rechargeable battery tagged posts

Findings could pave the way for a cost-efficient, high-performing calcium-ion battery. Concerns regarding scarcity, high prices, and safety regarding the long-term use of lithium-ion batteries has prompted a team of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to propose a greener, more efficient, and less expensive energy storage alternative.

In research published recently in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), corresponding author Nikhil Koratkar, the John A. Clark and Edward T. Crossan Professor of Engineering at Rensselaer, and his team, assert that calcium ions could be used as an alternative to lithium-ions in batteries because of its abundance and low cost.

“The vast majority of rechargeable battery products are based on lithium-ion technology, wh...

The battery uses both oxygen and iron to store and release electrical energy. Credit: Zhenpeng Yao

By using iron and oxygen to simultaneously drive the electrochemical reaction, a novel battery is less expensive and has a higher capacity. On paper, it doesn’t seem like Christopher Wolverton’s super lithium-rich battery should work. For one, the novel battery uses iron, an inexpensive metal that has notoriously failed in batteries. And in another difficult feat, the battery leverages oxygen to help drive the chemical reaction, which researchers previously believed would cause the battery to become unstable. But not only does the battery work, it does so incredibly well.

Teaming up with researchers at Argonne National Laboratory, Wolverton’s group at Northwestern University developed a recha...

This is an artistic rendering of a carbonized fungal biomass-manganese oxide mineral composite (MycMnOx/C) can be applied as a novel electrochemical material in energy storage devices Credit: Qianwei Li and Geoffrey Michael Gadd

A red bread mold could be the key to producing more sustainable electrochemical materials for use in rechargeable batteries. The researchers show for the first time that the fungus Neurospora crassa can transform manganese into a mineral composite with favorable electrochemical properties.

“We have made electrochemically active materials using a fungal manganese biomineralization process,” says Geoffrey Gadd of the University of Dundee in Scotland...