crazy tech idea that bill gates loves: a liquid battery - battery energy storage system

Liquid Metal Battery companies pursuing breakthrough in battery design have attracted Bill Gates and oil driller as seed investors.
Many battery companies are working to improve existing technology, but the founders of liquid metal batteries are taking an unusual approach that they hope will reduce the cost of energy storage, it also provides batteries capable of storing wind and solar energy for several hours.
Executives say the company's goal is to connect the demo system to the grid in three to five years, which was split from MIT.
It is expected that Series A financing will be officially announced next month.
The liquid metal battery, as the name implies, is to make a battery in which all the active materials ---
Cathode, anode and electrolyte--
It is liquid at high temperature.
In most common batteries today, such as lead-acid batteries and lithium-ion batteries, the cathode or anode are solid.
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The liquid method reduces the possible electrode degradation in the battery and allows the high current flow required for mass storage on the electrical network.
Most importantly, however, this means that the battery can be manufactured using relatively cheap components
Founder Donald Sadoway
He drew on his experience of using electrolysis to make metal (including giant aluminum ingots) on an industrial scale and conceived the original idea.
Professor Donald Sadoway showed a whole
Liquid metal batteries under development.
Martin lamenica/CNET "I'm looking at how the aluminum smelters fill a huge hall with liquid aluminum and I say, 'This is where you can get economies of scale.
"If you want a big battery, you make a big battery, and you can't do it with today's technology," Sadoway said in an interview . ".
"By drawing on the lessons learned from aluminum smelting in 125, scalability will be achieved.
"Liquid metal batteries have developed licensed technology in Sadoway's lab, which will continue to work in parallel.
Sadoway intends to take a year off as a scientific consultant for the company.
He received three in his lab. year $6.
9 million grant from Energy Department ARPA-
Two years ago, and a 4-
This year, the oil company allocated a total of $4 million to study how to use this battery chemistry for home storage.
Sadoway decided to set up an independent company because the researchers were limited in their ability to test larger prototypes of the original size of about ice hockey.
He also wants to hire people with engineering experience to develop and test commercial products.
"We are getting what we think is the most promising chemicals from laboratory research, and we are going to look at how the law of proportions is applied because no one has built these chemicals before," he said.
"If we do some very elegant scientific research, it will not be considered successful.
"The company is now working on a prototype system where each battery is about the size of a pizza box and is able to store about 200 watts of electricity
The working time and voltage are 1 v.
Its next task is to build a larger cell of about Ping size
Pong table, many individual batteries are stacked in one battery pack.
The goal is to make a grid storage device that can provide hours of power to fit into a container, while the size of the home battery is about the size of the basement refrigerator, company executives said.
In the last few years, trucks
For some applications, such as maintaining a stable frequency or a local reverse, the size battery is already connected to the gridup power.
But in general, the battery is still very expensive, mainly for providing fast energy.
Batteries are starting to be used with wind and solar power plants, but liquid metal batteries are looking to cut storage costs to $100 per kilowatt.
Hours, several times lower than today's price.
Providing hours of storage at low cost, which many see as the Holy Grail in storage, will enable solar and wind farms to "stabilize" variable wind and solar energy, it sometimes relies on natural gas power plants to provide a stable flow of electricity.
Different liquid metal chemicals can be used for different applications, such as in off-
Peak time and release it to the grid during peak time.
Now, this is done by uphill the pump to the reservoir at night and releasing it through the turbine, which is cheap but limited where it can be done.
Sodium Sulfur batteries already used for grid storage and certain types of mobile batteries today use liquid electrodes, said Louis Ortiz, president and co-spokesperson
Founder of liquid metal batteries.
What sets the company apart is having liquid metal electrodes and liquid electrolyte made of molten salt.
The method has performance and price advantages, he said. "We have all-
Liquid composition so it should last longer as there will be no build-
Or cracks, "said Ortiz.
"We have reason to believe that they can last for decades.
"One of the key technical challenges is to create a self-heating.
In order to keep the metal and salt liquid, the researchers have been treating the metal at temperatures ranging from 400 degrees Celsius to 700 degrees Celsius.
Because the flow of a large amount of current generates heat, the battery itself heats up once it reaches the right temperature, but the product designer needs to sort out the best battery shape, Sadoway said.
Early prototypes used liquid magnesium and liquid antimony as positive and negative electrodes.
Due to the different density of metals and molten salt electrolyte, they are still three different layers, just as the oil and vinegar are not mixed.
When the battery is charged, the chemical reaction causes the compounds dissolved in the electrolyte to form magnesium and antimony metals.
In the process of discharge, the chemical reaction in turn occurs, releasing electrons and generating current on the electric network.
Unlike most batteries, the electrolyte becomes thicker when discharged, and the two liquid metal electrodes become thinner.
The container that holds the liquid itself acts as a conductor.
The actual batteries need to be designed with an insulator around the container because they work at high temperatures.
Student gatthe group is now on for the second time
Ortiz said that the principle of producing liquid metal batteries is the same as that of lead-acid, lithium-ion and nickel metal hydrogen batteries today.
He explained that in this design, the metal ions between the anode and the cathode pass through and the electrolyte remains the same.
The company is cautious about which metals researchers work.
Ortiz said, but overall, they are looking at metal pairs of different densities that are relatively cheap.
Similarly, the electrolyte used can be a very cheap material, such as salt or rock salt for salt roads.
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The technology behind the liquid metal battery attracted Bill Gates's attention through Professor Sadoway's speech, his solid-
State chemistry classes can be viewed online.
In a thank-you note for the 150 anniversary of MIT, Gates specifically mentioned Sadoway's work on energy storage.
When setting up a company, liquid metal batteries were funded from Gates's risk department and a large company, hoping to have a long-termterm investors.
"We are interested in taking out patient money from our pockets because these systems require a lot of capital," he said . "
Founder David Bradwell
Gates, who has a strong interest in clean energy and climate change, said last year that he had invested five batteries --
Because cheap storage is a "tricky problem (that)
It may not be solved in any economic way.
"All the research
The liquid battery method has been going on for about five or six years, and Sadoway says the group has reached the technical and cost milestones set by investors and ARPA --E.
"We must get (
Total installation cost)
Below $250 per kilowatt hourhour.
That's the problem. -cost," he said.
"Our job is for us (but)
I am very optimistic.