Renewable Energy

Scientist Discover How to Convert CO2 into Powder That Can Be Stored for Decades

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A team of scientists has figured out how to convert planet-warming carbon dioxide into a harmless powdery fuel that could be converted into clean electricity

Smoke rising from coal processing plant.

CLIMATEWIRE | A team of scientists from Massachusetts has developed a process to convert one of the world’s most threatening planet-warming emissions — carbon dioxide — into a powdery, harmless fuel that could be converted into clean electricity.

The breakthrough follows an almost centurylong effort to turn CO2 into a cheap, clean fuel. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology exposed CO2 to catalysts and then electrolysis that turns the gas into a powder called sodium formate, which can be safely stored for decades.

“I think we have a big break here,” said Ju Li, an MIT professor leading the research team. “I could leave 10 tons of this stuff to my granddaughter for 50 years.”

Researchers have previously turned CO2 into fuels that required too much energy to make, or were difficult to store long term.

The MIT process gets closer to an ambitious dream: turning captured CO2 into a feedstock for clean fuel that replaces conventional batteries and stores electricity for months or years. That could fill gaps in the nation’s power grids as they transition from fossil fuels to intermittent solar and wind energy.

A schematic shows the formate process. The top left shows a household powered by the direct formate fuel cell, with formate fuel stored in the underground tank. In the middle, the fuel cell that harnesses formate to supply electricity is shown. On the lower right is the electrolyzer that converts bicarbonate into formate.
A schematic shows the formate process. The top left shows a household powered by the direct formate fuel cell, with formate fuel stored in the underground tank. In the middle, the fuel cell that harnesses formate to supply electricity is shown. On the lower right is the electrolyzer that converts bicarbonate into formate. Credit: Image: Shuhan Miao, Harvard Graduate School of Design

But the effort has been an uphill battle. A 2018 study called CO2 a “notoriously inert molecule;” two years later, another paper declared the invisible gas as “far more pernicious” to work with than researchers had thought.

The MIT team traces its breakthrough to November 2022. That’s when Li, who started his career as an undergraduate at China’s University of Science and Technology, went to a conference of the school’s alumni in Boston.

The 48-year-old Li met Dawei Xi, a young doctoral student in engineering at nearby Harvard University. Xi, now 27, was skeptical of the conversion efficiency of captured CO2, predicting that the team’s efforts would make a fuel that was too acidic.

“We were arguing on basic electrochemistry,” Li recalled. “He provided much valuable guidance on how to do this.”

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Xi eventually joined the research team, and Li introduced him to Zhen Zhang, one of his graduate students. Xi explained that his hunch was that the MIT process would became ”acidity imbalanced,” making the product useless after a short period of time.

Within a month, the pair had identified the problem and worked out what later proved in the MIT laboratory to be a highly efficient way to convert captured CO2.

The resulting powder closely resembles a commercial product that has been safely used for years to melt ice on highways and airports. It has been stored for 2,000 hours in tanks without a hint of corrosion, Li said.

Li’s team has also designed a refrigerator-sized fuel cell that uses a liquefied version of the stored power. That could produce electricity for homes, he said, and “nothing goes into the atmosphere.”

“Think of it as artificial wood,” Li said.

Li said he is beginning discussions with commercial companies interested in the MIT process that emerged. Li’s team is also exploring ways heavy industries might use it to meet company CO2 emission reduction goals.

So what happens next?

“There is this valley of death,” Li noted, using a term scientists often use to describe the difficult process of scaling up a laboratory solution into a commercial product.

“We will need space and money,” he said, “and that’s not easy to do in a university.”

Last month, Li’s team published a study in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science outlining their efficient process for converting CO2 into fuel.

“Several improvements account for the greatly improved efficiency of this process,” said Zhang, the study’s lead author. That, he said, improves the prospect of CO2 utilization for long-term energy storage.

A fuel derived from CO2, Li said, could be more promising than hydrogen and methanol for power generation. Methanol is a “toxic substance” and its leakage could cause a “health hazard,” Li said, while hydrogen gas can leak from pipes and tanks, “precluding” the possibility of long-term storage.

Big Business Threatens the Planet, Despite Boasts of Sustainability

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Transnational corporations, or TNCs, or just plain big businesses, are everywhere. They have an overwhelming influence and impact on our lives—and on the planet.

