2035 is the date when the European Union will ban the sale of internal combustion engine vehicles. The rise of renewable energy and electric vehicles is increasing demand for batteries that aren’t always sustainable, but a group of American scientists have found a solution in crayfish shells.
University of Maryland scientists have developed a zinc battery using a biodegradable electrolyte from an unexpected source: crab shells. The discovery was featured in an article published this month in Matter magazine.
“Huge amounts of batteries are being produced and consumed, increasing the possibility of environmental problems,” says lead author and professor of materials science and engineering Liangbing Hu, director of the Center for Materials Innovation at the University of Maryland. The other study authors are affiliated with the University of Houston and the UMD Department of Materials Science and Engineering.
For example, he said, polypropylene and polycarbonate separators, which are widely used in lithium-ion batteries, take hundreds or thousands of years to degrade.
Today’s batteries use an often flammable or corrosive electrolyte to transport ions back and forth between positively and negatively charged terminals within the battery to provide current. The new battery, which could be used to store renewable energy from large-scale wind and solar sources, uses a gel electrolyte made from a bio-rich, naturally-sourced material called chitosan, according to the study.
“The most abundant source of chitosan is the exoskeletons of crustaceans, including crab, shrimp and lobster, which can be easily obtained from shellfish waste,” Hu said. “It can be found on the table.”
According to the article published in Matter, a biodegradable electrolyte means about two-thirds of the battery could be degraded by microbes, and the chitosan electrolyte is completely degraded in five months. The metal component, in this case zinc, remains behind instead of lead or lithium.
“Zinc is more common than lithium in the earth’s crust,” says Hu. “In general, well-developed zinc batteries are cheaper and safer.”
This zinc-chitosan battery has an energy efficiency of 99.7% after 1,000 battery cycles, making it a viable option for storing electricity from wind and solar energy for transmission to power grids, he said.
Hu said he and his team will continue to work to make batteries even more environmentally friendly, including throughout the manufacturing process.
“I hope that in the future all battery components will be biodegradable,” says Hu. “Not only the material itself, but also the manufacturing process of the biomaterials,” adds the researcher of this ambitious project.
Rely on the electric vehicle
Most interesting sector. Car and truck manufacturers are among one of the sectors most interested in developing more sustainable and environmentally friendly batteries and are closely monitoring any advances in this particular area.
heavy vehicles. Industrial conglomerate Volvo Trucks has started series production of electric versions of Volvo’s FH, FM and FMX heavy-duty commercial vehicle models, the company said in a statement. Series production of Volvo’s heavier electric trucks has started at Tuve’s plant in Gothenburg, Sweden, with the plant in Ghent, Belgium to follow next year. Volvo Trucks will produce the electric trucks on the same line as their combustion engine counterparts, offering great production flexibility, while the batteries will be supplied from Volvo Trucks’ new battery assembly plant in Ghent.
Two-thirds of sales. These trucks can operate with a total weight of 44 tons and the three models account for around two-thirds of the company’s sales.