $1,760 on Monday as tens of thousands of new investors were pouring in from online brokerage Robinhood. The rocketing valuation also sets Musk up for yet another massive $1.8 billion payday.
At the same time, the construction of the manufacturing plant has hit several setbacks, with environmental protests concerning deforestation and worries over drinking water supplies leading to a German court ordering Tesla to cease construction, but lifting the freeze several weeks later.
Circa 2017
This bubbly concept car protects more than the driver; its next-generation rubber exterior can save pedestrians, too.
Traditional metal panels are replaced with soft rubber, which absorbs the impact of a collision. The car is also a shapeshifter, meaning that the rubber panels move and flex, forming a more aerodynamic shape.
The futuristic concept was recently showcased at the Tokyo Motor Show, which also featured artificially intelligent cars and electric vehicles. But none as adorable as this rubbery car.
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Circa 2012
Big science meets applied engineering. CERN, renowned for smashing protons, culling antimatter and the like, has put its accelerating processes to use making and commercializing solar panels.
Car buyers in Europe can now get their hands on a brand-new electric vehicle for less than the typical cost of a mobile-phone contract. Thanks to newly generous subsidies, some are even free.
Shoppers have swarmed virtual showrooms in Germany and France — the region’s two largest passenger car markets — after their national governments boosted electric-vehicle incentives to stimulate demand. Their purchase subsidies are now among the most favorable in the world.
The state support is allowing Autohaus Koenig, a dealership chain with more than 50 locations across Germany, to advertise a lease for the battery-powered Renault Zoe that is entirely covered by subsidies. In the 20 days since it put the offer online, roughly 3,000 people have inquired and about 300 have signed contracts.
Choi and other researchers have also tried to use lithium-ion battery electrodes to pull lithium directly from seawater and brines without the need for first evaporating the water. Those electrodes consist of sandwichlike layered materials designed to trap and hold lithium ions as a battery charges. In seawater, a negative electrical voltage applied to a lithium-grabbing electrode pulls lithium ions into the electrode. But it also pulls in sodium, a chemically similar element that is about 100,000 times more abundant in seawater than lithium. If the two elements push their way into the electrode at the same rate, sodium almost completely crowds out the lithium.
Lithium is prized for rechargeables because it stores more energy by weight than other battery materials. Manufacturers use more than 160,000 tons of the material every year, a number expected to grow nearly 10-fold over the next decade. But lithium supplies are limited and concentrated in a handful of countries, where the metal is either mined or extracted from briny water.
Lithium’s scarcity has raised concerns that future shortages could cause battery prices to skyrocket and stymie the growth of electric vehicles and other lithium-dependent technologies such as Tesla Powerwalls, stationary batteries often used to store rooftop solar power.
Seawater could come to the rescue. The world’s oceans contain an estimated 180 billion tons of lithium. But it’s dilute, present at roughly 0.2 parts per million. Researchers have devised numerous filters and membranes to try to selectively extract lithium from seawater. But those efforts rely on evaporating away much of the water to concentrate the lithium, which requires extensive land use and time. To date such efforts have not proved economical.
Elon is unique.
At age 17, Elon Musk left his home in South Africa and moved to Canada, where he enrolled at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. During his freshman-year in the fall of 1990, Musk befriended Navaid Farooq while living in the same dorm, according to the book “Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future,” by Ashlee Vance.
Farooq, a Canadian who grew up in Geneva, bonded with Musk over their backgrounds abroad and their interest in strategy games, according to the book. Living in such close quarters, Farooq learned a lot about Musk, including what Farooq sees as his defining trait.
“When Elon gets into something, he develops just this different level of interest in it than other people,” Farooq said in Vance’s book. “This is what differentiates Elon from the rest of humanity.”
