Skip to footer

The future of electric car batteries

Ingram offers a wrap-up of the latest research on electric car batteries and energy storage – an important area for the future of cleantech.

|
Junji Kurokawa/AP/File
Nissan Motor Co. employee Kazuhiro Fujibayashi demonstrates the electric recharge plug-in process of the company's latest LEAF car for photographers in Tokyo, in this November 2012 file photo. One path to improving electric car batteries is to find incremental improvements in today's technology, Ingram writes.
  • By Antony Ingram Guest blogger

There are three main paths to improving batteries for future electric vehicles.

One is the development of entirely new technologyreplacing today's batteries entirely with something lighter, more powerful and more energy dense. The next is the greening of batteries--reducing their environmental impact.

The other is simply to find incremental improvements in today's technology--like eliminating some of its current weaknesses.

According to the Ohio State University (viaCleanTechnica), One such weakness has been found in the chemistry of current lithium-ion batteries, and scientists are now looking into fixing that issue. 

Scientists at the University have discovered that as the batteries are used, they slowly lose lithium, as it accumulates outside the battery electrodes.

It turns out the "missing" lithium is accumulating inside the 'current collector'--a copper sheet which improves the efficiency of electron transfer between the electrodes--in addition to the known collection on the outside of the anode.

"We didn’t set out to find lithium in the current collector," explained Bharat Bhusan, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, "...so you could say we accidentally discovered it, and how it got there is a bit of a mystery. As far as we know, nobody has ever expected active lithium to migrate inside the current collector."

Researchers at Ohio have been studying the degredation of batteries, but discovered the lithium collections almost by accident.

The knowledge could now lead to improvements in technology, ensuring more lithium ions move efficiently between anode and cathode when the battery is charging and discharging--rather than collecting elsewhere.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to The future of electric car batteries
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/In-Gear/2012/1217/The-future-of-electric-car-batteries
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe