The Battery That Will Make Fossil Fuels & Nuclear Power A Thing Of The Past 07/14/2022

At half the price of lithium-ion, CO² batteries are set to kickstart a renewable energy revolution.

It seems mad that in this day and age, we are still digging up oil and burning it for power. This archaic method not only destroys the planet, it is also expensive and has even kickstarted wars. But a recent innovation could make fossil fuels, and even some next-gen power sources, completely obsolete by making solar and wind far cheaper and greener. Welcome to the miraculous world of the CO² battery.

Well, it is a system that stores energy by changing the state of carbon dioxide in a closed loop. When the battery is discharged, it is just a massive dome filled with atmospheric pressure carbon dioxide. To charge it, the carbon dioxide is pumped out of the dome and compressed, which heats it up. The heat is removed and stored in a device known as a TES (Thermal Energy Storage), which turns the carbon dioxide into a cold, dense liquid that is then stored in tanks. Now energy is stored as heat in the TES and as pressure in the liquid carbon dioxide tanks.

Discharging the battery is a two-step process. Firstly, the tanks are opened, which releases the high-pressure liquid carbon. As the carbon exits the tank, the pressure drops, which causes it to transition back into a gas and rapidly expand. This gas is then passed through the TES, where it is heated and expands even further. This double expansion creates colossal pressure, which is channelled through a turbine that spins a generator and makes electricity. The now atmospheric pressure carbon dioxide is then pumped back into the dome, ready for the battery to be charged again.

So this is a relatively complex piece of kit, and due to it needing large tanks, you probably won’t find one of these powering an EV (Electric Vehicle) any time soon. But what makes this odd battery so revolutionary? Well, five things: cost, carbon footprint, scalability, and lifecycle. These factors make it ideal for a grid battery. Let me explain.

Wind and solar power are excellent, creating loads of energy with practically no carbon emissions! But the wind doesn’t always blow, and the sun doesn’t always shine. So we need to use giant grid batteries to store the energy during times of surplus and then discharge it during times of shortage.

The current battery of choice for this process is the lithium-ion battery, the same technology that powers EVs, laptops, and your phone. But CO² batteries are just straight-up better at being used in grid batteries.

Their main advantage is cost. Anyone who has bought an EV will tell you that batteries are expensive! This makes the MWh-sized packs needed for solar and wind storage a sizeable expense. But because CO² batteries can be built with easy-to-access materials, they can be built for around half the cost, making wind and solar farms far more affordable.

This leads to CO² batteries having a far lower environmental impact. Lithium-ion batteries are not the environmental angels you might think they are. Building them requires a lot of energy and transportation, so their production creates a sizeable carbon footprint. Furthermore, the mining needed to access the raw materials has plenty of environmental and humanitarian issues. But, on the other hand, CO² batteries can be built using readily available recycled materials. This makes their impact on our precious planet far more gentle.

Lithium-ion battery production is far from eco-friendly — Photo by Dominik Vanyi on Unsplash

This also means they are really easily scaleable. We are currently barrelling headfirst into a battery crisis. Material supply chains can’t handle how quickly demand for batteries has skyrocketed in recent years. This is why the price of materials such as lithium, nickel, and manganese has gone through the roof. But CO² batteries don’t have the same supply chain issues, which means thousands of the batteries can be built rapidly with ease. So, in theory, the whole world could embrace this technology incredibly quickly.

Finally, we come to the lifecycle. Anyone who owns an iPhone will tell you that lithium-ion batteries don’t last forever. Every time they charge, the internal structure of the cell degrades, and over time, the capacity of the battery shrinks. Modern high-end lithium-ion cells can last for up to 2,000 charges, but the cheaper ones can only manage a few hundred before their performance is severely degraded. This means that lithium-ion grid batteries will need to be replaced or expanded every ten years or so. Not only is this a considerable expense, but it also it creates more ecological damage via extra carbon emissions and mining. But again, the CO² battery is far superior, given it doesn’t degrade. In theory, these batteries could last hundreds of years with regular maintenance, meaning they will cost less and have a reduced ecological impact.

However, CO² batteries aren’t quite the perfect solution. Lithium-ion batteries are around 99% efficient. This means if you charge one with 1 kWh of power, you will get 0.99 kWh back out. This high efficiency means we need fewer solar panels and wind turbines to keep a high power output. However, CO² batteries lag far behind, achieving a maximum of only 80% efficiency. This means we would need to build larger solar and wind farms to have the same high output. This will increase costs, create a larger carbon footprint (from producing more panels and turbines), and potentially increase habitat loss (for solar power in particular).

We would need to make larger solar forms to negate power lost to the CO² battery — Photo by Zbynek Burival on Unsplash

So, overall, CO² batteries can make wind and solar power cheaper and reduce their overall environmental impact. But wind and solar power are already the lowest carbon forms of energy we have, and they are also the cheapest forms of energy too. This means CO² batteries will just turn their ecological and financial credentials up to 11.

Such an incredible offering could kick-start a renewable revolution. Why would you bother looking into nuclear power or keep your gas-fired power station running when you could get far more power and far less ecological impact from a CO² battery-backed solar or wind farm? Developing nations will see this as a way to rapidly grow their energy infrastructure for less cost with the added bonus of being eco-friendly, while developed nations can see this as a cheap and sustainable way to transition their energy to carbon-neutral sources without going bankrupt (which is quite important, considering today’s economy).

I say these batteries “could kick-start a renewable revolution.” This sea-change has already been set in motion, as the first CO² batteries are already available from Energy Dome (who invented this concept). Because the CO² battery concept was only conceived in February 2020, this demonstrates how rapidly this technology can be developed, implemented, and scaled. With no complex manufacturing, no significant safety concerns (in comparison to the tendency of lithium-ion batteries to catch on fire) and no sensitive supply chain, it has gone from concept to reality in the blink of an eye.

It just goes to show that you don’t need a functional fusion reactor or sci-fi technology to save our precious world. Just a bit of ingenious lateral thinking with currently available technology can yield incredible results remarkably quickly. With each advancement like this, our future becomes brighter and brighter. We just need to adopt these fantastic machines and abandon our old, archaic ways.