Solving the energy crisis: 5 battery technologies you should know about

As the world moves away from fossil fuels towards emissions-free electricity, developing safer, more durable batteries is becoming increasingly vital. However, single-use batteries can create immense waste and harmful environmental impacts.

At the Battery Research and Innovation Hub at Deakin University’s Institute for Frontier Materials, we are doing important research into alternative battery technologies, aiming to reduce waste and re-use battery systems as we work towards a circular economy.

Image caption: The Battery Research and Innovation Hub at Deakin’s Institute for Frontier Materials. Image credit: Deakin University.

Here are five leading alternative battery technologies that could power the future:

Advanced lithium-ion batteries

Lithium-ion batteries can be found in almost every electrical item we use daily — from our phones to our wireless headphones, toys, tools and electric vehicles. However, serious questions have been raised regarding their safety induced by electrolytes.

At the Battery Research and Innovation Hub, our experts aim to design safer, reliable battery technology and enable the delivery of safer next-generation solid-state lithium-ion cells. In our unique facility we are investigating how safer electrolyte materials can be incorporated into lithium systems without any reduction in battery performance.

Benefits: Charging is safe and fast, long-lasting, large energy density, rechargeable.

Applications: Small electrical items such as phones, toys, wireless headphones to larger items such as electric vehicles, e-scooters and solar power batteries.

Sodium-ion batteries

Sodium-ion batteries are a promising alternative to lithium-ion batteries — one that is cheaper, safer and easier to recycle. As the fourth most abundant element in the Earth’s crust — 10,000 times higher than lithium — sodium is easily accessible and affordable. In addition, a sodium-ion battery does not use heavy metals, unlike other battery types, meaning it has less impact on the environment and is easier to recycle.

At the Battery Research and Innovation Hub we use our advanced facilities, such as our Pouch Cell Facility, to design, develop and test pouch cell technology that can be scaled up for manufacturing and ready for commercialisation.

We are also exploring chemistries involved in novel electrode and electrolyte materials within sodium batteries, with an emphasis on improving battery performance, and raising the focus on circular economy. This research has led to the development of novel electrolytes, with low flammability, and thermally and electrochemically stable features, which enables long-term battery cycling.

Benefits: Sodium is the fourth most abundant element in the Earth’s crust, making it more affordable than commonly used lithium, which is facing a worldwide shortage. Sodium-ion batteries don’t require heavy metals to produce — making it easier to recycle and having less impact on the environment.

Applications: Stationary applications such as a grid-scale power station and modes of transport that aren’t required to travel long distances, such as electric scooters or electric buses.

Solid-state batteries

As the electric vehicle market grows, so does the need for electric vehicle batteries that are safer, fast charging and longer lasting. Solid-state batteries are showing huge potential to address these needs by offering a drastic change to the battery components that are used in current technology.

As opposed to the liquid electrolytes used in more common battery types, solid-state batteries use thermally stable solid electrolytes as ion conductors. Solid electrolytes, such as solid polymer electrolytes (PILBLOCs), are non-flammable and non-fluid, and therefore have a low risk of catching and spreading fire — offering a much safer energy-storage option than lithium-ion batteries, in which flammable liquid electrolytes are being used.

Benefits: Solid-state batteries can be operated at a wide range of temperatures, especially at high temperatures that lithium-ion batteries cannot tolerate. Some solid electrolytes that can transfer ions at a faster rate than conventional liquid electrolytes.

Applications: Electric vehicles, energy-storage systems, consumer electronics such as laptops and smartphones, niche applications such as batteries that can be operated at high temperatures (ie, 60–200°C), aerospace.

Flow batteries

In the coming years, renewable energy sources such as solar and wind will increasingly dominate the conventional power grid. Because those sources only generate electricity when it’s sunny or windy, ensuring a reliable grid requires some means of storing electricity when supplies are abundant and delivering it later when not.

Flow batteries are proving to be a promising technology for this task. Flow batteries contain two substances that undergo electrochemical reactions in which electrons are transferred from one to the other. The two substances can contain different chemicals, but today vanadium is the most widely used.

Flow batteries can store hundreds of hours of energy and have the potential for long lifetimes and low costs. Construction of Australia’s first commercial vanadium-flow battery was completed in June 2023.

Benefits: Affordable, long-lasting and safe.

Applications: Energy storage for renewable energy grids.

Metal-air batteries

Metal-air batteries have long been the focus of research due to their theoretically higher capacity. Zinc is in high abundance — which makes it an ideal element for metal-air batteries.

Rechargeable Zn-air batteries are proving to have large theoretical energy density due to their active material being oxygen. This combination of zinc and oxygen makes the manufacturing of these devices feasible for large grid-scale energy storage systems and, potentially, fast-charging electric vehicles.

In addition to this, rechargeable Zn-air batteries make excellent candidates in flexible electronic devices that are lightweight and require long-term power supply, such as small drones.

Research done at the Battery Research and Innovation Hub has uncovered a low-cost, environmentally friendly, non-aqueous electrolyte to support long-term cycling of zinc, making it a promising candidate for rechargeable Zn-air batteries.

Benefits: Zinc is a safe and low-cost element for battery technology. Zn-air batteries are lightweight, flexible and longer lasting, with large energy density.

Applications: Zn-air batteries are used in watches and hearing aids. Rechargeable Zn-air batteries have the potential for large grid-scale energy storage systems, electric cars and flexible electronic devices such as small drones.

Top image credit: iStock.com/Chor muang

This is a modified version of a news item published by the Deakin University Battery Research and Innovation Hub. The original version of the news item can be accessed here.