The Lithium-Hydrogen Gas battery cell operates through redox of H2/H+ on the cathode and Li/Li+ on the anode. The universal properties of the H2 cathode enable the battery to demonstrate attractive electrochemical performance, including high theoretical specific energy up to 2825 Wh kg−1, discharge voltage of 3 V, round-trip efficiency of 99.7 %, reversible areal capacity of 5–20 mAh cm−2, all-climate characteristics with a wide operational temperature range of −20–80 °C, and high utilization of active materials.
Note: as with all early research on new chemistries, claims about the resultant metrics should be viewed with care as scaling the cell and adding all of the requirements for normal operation in a system can have a significant impact.
The benefits of the cell are:
- uses two of the lightest elements
- high discharge voltage
- good round trip efficiency
Challenges that we need to understand further:
- hydrogen is flammable
- hydrogen is difficult to contain
Hence at this point this is very interesting lab based research.
This post has been built based on the support and sponsorship from: Thermo Fisher Scientific, Eatron Technologies and About:Energy
References
- Dr. Zaichun Liu, Yirui Ma, Nawab Ali Khan, Dr. Taoli Jiang, Dr. Zhengxin Zhu, Dr. Ke Li, Dr. Kai Zhang, Dr. Shuang Liu, Zehui Xie, Dr. Yuan Yuan, Dr. Mingming Wang, Dr. Xinhua Zheng, Dr. Jifei Sun, Weiping Wang, Yahan Meng, Dr. Yan Xu, Dr. Mingyan Chuai, Prof. Jinlong Yang, Prof. Wei Chen, Rechargeable Lithium-Hydrogen Gas Batteries, Angewandte Chemie International Edition, German Chemical Society
- USTC Develops High-Performance Rechargeable Lithium-hydrogen Gas Batteries, University of Science and Technology of China
See also: Early & Passive Thermal Runaway Detection, Gas Sensing