Skip to content

iron-ion battery from India

Batteries power our phones, gadgets, and even cars are powered by Lithium-Ion batteries.

Lithium-Ion battery tech has its own drawbacks — price being one of them, and threat of overheat during rapid charging.

A team at IIT Madras has developed the world’s first ‘iron-ion’ battery as they call. The battery is made using an anode made from low-carbon steel along with a cathode of vanadium pentoxide that will facilitate the movement of the iron ion thanks to its larger gap. Also, the iron-ion battery is also equipped with an electrolyte made using iron chlorate. 

When compare with a conventional lithium-ion battery, not only is it cheaper to manufacture, it also consists of better storage capacity while being more stable. 

Moreover, manufacturing lithium-ion batteries can only be done in a controlled environment, due to its highly sensitive and volatile nature. Iron-ion batteries require nothing of that sort and can be manufactured at ambient environments.

However still there are issues, mainly the power retention after multiple charge cycles. Researchers tested the performance of iron ions battery for 150 cycles (charging and discharging) where it revealed decent stability numbers with 54 percent capacity retention at the end of 50 cycles. As for Li-ion stands well even over 2,000 cycles as we experience.

Sure they are working to get the performance numbers close to if not more than what we’re getting from lithium-ion batteries these days. 

Source: https:Indiatimes.com

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *