A Rhubarb-Based Battery – Renewable And Rechargable

There’s been a serious breakthrough in battery technology that replaces toxic metals with a renewable organic compound:

A group of Harvard scientists recently hit on a new form of battery that could massively expand the potential for renewable energy use. And the linchpin of the technology is an organic compound nearly identical to one found in — wait for it — rhubarb.

To explain: most of the batteries found in our cars, laptops, smartphones and whatnot rely on chemical solids. And the nature of the technology requires combining the two key parts of the battery — the material that holds the charge and the hardware that converts the charge to electricity — into one complete unit. But there’s another type of battery called a “flow battery,” which uses liquids to store the charge. Those liquids are stored in separate tanks, then pumped into conversion hardware as needed to produce electricity. The upshot is that the charge storage and the electrical conversion are physically decoupled, meaning the only limit to how much charge a flow battery can hold is the size of the tanks.

This comes with several advantages. Flow batteries can be easily scaled up or down for use by large utilities or for individual consumers. They’re rechargeable, the fluids holding the charge can last a very long time, and once they’re used up new tanks can be easily swapped in. The big downside is that the chemical fluids holding the charge use high-cost metals like vanadium or platinum, which can make the batteries uneconomical.

Enter the Harvard team. According to a paper just published in Nature, they successfully built and tested a flow battery using metal-free liquids. Instead, they used an abundant and inexpensive organic (i.e. carbon-based) compound called a quinone. These compounds are often found in green plants, and the specific type of quinone the team settled one is almost identical to one found in rhubarb. The Harvard team’s battery performs just as well as the typical flow batteries that rely on vanadium, and it functions even faster — allowing it to be charged and discharged much more quickly. The quinones are even dissolved in water, reducing fire hazards.

By: dave-dr-gonzo

David Hirsch, a.k.a. Dave "Doctor" Gonzo*, is a renegade record producer, video producer, writer, reformed corporate shill, and still-registered lobbyist for non-one-percenter performing artists and musicians. He lives in a heavily fortified compound in one of Manhattan's less trendy neighborhoods.

* Hirsch is the third person to use the pseudonym, a not-so-veiled tribute to journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson, with the permission of his predecessors Gene Gaudette of American Politics Journal (currently webmaster and chief bottlewasher at Liberaland) and Stephen Meese at Smashmouth Politics.