One of the chemicals used to store charges in the new flow battery. (credit: John Timmer)
In the batteries that power your laptop and cellphone, the charge carrying material is an integral part of the physical structure, moving from one electrode to the other during charge and discharge cycles. When current isn't being input or extracted, the charge carriers stay where they are.
But it doesn't have to be that way. There are alternatives, called flow batteries, where the charge carriers are in a liquid that flows past the electrodes (hence the name). While flow batteries have a much lower energy density than a lithium ion battery, they have a big advantage: the amount of electricity they can store is limited only by the size of the liquid storage tanks. The complicated and expensive parts of the system—the electrodes and membrane separating the two charge carriers—can be relatively compact and still handle a large amount of charge storage.
But flow batteries are pretty bulky, so they haven't received the sort of attention that's been given to the hardware that can power our laptops. But that doesn't mean research isn't ongoing. This week, a team from Harvard described how a way of creating a flow battery out of very inexpensive chemicals.
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This week, a team from Harvard described how a way of creating a flow battery out of very inexpensive chemicals. 8x batteries
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