Metals Tech

Not far from Norway’s North Sea oil rigs, shipbuilders are assembling some of the first ferry boats ever to be powered entirely by batteries.

For years, the yard, nestled against the deep-blue sea waters and snow-clad mountains of the country’s deepest fjord, mostly made fuel-guzzling boats for the oil industry. But orders vanished as crude slumped in recent years. Now, like other Norwegian industries, its future prosperity depends on going green.

“If you look at the next five years, this is what we’ll be doing,” said Erlend Hatleberg, a project manager at Havyard Group, which runs the Sognefjord shipyard that’s switched to specializing in boats with battery technology similar to plug-in cars. “We were in a really deep trough. But activity is back.”

While progress in electrifying the world’s excessively polluting shipping fleets is miles behind advances in automobiles, Europe is making initial strides as Paris Climate Accord goals to cut carbon dioxide emissions loom large. Dozens of battery-powered boats that can move through inland waterways in Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands are about to make their first voyages, including some able to run fully automatically without a crew.

Nowhere is this push more prevalent than Norway, a country where almost all electricity produced is hydropower, the state oil company is expanding into offshore wind farming and people drive more electric cars, per capita, than any country in the world.

Next up, Norway wants two-thirds of all boats carrying both passengers and cars along its jagged and windy Atlantic coastline to be electrified by 2030. Havyard is filling 13 orders for zero-emission ferries received since 2016.

Zooming out, though, the progress may be a drop in the bucket. To really slash maritime pollution would require the 50,000 tankers, freighters and carriers traversing the oceans to switch to renewable energy. The largest use diesel engines as big as a four-story house, with emissions comparable to 64,000 passenger cars.

Without big changes, the International Council on Clean Transportation warns sea transport could be responsible for 17 percent of CO2 emissions by 2050, up from 2-3 percent now. But shipping was omitted from the Paris deal and battery technologies haven’t evolved enough for long ocean voyages, according to the International Maritime Organization, which is set to reveal in April an initial set of guidelines for cutting greenhouse gases.

“Battery technology is simply not competitive and still requires significant further evolution in terms of performance and cost reduction before it could be preferable to synthetic fuel options,” Lloyd’s Register Group, a maritime classification society founded in the 18th century, said in a December report.

For now, electric ships make most sense in populated waterfront areas where they can be recharged easily and improve air quality and noise pollution. Of the 185 battery-powered ships in operation or scheduled for delivery worldwide in 2018, most are in Norway and France, according to DNV GL, a ship classification and assurance company near Oslo.

Norway is particularly suited because its hundreds of fjords-long and narrow inlets of sea water that can stretch hundreds of kilometers inland-make ferries an essential complement to road transportation. By 2021, about 60 battery-powered or hybrid vessels will be in operation, said Edvard Sandvik, who heads the ferry division at Norway’s Public Roads Administration.

The first zero-emissions ferry, called the MF Ampere, started sailing between the villages of Oppedal and Lavik along the Sognefjord in 2015. Operated by Norled, it’s made of light aluminium, runs on 10 tons of lithium-ion batteries and carries up to 350 passengers and 120 cars. After each 20-minute journey, it recharges for 10 minutes. The ride is both smoother and quieter than on diesel-powered ferries.

Some initial kinks made the ship lag the two other ferries that travel the same route, frustrating commuters, but it’s since caught up.

“I’m very doubtful that the first steam engine was flawless,” said captain Steinar Johnsen, 47. “If you’re always going to wait for something better, you’re never going to do anything.”

In the Netherlands, Port-Liner BV will deploy five, 52-meter (170-foot) container barges powered by 20-foot batteries this year that can cruise for 15 hours, says chief executive officer, Ton van Meegen. He predicts they’ll divert some 23,000 trucks from European roads when they start servicing ports in and around Antwerp, Belgium, and Dutch cities Amsterdam and Rotterdam.

Also in the pipeline: 10 boats capable of running for 35 hours on four, 20-foot-long batteries. They’ll cut 18,000 cubic tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere, he said.

“The technology, all the new ideas, are moving very very fast,” Van Meegen said. “I don’t know what will happen in the next 50 years, but it will be a completely different world.”

Europe’s 7,300 inland ships will eventually make the switch under global rules that require all transport, with the exception of planes, to use greener technologies by 2050. Their motors are already a third cheaper than typical diesel varieties going for 350,000 euros ($434,000), Van Meegan said. But batteries-made by the likes of Corvus Energy in Canada-drive up costs.

Regulations are also lagging. The IMO hasn’t yet set out rules to govern sailorless ships, even though companies are racing to design them.

Port-Liner’s Dutch barges can be fully automated, while a unit of Norwegian technology company Kongsberg Gruppen ASA will have a 79.5-meter, battery-powered, open-top container ship ready by 2020. Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc predicts its first unmanned ocean-going ship will make its first voyage as soon as 2035.

Back in Norway, where national and regional governments spend 3 billion kroner ($386 million) a year to operate the 200 ferries serving 130 routes, Hatleberg is counting on orders continuing. Before the electric boat fad, the yard cut more than a quarter of its workforce.

On an icy day in late February, some 120 shipwrights were welding, hammering and laying 75,000 meters of cables over the newest ferry, the 67-meter, 2,100 ton MF Husavik, slated for delivery to ferry operator Fjord1 as early as May.

“We finally have work again,” Hatleberg said. “It’s a pretty tough project. But people are enthusiastic, there’s an extreme will to make this happen.”

Lithium-ion batteries have become essential in everyday technology. But these power sources can explode under certain circumstances and are not ideal for grid-scale energy storage. Sodium-ion batteries are potentially a safer and less expensive alternative, but current versions don’t last long enough yet for practical use. Now, scientists have developed an anode material that enables sodium-ion batteries to perform at high capacity over hundreds of cycles, according to their report in the journal ACS Nano.

For years, scientists have considered sodium-ion batteries a safer and lower-cost candidate for large-scale energy storage than lithium-ion. But so far, sodium-ion batteries have not operated at high capacity for long-term use. Lithium and sodium have similar properties in many ways, but sodium ions are much larger than lithium ions. This size difference leads to the rapid deterioration of a key battery component. Meilin Liu, Chenghao Yang and colleagues wanted to find an anode material that would give sodium-ion batteries a longer life.

The researchers developed a simple approach to making a high-performance anode material by binding an antimony-based mineral onto sulfur-doped graphene sheets. Incorporating the anode into a sodium-ion battery allowed it to perform at 83 percent capacity over 900 cycles. The researchers say this is the best reported performance for a sodium-ion battery with an antimony-based anode material. To ultimately commercialize their technology, they would need to scale up battery fabrication while maintaining its high performance.

A team of researchers affiliated with Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), South Korea, claims to have made yet another step towards finding a solution to accelerate the commercialization of silicon anode for Lithium-ion batteries.

A new approach developed by a team of researchers, led by Prof. Jaephil Cho (School of Energy and Chemical Engineering) could hold the key to greatly improving the performance of commercial lithium-ion batteries.

Prof. Cho and his research team have developed a new type anode material that would be used in place of a conventional graphite anode, which they claim will lead to lighter and longer-lasting batteries for everything from personal devices to electric vehicles.

In the study, the research team has demonstrated the feasibility of a next-generation hybrid anode using silicon-nanolayer-embedded graphite/carbon. They report that this architecture allows compatibility between silicon and natural graphite and addresses the issues of severe side reactions caused by structural failure of crumbled graphite dust and uncombined residue of silicon particles by conventional mechanical milling.

This newly-developed anode material has been manifactured with increase in graphite content in composite by 45%. The research team has also developed new equipment, which is capable of producing 300kg in 6 hours per batch using a small amount of silane gas (SiH4). Such simple procedure is expected to ensure a competitive price.