They boast they are a force for good—and are helping in the fight against climate change. But Peter Dauvergne, professor of international relations at the University of British Columbia in Canada, begs to differ.

“The earth’s climate is drifting into an ever-deeper crisis as the shadows of mass production, transportation and industrial agriculture continue to intensify,” said Dauvergne.

The buzz word among TNCs is sustainability: TNCs see themselves leading the struggle to build a better world, in which resources will be ever more carefully managed—and climate-changing greenhouse gases reduced.

 

Leap of Faith

“We are entering a very interesting period of history where the responsible business world is running ahead of the politicians,” said Unilever, the giant Anglo-Dutch consumer goods company.

With their global reach and enormous financial resources—which dwarf those of many countries round the world—TNCs say they are ushering in a sustainable future.

But trusting big business to lead sustainability efforts, says Dauvergne, is like trusting arsonists to be our firefighters.

He does point out that TNCs are doing many good things. For example, Walmart—the world’s biggest company by far—uses solar panels on its stores, recycles increasing amounts of its waste and donates millions of dollars to environmental causes, including the fight against climate change.

Sustainable Business

Technology giants like Google and Apple have switched to using renewable energy across their operations.

TNCs spend billions each year on pressing home their sustainability message, stressing their adherence to the code of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

But Dauvergne says that, ultimately, CSR aims to enhance the sustainability of business, not the sustainability of the earth:

“One should not be fooled: when all is said and done, what companies like Walmart, Coca-Cola and BP are doing in the name of sustainability is aiming to advance the prosperity of business, not the integrity of ecosystems or the quality of future life.”

Financial Heft

Dauvergne says TNCs have amassed extraordinary financial resources. The top 500 corporations in the U.S. now account for two-thirds of the country’s gross domestic product.

“Of the world’s top 100 revenue generators in 2015, 69 were companies and 31 were states.”

Mergers and takeovers, with small businesses being gobbled up, have led to an ever greater concentration of corporate wealth and power. A handful of giant companies has enormous influence on global agriculture—controlling fertilizer and pesticide production and, most importantly, the availability of seeds.

TNCs, says Dauvergne, encourage both overconsumption and rising rates of unequal consumption. They use their financial clout and their teams of accountants and lawyers to avoid taxes—and to reap more profits for their shareholders.

Tax avoidance is severely damaging, especially to developing countries where losses of billions of dollars in revenues result in increased poverty, inadequate social services and weak environmental enforcement.

Maybe the TNCs have come to believe their own propaganda, but the degree of corporate chutzpah is, at times, amazing to behold.

McDonald’s boasts that it is “helping to lead a global movement on beef sustainability.” BP, responsible for spewing millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, says sustainability is at the heart of its corporate strategy.

Confrontation Needed

VW, which installed technology in millions of its cars to shut off pollution controls, says it abides by transparent and responsible corporate governance.

For the good of the future of the planet, the public—and governments—must confront big business, says Dauvergne: the corporate world is never going to be turned into a force for social justice and planetary sustainability.

“Any chance of stopping big business from destroying much of the earth will require governments and societies to reorient global environmental policies to reduce—and then restrain—the power of big business.

“Doing so is increasingly urgent, as the exact opposite is now happening, with the financial, political and cultural power of big business rising at an ever-quickening clip.”

Lessons from nature inspire breakthrough in catalyzing electricity from renewable energy

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Lessons from nature inspire breakthrough in catalyzing electricity from renewable energy
A new catalyst developed by PNNL researchers actually performs best in water and at temperatures and acidities remarkably similar to conditions found in fuel cells. Their paper was first made available online and has since inspired cover …more

Efficiently releasing stored chemical energy harnessed from renewable sources remains one of the great scientific challenges facing the catalysis research community. Meanwhile, Mother Nature performs this transformation with ease using abundant metal-containing enzymes as catalysts. So far, lack of an inexpensive and stable catalyst has limited widespread, economical use of hydrogen fuel cells (HFCs). But thanks to a recent breakthrough at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), that may change.

