Featured Scientists create battery that refuels electric cars in seconds

Scientists create battery that refuels electric cars in seconds - BBC News

It is a flow battery in which the researchers have developed a system for removing spent electrolyte from the car, and then filling it with charged fluid. They may have also improved upon the flow battery's energy capacity(most are less than Li-ion).

The article is light on details, but if this can be scaled up, it does solve the long distance recharge question. I just hope somebody doesn't decide we don't need home charging any more because of it.

 

Inorganic flow batteries have actually been around for decades. Their operation is more like a fuel cell than a traditional battery. In a fuel cell, there is a membrane with hydrogen on one side and air or oxygen on the other. The hydrogen moving across to form water with oxygen generates the electricity. In a traditional flow battery, there are two electrolytes, the anolyte and catholyte, separated by the membrane, and the movement of electrons across is what generates the electricity. There are some companies selling these batteries for home level and up energy storage. A company is planning to release a Vanadium based battery to the market next year. Their target price is $400 kWh with a 25 year lifespan. Flow batteries don't degrade like others, but do have moving parts in the pumps circulating the electrolytes.

What has kept them out of cars is the low energy density. Current vanadium ones has a volumetric energy density of around 10 times less of a Li-ion battery's. So that needs to improve, which it might have. It might need to only get close to current traction batteries, since most of the required space for a flow battery is just two(or one) tanks for liquids.

I will be annoyed if this does come to market, but they take away the home charging ability of the car.

Flow battery - Wikipedia
Vanadium Flow Batteries for Cost-Effective Energy Storage: An Interview with Angelo D’Anzi, CTO of StorEn Technologies | CleanTechnica

 

Li-ion degrades with time and use cycles. Same with other battery chemistries. So in time, the capacity you bought is reduced. It may not be much, I think most early Model S's have seen under 5% loss, but it is a factor when it comes to planning energy storage. Flow batteries don't suffer that type of degradation. After ten years, it will have the same capacity.

Which over looks the fact that we are thinking about two different values, and this is for residential use. The dollars per kWh in regards to the Gigafactory are for production costs, not the retail price. Tesla built it to lower those costs, and to also cut out the middleman mark up they were paying before. The retail price of the Powerwall is $437.04/kWh though. So this flow battery home energy storage unit should be competitive.

Then there are production logistics to consider. Several plug ins would be selling better if they weren't supply constrained by the unavailability of batteries. Consumer ready flow batteries aren't suitable for vehicles. Using them for stationary energy storage means we don't have them against the transportation industry in addition to their market competitors.

 

More info here.
University of Glasgow - University news - Liquid battery could lead to flexible energy storage