3/31/2023 0 Comments Form energyThe idea of an iron flow battery has been around since the 1970s, Dresselhuys said. How the battery works: 'The elegance is the simplicity' But it has to work cost effectively to be viable as a system because of the scale we're talking about," he said. "It's one thing to make something work, and that can be very difficult. While the element is promising, Dresselhuys says, it's too expensive to be meaningful. "Cobalt is a bit trickier and has come under fire for some of the supply chain relying on 'artisanal mines' in Africa, which employ forced labor, and child labor in some cases, with people digging out cobalt by hand and very, very harsh conditions," Jenkins said.ĮSS also does not use vanadium, a chemical element used in some flow battery technology. "Lithium is less of an issue in the long run, as long as we recycle lithium-ion batteries, but there may be some short-run price increases as production ramps up to match battery demand for EVs," Jenkins said. "Both are in potentially short supply globally, and none are produced in the U.S.," said Jesse Jenkins, an assistant professor at Princeton University who specializes in the energy grid. Making a battery out of iron, salt and water means "there's no toxicity, the technology we build doesn't start fires or doesn't blow up in fire," said Dresselhuys.Īlso, ESS batteries do not have lithium or cobalt, two common elements in batteries that are being impacted by supply chain crunches. "The flow battery is cheaper, safer and has better operational life than conventional lithium-ion storage," Roberts said. In ESS' batteries, the electrolyte is made of iron, salt and water. In a battery, the electrolyte is the chemical medium that connects the two ends of a battery, the anode and the cathode. The big breakthrough for ESS is a long-duration iron flow battery built from readily available materials, said Carmichael Roberts, a co-chair of the investment committee at Breakthrough Energy Ventures.
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