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Electrochemistry

Metal-free energy storage

Nature volume 505, pages 163–164 (2014)Cite this article

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In flow batteries, energy is produced by passing solutions of 'electroactive' materials — often, metal salts — through an electrochemical cell. A non-metallic electroactive material opens the way to large-scale energy storage. See Letter p.195

The adoption of intermittently available renewable energy sources, such as solar energy and wind power, to more than 20% of total energy capacity will require electric-energy storage systems to be deployed1. For grid-scale applications and remote generation sites, cheap and flexible storage systems are needed, but presently the options are either limited to a specific geographic location (such as pumping water from a reservoir to an elevated level as a source of potential energy) or expensive (for example, conventional batteries, flywheels and superconductive electromagnetic storage)2. On page 195 of this issue, Huskinson et al.3 report a major advance in the development of economical energy storage: a 'flow' battery that uses only water-soluble, non-metallic materials as the electrode components. These materials could lower the cost of flow batteries, while increasing the energy density.

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Figure 1: Schematic of a flow battery.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Grigorii L. Soloveichik is at General Electric Global Research, Niskayuna, New York 12309, USA, and at the Energy Frontier Research Center for Electrocatalysis, Transport Phenomena and Materials, General Electric Global Research.,

    Grigorii L. Soloveichik

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  1. Grigorii L. Soloveichik
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Correspondence to Grigorii L. Soloveichik.

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Soloveichik, G. Metal-free energy storage. Nature 505, 163–164 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/505163a

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