Inside Energy Extra (06-Jun-11)
A company started by Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists who received several million dollars under an Energy Department high-risk, high-reward research program has developed an advanced battery that promises to cost half the price of systems now used in electric vehicles, the university said Monday.
The battery involves a new design that also allows it to be easily scaled up for use by utilities in grid-scale power storage.
"We'll figure out what can be practically developed today," said Yet-Ming Chiang, an MIT professor and a co-founder of the company, 24M Technologies. "But as better materials come along, we can adapt them to this architecture."
The relatively low energy density of batteries is a major hurdle to increasing the range of electric vehicles and wide-scale adoption of those vehicles.
Improving battery energy density has been one focus of DOE's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, which in 2010 gave 24M Technologies $2.6 million to develop a so-called "semi-solid flow cell" battery.
The new technology is based on the concept of flow batteries, which separate the energy-storage liquid portion of the battery, the electrolyte, from the energy-generation components. The battery built by MIT researchers uses a much more dense liquid to store the energy, making it about 10 times more efficient than existing flow batteries, according to Chiang.
Using a liquid separated from the energy-generation cell could also allow the battery to charge faster than batteries used now in vehicles.
Chiang said the company is aiming to build a prototype system by 2013, and make it available for vehicle manufacture soon after.
The company is a spinoff of A123 Systems, another MIT-derived battery company that has received hundreds of millions of dollars in DOE assistance. The advanced lithium-ion batteries built by A123 are used by several electric-vehicle manufacturers, and the company in 2010 used a $249 million grant from DOE to expand battery production at a Michigan plant.
Derek Sands
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