A123 SpinOffCompany(24M)AimsToReduceEVBattCostsBy85%!

[MitchJi]

Hi,

http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/26023/

New Battery for Cheap Electric Vehicles

Founder of A123 Systems starts a new company to commercialize the technology.

Monday, August 16, 2010

A new startup company will attempt to solve the biggest roadblock facing electric vehicles today--the cost of their batteries.

The new company, called 24M, has been spun out of the advanced battery company A123 Systems. It will develop a novel type of battery based on research conducted by Yet-Ming Chiang, a professor of materials science at MIT and founder of A123 Systems. He says the battery design has the potential to cut those costs by 85 percent.

The battery pack alone in many electric cars can cost well over $10,000. Cutting this figure could make electric vehicles competitive with gasoline-fueled cars.

The new company has raised $10 million in venture-capital funding, and about $6 million from the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), which will fund collaboration between the company and MIT and Rutgers University. A123 Systems will work closely with the new company, and owns stock in it. The name stands for "24 molar," referring to material concentration levels that Chiang cryptically calls "technically significant" to the company.

Chiang isn't saying much about the details of the new battery--such as exactly what materials it's made of. But he does say that it uses a "semisolid" energy storage material (rather than the solid electrode material used in most batteries today), and that it combines the best attributes of conventional batteries, fuel cells, and something called flow batteries, while avoiding some of the disadvantages of these technologies.

One advantage of lithium-ion batteries--the kind used in laptops, and which will be used in a new wave of electric vehicles coming out starting at the end of the year--is that the electrode materials can store large amounts of energy. But the packaging required to handle that energy takes up a lot of space and adds cost and weight. "In a typical rechargeable battery, only half of it is actual energy-storing materials. The rest is supporting materials," Chiang says. "That's a problem I've been thinking about for years--how do you improve the efficiency of the design?"

Reducing the amount of materials isn't easy. To extract useful amounts of electric current from electrode materials, these materials have to be spread in very thin layers over sheets of foil, which take up a lot of volume inside the cell.



Fuel cells and flow batteries don't have this problem. The energy-storing material--a fuel such as hydrogen or a liquid electrolyte, respectively--can be flowed past a membrane, which makes it easier to get the energy out.

The problem with a fuel cell is that it can't be recharged by applying electrical current--you need to refill the fuel tank. That's fine if the fuel is widely available, but right now hydrogen can be hard to come by. Flow batteries require vast amounts of electrolyte because their energy density is low. "It's like managing a swimming pool full of corrosive liquid," Chiang says. As a result, flow batteries are not practical for cars.

As with fuel cells, the new battery can store large amounts of energy without also needing large amounts of supporting materials to extract it, Chiang says. Yet it retains the rechargeability and energy density of lithium battery electrode materials. The result is that the battery can store a relatively large amount of energy at low cost. But he's purposefully vague about the mechanisms involved, saying only, "The final version of the device will look very different from both a conventional battery and a flow battery."

Chiang says the new design could work with a range of battery chemistries. So far, he's developed a proof-of-concept device--which was needed to get the Arpa-e grant. But, he says, "there's a lot of work to do." He's setting a goal of five years to get the first systems out in the field.

 

[MitchJi]

Hi,

More info:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20013609-54.html

August 15, 2010 9:00 PM PDT
A123 spinoff 24M funded for novel energy storage

Yet-Ming Chiang, the MIT professor whose research led to the creation of lithium ion battery company A123 System, and his colleagues have started a new company to address the limitations of today's rechargeable batteries.

Called 24M Technologies, the early-stage company on Monday announced that it has raised $10 million in a series A round of venture funding from Charles River Ventures and North Bridge Venture Partners. 24M Technologies also recently received a grant from the Department of Energy which will bring the Cambridge, Mass.-based company between $5.5 million and $6 million

The technology behind 24M came about when Chiang and collaborators at A123 Systems took a fresh approach to automotive and stationary energy storage, such as storing wind and solar power. It combines concepts in current lithium ion batteries with flow batteries, where tanks of liquid electrolytes combine to create an electrical current.

"It came out of taking a blank sheet of paper and looking at what the real limitations of lithium ion--and rechargeable battery technology, in general--are and considering future applications," said Chiang. "We came to a point where we felt that after two years' effort, it really had merit, we had digested the idea, and we had enough for a proof of concept."

A123 Systems is spinning out 24M Technologies as its own company to give it more attention, A123 Systems CEO David Vieau said last Thursday. Chiang will remain an MIT professor, maintain his position at A123 Systems, and work with the 24M team, which is now under 10 people. The technology was started at A123 Systems about three years ago and advanced in collaboration with MIT researchers.

In particular, 24M is trying to create batteries that can store more energy per volume than current lithium ion batteries. Chiang said it's hard to predict when a product will come to market but the company hopes to have its first demonstrations within five years.

One of the limitations with rechargeable batteries is the cost and overhead associated with inactive components, Chiang explained. Meanwhile, flow batteries, which typically have two tanks holding liquid electrolytes, are complex and require a lot of mechanical engineering.

"What we're trying to do with the technology is to take the concepts from rechargeable batteries and high energy density flow batteries, and even fuel cells to produce a new device," Chiang said.

The Energy Department grant stemmed from an auto battery research program, but the technology could also be used for grid storage or other forms of stationary storage. With better energy density, a vehicle storage device could overcome the range limitations of lithium ion batteries.

Although it borrows flow battery concepts, 24M's planned device is not meant to be a flow battery, said company President Throop Wilder, a former networking technology executive. "A flow battery has been likened to managing a corrosive swimming pool," he said.

Both Chiang and Wilder were unwilling to be too specific about the technology or battery chemistry. A patent application, filed two years ago, describes a "high energy density redox flow device" where a semi-solid medium, such as a gel, is used for active materials. In an interview, Chiang said that the "storage media is flowable."

The name 24M refers to 24 molars, a level of concentration of active material in the storage media. "We believe that concentration is significant and relevant to the technology," said Chiang. "And we needed a name for the project."