Carbon Dioxide Battery Breakthrough

Key Takeaways

hi welcome to another ColdFusion video so in the last video that I did about the Tesla battery about a month ago I said that if it did well I'll do a follow-up video on a new carbon dioxide battery that was achieved by the University of Illinois in this video we'll take a look [Music] we've all heard of lithium-ion batteries they're everywhere from your laptop and phone to electric cars and planes but the main issue of them is their energy density there are many characteristics of a battery that matter energy density is one of them but you want to be able to charge it rapidly of course you want it to be last as long as possible with a lot of consumer electronics products we often change the product before we change the battery because we want a new generation of whatever it is but when you move to things like electric vehicles and for grid scale storage even more then the economics say that you know you really need that battery to last a lot longer than a couple of years and that's one of the challenges that with rely on battery space although great progress is being made to improve this the question has to be asked what if there was a more energy-dense form of battery although there's other interesting options being developed lithium carbon dioxide batteries are an interesting option researchers at the University of Illinois are the first to show that lithium carbon dioxide batteries can be designed to operate in a fully rechargeable manner their prototype can manage 500 consecutive charge and discharge cycles lithium carbon dioxide batteries are an attractive energy storage system because they have a specific energy density that's more than seven times current batteries so state-of-the-art current batteries would be about 256 watt hours per kilogram but these new lithium carbon dioxide batteries can theoretically reach 1876 watt hours per kilogram that's seven times more and that's the exciting part about this it means that a battery can theoretically be seven times lighter while holding the same amount of energy will be the same weight and size but holds seven times more energy the former is great for concepts like electric aircraft while the latter is great for electric cars and all electronic devices the problem was until now scientists haven't been able to develop a fully rechargeable version this makes their potential to store more energy virtually useless unfortunately lithium carbon dioxide batteries destroy themselves during the charging and discharging process but not anymore I'm insulate he Cochin associate professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at new I C's College of Engineering speaks quote lithium carbon dioxide batteries have been attractive for a long time but in practice we have been unable to get one that is truly efficient until now end quote traditionally when a lithium carbon dioxide battery discharges it produces lithium carbonate and carbon as a by-product the lithium carbonate recycles during the charge phase but the carbon just accumulates in the catalyst ultimately destroying the battery and leading to failure omim continues quote the accumulation of carbon not only blocks the active sites of the catalyst and prevents carbon dioxide diffusion but also triggers electrolyte decomposition in the charge state end quote this carbon buildup causes a battery of this kind to destroy itself before 100 cycles are completed the new breakthrough battery solves this and as mentioned earlier pushes the number of cycles up to 500 times a minute as colleagues used new materials in their experimentation these materials encourage the thorough recycling of lithium carbonate and carbon stopping the carbon buildup problem quote our unique combination of materials helps make the first carbon neutral lithium carbon dioxide battery with much more efficiency and long-lasting life cycle which will enable it to be used in advanced energy storage systems and quote several Giga tons of carbon dioxide in US every year so that's a really big number and we need to get rid of this not only we can remediate carbon dioxide we can also use it as a source of the energy so I want to convert it to some useful chemicals I don't want to leave the issues for the next generation I want to solve it here interestingly computer modeling was used as part of the research process theoretical calculations we use to deduce a mechanism for the reversible operation of the battery so this all does sound amazing but a word of caution must be given you know break through such as this are amazing in reality but they usually require much more development before they leave the lab and become commercially viable that being said this breakthrough does look very promising and with an energy density seven times that of a typical battery lithium carbon dioxide batteries could become a vital part of the battery revolution in the 2020s but for that we'll have to wait and see so what do you guys think let me know in the comments section below so quickly just some housekeeping I've recently come back from a trip from America through a youtuber van and some business meetings and that was cool but that's also the reason why there's been a gap in videos I didn't really get any time to create some videos before I left but now I'll be getting back to posting more regularly soon also if you haven't checked out mr. beasts efforts to plant 20 million trees it's awesome he'd DM to me on Instagram asking if I'd like to get involved so I'll leave some links below so you can check it out a $1 donation plants one tree okay so thanks for watching this has been to gogo and you've been watching cold fusion don't forget to check out the cold fusion podcast and follow me on Instagram and Twitter alright so I'll see you again soon for the next video cheers guys [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause]