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Stanford University scientists have made high performance batteries using copper, not lithium, that cost less and perform better.
The findings by Colin D. Wessells, Robert A. Huggins and Yi Cui were published in Nature Communications in late November. The researchers made the batteries out of copper nanoparticles.
Finding low cost batteries are the missing piece in making renewable energy feasible for modern energy consumption. Energy from wind and solar sources needs to be stored when those energy sources go offline.
“Stationary energy storage systems that can operate for many cycles, at high power, with high round-trip energy efficiency, and at low cost are required,” writes the study’s authors.
“Existing energy storage technologies cannot satisfy these requirements. Here we show that crystalline nanoparticles of copper hexacyanoferrate, which has an ultra-low strain open framework structure, can be operated as a battery electrode in inexpensive aqueous electrolytes.”
The scientists recorded impressive discharge cycle rates all at room temperature.
“After 40,000 deep discharge cycles at a 17 C rate, 83% of the original capacity of copper hexacyanoferrate is retained.”
At this rate, Wessells said the batteries will be long-lived.
“At a rate of several cycles per day, this electrode would have a good 30 years of useful life on the electrical grid,” said Wessells in an interview with Stanford University News.
5 Comments
Jgbowen1
Sounds great in the Lab. What about desert heat or arctic cold? That’s where the real test will be.
Liz Wilson
Maybe thats natures way of saying… Copper is in you and is most efficient for transmitting/retaining signals. Life-giving elements make sencse. lead and lithium don’t.
Fehertom64
Now You see. We have many opportunities left for cleaner energy storage even using classical chemical methods. Go on, please.
Justajo
Concerning Jgbowen’s comment, if these batteries are sensitive to extreme temperatures I’m sure they could be protected. Insulated structures have been around for a long time.
professor reality
This is good news for the transportation as well as long as the lattice does not break easily from vibration.
The copper electrode is formed from other elements as well , the cyano component is a carbon-nitrogen bond that gives pretty good stability but also lends it to environmental breakdown by microbes if the materials find themselves in landfill. The ferrate component is the cation half of the cyano anion half. It is a combination of iron atoms.
this is way less toxic to our biosphere than our lead-acid paradigm.