energy – Page 2 – Lightsources.org

Improving lithium-ion battery capacity

2018/11/272018/11/28

Toward cost-effective solutions for next-generation consumer electronics, electric vehicles and power grids.

The search for a better lithium-ion battery—one that could keep a cell phone working for days, increase the range of electric cars and maximize energy storage on a grid—is an ongoing quest, but a recent study done by Canadian Light Source (CLS) scientists with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) showed that the answer can be found in chemistry.
“People have tried everything at an engineering level to improve batteries,” said Dr. Yaser Abu-Lebdeh, a senior research officer at the NRC, “but to improve their capacity, you have to play with the chemistry of the materials.”

Image: The decomposition of a polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) binder in a high energy battery.
Credit: Jigang Zhou

Light-activated, single- ion catalyst breaks down carbon dioxide

2018/11/262018/11/28

X-ray studies reveal structural details that may point the way to designing better catalysts for converting pollutant gas into useful products

A team of scientists has discovered a single-site, visible-light-activated catalyst that converts carbon dioxide (CO₂) into “building block” molecules that could be used for creating useful chemicals. The discovery opens the possibility of using sunlight to turn a greenhouse gas into hydrocarbon fuels.

The scientists used the National Synchrotron Light Source II, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory, to uncover details of the efficient reaction, which used a single ion of cobalt to help lower the energy barrier for breaking down CO₂. The team describes this single-site catalyst in a paper just published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Converting CO₂into simpler parts—carbon monoxide (CO) and oxygen—has valuable real-world applications. “By breaking CO₂, we can kill two birds with one stone—remove CO₂ from the atmosphere and make building blocks for making fuel,” said Anatoly Frenkel, a chemist with a joint appointment at Brookhaven Lab and Stony Brook University. Frenkel led the effort to understand the activity of the catalyst, which was made by Gonghu Li, a physical chemist at the University of New Hampshire.

Image: National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II) QAS beamline scientist Steven Ehrlich, Stony Brook University (SBU) graduate student Jiahao Huang, and Brookhaven Lab-SBU joint appointee Anatoly Frenkel at the QAS beamline at NSLS-II.

Empowering multicomponent cathode materials for sodium ion batteries

2018/08/312018/09/10

…by exploring three-dimensional compositional heterogeneities

Energy storage devices have revolutionized the modern electronics industry by enabling the widespread application of portable electronic devices. Moreover, these storage devices also have the potential to reduce the dependence on fossil fuels by implementing electric vehicles in the market. To date, lithium ion batteries have dominated the market because of the high energy density delivered by them. However, one should look into the sustenance of such devices because Li is not one of the most abundant metals on Earth’s crust. Thus, developing an alternative to lithium ion batteries has become one of the key issues to ensure the sustainable future of energy storage devices. Sodium ion batteries provide one such alternative. Out of all the components of a battery, cathode materials play one of the key roles in determining the overall performance of such batteries. Unfortunately, sodium-ion batteries have been lagging behind their lithium ion counterpart in terms of performance. Thus, new design strategies must be undertaken in order to improve the performance of cathode materials for sodium ion batteries.

>Read more on the SSRL at SLAC website

Image (extract): Three-dimensional elemental associations of pristine Na_0.9Cu_0.2Fe_0.28Mn_0.52O₂ studied through transmission x-ray tomography. a) Visualizing the surface elemental associations at different angles with different colors corresponding to different association, and b) 2D cross-sectional association maps showing the bulk elemental associations. [Energy Environ. Sci., DOI: 10.1039/C8EE00309B (2018)] See entire figure here.

Understanding reaction pathways leading to MnO2 polymorph formation

2018/07/312018/09/05

Computational driven design of materials has provided guidelines for designing novel materials with desired properties, especially for metastable materials, which may have superior functionalities than its stable counterparts [1]. However, the synthesis of these metastable materials is usually challenging. The current computational approaches are not able to predict reaction pathways passing through intermediate or metastable phases. As a consequence, the synthesis of many compounds still remains Edisonian, meaning that repeated iteration is usually required to find the reaction conditions needed for synthesizing targeted materials with desired properties. To reduce the amount of cost and effort during this discovery process, a predictive theory for directing the synthesis of materials is necessary.

