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A backup power fuel cell for telecom applications. Credit: Kathy Fosberg; Wikipedia.

Lux Research continues to track materials and tech prospects as closely as anyone I know, and two recent reports show they still don’t shy away from touting the apparent winners and losers in many advanced materials and energy-related markets, including many out-of-the spotlight niche markets.

For example, one of Lux’s new dispatches, “Off-grid: A modest meal for starving storage developers,” offers some bullish opinions for makers of lithium-ion battery, fuel cell, flywheels and ultracapacitors — with compounded annual growth rates over the next five year of up to 23 percent—if engineers and entrepreneurs are bold and pursue the right off-grid (e.g., backup power storage) niches. (I should note that Lux’s lumping in fuel cells along side storage technologies is a little misleading because FCs don’t really store power, but serve as efficient power generators. Like diesel generators, FCs can serve in a valuable role as an off-grid energy source — as long as there is fuel available.)

Here are some of the research group’s key assertions:

• With improved cycle life and energy density compared to lead-acid batteries, lithium-ion will see narrow penetration into the high-end datacenter market. It sees these batteries taking 6.8 percent of unlimited power supply field and 5.8 percent of telecom backup field by 2016, with a CAGR of 23 percent. Furthermore, it says that if Li-ion developers possibly can make even larger inroads if they can trim costs by about

  a third, to $400/kWh, and demonstrate improved lifetimes.

• Lux says flywheels and ultracapacitors can play an important but supplemental role in the UPS market, capturing 10% of the datacenter UPS market by 2016. Low maintenance costs, reliability and good power density are factors that work in their favor. “Flywheels will grow from $49 million in 2011 to $104 million in 2016 (a 16 percent CAGR), while ultracapacitors will expand from a base of $88 million to $248 million in 2016 (a 23 percent CAGR),” says Lux in a news release.
• Finally, Lux has good news and bad news for fuel cells. The company says the good news is that the potential is strong and growing in the off-grid telecom market. They say sales will move from $536 million in 2011 to $1.3 billion in 2016, a 22% CAGR. The bad news is that there are a lot of players in this tech space and the off-grid opportunities, and Lux predicts the situation will lead “to fierce competition and consolidation.”

Moving on to Lux’s other report, “The platinum devolution: Reducing expensive platinum group metals in catalysis,”  the company looks at efforts to bring to market technologies that reduce the need for PGMs in automotive, hydrocarbon processing and fuel cell applications. Unlike the market focus of the off-grid storage report, this one “compares the start-ups and technologies offering to reduce or replace PGMs such as platinum, palladium, and rhodium. It also explores companies and technologies aiming to help catalysts better withstand harsh conditions, extend their active lifetimes, accelerate their rates of reaction, or improve overall performance.”

For example, Lux likes two companies in the automotive catalyst space: SDCmaterials and Nanostellar. It says, “Both firms boast strong technical solutions as well as solid partnerships, BASF and Volvo for SDCmaterials and several undisclosed European automakers for Nanostellar.” SDCmaterials also makes high-performance additives for body armor. Nanostellar has its roots in Stanford University and NASA Ames Research Center.

Lux mentions that its opinion of another company it regarded highly, Headwaters Technology Innovation Group, has slipped a little because of a missed a few milestones. HTI has a palladium catalyst for hydrogen peroxide production and a more efficient oil refining catalyst.

Meanwhile, Lux raises concerns about one company it had high hopes for, Catalytic Solutions. It says the firm’s revenues, once relatively high, have been dropping the past two years, and it “recently lost an automaker customer after its core technology failed to meet a required performance standard.” CS has what it calls “Mixed Phase Catalyst Technology” that uses ceramic oxide catalytic substrate coatings that contain “patented mixed-metal oxides, produced from combinations of low-cost materials that form active and stable ceramic oxides when fired at high temperatures. In certain applications, the coatings use small amounts of platinum group metals together with inexpensive transition metals and lanthanides.”

By the way, Lux Research analyst Kevin See will be one of the featured speakers at the upcoming Ceramic Leadership Summit. See will be doing a presentation on “The Market Outlook for Energy-Related Technologies.”

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Chiang at 2009 Materials Challenge for Alternative and
Renewable Energy meeting. Credit: ACerS.

When I interviewed Yet Ming Chiang, one of the brains behind A123 System’s lithium-ion battery technology, in 2009, he recalled a time when business opportunities weren’t yet a major interest:

“So, as the academic researcher, I wasn’t involved in A123 for my business acumen, right? But what happened was that my other co-founder, Ric Fulop, catalyzed the whole thing by coming to my office one day and announcing to me that he was interested in developing a venture based on new battery technology, and he wanted to know if I was working on anything that had that potential. What he really did when he arrived at my office was to prompt me to start to commercialize things that I might otherwise have waited longer to do, waited for a higher level of development . . . Part of the pitch [to venture capital companies] is, how do you convince an investor that even the technical guys understand what the impact of this can be? Over time the boundaries blurred a great deal. Ric became an expert in the technology very quickly, and I learned a lot about the business side, and it was mutually beneficial. So, I was able to help with the business development side as well as the technology.

Indeed, it became news in a conference call last week that Chiang and A123 Systems are working with venture investors on spin-off project to develop a new lithium-based battery design on flow battery principles. The new business is called 24M Technologies. According to a story by Technology Review, the name is a reference to 24 molar, a “concentration levels that Chiang cryptically calls ‘technically significant’ to the company.”

I shed more light on the “24 molar” reference below, although coincidentally there is a old chemistry joke:

Q: How do you make a 24-molar solution?
A: Put your artificial teeth in water.

Chiang, an ACerS member, tells TR that the new battery technology – initially developed at A123 and improved upon at MIT – involves a semisolid design that could cut production costs by 85 percent.

Chiang also tells TR that the battery design incorporates some concepts and elements of traditional batteries, fuel cells and flow batteries. He is quoted as saying, “In a typical rechargeable battery, only half of it is actual energy-storing materials. The rest is supporting materials. . . That’s a problem I’ve been thinking about for years – how do you improve the efficiency of the design?”

If his thinking goes back years, it might be worth noting that Chiang’s original battery concepts - before A123 – involved controlling colloid chemistry to get batteries to self organize. He thinks of self organization in the sense that the cathode and anode materials might repel themselves and spontaneously form an electrochemical junction. At the time, the hard part, for Chiang, was finding materials for the positive side of the junction. He spent a lot of time looking at olivines, “because,” he told me, “of all of the compounds, they were known to be useful as electrode materials. We screened them and found they had useful refractive indexes. So, that led to some work we did looking at olivines - lithium-ion phosphate, lithium manganese phosphate, nickel cobalt phosphate, that family of compounds - in order to see if we could use the properties in a way to produce a self-organizing system. In the end, we were able to produce an interesting laboratory demonstration of that concept. It has not proceeded, at this point, to full-scale device development.”

Building on this – and more on point – Chiang and three others at MIT filed a fascinating patent in 2009 regarding a design of a “redox flow” battery with a semisolid electrode:

“Redox flow devices are described in which at least one of the positive electrode or negative electrode-active materials is a semisolid or is a condensed ion-storing electroactive material, and in which at least one of the electrode-active materials is transported to and from an assembly at which the electrochemical reaction occurs, producing electrical energy. The electronic conductivity of the semisolid is increased by the addition of conductive particle to suspensions and the surface modification of the solid in semisolids: coating the solid with a more electron conductive coating material to increase the power of the device. High energy density and high power redox flow devices are disclosed.

. . .

“By “semisolid” it is meant that the material is a mixture of liquid and solid phases, for example, such as a slurry, particle suspension, colloidal suspension, emulsion, gel, or micelle. “Condensed ion-storing liquid” or “condensed liquid” means that the liquid is not merely a solvent as it is in the case of an aqueous flow cell catholyte or anolyte, but rather, that the liquid is itself redox-active. Of course, such a liquid form may also be diluted by or mixed with another, non-redox-active liquid that is a diluent or solvent, including mixing with such a diluent to form a lower-melting liquid phase, emulsion or micelles including the ion-storing liquid.”

Redox flow batteries are also known as a “flow cells” or “reversible fuel cells.” They are energy storage devices in which the positive and negative electrode reactants are soluble metal ions in liquid solution that are oxidized or reduced during the operation of the cell. Using two reversible redox couples, liquid state redox reactions are carried out at the positive and negative electrodes. In a flow battery, the nonelectrochemically active components at which the redox reactions take place and electrons are transported to or from the external circuit are known as electrodes, whereas in a conventional primary or secondary battery they are known as current collectors.

The patent goes on to describe a device that includes a storage tank for storing a flowable semisolid or condensed liquid ion-storing redox composition. The storage tank is in “flow communication” with the redox flow energy storage device using a peristaltic pump to transport the fluid. (A peristaltic pump is what you’ve seen used in hospitals with IV medicines: A roller moves along a length of flexible tubing, so that the fluid inside the tubing never comes into contact with anything outside of the tubing.)

