 TECHNOLOGIES

 POWER

Lithium-Free Battery Aims to Serve as

Backup for Grid-Scale Renewable
Energy
Feb. 28, 2023
A new battery chemistry, based on abundant, inexpensive elements, promises to
offer an inexpensive solution to storing renewable energy for times when the
wind isn't blowing and the sun doesn't shine.
Lee Goldberg
Related To: Electronic Design


What you'll learn:

 Details behind PNNL's molten-salt battery design.

 Storage capabilities possible as displayed by the prototype.
 Can the battery meet grid-scale storage requirements?
A research team, led by the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
(PNNL), demonstrated a new design for a grid energy-storage battery that uses sodium and
aluminum as its primary components. A small prototype cell has validated the cell's novel molten
salt chemistry's ability to perform well, retain capacity through hundreds of charge/discharge
cycles, and operate at much lower temperatures than earlier designs. 

The cell is well-suited for long discharge cycles, in excess of 24 hours. Its architecture will enable
the construction of flat, scalable batteries that can more easily be stacked for industrial- and grid-
scale applications.

According to a study just published in Energy Storage Materials, the new design, built with
abundant, inexpensive metals, could help ease integration of renewable energy into the nation’s
electrical grid at lower cost.

A grid-connected battery, shown here collecting energy from renewable sources (top), could feed
its energy to the electric grid at night or when weather takes them offline (bottom). (Credit: Sara
Levine | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)
SPONSORED

Microforming vs. Microscale 3D Printing

Understanding basic oscilloscope operation

 “We showed that this new molten-salt battery design has the potential to charge and discharge
much faster than other conventional high-temperature sodium batteries, operate at a lower
temperature, and maintain an excellent energy storage capacity,” said Guosheng Li, a materials
scientist at PNNL and the principal investigator of the research. “We are getting similar
performance with this new sodium-based chemistry at over 100°C [212°F] lower temperatures
than commercially available high-temperature sodium battery technologies, while using a more
Earth-abundant material.”

A Better Energy-Storage Solution

The new sodium-based molten-salt battery is based on two different electrochemical reactions that
build upon the single neutral molten-salt reaction they had previously developed. The new
discovery shows that this neutral molten salt can undergo an additional reaction that results in an
acidic molten salt. Crucially, this second acidic reaction mechanism increases the battery’s
capacity.

The recently demonstrated lab-scale "coin cell" prototype has a capacity of 416 mAh. PNNL
researchers anticipate using what they learn to develop early-stage practical batteries with
capacities of around 5000 mAh (5Ah). Although the battery is in initial development, the
researchers speculate that the technology is likely to eventually support practical energy densities
of up to 100 Wh/kg.
 The new sodium-aluminum battery design allows only sodium (depicted as yellow balls) to move
through the solid-state electrolyte to charge the battery. Being constructed of inexpensive Earth-
abundant materials such as sodium salts and aluminum wool, a scrap product of aluminum
manufacturing, is an advantage. (Credit: Sara Levine | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)

SPONSORED

Increase productivity with customizable toolbars

Intuitive user menu for straight forward workflows

While not as high as the energy densities of lithium-ion batteries utilized in commercial electronics
and electric vehicles (170 to 250 Wh/kg), the sodium-aluminum battery design is much less
expensive and easier to produce from materials that are widely available in the in the United
States.

Meeting Grid-Scale Storage's Unique Requirements

The new battery was assembled and tested as part of a collaboration between PNNL and the U.S.-
based renewable-energy pioneer Nexceris. Their new business, Adena Power, supplied its patented
solid-state, sodium-based electrolyte to PNNL to test the battery’s performance. This critical
battery component enables the sodium ions to travel from the negative (anode) to the positive
(cathode) side of the battery as it charges.

After the prototype cell was subjected to 345 charge/discharge cycles at high current, its acidic
reaction mechanism retained 82.8% of its original peak charge capacity. While this is promising, it
will take further development to be able to endure 1,000 cycles while retaining 90% of its original
capacity (i.e. the minimum performance considered commercially viable utility-scale storage
system).

Guosheng Li said that to meet this goal, they will work on optimizing the Al cathode and the
battery cell's cycling conditions. He expects their efforts will greatly extend cycle life within three
years.

More Capacity at a Lower Cost

As part of the study, the researchers estimated that the active materials required for a sodium-
aluminum battery could cost as little as $7.02 per kWh. The researchers expect that this cost could
be even further reduced as the design is optimized and new developments improve its practical
energy density.

