Problem:

The lithium-ion battery is limited in the number of times it can be recharged – 500 times.

Solution:

In his nineties, John Goodenough, whilst one of the pioneers of the li-ion and the lithium iron phosphate battery, has been investigating another solution in the lithium-sodium glass battery.

Together with Maria Helena Braga, a Portuguese physicist at the Cockrell School of Engineering, at the University of Texas, they have developed a battery that can be charged/discharged up to 23,000 times, in minutes instead of hours.

The solid-state lithium battery  uses a glass doped with alkali metals making it non flammable. Their prototype offers three times’ the energy density of li-ion and performs well in both hot and cold weather.

In March 2020 the Canadian utility Hydro-Quebec announced that its research lab, comprising 120 people, would be preparing the battery for commercialisation, in collaboration with Braga and the 97-year-old Goodenough who in 2019 was co-recipient of the Nobel Prize for chemistry. The utility announced that the battery would be ready in two years’ time, before Goodenough’s hundredth birthday.

Visit us tomorrow for Solution 219: cell-grown meat

Support 366solutions on Patreon and receive the ‘366solutions Insider Newsletter’ with updates on the monthly progress and successes of published solutions.