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Hmm, there's no discussion of what the energy density is compared to lithium-based battery chemistries. In articles about new battery designs, that usually means it's pretty bad. This will have limited value if you need 10x battery volume/mass for equivalent energy storage, primarily only for grid-scale systems, which the article specifically mentions near the end:
I'm guessing these batteries are heavy and bulky compared to an equivalent LiPo. Probably safer than the molten sodium grid storage systems, so that's good.
On the other hand, while lithium may be trading at 80x the price of iron on the market, you're going to need a lot more iron than you would lithium for each unit of equivalent energy storage, plus it's going to take up more space (real estate). The eventual storage system will probably be somewhat cheaper than an equivalent lithium system, but won't fit everywhere, especially developed urban areas due to larger space requirements, and definitely won't be 80x cheaper, even if the iron/lithium price ratio remains the same. It won't replace lithium batteries in mobile applications (vehicles, electronics, etc) or anywhere that physical space is at a premium.
The article is written to sound overly positive about this protoype, with a sensationalized headline, while not mentioning the drawbacks, and just hoping that the reader is to too ignorant to notice.
*Edit: Also, the picture attached to the article is bunk. Flow batteries require a pumping system to circulate the electrolyte fluid, which comes with a long-term.maintenance cost:
Energy density is not a universal concern for low cost batteries. Not every energy storage device is for a car or phone.
Sure, but as I already pointed out above, it's very relevant for an article titled:
This is a misrepresentation of the facts. While iron may be 80x cheaper than lithium, the iron battery built with this design will not be 80x cheaper than an equivalent lithium battery, because it will require substantially more material, as well as additional mechanical complexity (liquid pumping).
You're responding as if I'm criticizing the technology. I'm not. I'm criticizing the sensationalist writing of this article that is intentionally manipulative of the reader.
Energy density isn't really a problem for grid-wide storage. Just build huge electrolyte tanks under the solar panels, voilà, generation and storage.
If they're really stable, they'll probably be placed all over the place and be a huge help in managing demand.
It won't fit all use cases, you'll want batteries with better density for anything mobile, but there's definitely also a huge use case for this type of battery.
That's what plants crave!
The mw scale container lithium batteries could fit at most substations for a decentralized storage system without needing much if any new land. These kind of lower density batteries wouldn't work as well for that. They'd need more land and couldn't go in as many places.
The main benefit of these kinds of batteries is that you mainly just need to increase storage tanks to increase capacity. So price is pretty flat compared to the linear increase for lithium ones. Above a certain size, they are cheaper. Plus ~15k charge cycles vs 1k. Easy to recycle the electrolyte. No fire hazard because it's all disolved in water. But bigger space footprint.
Redox flow batteries already exist, are proven and in use as grid-storage.
The current tech appears to be mostly based on vanadium and using iron instead makes it much less problematic in case of spill and handling and more importantly cheaper to build.
Energy density is low, but is totally no issue when we talk about grid-storage solutions.
To put a number (from the linked Wikipedia article) here: iron-iron based redosx flow batteries have an average fluid energy density of 20 Wh/l.
Or in other words: you need 500 litres to save 1 kWh of electric energy.
Low price and durability (in terms of cycles) look very promising!
No.
Batteries for cars are practically solved. The next stops will be cheap home batteries, where weight and size are a lot less relevant, and batteries for ships.