Researchers at PNNL have demonstrated that stored renewable energy can be interconverted efficiently and inexpensively by mimicking enzymatic catalysts used in biological processes. Enzymes consist of an active site-a metal where the reaction happens with connections to the rest of the protein-and a protein scaffold surrounding the active site. That PNNL research team, led by Dr. Wendy Shaw, predicted that many parts of the protein scaffold play critical roles in catalytic activity and efficiency instead of only the active site. This protein scaffold is known as the outer coordination sphere (OCS). It controls the reactivity of the active site by controlling the movement of substrates during catalysis.

Shaw and her research group have shown that adding a simple, amino acid OCS around an artificial nickel-based catalyst has unparalleled improvement in performance. The researchers’ new catalyst actually performs best in water and at temperatures and acidities remarkably similar to conditions found in fuel cells.

“Overall, our research shows that proper bridging of synthetic catalysts and features from can help us develop novel sets of materials that can have activity far beyond any natural enzymes,” said Shaw. “They also perform better under demanding conditions.”

Enzymes are large protein molecules found in nature that catalyze reactions quickly and efficiently. They are ubiquitous in all niches of the biosphere, and their roles are clearly evident in reactions that fuel the natural world, such as photosynthesis and respiration. In nature, hydrogen (H2) molecules store energy and release it as needed with the aid of hydrogenase enzymes. The basic reaction catalyzed by the hydrogenases is the interconversion of H2 molecules and protons and electrons (H2 ⇔ 2H++2e–).

Although Shaw and her team drew inspiration from hydrogenases, these enzymes are difficult to produce in large quantities. They also perform only under a narrow set of conditions, making them challenging to use in energy applications. But molecular electrocatalysts-inspired by the same natural enzymes-can overcome deficiencies and provide alternatives.

Some of the best and most-studied molecular catalysts for H2 activation contain an enzyme-inspired . They are a series of nickel-based catalysts developed at the Center for Molecular Electrocatalysis, an Energy Frontier Research Center at PNNL. To understand the role of the in enzymes, Shaw’s team incorporated an enzyme-like OCS to these well-studied catalysts.

Interestingly, including just a single amino acid in the OCS induces water solubility for the catalyst. Solubility makes a catalyst more versatile and active under a range of conditions. It also allows researchers to explore speed and efficiency, including changes in solvent, pressure, and temperature. The researchers found that the best conditions for operating the catalyst were strongly acidic (pH = 0) and hot (72° C)—remarkably similar to the operating environment within HFCs.

Shaw and her PNNL research team assumed they could improve catalytic reactivity. But they were surprised and excited to learn to what degree.

“Our hypothesis was that we could include enzyme-inspired features, such as amino acids, tactically around the synthetic complex and improve its catalytic reactivity,” said Shaw. “What really surprised us was how just changing the solvent from water to methanol while using the same temperature and pressure resulted in reactivity almost 4 orders of magnitude slower and with significantly less efficiency,” added Shaw.

Their results imply that interactions with the solvent, even similar solvents such as methanol and water, have a very large influence in controlling reactivity. Differences in reactivity as a function of solvent will help to unravel how these complexes operate so efficiently under some conditions.

Electrochemistry and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy were the two primary techniques used during this study. Cyclic voltammetry allowed researchers to measure catalytic rates and energy efficiency (overpotential). The team used NMR to probe the structure of the molecule. Computational studies were used to quantify the solvent’s role in catalytic reactivity.

Shaw’s team and international collaborators will seek similar activity at lower H2 pressure and evaluate long-term stability of their catalyst. They hope to test it in a real setup. Such testing could pave the way for the development of fuel cells based on inexpensive metals that could replace platinum-based fuel cells currently in use. This advancement holds tremendous potential for inexpensively interconverting energy. It could lead to an inexpensive, environmentally friendly, energy-harvesting procedure for use across the globe.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-06-lessons-nature-breakthrough-catalyzing-electricity.html#jCp

GIANT SOLAR “TULIPS” WILL HELP ETHIOPIA BECOME CARBON NEUTRAL BY 2025

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Around the globe, more countries are looking to reduce their carbon emissions by bolstering renewable energy infrastructure, but they can’t do it alone. Nations with eco-friendly initiatives rely on energy and technology companies to help them meet their goals. In Ethiopia, a partnership with AORA Solar, developer of solar-biogas hybrid power technology, may help that country reach its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2025. AORA will join forces with three universities in Ethiopia to promote academic cooperation for the development and advancement of renewable energy technologies in the middle-income country.
AORA-Solar-partnering-with-Ethiopian-universities-537x403AORA-Solar-MoU-with-Ethiopian-universities-537x358

