From sulfur and sodium to manganese and organic molecules, there are many materials that have tried to defeat ubiquitous lithium-ion batteries. And so far, they all failed.
Organic batteries, made from some of the most abundant chemicals on the planet, including carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen, were perhaps the most frustrating failure. They should be cheaper than today’s batteries that use metal. However, no one could crack the organic battery.
Until now, probably.
A young startup called XL Batteries has a new take on chemicals. It says it’s cheaper, safer and more durable than previous organic batteries.
“The cost of capital should be very low,” Tom Sisto, co-founder and CEO of XL Batteries, told TechCrunch.
Don’t expect to find your company’s products in the next generation of electric vehicles. The liquid that XL batteries use to store electricity is considerably larger and heavier than today’s lithium-ion batteries. That’s why the company targets grid-scale storage. This places more emphasis on scale, cost and safety than weight or density.
Additionally, the scale of the XL battery installation can be very large.
The company exclusively told TechCrunch that it had commissioned a demonstration unit for the Stolthaven terminal, which specializes in petrochemical storage. The first unit will be relatively small, but once kink out, the company can quickly build a large battery, Sisto said.
Part of the reason Sisto is so optimistic is that the important components of the battery are merely storage tanks.
“If you take two [Stolthaven’s] The biggest tank will be a 700 megawatt-hour battery,” says Sisto. It’s enough to run around 25,000 homes all day.
The XL battery is building what is called a flow battery. The basic flow battery consists of two tanks connected to a pump that flows through two fluids passing through the membrane. When the battery is charged, ions push up the specific hills and store them in one of the liquids. When ejecting, those ions return to the other side, ejecting electrons in the process.
Flow batteries are an old technology and were first invented in the late 1800s. However, their bulk and relatively low energy storage hindered them. The new model has helped to promote energy storage, but it is still relatively expensive as the liquid used is corrosive and requires expensive materials for pumps and other equipment.
Organic batteries have been hypothesized for a while, but they have proven elusive as most organic molecules tend to fall apart quickly when they are loaded with extra electrons. Those that last longer require refrigeration and still fall apart in a few months, Sisto said.
Even with more stable molecules, Sisto knew that XL batteries had to be cheaper for the company to succeed. He gained a faint hope of hope during his research at Columbia University when the organic compounds he was investigating broke the record of the most electrons accepted into a single molecule. At the time, the molecule had to be suspended in an expensive, flammable organic solvent. Ultimately, he and his collaborators were able to stabilize it with pH neutral water. At that point he knew they could build a company around it.
One of the XL battery installations consists of three parts: one 40-foot shipping container and two tanks. The company’s proprietary membrane and other components fit in the shipping container, one or more of which are connected to the storage tank. The size of the tank determines the capacity of the battery, while the number of shipping containers determines how quickly the battery can be charged or discharged.
The company uses so many off-the-shelf technology, Sisto says that XL batteries can start building larger batteries soon. “Commercial design is being done in large numbers,” he said. The company is working with engineering companies that previously designed other flow batteries. “They have all their pieces in place.”
Outside of early customers like Stolthaven, XL Batteries is working with independent power producers to build batteries to support the grid, especially in Texas, when such installations became very commonplace.
“I think the project-level economics of this is very convincing,” Sisto says.
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