How Water-based Batteries Could Reshape The Electric Car Industry

How Water-based Batteries Could Reshape The Electric Car Industry

The regular customer is presented with an ever-growing swarm of acronyms as electric cars become more commonplace: EV, PHEV, BEV, FCEV, EREV... the list seems to grow every time an electric car company issues a press release. Since no other type of battery can currently match the demands of an electric automobile, almost all of these have lithium-ion batteries. Nothing else is able to start a motor with the massive energy spikes needed, maintain the high demand for electricity needed to keep the car moving and the music playing, store enough electricity to run the automobile while still fitting within, and be affordable enough.

Scientists and manufacturers are working to develop alternatives to lithium as the demand for the metal rises. In the limited places where they can be refuelled, hydrogen cars have made hesitant inroads, but because the majority of hydrogen comes from natural gas, they have no impact on the demand for fossil fuels. Despite being in the early stages of laboratory research, water-based batteries already hold a lot of potential. Water-based batteries may revolutionise electric automobiles as we know them if they are ever put into mass production.

What Is A Water-Based Battery?

A water-based battery, like all batteries, has two electrodes on either end of an electrolyte liquid. (The electrolyte in many batteries is a paste so it won't slop about when the battery is shook or disturbed.) The anode and cathode are the names of two electrodes, respectively. Electrons that desire to move to the cathode are liberated by the anode's reaction with the electrolyte. The electrons cannot, however, simply pass through the electrolyte of the battery to the cathode on the other side, much like the electrolytic membrane in a hydrogen fuel cell. They must instead travel a significant distance to reach whatever the battery is powering by exiting the battery and travelling through the cables.

The electrolyte eventually expends all the electrons it is able to transfer from one end of the battery to the other. The battery is currently dead. Rechargeable batteries have the ability to stop this electrolyte reaction, restoring the battery to nearly new condition for further uses. The same components are used in water-based batteries and other batteries. The two electrodes at either end are made of "redox-active, non-conjugated radical polymers," according to Texas A&M researchers, which is a significant difference. In the battery, water and organic salts are used as the electrolyte. (The word "organic" in science implies "contains carbon.")

Water-Based Batteries Could Prevent A Resource Bottleneck

Simply put, we are out of mountains to blow open in order to get lithium. The components of electric vehicle batteries are referred to as "rare-earth" metals for a reason. In recent years, the demand for lithium has significantly increased as more electronic devices are powered by lithium-ion batteries every second. Even hydrogen fuel cells depend on rare-earth metals for their catalysts, which makes them vulnerable to fluctuations in the price of platinum and palladium. Water batteries would eliminate the necessity for metal mining as well as those annoying foreign dependencies that so many men in ties complain about on the news.

They Would Be Safer Than Lithium-Ion In Crashes

Currently, electric car batteries can make car rescue attempts in the event of a fire too risky to perform. Everyone in the car or nearby could be killed if the battery exploded during the rescue. Lithium-ion batteries have the potential to explode if something goes wrong with them or if they have a manufacturing flaw, as anyone who remembers the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 battery crisis will know. A burning phone may not require 600 gallons of water to put it out, unlike an electric car's battery may. This is because phones have less stored energy than an electric car's battery. Basically, the whole amount of power stored in the car's battery—enough to keep it running for several hours—explodes out in a single instant.

Battery-electric cars aren't the only new automotive technology that has sparked concerns about explosivity. They have also been educated on hydrogen-powered vehicles. After all, a hydrogen car carries a high-pressure tank of explosive gas, whereas an ICE car carries a tank of flammable petrol or diesel underneath it. Hydrogen tanks aren't any more prone to fire than petrol tanks, according to accident tests and real data from the road. However, with vehicles powered by water batteries, there wouldn't be any such issues. Researchers working on water batteries claim that they do not explode like lithium-ion batteries do. Dr. Jodie Lutkenhaus, the lead researcher, asserts that "there would be no battery fires anymore because it's water-based."

Water-Based Batteries Could Enable The Electric Future

Even though having metal-free batteries in every automobile may sound thrilling, this is a relatively recent technology. It is still inside the testing facility. According to scientists, the chemical interaction that powers batteries is "complex and difficult to resolve," which translates to "It works, but we don't quite understand how." Most likely, bendable, small technological and medical devices will be the first to adopt water-based batteries. Longer still before we start using them to power cars and before we see them in every laptop and phone.

Water-based batteries would completely eliminate the issue of lithium shortages in electric vehicles if they are properly understood. Although electric vehicles are undoubtedly the way of the future, they are still in the early stages of acceptance, which, among other things, means that no technology has yet become the norm. It would be analogous to developing a grass-based petrol equivalent in the early 1930s, just as the last horse-drawn carts were leaving the streets, to switch water batteries at the beginning of electrified traffic. In other words, water-based batteries have the potential to fundamentally alter how resources are used to power automobiles. Water-based batteries could allow electric automobiles to be released from the limited lithium and cobalt supply and allow them to take over the roads.