The partnership is in the form of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which AORA Solar announced they signed this week with Arizona State University LightWorks, Addis Ababa Science and Technology University (AASTU) and Adama Science and Technology University (ASTU). Under the MoU, educational and research programs will be launched to support the national energy goals, and the efforts will be overseen by the Ethiopian Ministry of Water, Irrigation and Energy and the Ethiopian Ministry of Science and Technology.

In addition to renewable energy research, AORA Solar’s involvement with the universities will lead to the installation of AORA’s solar-biogas hybrid power technology at both Ethiopian institutions. “Our ongoing engagement with AORA Solar illustrates our commitment to conducting use-inspired research, engaging globally, valuing entrepreneurship and providing students with the necessary skills and knowledge to affect a transition to a sustainable world,” said Gary Dirks director of LightWorks and director of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at ASU. They went on to say the partnership could enhance the lives of Ethiopian citizens. Surely, if the 2025 carbon neutral goal is met in part due to this relationship, that will be true.

Renewable energy from evaporating water, left-handed kangaroos and a fasting diet that slows aging

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It was a good week for new technology as a team of researchers at Columbia University announced a way to get renewable energy from evaporating water—they have come up with two devices, one a piston-based engine that generates electricity while floating, and the other, a rotary engine that powers a tiny car. Also, another team with members from the U.S. and Korea demonstrated for the first time an on-chip visible light source using graphene—the world’s thinnest light bulb. And a team of chemists at UCLA announced that they had devised technology that could transform solar energy storage—it is a way to extend energy storage in solar cells from microseconds to weeks.

It was also an interesting week for as one team of researchers at the University of Texas announced that they had discovered the first sensor of Earth’s magnetic field in an animal. They found a microscopic structure in a C. elegans, a type of worm that senses the and to modifies its behavior based on what it finds. They suspect similar structures exist in other animals such as geese that help them navigate. Also, another team found that Saharan silver ants can control electromagnetic waves over an extremely broad spectrum range—it helps them stay cool in the hot desert. And another team of researchers with members from Russia and Australia found that Kangaroos are left-handed—which came as a surprise as the marsupials do not have a neural network in their brain that connects their left and right hemispheres. The team has also shown that handedness is not unique to primates.

Another team at the University of Warwick was able to show that self-awareness is not unique to mankind—they used thought experiments to figure out which capabilities any animal must have in order to mentally simulate the environment around them, and then found examples in other animals, such as rats in a maze. And a team at Monash University has found that with people, emotional brains are “physically different” to rational ones. They found actual differences in grey matter. Also a team of researchers at Rutgers University discovered a bacterium that “breathes” uranium and renders it immobile—possibly allowing for a new way to clean up radioactive waste.

And finally, if you have been looking for a way to stave off the impact of Father Time, a team of researchers at USC has found that a diet that mimics fasting appears to slow aging—mice cycled on and off the diet for a period of time lost weight, got smarter and lived longer.

Tesla’s home battery pack that could ‘change the way the world uses energy’: Elon Musk unveils $3,000 device that can power an entire home for eight hours

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  • Musk unveiled Powerwall device at press conference in California
  • Daily use version will be able to store 7 kilowatt-hours of electricity 
  • It will let users store renewable energy, or pay lower, off-peak rates
  • Also revealed a larger model which is a ‘infinitely scalable system’ 

 

Tesla founder Elon Musk has unveiled a ‘revolutionary’ $3,000 (£1,980) battery which he claims can run an entire home for eight hours.

Musk introduced the Powerwall device at a press conference in California last night and said the technology could ‘change the world’.

The device, which could be in homes by the end of summer, will be able to store electricity at night when it is cheaper.