The patent goes on to say that the the flowable semisolid or condensed liquid ion-storing redox composition provides a specific energy of more than about 150 Wh/kg at a total energy of less than about 50 kWh; 200 Wh/kg at total energy less than about 100 kWh; or 250 Wh/kg at total energy less than about 300 kWh.

The patent seems to address the mystery of the “24M” name:

One distinction between a conventional flow battery anolyte and catholyte and the ion-storing solid or liquid phases as exemplified herein is the molar concentration or molarity of redox species in the storage compound. For example, conventional anolytes or catholytes that have redox species dissolved in aqueous solution may be limited in molarity to typically 2M to 8M concentration. Highly acidic solutions may be necessary to reach the higher end of this concentration range. By contrast, any flowable semi-solid or condensed liquid ion-storing redox composition as described herein may have, when taken in moles per liter or molarity, at least 10M concentration of redox species, preferably at least 12M, still preferably at least 15M, and still preferably at least 20M.

I deduce here that, apparently, the sweet spot is at 24M.

In the recent conference call with investment analysts, A123 officials described the new battery design as a “significant long-term project” and a “significant change from lithium ion technology.” They said they spun off the new company to “get enough focused management time and funding to get it move aggressively to marketplace. By using VC funding and management approach, probability of success will be much greater in a short period of time.”

One surprise, however, is that they see the new flow battery not just for electric vehicles but more importantly as a low-cost energy storage solution for the electric grid. The new company has already received $10 million in funding from private investors and $6 million from ARPA-E.

Adding: For reference purposes, the estimated weight of the battery for a Nissan Leaf is ~660+ pounds.

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The Obama administration seems to have decided to let others share some of the Department of Energy’s glory and let Vice President Joe Biden and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke make the official announcement that DOE is preparing to release funds to develop the “Smart Grid.” Biden and Locke said the DOE is moving to quickly distribute nearly $3.4 billion for grid technology grants and $615 million for grid storage and monitoring.

The duo also announced that some sort of grid summit meeting will be held in nation’s capital around May 19-20. Smartly, it sounds like Energy Secretary Steven Chu will use the meeting to put national media focus on the benefits an advanced energy grid, plus put the squeeze on key private sector groups to unite around a set of standards so that the nation doesn’t end up with a lot of wasted talent going into a Blu-Ray versus HD DVD-type of competition.

According to the DOE, “industry leaders at the meeting will be expected to pledge to harmonize industry standards critical to developing the smart grid, commit to a timetable to reach a standards agreement and abide by the standards devised.”

There is a direct link to the Department of Commerce in this. NIST falls under the department’s purview and NIST has already been given the responsibility to facilitate the creation of grid standards.

Obviously, the idea is to think broadly and relatively far down the technology line so that the next grid generation is fully and easily capable of integrating existing and yet-unthought-of renewable energy sources with the electrical grid, in addition to having mega- and micromanagement features for both industry and consumers.

The $3.375 billion is being paid out under the DOE’s “Smart Grid Investment Grant Program.” The department says it is willing to tailor grant sizes to $500,000 to $20 million for large-scale grid technology items. The $615 million will be doled out in cost-sharing grants of $100,000 to $5 million for grid monitoring, energy storage and regional projects, and the agency is requiring a minimum 50-50 cost share. In either case, the DOE says grant proposals will be weighed using a competitive, merit-based process.

Currently, there isn’t a lot of detail about funding priorities for the large program, however more information is available about DOE’s interests in the smaller pool of funds. According to preliminary grant information, the DOE will be looking at “regionally unique demonstrations to verify smart grid technology viability, quantify smart grid costs and benefits, and validate new smart grid business models, at a scale that can be readily adapted and replicated around the country.” Ultimately, the DOE says it wants the regional projects to “embody essential and salient characteristics of each region and present a suite of use cases for national implementation and replication.”

Funding will be limited to three types of demonstration projects:

•    Regional demonstrations (smart grid costs and benefits, technology viability and new business models);

•    Utility-scale energy storage demonstrations (advanced battery systems, ultracapacitors, flywheels and compressed air energy systems) and congestion relief;

•    Grid monitoring demonstrations (phase measurement units).

Lastly, the DOE says the projects should be collaborations among utility companies, products and services suppliers, end users and state and municipal governments.

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