Later today, President Obama is scheduled to unveil his plan for a $2 billion Energy Security Trust to support research into alternative energy production and high-capacity storage technologies. This announcement comes just days after Boeing Corp. won approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to begin testing a new design for its troubled lithium-ion batteries aboard the new, but grounded, 787 Dreamliner.
Héctor Abruña and Frank DiSalvo, both professors of chemistry and chemical biology at Cornell University, are available to explain the design challenges – and the inherent limitations – of chemical battery technology.
Abruña and DiSalvo say:
“As consumers, we want batteries with infinite capacity, infinite power, that charge instantaneously, last forever and cost nothing. Many of these aspects conflict with each other and that's where some of the problems begin.
“It took a while for Lithium-ion batteries to be widely used in handheld devices and laptops because of fire risk, but that problem is now solved. It will also be solved for the larger battery packs used in aircraft and electric cars, but it may take a while. An especially important aspect is thermal control and stability, particularly, the prevention of so-called ‘thermal runaway’ in which the battery heats to the point of catastrophic failure.
“Batteries that pack five times more energy per unit volume or per unit weight than the current lithium batteries will eventually be invented, but it is impossible to get to 20 times more energy. Given the periodic table and the nature of atoms, we are very unlikely to develop batteries in the future with more than 10 times current energy densities.
“The challenge with higher energy density batteries will always be the risk of melting, fire or explosion. The energy stored will be approaching that of gasoline. Many of the high-energy-density lithium-ion batteries operate beyond the thermodynamic limit of the electrolyte, which is also flammable. Thus, there is an inherent instability in these devices and we are still learning how to control these processes.”
Additional information:
• DiSalvo is the director of Cornell’s Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future. His research group synthesizes, characterizes and tests nanoscale materials for possible application to new energy systems. For more, see: http://chemistry.cornell.edu/faculty/detail.cfm?netid=fjd3• Abruña is director of the Energy Materials Center at Cornell (emc2) and faculty fellow at the Atkinson Center. His research group focuses on the development and characterization of new materials using a wide variety of techniques for fuel cells, batteries, and molecular assemblies for molecular electronics. For more, see: http://chemistry.cornell.edu/faculty/detail.cfm?netid=hda1
Contact the Press Relations Office for information about Cornell's TV and radio studios.
RSS