Tesla has unveiled a 'revolutionary' $3,000 (£1,980) home battery that can power an entire house for eight hours

Tesla has unveiled a $3,000 (£1,980) home battery that can power an entire house for eight hours. Powerwall is three feet wide and four feet tall, weighs 220lbs, and can be installed on an outside or inside wall

Tesla has unveiled a $3,000 (£1,980) home battery that can power an entire house for eight hours. Powerwall is three feet wide and four feet tall, weighs 220lbs, and can be installed on an outside or inside wall. The left images shows the 10kWh version while on the right is the 7kWh device

HOW DOES POWERWALL WORK?

The technology powers up overnight when electricity rates are cheaper. Users can then switch the battery on during the day to use the home during the day.

Powerwall can be used as back up power in the case of an emergency, or be used to hold power from renewable energy sources.

The ‘daily use’ version has a capacity of 7 kilowatt-hours, which is around a quarter of a home’s daily usage. The  average U.S. home uses 10,908 kilowatt-hours of energy per year, or just short of 30 per day.

Home battery packs could disrupt the utility market. In 2013, the Edison Electric Institute, the trade group for investor-owned electric companies, issued a report warning about disruption.

‘One can imagine a day when battery storage technology or micro turbines could allow customers to be electric grid independent,’ the report said.

It would then discharge this cheap electricity during the day in quantities large enough to be useful to homes and businesses.

The  Powerwall is around three feet wide and four feet tall, weighs 220lbs, and can be installed either on an outside or inside wall of a home.

The ‘daily use’ version has a capacity of 7 kilowatt-hours, which is around a quarter of a home’s daily usage.

Department of Energy figures state that the average U.S. home uses 10,908 kilowatt-hours of energy per year, or just short of 30 per day.

According to that figure, a single, fully-charged Powerwall device would be able to meet a quarter of a home’s energy needs on any given day.

However, it would likely last far less time than eight hours during the mornings and evenings, when homes use the vast majority of their electricity.

Musk said that the devices can be stacked together to provide more energy.

The system would let homeowners with solar panels or other sources of renewable energy easily store their energy at home, rather than the current model whereby they sell power back to energy suppliers as it is produced, then buy it again during peak times.

It could also let savvy consumers take advantage of power companies’ lower rates during the night and use the cheaper, stored energy during peak periods.

According to tech site Mashable, Musk told attendees at the event: ‘Our goal is to fundamentally change the way the world uses energy.

Tesla unveils batteries for homes to store solar energy

Pictured is a utility-scale version of Powerwall that can be used by businesses and scaled up for more power

Pictured is a utility-scale version of Powerwall that can be used by businesses and scaled up for more power

The 'daily use' version has a capacity of 7 kilowatt-hours, which is around a quarter of a home's daily usage

The ‘daily use’ version has a capacity of 7 kilowatt-hours, which is around a quarter of a home’s daily usage

WHAT IS THE POWERPACK?

Tesla also unveiled the ‘Powerpack’, which is the big brother of the Powerwall.

It describes it as an ‘infinitely scalable system’ that can work for businesses, in industrial applications, and public utility companies.

It comes in 100 kWh battery blocks that can scale from 500 kWH all the way up to 10 MWh.

 ‘Our goal here is to change the way the world uses energy at an extreme scale,’ it said.

‘It sounds crazy, but we want to change the entire energy infrastructure of the world to zero carbon.’

As well as the daily-use model, Tesla will also launch a 10 kilowatt-hour backup battery, designed to tide homes over during power blackouts, such as those caused by storms.

Marketing material for the device, published late Thursday on Tesla’s website, says: ‘Powerwall is a home battery that charges using electricity generated from solar panels, or when utility rates are low, and powers your home in the evening.

‘It also fortifies your home against power outages by providing a backup electricity supply.

‘Automated, compact and simple to install, Powerwall offers independence from the utility grid and the security of an emergency backup.’

Musk said that he hopes to sell hundreds of millions of the devices, which he touted as a vast improvement over currently-available models. In the past he has said such early batteries ‘suck’.

He later added that the entire showcase had been powered by a huge array of Powerwall batteries.

