Sustainable, Fire-Safe Batteries Could Become a Reality Soon for an Emission-Free Future

Lithium-ion batteries are essential to technology, but they require improvements that address density, safety, temperature resilience, and sustainability problems. That means modern energy storage technology must evolve and adapt to meet the growing demand of an increasingly electricity-dependent world.

According to TechXplore, Professor Y. Shirley Meng of the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering led a team of engineers that demonstrated the properties of liquefied gas electrolytes that can provide all mentioned essential properties that can be developed at a large scale for an emission-free future.

Liquefied Gas Electrolytes Provide Sustainable, Fire-Safe Batteries

Co-first author Yijie Yin, a nanoengineering Ph.D. student, explained that UC San Diego nano engineers discovered hydrofluorocarbon molecules are gases at room temperature and liquefies under certain pressure while experimenting in 2017. From that, they invented the Liquefied Gas Electrolyte (LGE) they used for the recent study.

The LGE broadens the choice of electrolyte solvent molecules as adding it to co-solvents exhibits low-temperature performance better than lithium metal and has high performance of high-voltage cathodes. But LGE is not yet perfect and needs more improvement, especially in what makes it safe and more environment-friendly.

The team's work in the study titled "Fire-Extinguishing, Recyclable Liquefied Gas Electrolytes for Temperature-Resilient Lithium-Metal Batteries" published in the journal Nature Energy, is a follow-up work that replaces the strong solvating power liquid co-solvents with dimethyl ether (Me2O) that can be used in liquefied gas.

Yang believes the system needs improvement and scientists should work on searching for molecules with increased fluorinated carbon bonding. The team refers to the structure of fluoromethane to look for fluorinated molecules with longer carbon chains while still maintaining the characteristics of liquefied gases, such as low melting point and viscosity and maintaining polarity.

These characteristics are found in two molecules, namely 1,1,1,2 tetrafluoroethane (TFE) and pentafluoroethane pentafluoroethane (PFE). Surprisingly, they are the main components of some fire extinguishers that are not only non-flammable but also have fire-safe properties.

Exploding Lithium-Ion Batteries

According to Science News for Students, lithium-ion batteries are found everywhere and have revolutionized the world since it was released. They are in laptop computers, toys, phones, and even in tiny wearable electronics and electric cars, which replaced gasoline engined with lithium-ion batteries to allow renewable energy to modern power cars.

However, exploding lithium-ion batteries is not an unheard-of circumstance as well. Most of those cases come down with problems of short-circuiting, which happens when the plastic separator fails and allows the anode to touch the cathode, which causes it to overheat. How-toGeek website listed some reasons the separator can fail and cause fires and explosions, which are as follows:

• The poorly designed battery in which there is not enough space for electrodes and separator.
• External factors, such as extreme heat, dropping the phone too hard or too many times, and accidentally piercing the battery.
• Badly made or poorly insulated chargers
• Thermal runway in multiple cells like those in the iPhone X and Tesla Model S.

Despite the reported explosions, lithium-ion batteries are still considered safe and mature technology and rarely cause big failures. Nonetheless, improvements are always welcome for better energy storage technology.

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