Electric vehicle problem? They depend on large batteries if they want to cover long distances. Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology wondered if they could build a battery that would also serve as a load-bearing material, capable of holding the vehicle together while reducing weight.
This research team in Sweden works on what they call “massless energy storage,” and they have developed a battery made of a carbon fiber composite. It promises a rigidity similar to aluminum and can store a good amount of energy, enough to be used commercially.
Carbon fiber is light, strong and rigid, essential in high-performance cars and aerospace applications, where every gram counts… Fewer people know that it can serve as an effective electrode material if electrochemically designed for that purpose. The Chalmers team, led by Professor Leif Asp, has been working on this for years. In fact, in 2018 they published a study that demonstrates this property of carbon fiber with a specific arrangement of crystals. Its new battery design has an energy density of 30 Wh/kg.
Doesn’t seem like much by today’s standards. For example, the Hyundai Ioniq 6’s 53 kWh battery pack is rated at 153 Wh/kg. But be careful, the weight of the structural chassis would have to be added for the comparison to be fair, since this carbon fiber structural battery is designed to replace the entire frame. This would considerably reduce the weight of the vehicle or allow more cells to be added to increase autonomy. According to their calculations, electric cars could increase autonomy by 70% with structural batteries.
The battery design uses carbon fiber in both the anode and cathodewhich also serves as a booster and current collector. That eliminates the need for current collectors made of heavy materials like copper, as well as “conflicting” metals like cobalt in the electrode design.
Additionally, this battery uses a semi-solid electrolyte instead of a liquid one to move lithium ions between its terminals. This makes it less flammable and safer, although the team admits there are still some problems getting the ions through the electrolyte fast enough for high-power applications. More research is needed on this.
Yes, this battery is still in the laboratory phase. It is still years away from seeing it on the market but production is in progress. In 2022, the university partnered with Gothenburg-based venture capital firm Chalmers Ventures to create a new company called Sinonus. Its goal is to commercialize massless energy storage, to change the way we build cars… and other devices, since there could be cell phones or laptops the thickness of a credit card that weigh half as much as they do today.
Fuente: EurekAlert