Pictured is the 'powerpack', an 'infinitely scalable system' that comes in 100 kWh battery blocks that can scale from 500 kWH all the way up to 10 MWh and higher
Pictured is the 'powerpack', an 'infinitely scalable system' that comes in 100 kWh battery blocks that can scale from 500 kWH all the way up to 10 MWh and higher

Pictured is the ‘powerpack’. Elon Musk (right) describes it as an ‘infinitely scalable system’ that comes in 100 kWh battery blocks that can scale from 500 kWH up to 10 MWh and higher

The technology could let savvy consumers take advantage of power companies' lower rates during the night and use the cheaper, stored energy during peak periods.  Mr Musk is already the chairman of SolarCity - a company that offers solar power systems for homes - and Tesla's home battery is an extension of this

The technology could let savvy consumers take advantage of power companies’ lower rates during the night and use the cheaper, stored energy during peak periods.  Mr Musk is already the chairman of SolarCity – a company that offers solar power systems for homes – and Tesla’s home battery is an extension of this

Musk said that he hopes to sell hundreds of millions of the devices, which he touted as a vast improvement over currently-available models. In the past he has said such early batteries 'suck'

Musk said that he hopes to sell hundreds of millions of the devices, which he touted as a vast improvement over currently-available models. In the past he has said such early batteries ‘suck’

Tesla also unveiled the ‘Powerpack’, which is the larger scale version of the Powerwall.

It describes it as an ‘infinitely scalable system’ that can work for businesses, in industrial applications and public utility companies.

It comes in 100 kWh battery blocks that can scale from 500 kWH all the way up to 10 MWh.  ‘Our goal here is to change the way the world uses energy at an extreme scale,’ it said.

The latest announcement builds on previous Tesla products, principally its range of cars.

Last year, Tesla Motors unveiled plans for a ‘Gigafactory’ designed to help the firm ramp up production of batteries for its electric cars, and now homes.

Tesla said the factory will cut current battery production costs by up to 30 per cent, and will be powered predominantly by renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar.

Elsewhere, Mr Musk is already the chairman of SolarCity – a company that offers solar power systems for homes – and Tesla’s home battery could be an extension of this.

These batteries 3ft tall (0.9 metres), and can be controlled remotely using a smartphone app. Tesla would not comment on whether the new batteries will work in the same way.

Home battery packs could disrupt the utility market. In 2013, the Edison Electric Institute, the trade group for investor-owned electric companies, issued a report warning about disruption.

Powerwall charges using electricity generated from solar panels, or when utility rates are low, and powers your home in the evening

Powerwall charges using electricity generated from solar panels, or when utility rates are low, and powers your home in the evening

Tesla reveals plans to build $5B ‘gigafactory’ in Nevada

‘One can imagine a day when battery storage technology or micro turbines could allow customers to be electric grid independent,’ the report said.

Deutsche Bank estimates sales of stationary battery storage systems for homes and commercial uses could yield as much as $4.5 billion in revenue for Tesla.

Analysts expect Tesla will build stationary storage systems around the same basic batteries it will produce for its vehicles at a large factory the company is building in Nevada.

Stationary storage systems could be part of a fossil-fuel free lifestyle in which an individual has solar panels on the roof, generating electricity that can power home appliances and recharge batteries in a Tesla Model S sedan parked in the garage.

Government subsidies and a dramatic drop in the price of lithium ion batteries are drawing more companies into the home electricity storage business.

Tesla has so far received $1.1 million from California’s Self-Generation Incentive Program. Tesla has received or is poised to receive state funding for about 600 storage projects in California, according to data from the state.

Though valued at just $200 million in 2012, the energy storage industry is expected to grow to $19 billion by 2017, according to research firm IHS CERA.

In Tesla's view, such storage systems could become part of a fossil-fuel-free lifestyle in which people can have solar panels on their roof generating electricity to power their home and recharge their electric car batteries

In Tesla’s view, such storage systems could become part of a fossil-fuel-free lifestyle in which people can have solar panels on their roof generating electricity to power their home and recharge their electric car batteries

 

 

Organic mega flow battery promises breakthrough for renewable energy.

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A team of Harvard scientists and engineers has demonstrated a new type of battery that could fundamentally transform the way electricity is stored on the grid, making power from renewable energy sources such as wind and solar far more economical and reliable.

The novel battery technology is reported in a paper published in Nature on January 9. Under the OPEN 2012 program, the Harvard team received funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) to develop the innovative grid-scale battery and plans to work with ARPA-E to catalyze further technological and market breakthroughs over the next several years.

