An international group of researchers has demonstrated an aqueous zinc battery with excellent performance in terms of capacity, rate capability, specific energy, and output voltage. The battery is a hybrid supercapacitor-battery hybrid device which has demonstrated an unprecedented cycling stability of 99.2% capacity retention after 17,000 cycles at 100% depth of discharge.
This battery technology has been explored as a promising alternative due to its low cost, safety, environmental friendliness, and intrinsic non-flammable nature. However, their widespread adoption has been held back by their low Coulombic efficiency (The Coulomb efficiency is usually used to describe the released battery capacity. It refers to the ratio of the discharge capacity after the full charge and the charging capacity of the same cycle) and the notorious dendritic growth (dendrites are basically whiskers of minerals that grow inside batteries and can cause the devices they’re powering to lose power more quickly, short out, or in some instances, catch fire ) at the zinc-based anodes, along with the fast capacity fading of the cathodes.
Source: PV Magazine. Read The Article
PSR Analysis: The demand for battery energy storage systems is constantly growing and with Lithium prices rocketing due to the anticipated supply shortfall, research continues unabated in the battery world. New battery technologies and chemistries seem to appear every month and the realization that not everything can hinge on single chemistry is growing. What makes this battery technology different is the capacity retention after so many cycles, but it remains to be seen if this can be commercialized over the next few years. Watch this space. PSR
Guy Youngs is Forecast & Adoption Lead at Power Systems Research
