Tomorrow’s battery to contain more than one technology

The current transition to battery-powered transport and large energy storage is only the first iteration, according to leaders in the field. Scarcity and demand have combined to bring forward the next phase, which was likely to be a combination of current and new technologies, according to Associate Professor Joshua Watts who’s director of the Energy Storage Research Group based at QUT. A squeeze on lithium resources, in particular, was forcing researchers to look left field, Professor Watts said. “The short answer for that is we need everything,” he said. Associate Professor Joshua Watts. "There's not enough batteries being manufactured globally to meet the coming demand. Forecast demand for lithium-ion batteries alone, it looks like we won't be able to get there with the current critical minerals that are being dug out of the ground, so it is likely that lithium demand is going to be curtailed and something else is going to be needed to meet that demand. “It looks like sodium-ion batteries are going to be a pretty good contender for that. There's still a bit of work to be done to commercially deploy them and prove them out, but there's a lot of the big companies in the space absolutely ramping production, targeting lots of different applications. “Sodium-ion has different analogs, so different chemistries that have different performance benefits or drawbacks depending on the use case. "Sodium-ion, just in general, has a lower capacity, lower energy density, but it has a lot of other benefits potentially. "So it could be used for low-range EVs (and) potentially very good for large-scale static energy storage applications for sure. Again, there's purported safety benefits in sodium-ion batteries. “Lithium batteries are not going anywhere. They will be used for a very long time. There's nothing really coming through apart from sodium-ion that looks to have the commercial maturity to replace it.” Australia was well positioned to take advantage of the demand forecast for large-scale static solutions including vanadium and bromide flow batteries to store energy generated from wind and solar farms, Professor Watts said. Tomorrow’s solution was likely to be a combination of technologies to make a battery more fit for a given purpose, he said. “I guess fringe technologies are absolutely coming through ranging from thermal batteries through to compressed air,” he said. “Also inertia batteries, so flywheel-type technologies. There's heat and gravity batteries, there's heaps of different ways you can store energy. It really depends on the use case. “… It really comes down to the ability to test and deploy the systems in different use-case conditions to be able to work out what works best in which spaces. “The answer, I think, for a lot of what we need for grid stability, renewables integration and just electrification in general to meet the clean energy transition is going to come down to a hybridisation of different battery technologies. Using multiple different energy storage technologies in parallel to try and have them operate in their sweet spots. “That way you're using the battery to its best ability. You're not degrading the ability, the long-term cyclability or the performance of the system at the expense of having it operate outside of where it's happy when you can use maybe another battery, or capacitor or something like that instead to take some of the load off the battery where it doesn't like being operated.” The vision of the QUT Energy Storage Research Group is to support, enable and grow battery industries within Australia through expansion upon strong foundations to become a national leading, globally recognised centre for excellence in battery research, technology, standards, safety and accreditation.

Tomorrow’s battery to contain more than one technology

Industry Queensland

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