In the recent article “Understanding Crystallization Pathways Leading to Manganese Oxide Polymorph Formation [2]”, researchers from SLAC, LBNL, MIT, Colorado School of Mines, and NREL combined theory and experimental approaches to develop and demonstrate a theoretical framework that guides the synthesis of intermediate/metastable phases. This ab initio-computation based framework calculates the influence of particle size and solution composition on the stability of polymorph (substances having the same composition but different crystallographic structures), and predicts the phases that will appear along the different reaction pathways.

>Read more on the SSRL at SLAC website

Image (extract): (a) Size-dependent phase diagram of MnO₂polymorphs. The three arrows mark the reaction progression from nano-size to bulk at different potassium concentrations. (b-d) The evolution of x-ray scattering pattern with time along [K⁺] = 0 M (b), 0.2 M (c), and 0.33M (d). The identities and the fractions of the phases are marked in the subfigure to the right. (e-f) Electron beam diffraction patterns of the δ” phase and δ’ phase harvested from [K⁺] = 0 M and 0.2 M, respectively. See all figures here.

X-Ray Experiment confirms theoretical model for making new materials

2018/07/022018/07/11

By observing changes in materials as they’re being synthesized, scientists hope to learn how they form and come up with recipes for making the materials they need for next-gen energy technologies.

Over the last decade, scientists have used supercomputers and advanced simulation software to predict hundreds of new materials with exciting properties for next-generation energy technologies.

Now they need to figure out how to make them.

To predict the best recipe for making a material, they first need a better understanding of how it forms, including all the intermediate phases it goes through along the way – some of which may be useful in their own right.

Now experiments at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have confirmed the predictive power of a new computational approach to materials synthesis. Researchers say that this approach, developed at the DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, could streamline the creation of novel materials for solar cells, batteries and other sustainable technologies.

Image: In an experiment at SLAC, scientists loaded ingredients for making a material into a thin glass tube and used X-rays (top left) to observe the phases it went through as it was forming (shown in bubbles). The experiment verified theoretical predictions made by scientists at Berkeley Lab with the help of supercomputers (right).
Credit: Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Brookhaven Lab scientist receives Early Career Research Program Funding

2018/06/212018/07/04

Valentina Bisogni, an associate physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, has been selected by DOE’s Office of Science to receive significant research funding as part of DOE’s Early Career Research Program.

The effort, now in its ninth year, is designed to bolster the nation’s scientific workforce by providing support to exceptional researchers during the crucial early career years, when many scientists do their most formative work. Bisogni is among a total of 84 recipients selected this year after a competitive review of proposals. Thirty winners come from DOE national laboratories and 54 from U.S. universities.

“Supporting talented researchers early in their career is key to building and maintaining a skilled and effective scientific workforce for the nation. By investing in the next generation of scientific researchers, we are supporting lifelong discovery science to fuel the nation’s innovation system,” said Secretary of Energy Rick Perry. “We are proud of the accomplishments these young scientists have already made, and look forward to following their achievements in years to come.”

Each researcher will receive a grant of up to $2.5 million over five years to cover their salary and research expenses. A list of the 84 awardees, their institutions, and titles of their research projects is available on DOE’s Early Career Research Program webpage.

Image: Valentina Bisogni is shown preparing samples at NSLS-II’s Soft Inelastic X-ray Scattering beamline, where she will conduct her research funded through DOE’s Early Career Research Program.

Tripling the energy storage of lithium-ion batteries

2018/06/142018/06/15

Scientists have synthesized a new cathode material from iron fluoride that surpasses the capacity limits of traditional lithium-ion batteries.

