A battery made from seaweed could improve electric cars

Scientists have found another way to reduce our dependence on lithium. With the arrival of the electric vehicle, the world will face some unique challenges. If all users switch to electric vehicles, there could be greater strain on the electricity grid. There is also the problem of charging times and the issues associated with relatively limited range, but scientists have recently found a way to recharge electric vehicle batteries in just 10 minutes, while new insights into aerodynamics are helping to increase that figure.

There is still a major problem. Lithium is not getting cheaper or more abundant. But what if we don’t need lithium? A recent paper suggests that crustaceans could be a solution, and now the ocean offers another possible answer to the lithium problem: seaweed.

Sodium-metal batteries are being explored as an alternative to lithium, since they offer high energy density and low cost, but they have their flaws. Among them is the uncontrolled growth of dendrites, which can penetrate the battery separator and ultimately cause a short circuit. But now, a research team led by the University of Bristol has discovered that nanomaterials made from seaweed could be used as a more robust battery separator. The team’s findings have been published in Advanced Materials and state that the fibres containing these seaweed-derived nanomaterials not only prevent sodium electrode crystals from penetrating the separator, but also improve battery performance.

Seaweed, the solution for electric cars?

Jing Wang, first author and Ph.D. student at the Bristol Composites Institute, has stated that “the purpose of a separator is to keep the functional parts of a battery apart and allow the free transport of charge. We have shown that seaweed-based materials can make the separator very tough and prevent it from being pierced by metal structures made of sodium. It also allows greater storage capacity and efficiency, which extends the useful life of the batteries.”

As leader of the research project, Professor Steve Eichhorn commented that this kind of work shows that “more environmentally friendly forms of energy storage are possible, without being destructive to the environment in their production.”

While we are still a long way from a seaweed-based separator becoming part of a production electric car like the Hyundai Ioniq 5, this is a big step toward ensuring that future electric cars are manufactured in a more sustainable way, and that can only be good.