The paper reports a metal-free  that relies on the electrochemistry of naturally abundant, inexpensive, small organic (carbon-based) molecules called quinones, which are similar to molecules that store energy in plants and animals.

The mismatch between the availability of intermittent wind or sunshine and the variability of demand is the biggest obstacle to getting a large fraction of our electricity from renewable sources. A cost-effective means of storing large amounts of electrical energy could solve this problem.

The battery was designed, built, and tested in the laboratory of Michael J. Aziz, Gene and Tracy Sykes Professor of Materials and Energy Technologies at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). Roy G. Gordon, Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Materials Science, led the work on the synthesis and chemical screening of molecules. Alán Aspuru-Guzik, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, used his pioneering high-throughput molecular screening methods to calculate the properties of more than 10,000 quinone molecules in search of the best candidates for the battery.

Flow batteries store energy in chemical fluids contained in external tanks—as with fuel cells—instead of within the battery container itself. The two main components—the electrochemical conversion hardware through which the fluids are flowed (which sets the peak power capacity), and the chemical storage tanks (which set the energy capacity)—may be independently sized. Thus the amount of energy that can be stored is limited only by the size of the tanks. The design permits larger amounts of energy to be stored at lower cost than with traditional batteries.

By contrast, in solid-electrode batteries, such as those commonly found in cars and mobile devices, the power conversion hardware and energy capacity are packaged together in one unit and cannot be decoupled. Consequently they can maintain peak discharge power for less than an hour before being drained, and are therefore ill suited to store intermittent renewables.

“Our studies indicate that one to two days’ worth of storage is required for making solar and wind dispatchable through the electrical grid,” said Aziz.

To store 50 hours of energy from a 1-megawatt power capacity wind turbine (50 megawatt-hours), for example, a possible solution would be to buy traditional batteries with 50 megawatt-hours of energy storage, but they’d come with 50 megawatts of power capacity. Paying for 50 megawatts of power capacity when only 1 megawatt is necessary makes little economic sense.

For this reason, a growing number of engineers have focused their attention on flow battery technology. But until now, flow batteries have relied on chemicals that are expensive or difficult to maintain, driving up the energy storage costs.

The active components of electrolytes in most flow batteries have been metals. Vanadium is used in the most commercially advanced flow battery technology now in development, but its cost sets a rather high floor on the cost per kilowatt-hour at any scale. Other flow batteries contain precious metal electrocatalysts such as the platinum used in fuel cells.

The new flow battery developed by the Harvard team already performs as well as vanadium flow batteries, with chemicals that are significantly less expensive, and with no precious metal electrocatalyst.

“The whole world of electricity storage has been using metal ions in various charge states but there is a limited number that you can put into solution and use to store energy, and none of them can economically store massive amounts of renewable energy,” Gordon said. “With organic molecules, we introduce a vast new set of possibilities. Some of them will be terrible and some will be really good. With these quinones we have the first ones that look really good.”

Aspuru-Guzik noted that the project is very well aligned with the White House Materials Genome Initiative. “This project illustrates what the synergy of high-throughput quantum chemistry and experimental insight can do,” he said. “In a very quick time period, our team honed in to the right molecule. Computational screening, together with experimentation, can lead to discovery of new materials in many application domains.”

Quinones are abundant in crude oil as well as in green plants. The molecule that the Harvard team used in its first quinone-based flow battery is almost identical to one found in rhubarb. The quinones are dissolved in water, which prevents them from catching fire.

To back up a commercial wind turbine, a large storage tank would be needed, possibly located in a below-grade basement, said co-lead author Michael Marshak, a postdoctoral fellow at SEAS and in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. Or if you had a whole field of turbines or large solar farm, you could imagine a few very large storage tanks.

The same technology could also have applications at the consumer level, Marshak said. “Imagine a device the size of a home heating oil tank sitting in your basement. It would store a day’s worth of sunshine from the solar panels on the roof of your house, potentially providing enough to power your household from late afternoon, through the night, into the next morning, without burning any fossil fuels.”

“The Harvard team’s results published in Nature demonstrate an early, yet important technical achievement that could be critical in furthering the development of grid-scale batteries,” said ARPA-E Program Director John Lemmon. “The project team’s result is an excellent example of how a small amount of catalytic funding from ARPA-E can help build the foundation to hopefully turn scientific discoveries into low-cost, early-stage energy technologies.”

Team leader Aziz said the next steps in the project will be to further test and optimize the system that has been demonstrated on the bench top and bring it toward a commercial scale. “So far, we’ve seen no sign of degradation after more than 100 cycles, but commercial applications require thousands of cycles,” he said. He also expects to achieve significant improvements in the underlying chemistry of the battery system. “I think the chemistry we have right now might be the best that’s out there for stationary storage and quite possibly cheap enough to make it in the marketplace,” he said. “But we have ideas that could lead to huge improvements.”

By the end of the three-year development period, Connecticut-based Sustainable Innovations, LLC, a collaborator on the project, expects to deploy demonstration versions of the organic flow battery contained in a unit the size of a horse trailer. The portable, scaled-up storage system could be hooked up to solar panels on the roof of a commercial building, and electricity from the solar panels could either directly supply the needs of the building or go into storage and come out of storage when there’s a need. Sustainable Innovations anticipates playing a key role in the product’s commercialization by leveraging its ultra-low cost electrochemical cell design and system architecture already under development for  applications.

“You could theoretically put this on any node on the grid,” Aziz said. “If the market price fluctuates enough, you could put a storage device there and buy electricity to store it when the price is low and then sell it back when the price is high. In addition, you might be able to avoid the permitting and gas supply problems of having to build a gas-fired power plant just to meet the occasional needs of a growing peak demand.”

This technology could also provide very useful backup for off-grid rooftop solar panels—an important advantage considering some 20 percent of the world’s population does not have access to a power distribution network.

William Hogan, Raymond Plank Professor of Global Energy Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, and one of the world’s foremost experts on electricity markets, is helping the team explore the economic drivers for the technology.

Trent M. Molter, President and CEO of Sustainable Innovations, LLC, provides expertise on implementing the Harvard team’s technology into commercial electrochemical systems.

“The intermittent renewables storage problem is the biggest barrier to getting most of our power from the sun and the wind,” Aziz said. “A safe and economical flow battery could play a huge role in our transition off fossil fuels to renewable electricity. I’m excited that we have a good shot at it.”

 

Increasing size of Wind Turbines .

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Wind Energy is the oldest and is among the most widely used Renewable Energy sources in the world. In India, it is only next to Large Hydro in terms of capacity and energy generation. Of-late, plans to make bigger and bigger wind-turbines are being announced by companies that have been operating for decades in this field. By bigger, I mean both size-wise and capacity-wise. Siemens which announced its flagship product SWT-6.0-154 that has a 6 MW output capacity and a rotor diameter of 154m was outdone by Vestas’ V164 turbine which is not only bigger in size (80m blade and 164m rotor diameter) but is also said to produce 7 MW output.

Enercon, however, already has its E-126 wind turbine on production and has finished several installations since 2007. Released as a 6 MW turbine, it was later upgraded to 7.5 MW after technical revisions. This is by far the biggest wind turbine till date.

 

Vestas which was working on its 7 MW turbine recently announced that, owing to technological improvement, the Vestas-V164 will now have 8 MW output. This is in develepment stage right now with testing to be started next year. The product is slated to be launched in 2014 according to information from the company.

As these companies race against each other producing higher capacity turbines, there was an announcement made in July 2010 by UK based company Wind Power Limited that it plans to come up with a 10 MW turbine. Unlike the ones mentioned above, this is going to be a Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT) and is going to be off-shore based. Named ‘Aerogenerator X’, the sheer size of this turbine makes it infeasible for land installations. Here are a few specifications of the Aerogenerator X:

Type: Vertical Axis
Distance from blade tip to blade tip: 275 m
Swept area: 14.7 Acres
Generation Capacity: 10 MW
Concept released in: 2010
Expected to be ready by: 2013-2014

The distinctive feature of the Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT), unlike other VAWTs, is that it has most of its mass concentrated at the bottom thus resulting in a lower centre of gravity and thus higher structural stability.

The future of Wind Energy technology sounds promising and exciting with all the focus on Renewable Energy in the last decade. Wind Energy which is already a well understood and widely established industry will continue to be a significant part of the Global Renewable Energy revolution.

Source: Yahoo news.