New Development Could Make Zinc Batteries a Viable Alternative to Li-ion

­Zinc batteries have long been touted as an alternative to the undisputed king of energy storage, lithium-ion, though reliability issues have held them back. A new development from Linköping University, Sweden could change that.

We’re all familiar with lithium-ion batteries – the electrification of the automotive world and mass proliferation of portable electronics has created a higher demand for li-ion than at any point in history.

Costs have also come down considerably, though they do require rare metals like cobalt and nickel, amongst other glaring issues.

"While lithium-ion batteries are useful when handled correctly, they can be explosive, challenging to recycle, and problematic in terms of environmental and human rights issues when specific elements like cobalt are extracted," says Ziyauddin Khan, a researcher at the Laboratory of Organic Electronics at LiU.

Previously, zinc batteries have had to deal with the zinc reacting with the water in the battery's electrolyte solution, starting a reaction that effectively kills the device.

But LiU researchers used a substance called potassium polyacrylate based water-in-polymer salt electrolyte (WiPSE), and when combined with zinc and lignin, allows for high stability.

And while its energy density might be inferior to li-ion batteries, the zinc-lignin batteries are much cheaper and more plentiful.

According to the researchers, their new battery can achieve 8000 cycles, maintaining about 80% of its performance, and the battery retains its charge for about one week.

The researchers’ batteries are small, but because of the abundance of zinc and lignin, they foresee being able to upscale it to the size of a car battery.