Harvard University researchers are working on a new type of battery based on organic molecules to store renewable energy in an effort to make it more viable for wide-scale use.
The Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) has awarded a team of researchers at the university's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) a $600,000 innovation grant to develop what is called a flow battery for the storage of energy from sources such as wind turbines and solar panels, according to ARPA and the university.
Researchers are collaborating with Sustainable Innovations LLC, a commercial electrochemical system developer, on the project to develop the battery with practicality in mind, hoping to displace fossil-fuel energy through its development, they said.
A team of researchers at Harvard University are working on a new type of battery based on organic molecules for storing renewable energy in an effort to make it more viable for widespread use and displace fossil fuels as energy sources. A $600,000 grant from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency is funding the work. (Source: Harvard University)
While automation, robotics, and other types of technology are making the use of renewable energy sources generated by solar and wind power a more competitive option to traditional power, the energy is still largely dependent on the forces of nature because there currently is no good, practical way to store large quantities of it, said Michael Aziz, a professor of materials and energy technologies at SEAS.
"Storage of very large amounts of energy is required if we are to generate a major portion of our electricity from intermittent renewable sources such as wind turbines and photovoltaics," he said in a press release. "Currently no cost-effective solution exists to this large-scale storage problem."
Aziz and his team think flow batteries, a type of highly rechargeable fuel cell that stores electrical energy in the form of liquid chemicals, could be the answer to this problem. The batteries are so-named because the chemicals are flowed past electrochemical conversion hardware and then stored externally in low-cost tanks that can vary in size, according to researchers. The tanks can be very large, permitting the designers to decide on the size of the electrochemical conversion hardware for setting peak power capacity and the storage tanks that set the energy capacity.
As a point of contrast, in solid-electrode batteries, such as those in cars and mobile devices, power-conversion hardware and energy capacity are packaged together, which means they can only maintain peak discharge power for less than an hour. However, studies show that renewable energy needs one or two days of peak discharge power to move through the electrical grid, researchers said. This makes the use of these types of batteries cost prohibitive, according to Aziz.
Flow batteries alone aren't the answer either, since those currently under development also have limitations in terms of price. "The chemicals used for storage in flow batteries can be expensive or difficult to maintain," Aziz said.
The key to researchers' work is to replace those chemicals in a flow battery with organic molecules found in plants that can be synthesized artificially without a high price tag. Other benefits of the molecules are that they are non-toxic, can be stored at room temperature, and cycle very efficiently between the chemical states needed for energy storage, Aziz said.
Harvard researchers won the grant as part of ARPA's OPEN 2012 program, which distributed $130 million in funding to support innovation in energy technology.
I'm not sure I get the supposed connection between moral arguments and numbers: nothing is unlimited, including power. That assumption--or that wishful thinking--has caused a lot of problems. But if we want to talk about values (which aren't the same thing as morals), frugality and conservation of resources used to be cherished values, and still are in some places. As Liz points out, wasting energy could backfire--in fact, it already has. That's one of the reasons for the search for alternative sources of energy.
Ann - This was an intersting article and obviously contributors are passionate about this issue. I think that you are right that we need to accept a broad-based approach. Versatility is the hallmark of creativity and there are many, not just one, solution to our energy needs. Green batteries, wind power, conservation, photovoltaics, and IC engines are all part of the energy mix. We need to apply them all where we can and continuously develop new solutions.
Yes, power itself is potentially unlimited, and perhaps it is a moral argument we are all having here. But in my opinion, people need to be smarter about their consumption of power and think about the bigger picture. Even the resources we believe to be unlimited could fail us one day, and wasting energy now could have unforseen ramifications for the future. Smarter storage and use of power sources in the present is, in my opinion, the best way to set a practical precedent for the use of energy and existing power resources in the future.
China outstrips US power usage because there are a couple of orders of magnitude more people there than here--and they've only gotten to that dubious achievement recently. On a per-individual basis, nobody knows how to consume power like we do here in the US. That's true for just about every resource you can think of, and has been true for most of the last century. I don't see why we shouldn't also be using as little as possible, on top of all the other strategies: conservation.
Moral opinion aside, the world will continue to demand more power. The best we can do is recycle and be efficient in generation and storage. For example, I could light up my whole house like an operating room with LED lights for the same power consumption of only a handful of incandescent bulbs. China already outstrips the power demands of the USA. That will not change, only grow. Let's make for a bright efficient future.
My point was that the idea that there is so much power that one can consume as much as one wants to pay for--i.e., if not unlimited, than potentially very high limits for people with lots of money--is the privilege of people in First World countries, and not at all a condition shared by many other people in other countries; in fact, by most other people. I don't see how limits on consumption somehow limits one's freedom.
Elizabeth, I mean a better technology for saving more energy in a limited space, like Duracell. Duracell are 10 times powerful than normal cells. like that optimizing for more power at a limited space.
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