New research from the University of Washington is opening another avenue in the quest for better batteries and fuel cells. But this research is not a breakthrough in efficiency or longevity, rather a tool to more closely analyze how batteries work.

While we’ve come a long way from the voltaic pile of the 1800s, there is still much work to be done in the field of energy storage to meet modern day needs. In a society that is looking for ways to power electric vehicles and implement large scale grid energy storage for renewables, batteries and fuel cells have never been more important.

A research team from the University of Washington – including ECS members Stuart B. Adler and Timothy C. Geary – believes that these improvements will likely have to happen at the nanoscale. But in order to improve batteries and fuel cells at that microscopic level, we must first understand and see how they function.

[MORE: Read the full journal article.]

The newly developed probe offers a window for researchers to understand how batteries and fuel cells really work.

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Researchers from the University of Connecticut are pushing toward a hydrogen economy with the development of a new catalyst for cheaper, light-weight hydrogen fuel cells.

The catalyst — made of graphene nanotubes infused with sulfur — could potentially work to make hydrogen capture more commercially viable.

This development comes during a time where many people are looking to hydrogen in the search for a new, sustainable energy source. While hydrogen may be abundant, it often requires a costly and energy-consuming process to produce. However, if scientists could find an affordable and efficient way to capture hydrogen, it may begin to shift society away from the fossil fuel-driven economy toward a hydrogen economy.

The material developed by the University of Connecticut professors currently shows results that are competitive with some of the top materials traditionally used in these processes, but at a fraction of the cost.

The secret lies in the non-metal catalyst that has many of the same electrochemical properties as rare earth materials.

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From televisions screens we can roll up like newspapers to see-through batteries, researchers are moving electronics toward a more flexible, more transparent future.

The most recent development in this area comes from a group that has developed transparent, flexible supercapacitors made of carbon nanotube films. But this development goes far beyond wearable electronics, with potential applications in both energy storage and harvesting.

“Potential applications can be roughly divided into two categories: high-aesthetic-value products, such as activity bands and smart clothes, and inherently transparent end-uses, such as displays and windows,” co-author of the study Tanja Kallio, told Phys.org. “The latter include, for example, such future applications as smart windows for automobiles and aerospace vehicles, self-powered rolled-up displays, self-powered wearable optoelectronics, and electronic skin.”

With the thin films demonstrating 92 percent transparency and high efficiency compared to other carbon-based counterparts, the researchers believe that further improvements to the supercapacitors durability and energy density could make the product commercially viable.

A joint venture between two Japanese companies has embarked on building the world’s largest floating solar project.

The project is estimated to harvest 16,170 megawatt hours per year – enough to power around 4,970 households.

Not only will the floating solar farm – which will consist of 50,904 panels – produce a large amount of renewable energy, it will also play a major role in offsetting over 8,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually (the equivalent of 19,000 barrels of oil).

Japan is making the move to “floatovoltaics” due to the lack of open land suitable for solar farms, but plentiful water surfaces. Proponents believe floating solar farms will be cheaper to produce than their land counterparts due to less strict regulations held on water surfaces.

Energy comes in many forms. From solar to wind, there are an abundance of energy technologies available today. But one village in Indonesia is using on very different, very unique product to power their homes: Tofu.

The remote Kalisari village in Indonesia has a vibrant tofu producing industry (over 150 tofu businesses, to be exact). To produce this tofu, a lot of water is required. To make just over two pounds of tofu, some nine gallons of water is required. That water, inevitably, transforms into wastewater and it typically tossed into a nearby drainage system.

But the village has found a way to make that waste reusable in the form of energy. By treating the wastewater with a specific type of bacteria, biogas can be produced. The clean, renewable energy can be pumped directly into households.

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We may understand melanin best as the pigment that dictates our skin tone, but these pigments are actually super plentiful – existing in almost every organism on earth. While melanin is all around us, there is still much to learn about its chemical structure.

A group of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University set out to better understand melanin, and in doing so, found that its chemical structure may be conducive to creating certain kinds of batteries.

“Functionally, different types of melanin molecules have quite different chemistries, so putting them together is a little like solving a jigsaw puzzle, with each molecule a puzzle piece,” says Venkat Viswanathan, ECS member and co-author of the study. “You could take any number of these pieces and mix and match them, even stack them on top of each other. So what we researched was, which of these arrangements is really correct?”

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As far back as 1839, the English scientist William Grove had the idea that the reactants of a battery could be gases fed into it from external tanks. For most of their history, fuel cells existed only as laboratory curiosities. But fuel cells have gained much more attention in recent years, with many considering these power sources for applications in vehicles and alternative grid technology.

New research from Harvard University shows just how promising fuel cell technology could be. According to the study, the researchers were able to develop more efficient fuel cells that get more robust as they age instead of degrading.

“The elegance of this process is that it happens naturally when exposed to the electrons in fuel,” says Shriram Ramananthan, lead author of the study and past ECS member. “This technique can be applied to other electrochemical devices to make it more robust. It’s like chess—before we could only play with pawns and bishops, tools that could move in limited directions. Now, we’re playing with the queen.”

In late 2015, a team of Cambridge University researchers led by ECS member Clare Grey, detailed research in the journal Science on the path to the “ultimate” battery. According to the study, the researchers stated they had successfully demonstrated how to overcome many of the problems preventing the theoretically promising lithium-air battery from being commercially viable.

The key component to this research relies on a highly porous, “fluffy” carbon electrode made from graphene. The researchers cautioned that although the preliminary results were very promising, much work was yet to be done to take lithium-air batteries from the lab to the marketplace.

However, the research got many scientists in energy science and technology talking. Like all groundbreaking results, there has been much discussion and some controversy over the research published by Grey and her team.

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Researchers from the University of Maryland and the U.S. Army Research Laboratory have developed a lithium-ion battery that is safer, cheaper, more powerful, and extremely environmentally friendly – all by adding a pinch of salt.

The team, led by ECS members Chunsheng Wang and Kang Xu, built on previous “water-in-salt” lithium-ion battery research – concluding that by adding a second salt to the water-based batteries, efficiency levels rise while safety risks and environmental hazards decrease.

(WATCH: Wang’s presentation at the fifth international ECS Electrochemical Energy Summit, entitled “A Single Material Battery.”)

“Our invention has the potential to transform the energy industry by replacing flammable, toxic lithium ion batteries with our safe, green water-in-salt battery,” says Wang, professor in the University of Maryland’s Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering. “This technology may increase the acceptance and improve the utility of battery-powered electric vehicles, and enable large-scale energy storage of intermittent energy generators like solar and wind.”

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After Toyota’s 2015 release of the first mass-market fuel cell car, the Japanese automaker is gearing up to release the second generation of its fuel cell vehicle in 2019.

The initial version of the Mirai, which was heralded by Toyota as the ultimate “green car,” could travel up to 300 miles on a single tank of hydrogen and refuel in less than five minutes. The starting price for the vehicle is currently $57,460.

Toyota’s new version of the Mirai promises to be more affordable than its predecessor, potentially making the clean energy vehicle well-received among consumers.

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