As the demand for smartphones, electric vehicles, and renewable energy continues to rise, scientists are searching for ways to improve lithium-ion batteries—the most common type of battery found in home electronics and a promising solution for grid-scale energy storage. Increasing the energy density of lithium-ion batteries could facilitate the development of advanced technologies with long-lasting batteries, as well as the widespread use of wind and solar energy. Now, researchers have made significant progress toward achieving that goal.

A collaboration led by scientists at the University of Maryland (UMD), the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, and the U.S. Army Research Lab have developed and studied a new cathode material that could triple the energy density of lithium-ion battery electrodes. Their research was published on June 13 in Nature Communications.

Image: Brookhaven scientists are shown at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials. Pictured from left to right are: (top row) Jianming Bai, Seongmin Bak, and Sooyeon Hwang; (bottom row) Dong Su and Enyuan Hu.

New class of single atoms catalysts for carbon nanotubes

2018/04/302018/05/02

They exhibit outstanding electrochemical reduction of CO2 to CO.

Experiments using X-rays on two beamlines at the Australian Synchrotron have helped characterise a new class of single atom catalysts (SACs) supported on carbon nanotubes that exhibit outstanding electrochemical reduction of CO2 to CO. A weight loading of 20 wt% for the new class, nickel single atom nitrogen doped carbon nanotubes (NiSA-N-CNTs), is believed to be the highest metal loading for SACs reported to date.

Single atoms of nickel, cobalt and iron were supported on nitrogen doped carbon nanotubes via a one-pot pyrolysis method and compared in the study.

A large international collaboration, led by Prof San Ping Jiang, Deputy Director of the Fuels and Energy Technology Institute at the Curtin University of Technology and associates from the Department of Chemical Engineering, have developed a new synthesis and development process for nitrogen-doped carbon nanotubes with a nickel ligand that demonstrate high catalytic activity.

The study was published in Advanced Materials and featured on the inside cover of the publication.

Dr Bernt Johannessen, instrument scientist on the X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) beamline at the Australian Synchrotron was a co-author on the paper, which also included lead investigators from Curtin University of Technology and collaborators at the University of Western Australia, Institute of Metal Research (China), Oak Ridge National Laboratory (US), University of the Sunshine Coast, University of Queensland, Tsinghua University (China) and King Abdulaziz University (Saudi Arabia). Technical support and advice on the soft X-ray spectroscopy experiments was provided by Australian Synchrotron instrument scientist Dr Bruce Cowie.

Image: extract of the cover of Advanced Materials.

Monovalent Manganese for High-Performance Batteries

2018/04/192018/04/30

The discovery enables the design of a high-performance, low-cost battery that, according to its developers, outperforms Department of Energy goals on cost and cycle life for grid-scale energy storage.

The widespread deployment of renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power destabilizes the electric grid because conventional power-generation systems cannot ramp quickly enough to balance the power variations from these intermittent sources. Storing energy in batteries could help to even things out, but the cost of most existing technologies—including lithium-ion batteries—is significant, hindering grid-scale applications.

Emerging storage technologies such as aqueous sodium (Na) systems offer low costs for long-duration storage, but they do not have the charge/discharge rates needed to balance volatile power generation. In particular, it remains a critical challenge to develop a stable negative electrode (anode) for high-rate Na-ion battery systems.

A battery breakthrough

Compared with the relatively mature designs of anodes used in Li-ion batteries, anodes for Na-ion batteries remain an active focus of research and development. Natron Energy (formerly Alveo Energy), a battery-technology company based in Santa Clara, California, developed an unconventional anode design using a blend of elements chemically similar to the paint pigment known as Prussian blue.

Image: Atomic structure of an electrode material, manganese hexacyanomanganate (MnHCMn), that achieved high performance in a sodium-ion battery. The open framework contains large interstices and channels that allow sodium (Na) ions to move in and out with near-zero strain. Manganese (Mn) ions form the corners of the cage: Mn(N) has six nitrogen nearest neighbors and Mn(C) has six carbon nearest neighbors.

