Our world is going to be powered by batteries very soon. The process has already started and as we move towards more sustainable energy, we will need bigger and better batteries. Scientists at the University of Queensland have developed faster-charging, more sustainable batteries than conventional lithium ion elements. And they last longer too.
Lithium ion batteries are now everywhere. It’s likely that you are reading this on a device that has lithium ion batteries. They are in every laptop, smartphone, electric car and pretty much all other mobile devices. The problem with them is that they need rare metals to work and don’t serve for that long. Sustainability of lithium ion batteries is not great either. However, scientists are aiming to change this using graphene.
Graphene, of course, is carbon and we have a lot of it. We also have a lot of aluminium – it is not only a very common element in Earth’s crust, but it is also very commonly used in industry. Scientists have combined graphene electrodes with aluminium ion batteries. Testing revealed that this battery serves for three times longer current leading lithium-ion batteries. Furthermore, they boast higher power density, which means that they can be charged up to 70 times faster.
And advantages don’t stop there. These new graphene-aluminium batteries would be easy to recycle. We recycle thousands of tonnes of aluminium all the time already – these batteries wouldn’t cause any more problems. And because they last so long, people wouldn’t have to keep buying new batteries so frequently. Finally, if they were to be discarded, these batteries don’t have a lot of toxic chemicals, unlike current lithium ion elements. All of this means that graphene-aluminium batteries would be more environmentally friendly.
Dr Dean Moss CEO of UniQuest, company that is trying to commercialize this technology, said: “Lithium-ion batteries demand the extraction of rare earth materials using large amounts of water and are processed with chemicals that can potentially harm the environment. This project has real potential to provide the market with a more environmentally friendly and efficient alternative.”
The new type of batteries could be used in watches, phones, laptops, electric vehicles and grid storage centres. UniQuest is already looking into making some prototypes. This technology, however, is unlikely to push out lithium ion batteries any time soon, because the capacity of graphene-aluminium batteries is still behind. However, these steps are in the right direction and maybe in some situations, where battery capacity is not necessarily critical, this technology can be adopted pretty soon.
Source: University of Queensland