Li noted that the inexpensive material costs should enable the commercial production of large,
long-duration batteries capable of supporting 10- and 24-hour discharge periods, with prices in the
neighborhood of $70/kWh and $168/kWh, respectively.

“Our primary goal for this technology is to enable low-cost, daily shifting of solar energy into the
electrical grid over a 10- to 24-hour period,” said Vince Sprenkle, a PNNL battery technology
expert with more than 30 patented designs for energy-storage systems and associated technology.
“The good reaction kinetics of the aluminum cathode and the high ionic conductivity of the
NaAlCl4 molten salt provide the high areal loading capacity of the cathode, which is crucial for
extending the discharge duration. This is a sweet spot where we can start to think
about integrating higher levels of renewables into the electrical grid to provide true grid resiliency
from renewable resources such as wind and solar power.” 

Sprenkle was part of the team that developed this battery's new flexible design. The development
also shifted the battery from a traditional tubular shape to a flat, scalable one that can more easily
be stacked and expanded as the technology progresses from coin-sized batteries to a larger grid-
scale demonstration size.

More importantly, this flat cell design allows the cell capacity to be increased by simply using a
thicker cathode, which the researchers leveraged in this work to demonstrate a triple capacity cell
with sustained discharge of 28.2 hours under laboratory conditions.

This contrasts sharply with most current battery technologies, including lithium-ion batteries,
which can support much shorter discharge periods, typically in the range of four hours. That’s
sufficient for buffering the short-term fluctuations in output experienced by wind and solar farms
during normal operation. However, the ability to support discharge periods of 10-plus hours are
needed to shift renewable sources' peak capacity to meet evening load demands, or when adverse
weather takes them offline extended periods.

Bridging the Capacity Gap

PNNL has been developing technologies to meet the demand for grid-scale storage for nearly a
decade, including a sodium-based freeze-thaw battery that's capable of storing energy generated
seasonally for months at a time. While the freeze-thaw system excels at shifting energy on a
seasonal timeframe, this new design is particularly suited for short- to medium-term grid energy
storage over 12 to 24 hours. It’s a variation of what’s called a sodium-metal halide battery, which
has been successfully used in a commercially available battery based on a more expensive nickel
cathode.

Research teams at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory study how to integrate a utility-scale
solar-energy and battery storage facility into the grid at a facility near its Richland, Washington,
headquarters. Here they monitor and analyze data to evaluate the financial benefits of storing
renewable energy and incorporating intermittent renewables onto the grid. (Photo by Andrea Starr
| Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)

“We have eliminated the need for nickel, a relatively scarce and expensive element, without
sacrificing battery performance,” said Li. “Another advantage of using aluminum over nickel is that
the aluminum cathode charges more quickly, which is crucial to enable the longer discharge
duration demonstrated in this work.”
With this milestone reached, the team is focusing on further improvements to increase the
discharge duration, which could greatly improve grid flexibility for greater incorporation of
renewable power sources.

A Successful Collaboration

The research was supported by the DoE Office of Electricity and the International Collaborative
Energy Technology R&D Program of the Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and
Planning. The electrolyte development was supported by a DoE Small Business Innovation
Research program. The nuclear magnetic resonance measurements were made in
the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL), a DoE Office of Science User Facility
sponsored by the Biological and Environmental Research program.

Learn more about PNNL’s grid modernization research and the Grid Storage Launchpad, opening
in 2024.

CONTINUE READING

What's All This Algebraic Equation Stuff, Anyhow? (Part 1)

Top Tips: What to Consider When Selecting a Termination Style for
Specific Applications

SPONSORED RECOMMENDATIONS

Integrated Power Loss Brake Features Lower Energy Consumption and Reduce Costs in
Data-Center Fan Applications

Oct. 12, 2022

By Chengyi Jin, Principal Systems Design Engineer. Allegro MicroSystems. INTRODUCTION. Modern
server applications need uninterrupted service. Accommodat…

3 ways MCUs are addressing common design challenges of 800-V EV traction inverters
Oct. 7, 2022
The electric vehicle (EV) traction inverter is the core of the EV. It converts DC from the high-voltage
battery to multiphase (usually three-phase) A…

Enabling New Levels of Performance and Safety in Magnetic Sensors with xMR

Oct. 3, 2022
By Paul A. David, Executive Director, Chief Technologist, Sensor Innovation,. and Alexander Latham,
Senior Technologist. Allegro MicroSystems. INTRODUCT…

Traction inverters: the intersection of automotive innovation and performance

Sept. 12, 2022

Semiconductor innovations in next-generation traction inverters will help drive electric vehicle
performance further, making them even more fun to dr…