Secretary of Energy visits Berkeley Lab

2018/03/272018/04/16

Secretary of Energy Rick Perry visited Berkeley Lab on March 27, stopping at the Advanced Light Source, Molecular Foundry, NERSC, and ESnet.

Secretary of Energy Rick Perry visited the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) today, getting a firsthand view of how Berkeley Lab combines team science with world-class facilities to develop solutions for the scientific, energy, and technological challenges facing the nation.

As the top official at the Department of Energy, Perry oversees Berkeley Lab and the 16 other DOE national laboratories that form the backbone of the nation’s scientific infrastructure.

His visit began with a welcome and brief introduction to Berkeley Lab, followed by tours of several of the Lab’s DOE Office of Science user facilities, which provide state-of-the-art resources for scientists across the nation and around the world. After the tour, Perry addressed the Berkeley Lab community in a town hall meeting that was livestreamed to Lab staff.

“One of the things that I enjoy as much about this job as anything, is going and telling the uninitiated about what’s happening at the national labs in this country. Your engagement in the future of the sciences, in innovation and knowledge, is invaluable,” said Secretary Perry at the town hall.

Image: The Advanced Light Source, synchrotron facility the Secretary of Energy Rick Perry visited on March 274th 2018.

Cleaner diesel emissions

2018/03/132018/03/26

More effective control of diesel nitrogen oxides through dosed addition of ammonia

In diesel engines, the burning of the fuel releases nitrogen oxides (NOx), which are harmful to human health. The automobile industry therefore developed a technique that reduces these emissions: Gaseous ammonia is added to the exhaust and, prompted by a catalyst, reacts with the nitrogen oxides to produce harmless nitrogen and water. At low temperatures, however, this process does not yet work optimally. Now, for the first time, scientists at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have found a remedy which is based on observations at the molecular level: The precise amount of added ammonia needs to be varied depending on the temperature. With this knowledge, manufacturers can improve the effectiveness of their catalytic converters for diesel vehicles. The researchers have now published their findings in the journal Nature Catalysis.

Image: At the X-ray beam line: Davide Ferri (left) and Maarten Nachtegaal at the SLS experimental station where they studied diesel catalysis.
Photo: Paul Scherrer Institute/Markus Fischer

Converting CO2 into usable energy

2018/03/01

Scientists show that single nickel atoms are an efficient, cost-effective catalyst for converting carbon dioxide into useful chemicals.

Imagine if carbon dioxide (CO₂) could easily be converted into usable energy. Every time you breathe or drive a motor vehicle, you would produce a key ingredient for generating fuels. Like photosynthesis in plants, we could turn CO₂ into molecules that are essential for day-to-day life. Now, scientists are one step closer.

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory are part of a scientific collaboration that has identified a new electrocatalyst that efficiently converts CO₂ to carbon monoxide (CO), a highly energetic molecule. Their findings were published on Feb. 1 in Energy & Environmental Science.

“There are many ways to use CO,” said Eli Stavitski, a scientist at Brookhaven and an author on the paper. “You can react it with water to produce energy-rich hydrogen gas, or with hydrogen to produce useful chemicals, such as hydrocarbons or alcohols. If there were a sustainable, cost-efficient route to transform CO₂ to CO, it would benefit society greatly.”

>Read more on the NSLS-II website

Image: Brookhaven scientists are pictured at NSLS-II beamline 8-ID, where they used ultra-bright x-ray light to “see” the chemical complexity of a new catalytic material. Pictured from left to right are Klaus Attenkofer, Dong Su, Sooyeon Hwang, and Eli Stavitski.

Scientists confirm speculation on the chemistry of a high-performance battery

2018/02/282018/03/05

X-ray experiments at Berkeley Lab reveal what’s at work in an unconventional electrode.

Scientists have discovered a novel chemical state of the element manganese. This chemical state, first proposed about 90 years ago, enables a high-performance, low-cost sodium-ion battery that could quickly and efficiently store and distribute energy produced by solar panels and wind turbines across the electrical grid.

