News

Silicon anodes are receiving a great deal of attention, as they can enable batteries to deliver 3-5 times higher capacities compared with current graphite anodes. Although silicon is abundant and cheap, Si anodes have a limited number of charge-discharge cycles – typically less than 100 times. Their volume expands enormously […]

on a three-year, multi-million-dollar cathode development program that will focus on improving cathode safety without compromising energy density or battery life. A123 will leverage its battery expertise to commercialize advances in nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC) technology originally developed by Argonne, which already accounts for nearly half of the company’s […]

Samsung SDI has decided to make Hungary its Li-ion battery production base in Europe, and will build a new battery plant north of Budapest on a 330,000-square-meter site, using an existing facility that the company built in 2001, and used to make cathode ray tubes. Aiming to start commercial production […]

XALT Energy, a manufacturer of prismatic, large-format battery cells and packs, has launched a new Lithium Titanium Oxide (LTO) cell that it says has achieved better cycle life performance over a wider range of operating conditions than any lithium-ion cell ever built. XALT’s Li-ion LTO cell offers specific energy greater […]

As rechargeable batteries proliferate in everything from cars to smartphones, recycling is becoming a critical issue. Now a team of researchers at the University of South Florida has found a way to use naturally occurring fungi to extract cobalt and lithium from waste batteries. The scientists presented their work at […]

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about some interesting comments Tesla CTO JB Straubel made regarding vehicle-to-grid technology and using old EV batteries for stationary energy storage (for homes or the grid). There was a tidbit in there that I wanted to further highlight on its own, since it’s […]

In a new report for clients, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) forecasts that there will be 29 GWh of used EV batteries available in 2025. This far exceeds the size of the current stationary storage market. Of this, almost a third will get a second life as stationary storage (10 […]

A team led by celebrated battery boffin Professor Jeff Dahn at Dalhousie University has demonstrated that a common electrolyte additive is detrimental for Li-ion cells at high voltages, and suggest some alternatives. Dahn and his team discuss their latest work in two papers: “Enabling linear alkyl carbonate electrolytes for high […]

As is often the case with Tesla, the mainstream press has missed the true significance of the company’s latest product. Tesla’s announcement of its new P100D battery pack option focused on the quicker 0-60 time, so that’s what most media outlets wrote about. Everyone other than acceleration junkies greeted it […]

Zinc-air batteries are widely used in devices like hearing aids for their good performance-to-price ratio. The tricky part is of course to make them rechargeable. This is one of two technologies that ZAF Energy Systems has been working on for the last couple of years. [Note that CleanTechnica published an […]

Researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) and the US Army Research Lab (ARL) are collaborating on a new type of lithium-ion battery that uses a high concentration of salt in an aqueous electrolyte. They hope to develop a battery that offers greater energy density and better safety than current […]