10 Years Of Battery Life? New Technology Discovered

Batteries are now an indispensable part of our lives. These metallic things are not only found in our phones, laptops, tablets, cars, kitchen appliances etc., but are also a valuable source of creating renewable energy feasible enough as a long-term strategy to our current, well exceeded power requirements.

Battery technology now days has improved by gigantic leaps over the last couple of years, but one problem still persists – The life of the battery .

When using a battery frequently, within a year or so of its life there’s a visible drop off in both the discharge and the charge capacity of the battery

Though, if this study from a team of Harvard scientists is taken to market, batteries as we once knew them may just be a “thing” of our distant past.

A team of Harvard scientists have created a “flow battery”, a battery intended to store energy in liquid solutions in its place of solid lithium-ion packs. By storing energy in liquids, these batteries should hold their capacity & discharge rates for well over 10 years.

The research team exposed that, by altering the molecules in the electrolytes ferrocene & viologen, they could create stable, water-soluble charged particles that are resistant to degradation.

The team's results exposed that when these particles are dissolved in neutral water, the solution only loses one percent of its capacity every thousand cycles – in contras0 to that of the usual lithium-ion battery which will probably only last 1,000 cycles in its lifetime.

Basing battery technology around electrified water may seem rather hazardous and suspect, but in truth the use of water makes battery packs far safer than the current acidic models used today. For one, it’s non-corrosive and isn’t toxic, meaning no more dangerous exploding smartphones in your pocket. Using water will also severely drop the cost of manufacturing too, ensuring battery-based energy storage solutions finally become cost effective.

Presently, there are no plans to bring these flow batteries to market, but it wouldn’t be surprising if there are not manufacturers out there looking at this possible new technology.