They report that the silicon/graphite composite is mass-producible and it has superior battery performances with industrial electrode density, high areal capacity, and low amounts of binder. The findings of the research have been published in the August issue of the energy journal Nature Energy.

This work has been supported by the IT R&D programme of the Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy (MOTIE) and Korea Evaluation Institute of Industrial Technology (KEIT), 2016 Research Fund of UNIST, and by the Office of Vehicle Technologies, Battery Materials Research Program of the US Department of Energy.

UNIST will be working with public organizations in the energy sector to develop a new type of eco-friendly batteries that can store and produce electricity using seawater. By successfully securing five billion won in research funding over three years, the project is expected to accelerate the commercialization of eco-friendly, cost-efficient, and high-stability seawater batteries.

This project’s consortium includes Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO), Korea East-West Power Company Ltd. (EWP), and the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST). For this project, KEPCO and EWP will provide three billion by 2019 and two billion won by 2018, respectively. UNIST has been leading the seawater battery reserach since 2014 with the government grants worth seven billion won.

Seawater batteries use sodium, the sixth-most abundant element on earth, to generate electricity. This makes this system an attractive supplement to existing battery technologies. The new type of seawater battery is much cheaper and more environmentally friendly than lithium and will, therefore, offer a low-cost route to large-scale energy storage. Moreover, the use of seawater can also considerably reduce fire risks, as it keeps the thermal fluid in good condition.

Seawater batteries operate without auxiliary loads or an external power supply, except for water and salt. Therefore, they can be applied as energy storage systems (ESS) for homes and industries or as emergency power supplies for large ships and nuclear power plants.

Seawater batteries are similar to their lithium-ion cousins since they store energy in the same way. The battery extracts sodium ions from the seawater when it is charged with electrical energy and stores them within the cathode compartment. Upon electrochemical discharge, sodium is released from the anode and reacts with water and oxygen from the seawater cathode to form sodium hydroxide. This process provide energy to power, for instance, an electric vehicle.

While seawater batteries are more cost-effective than lithium-ion batteries, they are not quite ready for commercial distribution. Part of the reason is that these batteries have relatively low electrical power. output. To overcome this, UNIST will help design a more optimized cell geometry and standardized procedures for the battery. Together with KEPCO, the research team at UNIST plans on building cells with various sizes and shapes, thereby enhancing the charge rate of the battery by 20 Wh. Generally, a small smartphone lithium-ion battery stores about 10 Wh.

With the support of KEPCO, UNIST will establish a testing facility to mass produce seawater batteries, as well as to develop a seawater battery pack that enhances the charge rate of the battery by connecting cells. By 2018, the joint research team will build a 10 Wh seawater battery pack at Ulsan Thermal Power Plant. 10 Wh is the average amount of energy required per day for a family of four.

“Once this battery is commercialized, we can lead the 47 trillion won worth, advanced energy storage devices market,” says Professor Youngsik Kim of Energy and Chemical Engineering at UNIST. “It will become one of the major growth engines in the future of our economy, contributing to the revitalization of the new energy industry.”

Professor Youngsik Kim started a venture, called ‘4 to One’ in 2015 and has been producing and selling coin-shaped seawater batteries and test kits. Professor Kim has also transferred the solid ceramic electrolyte synthesis technique, one of the core materials of seawater batteries to a local SME, Ce&Chem Co. Ltd. in 2015. The company now produces over 100,000 solid ceramic electrolytes annually.

Earlier today, UNIST has also signed a MOU with KEPCO and EWP to initiate the joint research on the commercialization of eco-friendly seawater batteries. On January 24th, UNIST also partook in a major new initiative to support Korea’s innovative entrepreneurs.

Chlorophyll, blood, and vitamin B12 are all based on the porphyrin molecule. But porphyrin can also be used as an electrode material where it speeds up the charging process of rechargeable batteries. In the “Angewandte Chemie International Edition” journal, researchers from KIT now present the new material system that could mark the beginning of an era of high-performance energy storage and supercapacitors.