Harvard researchers have created a flow battery that lasts 10 years or longer as a new way of storing energy.
Harvard's flow battery uses water to dissolve organic molecules that store energy, and it can be recharged recharge frequently and lasts a decade with minimal degradation.
The new battery offers several significant improvements over previous large-scale rechargeable batteries, according to the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Previous batteries used toxic chemicals to hold their charges, and when recharged, degraded until they were depleted after about 1,000 cycles.
The new flow batteries use inexpensive, nontoxic chemicals that are mixed with neutral pH water, making them far less hazardous if they spill or leak.
“This is a long-lasting battery that you could put in your basement,” Harvard Materials Science Professor Roy Gordon, who worked on the team that made the discovery, said on the website. “If it spilled on the floor, it wouldn’t eat the concrete and since the medium is noncorrosive, you can use cheaper materials to build the components of the batteries, like tanks and pumps.”
Researchers are hopeful this technology could reduce the cost of the batteries and make solar and wind technologies around the same price as energy produced by traditional coal, oil, and gas power plants.
“If you can get anywhere near this cost then you change the world,” study team leader and Professor of Materials and Energy Technologies Michael Aziz said. “It becomes cost effective to put batteries in so many places.”
In addition to allowing homeowners to run their homes with alternative energy sources through the batteries, energy companies could use them to store energy until it is needed, Harvard said.
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