Larger and More Reliable Batteries and the Means to Charge Them

­Welcome to the July issue!

We’ve just passed the official start of summer in the Northern Hemisphere (sorry, Antarctica!), and with kids home from school and the weather considerably less treacherous, we hope you’re able to enjoy the outdoors, and pull yourself away from the workbench long enough for an honest-to-goodness vacation!

Perhaps you’ll go for a road trip, and if so, you’re probably concerned with energy density and how far your EV can get on a single charge (and where you can stop along the way for a recharge).

Appropriately enough, the July issue covers “Batteries + Other Storage Devices,” and given how red hot the topic is, it’s seen no shortage of coverage in every corner of our publication, from product releases to technical features, and of course our blog section and PSDcasts (podcasts).

For example, we recently spoke to WiBotic regarding their collaboration with Astrobotic and NASA on flight testing of a wireless lunar charging system. Lunar explorers – especially long-term denizens – will have to contend with rough conditions and be mostly self-sufficient (swap “mostly” for “entirely” once we deign to send humans to Mars), and that includes power.

And I probably don’t need to explain the logistical and practical advantages of wireless over wired charging, especially on a completely different planetary body.

We also recently interviewed Mathworks about using modeling and simulation – which the company has ample experience in – to help develop more robust battery management systems.

Moving laterally to our blog section, we detailed a development where Chinese researchers have developed a method to recover 99.99% of the lithium, 96.8% of the nickel, 92.35% of the cobalt, and 90.59% of the manganese in spent lithium-ion batteries.

China leads the globe in rare earth element extraction (and are in the top 5 for lithium production), but they also hold a rather dubious distinction – the world’s biggest polluter.

So, the fact that this new method allows China to recover rare minerals from spent batteries in an environmentally - conscious manner is huge! They apparently do so using an amino acid (glycine), which cuts out harsh chemicals in the recycling process plus toxic byproducts.

Finally, I’d like to briefly mention one of several articles in this month’s Special Report, this one dealing with battery management system (BMS) transformers in energy storage systems.

Renewable energy sources like wind and solar are making larger energy storage systems a top priority. And as Samuel Lamprecht and Gerhard Stelzer from Würth Elektronik point out, larger energy storage systems “require a sophisticated battery management system (BMS) for reliable operation. BMS transformers can be used to insulate the components and improve the EMC properties.”

Enjoy the July issue!

Best Regards,

Jason Lomberg

North American Editor, PSD