Flow Battery Breakthrough May Boost Green Energy

[Hum]

A new battery designed by researchers at Harvard University may open the door to large-scale storage of solar and wind power.

 

Described in the journal Nature, the prototype battery stores energy in liquid, organic (carbon-based) molecules, a flexible system that could also significantly bring down power-storage costs. Because solar and wind power are intermittent energy sources, storage solutions are needed to improve their reliability.

 

The device is a flow battery, which holds energy in tanks of liquid chemicals that can be scaled up or down. The actual battery cell, which converts the chemical energy into electricity, is held separately. That means the amount of storage can expand without also increasing the device's wattage capacity.

 

Engineers developed flow batteries decades ago, but they have typically used metals like vanadium, which are expensive in large volumes.

 

With funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, the team at Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences used computer programs to screen thousands of organic molecules called quinones, which can be found in plants and crude oil. They settled on a quinone similar to one found in rhubarb, and dissolved it in water for the anode side of the battery.

 

more

[DocM]

Storage or not there are other factprs limiting the utility of wind power, starting with its 30-35% uptime and that each turbine can only power <600 homes. A buried modular mini-reactor which requires nearly zero maintenance could power a small city.