Cambridge Researchers Create 'Breathing Battery' For Long-Distance Electric Cars

A group of scientists is set on giving electric cars the ability to achieve the same distances as their diesel-powered counterparts with the creation of a lithium-oxygen battery.

Chemical engineers at the University of Cambridge claim to have developed a "breathing battery" that is the first of its kind and can last for more than a few charge cycles, according to WIRED.

While the lithium anode in previously systems became clogged and didn't work because of the lithium reaction with the batteries' electrolyte, the team set out to fix that problem by adding a highly porous graphene electrode, which is made of one-atom-thick sheets of carbon atoms and an electrolyte made from the organic solvent dimethoxyethane, which is mixed with the salt lithium iodide. This makes lithium hydroxide, which decomposes easily when the battery is charged, the battery's main byproduct.

The density of lithium-ion batteries makes them the best bet for long-distance electric cars right now, as they don't have to carry around oxygen, one of their main ingredients, and lithium metal's low density allows them to, in theory, store as much energy per kilogram as a petrol engine, according to Nature. Researchers hope that such a battery could help an electric car travel as far as 800km before recharging.

However, some chemists have given up on developing batteries that provide greater driving ranges.

"Although the lithium-air battery has a high theoretical energy-storage capacity, in practice it is very difficult to achieve," said Prof. Clare Grey, senior author of the Cambridge team's study.

The demonstrator in the current prototype needs pure oxygen instead of air, WIRED noted. The team also needs to find a way to keep the electrode from growing lithium dendrites, which can cause the battery to short-circuit and even explode. First author Dr. Tao Liu said that while the battery still needs some improvements, "what we've seen here suggests that there are ways to solve these problems."

While the battery isn't ready to go on the market and the Cambridge team says that it will be another decade before a practical implementation is available, Grey said the invention marks a "significant advance" in electric car battery technology and could lead to "whole new areas of research."

"We haven't solved all the problems inherent to this chemistry, but our results do show routes forward towards a practical device," she added.

The Cambridge researchers published their work in the Oct. 30 issue of the journal Science.