Haley Zaremba

Haley Zaremba is a writer and journalist based in Mexico City. She has extensive experience writing and editing environmental features, travel pieces, local news in the…

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• Structural batteries are a “massless” alternative to traditional batteries because they are designed to produce and store energy while also serving as a load-bearing part of a vehicle’s structure.
• A recent prototype developed by researchers in Sweden, largely constructed of carbon fiber, performs ten times better than previous models, exhibiting both competitive energy storage capacity and rigidity.
• While not yet matching the energy density of current lithium-ion batteries, structural batteries offer the potential for greatly reduced vehicle weight, which in turn increases efficiency and safety.

An electrified future is going to require a whole lot of batteries. Keeping our power grids stable and our cars running won’t only necessitate huge increases in production for current battery models, but it will also hinge on the development of new technologies that have better energy efficiency, quicker charging, longer duration, and diversified supply chains. Currently, the market is almost completely dominated by lithium-ion batteries, but a litany of alternatives are quickly progressing through research and development phases and could be fuelling significant market disruption in coming years.

Lithium-ion batteries dominate the market, powering a whopping 70 percent of all rechargeable devices, because they’re extremely good at what they do. They’re efficient, have well-established production chains, and perform well in a wide range of conditions, making them “indispensable for high-performance applications” according to EV World. But there are a lot of downsides to lithium, too. It’s terrible for the environment and for communities that live near extraction sites, and its supply chains are almost entirely controlled by China, making the market geopolitically vulnerable. 

Plus, while lithium-ion batteries are extremely useful, there may be other alternatives that are simply better, or at least better in certain applications. Energy storage, for example, will require batteries that can hold onto energy for much longer than lithium-ion batteries’ maximum of four hours. Even electric cars, which are virtually entirely powered by lithium-ion batteries now, could benefit from a reimagining of battery design.

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In fact, “massless” structural batteries could one day completely transform the way that ground vehicles and aircraft are designed and powered. Structural batteries don’t just produce and store energy, they also bear weight as part of the structure of whatever it is that they are powering. This could be revolutionary in the transportation industry, as batteries currently make up a huge portion of the vehicles’ volume and weight. “In fact,” states a recent report from Popular Mechanics, “these cars must be specially designed to carry the mass of the batteries.”

Structural batteries, therefore, could totally transform EVs as we know them – and scientists just made a major breakthrough bringing that potential renaissance closer to becoming reality. A team of researchers from Chalmers University of Technology and KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden have produced a structural battery that performs ten times better than any previous model. 

The new battery prototype is largely constructed of carbon fiber which serves a multifunctional role as an electrode, conductor, and a load-bearing material that is durable enough to compete with other commonly used construction materials. The breakthrough model is described in detail in an open-access paper published in the scientific journal Advanced Energy & Sustainability Research,

“Previous attempts to make structural batteries have resulted in cells with either good mechanical properties, or good electrical properties,”  Leif Asp, Professor at Chalmers and leader of the project, recently explained to Science Daily. “But here, using carbon fibre, we have succeeded in designing a structural battery with both competitive energy storage capacity and rigidity.”

The technology still isn’t advanced enough to compete with lithium-ion batteries, but it’s well on its way, having shown enormous performance gains since scientists started building structural battery prototypes nearly two decades ago, in 2007.

“The battery has an energy density of 24 Wh/kg, meaning approximately 20 percent capacity compared to comparable lithium-ion batteries currently available,” reports Science Daily. “But since the weight of the vehicles can be greatly reduced, less energy will be required to drive an electric car, for example, and lower energy density also results in increased safety.”

Structural batteries are just one of many alternative battery prototypes gaining ground in tech research and development. Scientists are also busily improving prototypical models for solid-state batteries, sodium-ion batteries, graphene batteries, dirt batteries, and even quantum batteries. The question is not which of these will rise to the top, but how many different battery types will together power our future. A stable electrified future will require the diversification of technologies for greater energy security and resilience. 

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com 

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