Wanted is the battery of the future
A new research project is looking for the successor to the lithium-ion battery.
Next-generation high-energy batteries are set to succeed the lithium-ion battery. But will current battery technology for automotive and stationary applications really soon be obsolete? What can so-called post-lithium-ion battery systems achieve? These and other questions are being addressed by a new research project being conducted at the Battery Research Center MEET of the Westphalian Wilhelms University Münster (WWU). The project will run for three years and is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) with a total of around three million euros.
In addition to WWU researchers from MEET and from the Department of Economic Chemistry, scientists from the Research Center Jülich are also involved, as well as from the Helmholtz Institute "Ionics in Energy Storage" in Münster (HI MS), from the Technical University of Braunschweig and from the Justus Liebig University of Giessen. The project title is "BenchBatt - Benchmarking and evaluation of the performance and costs of high-energy and high-voltage lithium-ion batteries in comparison with post-lithium-ion technologies".
Higher ranges for electric vehicles
Compared to lithium-ion batteries, subsequent battery generations would have much higher energy densities per battery weight, experts hope. The challenges: So far, these batteries would not yet be competitive where space is limited - for example, in electric cars - because of their higher space requirements. Moreover, the development of these systems is still at the basic research stage.
In addition to the lithium-air and lithium-sulfur systems, candidates for tomorrow's batteries include sodium-based batteries and solid-state batteries ("all-solid-state batteries"). "There are numerous challenges to overcome before they are ready for the market, including high self-discharge rates and a short service life," is the assessment of Prof. Dr. Martin Winter, scientific director of MEET and director of HI MS.
"'BenchBatt' will make it possible to assess the future competitiveness of next-generation battery technologies at an early stage, realistically and in a scientifically sound manner - in terms of energy density, costs and resource availability, among other things," explains Dr. Richard Klöpsch, project manager at MEET. To do this, the scientists will compare the latest generation of energy-optimized lithium-ion battery systems with next-generation systems, theoretically and experimentally at the material, process and cell levels.
