Imagine having an EV that you could charge in 5 to 10 minutes and - that gave you a 1000 Km range per charge, you could use the same battery - without replacing - for decades. And imagine paying lower price for such batteries.
In the video here, I share how that’s actually going to be possible once Lithium ion batteries (that EVs and phones and laptops use today), get replaced by Lithium Sulfur ones.
By the way, if you have a hot take on EVs and their future, do let me know what you think, in the comment.
So theoretically it has been known for many decades now that Li-S batteries can hold 3-5 times higher energy than conventional lithium-ion batteries.
And the reason they are less expensive to make is because unlike Cobalt and Nickel needed for Lithium ion batteries, Sulfur is pretty inexpensive, readily available and also more environmentally friendly. This is almost like a dream situation. So why don’t we have these batteries yet? Well, lithium Sulfur batteries have two main problems.
they are slow to charge and
every time you use or charge them, something called polysulfides get generated which dissolve and then start breaking the battery itself.
But all of that is changing - I just read a research review paper that has summed up amazing tech developments happening which can make Lithium Sulfur batteries a reality sooner than you think.
For example, back in 2009, University of Waterloo already figured out way to "cage" Sulfur in a carbon framework which prevented the polysulfide from eating up the battery and building on this technology, DGIST in South Korea discovered that graphite scaffolding works best for this. They used a special material called ZIF-8 which was doped with nitrogen and using this, not only did they contain the polysulfides but also sped up charging – achieving a 12-minute charge time for 705 mAH/g of energy dense batteries (for contrast, Lithium ion batteries typically have a capacity of only 150-200 maH/g).
In fact, on the charging front, researchers at the University of Adelaide in Australia tried an electrocatalyst approach and they could further bring down charging times to just 5 minutes. But the best thing with Lithium Sulfur is once you are able to take care of the polysulfide issue and then you throw in solid electrolytes to the mix, you can also increase the number of times the battery can be charged in its lifetime.
I saw this new study published in Nature where they presented a Li-S battery with 25,000-cycle lifespan while still retaining 80% of its capacity. That’s like if you had this battery in your EV, and even if you charged your EV 2 times a day - you could keep using the same battery for 35 years with the battery still retaining 80% capacity!!
Insane, right?
But how real are these batteries - do they exist outside of university labs? Yes - at least prototypes.
Lyten, a California-based company - is offering prototypes to test and has already built a Lithium Sulfur pilot plant with plans for a billion-dollar gigafactory in Nevada, that can produce up to 10 GWh of these lithium-Sulfur batteries annually by 2027.
Alright so now you know something new. Share this post with someone who may be interested in batteries and the future of EV. Will be in touch.
