{"id":473393,"date":"2022-12-09T10:15:02","date_gmt":"2022-12-09T08:15:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=473393"},"modified":"2022-12-09T10:17:09","modified_gmt":"2022-12-09T08:17:09","slug":"scientists-create-new-electrolyte-mixture-to-prevent-battery-fires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/science\/473393-scientists-create-new-electrolyte-mixture-to-prevent-battery-fires.html","title":{"rendered":"Scientists develop electrolyte mixture that could prevent battery fires"},"content":{"rendered":"

Researchers at Stanford University’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory<\/a><\/strong> believe they have found a solution to prevent lithium-ion electric vehicle (EV) batteries from igniting at high temperatures.<\/p>\n

The scientists developed a polymer-based electrolyte \u2014 the substance that facilitates the transfer of lithium ions between electrodes \u2014 that doesn’t ignite at 140 degrees Fahrenheit (60 degrees Celcius) or higher.<\/p>\n

“One of the biggest challenges in the battery industry is this safety issue, so there’s a lot of effort going into trying to make a battery electrolyte that is safe,” the report’s<\/a><\/strong> lead author, Rachel Huang, said.<\/p>\n

Conventional lithium-ion battery electrolytes comprise a lithium salt dissolved in an organic solvent like ether or carbonate, resulting in a flammable mixture.<\/p>\n

Huang’s solution was to dissolve as much of a lithium salt \u2014 LiFSI (Lithium bisfluorosulfonylimide) \u2014 in a polymer-based electrolyte as she possibly could.<\/p>\n

Conventionally, less than 50% of a polymer-based electrolyte’s weight is made up of salt. Huang increased this figure to 63%.<\/p>\n

“I just wanted to see how much I could add and test the limit,” she said.<\/p>\n

It should be noted that the electrolyte she created also contained flammable solvent molecules.<\/p>\n

However, the complete electrolyte \u2014 known as Solvent-Anchored non-Flammable Electrolyte (SAFE) \u2014 proved to be non-flammable during high-temperature tests.<\/p>\n

Instead of failing at high temperatures like most lithium-ion batteries, those containing SAFE continued to operate at temperatures between 77\u2013212 degrees Fahrenheit (25 to 100 degrees Celcius).<\/p>\n

“This new finding points out a new way of thinking for polymer-based electrolyte design,” a professor at Stanford University who advises Huang, Zhenan Bao, said.<\/p>\n

“This electrolyte is important for developing future batteries that are both high energy density and safe.”<\/p>\n

\n

Now read: Elon Musk’s Neuralink under investigation for animal welfare violations<\/a><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Batteries with the new electrolyte can operate at temperatures up to 100 degrees Celcius, as opposed to 60 degrees Celcius for conventional electrolytes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341076,"featured_media":473395,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31750],"tags":[73250,79528,83217,30298],"class_list":["post-473393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science","tag-battery-fires","tag-lithium-ion-batteries","tag-rachel-huang","tag-stanford-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473393"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341076"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473393"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":473397,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473393\/revisions\/473397"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}