Page 12 - AsiaElec Week 07 2023
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AsiaElec CELLS AsiaElec
New battery design could
aid in more effective grid
integration
ASIA In a study released in Energy Storage Mate- The majority of batteries on the market today
rials, a team at America’s Department of Energy employ lithium-ion, but are limited to short-term
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) storage of energy and increasingly rapid deprecia-
has revealed a never before used design for a grid tion in effectiveness over time.
storage battery using just sodium and aluminium. As such, the new sodium-based molten
At present, Asian economic powerhouses China salt battery has been shown to be much more
and India combine to produce over a third of the effective in maintaining a higher level of energy
global sodium supply, in addition to producing over retention for longer, with sources showing that
40mn tonnes per year (tpy) of aluminium. after 345 charge and discharge cycles using a China and India
“We showed that this new molten salt battery high current, the battery’s reaction mechanism
design has the potential to charge and discharge was able to maintain 82.8% of its initial capacity combine to
much faster than other conventional high-tem- ceiling.
perature sodium batteries, operate at a lower tem- The director of the DOE’s Office of Electricity, produce over
perature and maintain an excellent energy storage Energy Storage Programme, Imre Gyuk, said of
capacity,” PNNL materials scientist Guosheng Li the research: “This battery technology, which is a third of the
said of the new design. built with low-cost domestically available materi- global sodium
Li added: “(W)e are getting similar performance als, brings us one step closer toward meeting our
with this new sodium-based chemistry at over nation’s clean energy goals.” supply.
100 °C temperatures than commercially available “With optimisation, we expect the specific
high-temperature sodium battery technologies, energy density and the life cycle could reach even
while using a more Earth-abundant material.” higher and longer,” Guosheng Li added.
P12 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 07 15 •February•2023
