Advanced Battery Options - New Hope for Electric Vehicles

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In a time when green energy is in hype and smartphone, smart homes, wearables, and electric cars are on the rise and being diligently worked on, how much would you like it to be limited by power supply?

All the above-mentioned technologies essentially need a good amount battery power but the one I would like to focus on here is the electric cars or vehicles in general because a huge amount of fuel is used up by trucks and family cars both and if a solution to this problem in the form of an advanced battery could be found the mankind would be relieved of a burden of huge oil demand. Not just such a technology will bring down the cost of these modern clean vehicles but will also add to its mileage to hundreds, making it convenient to accept as a regular mode of transport.

The currently used lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries are quite simple in design and given a basic chemistry it is difficult to tinker with. So far the simplest solution the manufacturers have come up with is to increase the size of the batteries thus allowing more space for the ions. Same is followed when they are being used in the recent electric vehicles (EVs), a bit bigger pack of multiple batteries are used for the electric motor engine in these vehicles. Although it also makes these batteries heavy slightly affecting the range of the vehicles with longer periods of charging.

A team at Carnegie Mellon University came up with the term ‘Hype Cycle’, citing new battery chemistry. Some worth mention are magnesium-ion (Mg-ion), sodium-ion (Na-ion), lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries, all of which work in the similar manner a Li-ion battery works today, being better than the latter in terms of energy density. While among these the most promising is Li-S batteries which can be cheaper than the conventional Li-ion batteries due to the low cost of batteries, but they come with their own share of design issues and instabilities, hence, not to be considered as a better car battery yet.

Few technologies worth mentioning here, which are feasible and actually does something to address various issues to being a better battery are discussed below.

The Solid State

In a lithium-ion battery, the electrodes are separated by an electrolyte which is very flammable. A damage or puncture may lead the battery to burst and catch fire. No need to mention how risky can it be attached to an EV as its sole power source.
The solid-state Li-ion batteries or any other solid-state battery (doing away with Li-ion altogether) uses a mixture of metals to conduct ions between the electrodes and create energy. Due to this, they need lesser layers of insulation and other safety measures - making them smaller, lighter, and more adaptable to EV technology.

Lithium-air

This technology is another alternative to Li-ion battery and beats it with a different way of storing the energy. The battery cell uses metallic lithium as a cathode and atmospheric oxygen for an anode. Due to this, it requires half the materials required for the regular Li-ion battery to store the same amount of energy, and the weight is also reduced by half. All this makes it really appealing for the use in EVs. Although they still have a long way to go to be cost efficient and achieve better lifecycle than a conventional Li-ion battery.

Aluminium-air

Researchers have argued that aluminium-air batteries are the only feasible replacement for gasoline. Just like lithium-air batteries here one electrode is aluminium while the other is oxygen. Oxygen and water electrolyte, to be specific. Aluminium in comparison to lithium is cheaper to mine and loses an electron more readily as well.
Theoretically, these batteries could have capacity that is 40 times the Li-ion batteries and could extend the range of EVs by 1000 miles.
Although these batteries come with their own drawback that they can only be used a ‘primary cell’ as they can’t be recharged. The current flows only in one way i.e. from the anode to cathode, which means over time the aluminium’s reaction with oxygen is going to eat it away.
A secondary Li-ion battery cell is advisable to be used along with them which is all right as when it comes to a car infrastructure the need to swap the primary batteries is no big deal.

Graphene car batteries

This one comes from the latest wonder material in the know, ‘graphene’. A company has made a new battery using them called Grabat, which could offer cars a driving range of around 500 miles.
One valuable feature of it is that it can be charged and discharged 33 times faster than lithium-ion. Discharge is also a point to be considered here as a vast amount of power is required by an EV to pull away quickly.

Gold nanowire batteries

Another futuristic battery technology that uses a nanowire that can take up a huge amount of recharging. This could result in future batteries that don’t die.
Nanowires for batteries have been in hype recently but they used to break down while recharging. The usage of gold nanowire in a gel electrolyte deals with the problem here. These new models have been recharged for 200,000 times in three months with no signs of degradation.
It makes these batteries pretty ideal for the EVs.

Sodium-ion batteries

These are batteries that use salt, a prototype, built by a network of French researchers and firms, has been used in laptops.
This battery follows a standard model and hence, can also be considered for electric vehicles.

NTU fast-charging battery

Scientists in Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore have come up with a battery which charges up to 70 percent in just two minutes and has a battery lifecycle 10 times to that of Li-ion batteries.

"Electric cars will be able to increase their range dramatically, with just five minutes of charging, which is on par with the time needed to pump petrol for current cars,” said the lead, Professor Chen.

Although there are many other technologies being discovered and developed by various research teams, the few mentioned above are those most of which are already being licensed and manufactured, hence soon to be implemented in the next 10 years, making it possible for majority of cars in the next 20 years to be electric, which as per Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, is the ‘install base’ for the cars.

While the Lithium-ion batteries are improving by 7 to 8 percent per year starting with a car range of 300 miles, the above technologies once mainstream will render the entire progress pointless with their 10-100 times efficiency level.