A new anode material for oxygen evolution in molten oxide electrolysis

Sadoway and colleague, Antoine Allanore find a way to make pure, cheap steel without any greenhouse-gas emissions.

Molten oxide electrolysis (MOE) is an electrometallurgical technique that enables the direct production of metal in the liquid state from oxide feedstock, and compared with traditional methods of extractive metallurgy offers both a substantial simplification of the process and a significant reduction in energy consumption.

read full article at Nature

Ambri’s Better Grid Battery

If Ambri or anyone else can make grid storage cheap and dependable, it will change the way we get electricity. Because the output of wind and solar farms is intermittent, these renewable sources alone can’t reliably power the entire grid, or even most of it. Grid operators need to ensure a steady balance between the power being consumed and the amount being generated. The system must be able to meet peak demand, which typically occurs when people turn on their air conditioning on hot summer days. That means wind and solar farms are typically backed up with natural-gas plants that can quickly add to the electricity supply.

read full article at Technology Review

MIT Professor: Battery Fix Could Ground 787 Until 2014

Sadoway points out that Boeing’s decision to use lithium-ion batteries was very consistent with a core design principle — reduce how much the aircraft weighs so it will cost less to operate. To that end, a lithium-ion battery appears to be an obvious choice because it generates more energy given its weight — 150 watt-hours/kilogram – than any other battery out there.

But in Sadoway’s view, Boeing made a huge mistake by focusing solely on this dimension when it made the decision to use lithium-ion. Sadoway points out that the lithium-ion battery is far more prone to burning up than these other technologies.

read full article at Forbes

Power supply: Batteries required

Growth in renewable power plants has increased the need for grid-scale batteries to store their electricity. Sadoway and his team’s idea is to make a battery so big and so cheap that a utility company could use it to store renewable electricity generated from a wind or solar plant, then feed the power back to the grid later on. If it worked, it could transform the world’s energy systems.

read full article at Financial Times

A Battery for the 21st Century: Liquid metal battery from Ambri

Imagine a world in which batteries the size of refrigerators or shipping containers could power individual homes or even entire neighborhoods. That is the vision of Donald Sadoway professor of materials science and engineering at MIT.