Electric vehicle batteries made from seafood: Environmentally friendly, cheap, few battery bottles

Tram Ho

The lithium-ion batteries in current electric vehicles could be a more efficient solution than the lead-acid batteries found in early electric vehicle models launched early last decade. However, this type of equipment still has many shortcomings. Difficult to exploit raw materials, expensive rare metals, stability under physical impact or long-degradable chemicals (such as polypropylene takes hundreds to thousands of years to decompose naturally)… are some examples.

Ắc quy xe điện làm từ hải sản: Thân thiện môi trường, giá rẻ, ít chai pin - Ảnh 1.

Current electric vehicles all use lithium-ion batteries because of their advantages in energy density, size and energy retention compared to old lead-acid batteries, but this equipment also has many weaknesses – Photo: Hyundai

For this reason, many scientists around the world, not just car manufacturers, are looking for alternatives to lithium-ion batteries, or at least the lithium inside.

The latest solution, according to the scientific journal Matter , comes from… seafood, or more specifically, crustaceans such as shrimp, crab…

To understand this alternative, we must first understand a little about how the battery works. In its simplest form, a battery consists of an anode, a cathode, and an electrolyte layer connecting the two sides. When a battery is charged or discharging, an oxidation reaction occurs when charged ions from the anode flow through the electrolyte to the cathode.

Ắc quy xe điện làm từ hải sản: Thân thiện môi trường, giá rẻ, ít chai pin - Ảnh 2.

Electric vehicle batteries need optimal weight and size, so many electric battery solutions are suitable for many other industries but cannot be used in cars – Photo: Hyundai

The problem of electric batteries, comes from the electrolyte layer when they are very toxic and difficult to decompose, not to mention the ability to strongly corrosive and flammable .

The solution comes from a crustacean called Chitosan – a chitin-based biomaterial abundant in the outer shells of these species that can be used as an electrolyte.

The advantage of an electrolytic layer made of Chitosan is that they can decompose naturally within only 5 months, and do not harm the environment.

Ắc quy xe điện làm từ hải sản: Thân thiện môi trường, giá rẻ, ít chai pin - Ảnh 3.

Chitosan sources are also extremely easy to find because shells of shrimp and crab species can be obtained from seafood waste. In addition, materials that go with the above electrolyte can use zinc instead of lead, or more recently lithium – a substance that is easy to recycle and also much easier to find.

Thus, a battery from Chitosan and zinc will effectively solve two concerns: environment and cost. However, they have one more advantage. This type of battery can retain 99.7% of battery capacity after 1,000 charge-discharge cycles instead of 70-75% as commonly found on normal zinc batteries, and on par with lithium-ion batteries.

The only problem that scientists have headaches in applying this new solution is size and weight. Even with the above advantages, the fact that the size of the battery can be doubled or tripled, making this equipment no longer feasible in cars that require compactness.

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Source : Genk