January 4, 2010
Researchers are exploring the promise of lithium-air battery technology as an environmentally sound way to fuel the world's growing transportation needs.
Li-air batteries, as they are known, use a catalytic air cathode that supplies oxygen, an electrolyte and a lithium anode. The technology has the potential to store almost as much energy as a tank of gasoline, and will have a capacity for energy storage that is five to 10 times greater than that of Li-ion batteries, a bridge technology.
That potential, however, will not be realized until a number of critical scientific challenges are solved.
"The obstacles to Li-air batteries becoming a viable technology are formidable and will require innovations in materials science, chemistry, and engineering," says Eric Isaacs, director of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory.
"This is not a near-term technology," adds Jeff Chamberlain, senior account manager in Argonne's Office of Technology Transfer. "It is going to take time and collaborations across several scientific disciplines to address the four main challenges of this battery development effort: safety, cost, life, and performance."
To accomplish this task, Argonne's research will continue to span basic, applied, and theoretical sciences and will utilize the lab's research facilities -- the Advanced Photon Source, the Center for Nanoscale Materials, and the Leadership Computing Facility -- and work with industry, which will eventually adopt the technology for commercial application.
Argonne has worked with several industrial partners on the commercialization of Li-ion batteries and battery materials, including companies such as EnerDel, Envia, BASF, and Toda America.
It currently is working with the Commonwealth of Kentucky to develop the Kentucky-Argonne National Battery Manufacturing Center, which will support the development of a viable U.S. battery manufacturing industry.
More recently, DOE awarded the lab $8.8 million to build out and outfit three battery research facilities that will be used for battery prototyping, materials production scale-up, and post-test analysis.
