Page 6 - AsiaElec Week 23 2021

AsiaElec ENERGY STORAGE AsiaElec

Energy Storage develops a low-cost,

mineral salts-based energy storage unit

AUSTRALIA AUSTRALIAN energy storage specialist Energy organic salts – an abundant earth mineral.
Storage Pty Ltd has unveiled its next-generation, Developed by an industry-leading team out
low-cost, long-duration, energy storage unit that of Melbourne’s Deakin and Monash universities,
the company says offers the same sort of perfor- their technology uses organic salts and ionic liq-
mance as hydro, but with the added advantage uids as “Phase Change Materials” to stably cap-
of being a fully mobile modular-based system. ture and store thermal energy through a process
Energy Storage CEO Steve White com- known as “State of Matter change”. Stored energy
mented: “There are three fundamental issues can then be subsequently re-released as energy
holding back the fully distributed power gen net- by reversing that process. Importantly, the
work. First, having a net-zero emission battery/ non-corrosive nature of the ionic liquids means
energy storage system that can be easily trans- that standard casing materials can be used,
ported to remote locations where heavy industry thereby helping minimise production costs.
and renewable energy firms are typically based; Energy Storage’s technology has likewise
secondly, having an economic model – a low been designed so that it can capture the energy
enough cost-entry point – that makes sense to for storage from waste heat, renewable sources,
businesses of any size; thirdly, and most impor- or even the grid in low-peak periods, and then
tantly in our eyes, is not to be reliant on a rare released as zero-emission electrical energy as
earth mineral.” and when required.™
Rare earth mineral reliance is an issue for
the industry at the moment, as the lack of lith-
ium for one will limit the amount of renewable
energy that can be stored and gainfully used.
Currently most of the storage systems of US and
European utility companies make heavy use of
lithium-ion based technologies. For example, in
Germany, where 42% of the country’s energy is
now from renewable sources, three facilities are
now using recycled EV car batteries to provide
their back-up storage options.
“Notwithstanding the energy and CO2 emis-
sions involved in mining lithium, at a more basic
level, there is not enough lithium currently to go
around. Based on data from a leading mining
publication, for any one of the major Western
EV car manufacturers – Tesla, Mercedes, VW –
to hit their own 2030 production numbers, they
would each take out over 150% of current global
lithium annual production. That is before we
overlay demands on the rare earth mineral from
other sectors,” White said.
More fundamentally, lithium-ion batteries
were not conceived as a long-duration heavy
industry solution. They were designed as short-
term rechargeable batteries originally for porta-
ble electronic devices in the late 1980s and early
1990s based on the research of John Goode-
nough, M Stanley Whittingham, Rachid Yazami
and Koichi Mizushima in the 1970s–1980s,
White reports.
By contrast, Energy Storage’s next genera-
tion unit is based on salt – or more specifically,

P6 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 23 09•June•2021