MIT researchers have developed a self-assembling battery material that rapidly disintegrates when exposed to organic solvents, potentially transforming electric vehicle battery recycling and addressing the growing challenge of electronic waste from the expanding EV market.
The breakthrough, published Tuesday in Nature Chemistry, introduces an electrolyte material composed of aramid amphiphiles that self-assemble into mechanically stable nanoribbons when exposed to water, yet completely dissolve within minutes when immersed in organic liquids. This allows entire battery packs to fall apart naturally, enabling separate recycling of individual components without the harsh chemicals and high temperatures typically required.
“So far in the battery industry, we’ve focused on high-performing materials and designs, and only later tried to figure out how to recycle batteries made with complex structures and hard-to-recycle materials,” said lead author Yukio Cho, a recent MIT PhD graduate now at Stanford University. “Our approach is to start with easily recyclable materials and figure out how to make them battery-compatible.”
It has been 20 straight years of “this new battery tech COULD revolutionize everything”.
No. It won’t.
Do not talk about battery tech revolutionizing anything unless your innovation is in mass manufacturing it, cost effectively, and reliably, at scale.
Anything else is just another early research project jerking itself off before it goes nowhere.
Idea
Lab tech <- the article is here
Prototype
Mass production
So, the usual Battery Tuesday message.
progress in battery tech has been pretty amazing over the last 20 years.
take you pick for sources https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=cost+of+batteries++chart&ia=images&iax=images
compared to hydrogen and nuclear…
Yes, progress in the manufacturing and refining of Lithium Ion batteries.
This is not that. This is a research lab trying a new idea that will go nowhere and then issuing a press release that talks about the positives and ignores the showstopping negatives.
My brother in Christ, have you heard about our lord and saviour the Scientific Method and the proliferation of cross-domain ideas? How do you imagine the li-ion batteries came about as the go-to energy storage solution? Incremental improvements of ideas would be my guess, ideas have to start somewhere and of course they’re going to be hyperbolic since researchers are both excited and have to draw attention to their ideas.
I sympathise with your point but the alternative is little to no research into different battery technologies because close to nothing will ever emerge as a competitive day-one drop-in replacement, but some ideas may prove exciting to others who understand the value and they might push the ball further towards realistic alternatives.
I don’t fault researchers for publishing novel research that might not go anywhere. I explicitly understand the scientific value in doing so.
I do not think it’s valuable to breathlessly regurgitate those claims to the broader pop-sci public though. A) It’s boring to read the same overhyped battery press release every single week. And B) it shakes people’s faith in science, in the same way that people’s faith in medicine has been shaken by bad reporting on every study that says X could give you cancer or make you live longer.
But… battery tech did revolutionize everything in the last 20 years.
Yes, Lithium Ion batteries did. Do you know when their lab experimentation happened? The equivalent stage to what this article is describing? The 70s and 80s.
Do you know how many labs have experimented with new battery types that have some benefits in some areas since then? Literally thousands and thousands and thousands. Most go nowhere and revolutionize nothing and never will because they’re impractical for other reasons.
LiFePo4 was first brought up in lab experiments in 1996/1997.
NaIon first came up in the 80s, but were shelved and most research happened in the 2010s.
But as you rightfully noticed: It took Li-Ion Batteries 20 years to become usable and another 20 years to become really good. Why would you expect that other battery technologies would be faster to market? Many other chemistries are on the market but just haven’t (yet) become better than Li-Ion.
Battery development is a huge amount of trial and error, and Li-Ion was also a series of throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks. On the way to develop Li-Ion hundreds if not thousands of chemistries had to be tried, tested and discarded. That specific technology went through multiple companies and research facilities who each discarded the idea when they got stuck and coundn’t find a way around the problems, and then the next company picked it up to continue working on it.
I don’t expect them to come to market faster than that, I expect people to not believe and post headlines about a battery technology revolutionizing things when it’s early stage research and most likely will not.
If you spent your time reading about every novel research battery since the dawn of Li Ion and today, all you’ll have succeeded in is wasting a lot of time.
Not any more waste of time than reading 90% of other tech news (or any news in general). It’s basically entertainment, not education.
So if I wasted some time reading a interesting article about some prototype technology, I haven’t wasted any more or less time than reading some news article about some other topic that doesn’t affect me.
I’m not holding my breath that this specific technology will beat Li-Ion in a year and I will not use the article as investment advice, but there’s nothing wrong with using it for free entertainment.
Not any more waste of time than reading 90% of other tech news (or any news in general). It’s basically entertainment, not education.
I agree, but if I want to read 90% filler I can just pick a tech news site and read everything.
This is the technology community. If you’re not interested in reading about new and groundbreaking tech, maybe you should block this one, start a consumerism community, all about stuff you can buy.
The rest of us are quite happy reading about potential ideas and research that may or may not become something profitable.
Bruh I’m an electrical engineer. I’m interested in new technology and specifically battery technology. I’m not interested in journalists regurgitating mindless research paper fluff. This is just self aggrandizing boosting, not anything meaningful.
You should look beyond your NiCad pile, old man!
My current batteries are Goodenough.
That’s what they all say.
But the grant money! The colleges receive and dictate where it goes. Just think of the universities for once. /s
