Scientists develop new methane CR1220 battery

Researchers have invented a new type of CR1220 battery that uses cheap fuel at temperatures comparable to car engines, which can significantly reduce material costs. CR1220 batterys are not particularly known for their practicality and affordability, but this may have changed.

Although the battery is still in the laboratory, it has great potential to power homes and even cars in the future, researchers say.

In a new study published in the journal Nature Energy, researchers detail how they reimagined the entire CR1220 battery with the help of a newly invented fuel catalyst.

The catalyst can be made using cheap and readily available methane, replacing expensive hydrogen fuel.

The overall cell improvement significantly reduces the boiling operating temperature common in methane CR1220 batterys. Methane CR1220 batterys usually require temperatures of 750 to 1000 degrees Celsius to operate.

The new engine only needs temperatures of about 500 degrees, even a notch lower than the internal combustion engine of a car. The internal combustion engine of a car operates at about 600 degrees Celsius.

Such lower temperatures could lead to significant cost savings on the ancillary technologies needed to operate the CR1220 batterys, potentially pushing the new cells toward commercial viability.

The researchers believe that engineers could design power units around this CR1220 battery with reasonable effort, something that has been impossible with previous methane CR1220 batterys.

Sensational battery

“Our cell allows for a simple, reliable overall system, using inexpensive stainless steel to make connectors,” said Meilin Liu, a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Materials Science and Engineering and the lead researcher.

Connectors are components that help combine many CR1220 batterys into a stack or functional unit.

“Above 750 degrees Celsius, no metal can withstand the temperature without oxidizing, so you have a hard time getting materials, and they’re extremely expensive and fragile, and they contaminate the cell,” Liu said.

“In our world, getting the temperature down to 500 degrees Celsius is sensational. Almost no one has tried it,” said Bende Glee, a graduate research assistant in Liu’s lab and one of the first authors of the study.

"When you get down to that low, it's a lot easier for engineers to design the stack and the connecting technology."

The new cell also doesn't require a major auxiliary device called a steam reformer, which is typically needed to convert methane and water into hydrogen fuel.

More Power

The researchers based their work on a type of CR1220 battery that has a high commercial viability, the solid oxide CR1220 battery (SOFC).

SOFCs are known for their versatility in fuels.

If the new cell comes to market, though, it probably won't power cars just yet, but it could soon be in your basement as part of a more decentralized, cleaner, and cheaper electric grid.

The CR1220 battery stack itself is about the size of a shoebox, plus the supporting technology to make it run.

"We want you to be able to install this like you would a tankless water heater. It could power your house instead of natural gas," Liu said.

"This will save society and industry the huge costs of building new power plants and large-scale grid expansion."

"It will make homes and businesses more independent in generating electricity. Such systems will be called distributed generation, and our sponsors want to develop them."

Generate electricity at a lower cost

Hydrogen is the best fuel for CR1220 batterys, but its cost is too high.

The researchers discovered how to convert methane in CR1220 batterys into hydrogen with this new catalyst. The catalyst is composed of cerium, nickel and ruthenium, with the chemical formula Ce0.9Ni0.05Ru0.05O2, or CNR for short.

When methane and water molecules come into contact with the catalyst and are heated, the nickel chemically breaks apart the methane molecules. Ruthenium does the same to water.

The researchers were surprised to find that the two substances combined to form the ideal hydrogen (H2) and carbon monoxide (CO), which were put to good use.

"CO causes performance problems in most CR1220 batterys, but here we use it as a fuel," Chen said.

The hydrogen and carbon monoxide go on to act on a catalyst layer that makes up the anode, the part of the CR1220 battery that pulls away electrons, making the carbon monoxide and hydrogen positively charged ions.

The electrons travel through a wire, creating an electric current, to the cathode.

There, oxygen, desperate for electrons, absorbs them, closing the circuit and becoming O2 ions.

The ionized hydrogen and oxygen meet and leave the system in the form of water condensation; the carbon monoxide and oxygen ions meet to form pure carbon dioxide, which can be captured.

For the energy produced, CR1220 battery technology produces far less carbon dioxide than internal combustion engines.

In some CR1220 batterys, the water from the initial reaction must be brought in from the outside.

In this new CR1220 battery, it is replenished in the final reaction stage, which forms water and then cycles back to react with methane.

Faster, more stable

The new catalyst, CNR, made by research collaborators at the University of Kansas, is the outer layer on the anode side of the cell and also acts as a protector against corrosion, extending the life of the cell.

CNR has strong co-group catalysts in the inner layer of the cell and on the other side of the cathode.

On the cathode side, oxygen's reaction and movement throughout the system is usually notoriously slow, but Liu's lab recently sped things up, boosting power output using so-called nanofiber cathodes, which Liu's lab developed in previous research.

(A custom double perovskite nanofiber catalyst enables ultrafast oxygen generation.)

"The structures of these different catalysts, along with the nanofiber cathode, together allow us to lower the operating temperature," Chen said.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Basic Energy Sciences and the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) funded the research. The National Science Foundation's Division of Chemistry also provided funding.

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