Aqueous Lithium Ion Batteries: The Most Efficient Lithium Ion Batteries Yet?
Aqueous lithium ion batteries have been a intriguing area of battery research in the past because they’ve been proven to be much more eco-friendly and inexpensive than the standard lithium ion battery. Although they’re safer and cheaper, they have been avoided in a commercial setting because they haven’t delivered when compared with current battery technology. While aqueous lithium ion batteries have been unusable in the past, they now have a chance to become usable in the real world due to a recent discovery by researchers.
The reason aqueous lithium ion batteries batteries have been unusable is because they lacked energy retention compared to standard lithium ion batteries. This means that the overall battery life of these batteries was significantly sub par. This new discovery involves scientists; adding water, removing oxygen, and readjusting the pH in combination with carbon-coated electrodes. It’s been a huge step forward toward true success.
Before researchers found out about this new method, these batteries would only retain about 50 percent of their charge after 100 charging cycles. I’m willing to bet that if you used a notebook computer that had 50 percent of its battery die
that quickly, you wouldn’t be too thrilled about that. Customers would complain, computers would become obsolete more quickly, and companies using these batteries would, over all, just lose money – this is the exact reason why no one has been able to use these batteries until now.
By removing as much oxygen as possible and readjusting its pH, scientists have just managed to take an aqueous lithium ion battery and get it to retain 90 percent of its charge after 1000 cycles. That’s really good. While this
advancement in research may seem like the end-all-say-all of lithium ion batteries, there’s still a major hurdle…The downside to the aqueous lithium ion battery is that it only provided around 10 minutes of power. Another battery that lasts 8 hours at a lower current output managed to retain 85 percent after 50 cycles. For those of you lacking math skills, the aqueous lithium ion battery’s lifespan is over 20 times longer. Regrettably, a 10 minute battery still has little practical use in the real world.
While this discovery proves to be a huge step toward more eco-friendly and inexpensive batteries, the aqueous lithium ion battery still has a long way to go in order to replace what we’re currently using. While laptop users are still waiting for a better alternative, researchers speculate that these batteries may still be put to use as storage for energy from unlimited energy sources, such as wind turbines and solar panels.
In the end, the pros to this battery are that it’s cheaper, easier to make, safer for the environment, and could become the most efficient commercially used battery to date. The cons? The only batteries scientists have managed to create using this method don’t last long enough for everyday use. Until battery life is extended, we’re all still stuck with the clunky alternative in our notebooks.