This direct proof of a previously unconfirmed charge state in a manganese-containing battery component could inspire new avenues of exploration for battery innovations.

X-ray experiments at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) were key in the discovery. The study results were published Feb. 28 in the journal Nature Communications.

Scientists at Berkeley Lab and New York University participated in the study, which was led by researchers at Natron Energy, formerly Alveo Energy, a Santa Clara, California-based battery technology company.

The battery that Natron Energy supplied for the study features an unconventional design for an anode, which is one of its two electrodes. Compared with the relatively mature designs of anodes used in lithium-ion batteries, anodes for sodium-ion batteries remain an active focus of R&D.

Photo: An array of solar panels and windmills.
Credit: PxHere

The future of energy storage with novel metal-oxide magnesium battery

2018/02/032018/02/19

Move over, lithium-ion; now, there’s a better battery on the horizon.

A multi-institution team of scientists led by Texas A&M University chemist Sarbajit Banerjee has discovered an exceptional metal-oxide magnesium battery cathode material, moving researchers one step closer to delivering batteries that promise higher density of energy storage on top of transformative advances in safety, cost and performance in comparison to their ubiquitous lithium-ion (Li-ion) counterparts.

“The worldwide push to advance renewable energy is limited by the availability of energy storage vectors,” says Banerjee in the team’s paper, published Feb. 1 in the journal Chem, a new chemistry-focused journal by Cell Press. “Currently, lithium-ion technology dominates; however, the safety and long-term supply of lithium remain serious concerns. By contrast, magnesium is much more abundant than lithium, has a higher melting point, forms smooth surfaces when recharging, and has the potential to deliver more than a five-fold increase in energy density if an appropriate cathode can be identified.”

Ironically, the team’s futuristic solution hinges on a redesigned form of an old Li-ion cathode material, vanadium pentoxide, which they proved is capable of reversibly inserting magnesium ions.

“We’ve essentially reconfigured the atoms to provide a different pathway for magnesium ions to travel along, thereby obtaining a viable cathode material in which they can readily be inserted and extracted during discharging and charging of the battery,” Banerjee says.

A path to a game-changing battery electrode

2018/01/162018/01/24

If you add more lithium to the positive electrode of a lithium-ion battery, it can store much more charge in the same amount of space, theoretically powering an electric car 30 to 50 percent farther between charges. But these lithium-rich cathodes quickly lose voltage, and years of research have not been able to pin down why—until now.

Image: Electric car makers are intensely interested in lithium-rich battery cathodes made of layers of lithium sandwiched between layers of transition-metal oxides. Such cathodes could significantly increase driving range.
Credit: Stanford University/3Dgraphic

Surprising Discovery Could Lead to Better Batteries

2018/01/122018/01/31

Scientists have observed how lithium moves inside individual nanoparticles that make up batteries. The finding could help companies develop batteries that charge faster and last longer

UPTON, NY – A collaboration led by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory has observed an unexpected phenomenon in lithium-ion batteries—the most common type of battery used to power cell phones and electric cars. As a model battery generated electric current, the scientists witnessed the concentration of lithium inside individual nanoparticles reverse at a certain point, instead of constantly increasing. This discovery, which was published on January 12 in the journal Science Advances, is a major step toward improving the battery life of consumer electronics.

“If you have a cell phone, you likely need to charge its battery every day, due to the limited capacity of the battery’s electrodes,” said Esther Takeuchi, a SUNY distinguished professor at Stony Brook University and a chief scientist in the Energy Sciences Directorate at Brookhaven Lab. “The findings in this study could help develop batteries that charge faster and last longer.”

>Read more on the NSLS-II website

Picture: Brookhaven scientists are shown at the Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Science Department’s TEM facility, where part of the study was conducted. Pictured from left to right are Jianming Bai, Feng Wang, Wei Zhang, Yimei Zhu, and Lijun Wu.