Nickel-hydrogen batteries for large-scale energy storage

Abstract

Large-scale energy storage is of significance to the integration of renewable energy into electric grid. Despite the dominance of pumped hydroelectricity in the market of grid energy storage, it is limited by the suitable site selection and footprint impact. Rechargeable batteries show increasing interests in the large-scale energy storage; however, the challenging requirement of low-cost materials with long cycle and calendar life restricts most battery chemistries for use in the grid storage. Recently we introduced a concept of manganese-hydrogen battery with Mn 2+ /MnO 2 redox cathode paired with H + /H 2 gas anode, which has a long life of 10,000 cycles and with potential for grid energy storage. Here we expand this concept by replacing Mn 2+ /MnO 2 redox with a nickel-based cathode, which enables ∼10× higher areal capacity loading, reaching ∼35 mAh cm −2 . We also replace high-cost Pt catalyst on the anode with a low-cost, bifunctional nickel-molybdenumcobalt alloy, which could effectively catalyze hydrogen evolution and oxidation reactions in alkaline electrolyte. Such a nickel-hydrogen battery exhibits an energy density of ∼140 Wh kg −1 (based on active materials) in aqueous electrolyte and excellent rechargeability with negligible capacity decay over 1,500 cycles. The estimated cost of the nickel-hydrogen battery based on active materials reaches as low as ∼$83 per kilowatt-hour, demonstrating attractive characteristics for large-scale energy storage. battery | large-scale energy storage | hydrogen catalysts | nickel-hydrogen | nickel-molybdenum-cobalt F or renewable energy resources such as wind and solar to be competitive with traditional fossil fuels, it is crucial to develop large-scale energy storage systems to mitigate their intrinsic intermittency (1, 2). The cost (US dollar per kilowatt-hour; $ kWh −1 ) and long-term lifetime are the utmost critical figures of merit for large-scale energy storage (3-5). Currently, pumped-hydroelectric storage dominates the grid energy storage market because it is an inexpensive way (∼$100 kWh −1 ) to store large quantities of energy (accounts for more than 95% of global storage capacity) over a long period of time (∼50 y), but it is restricted by the lack of suitable sites and the environmental footprint (6). Other technologies such as compressed air and flywheel energy storage show some advantages for grid storage, but their relatively low efficiency and high cost need to be significantly improved (7). Rechargeable batteries offer great opportunities to target low-cost, high capacity, and highly reliable systems for large-scale energy storage (3). Representatives of the battery technologies include lead-acid (8), redoxflow (9), lithium-ion (10), sodium-sulfur (11), and liquid-metal (12); however, these existing technologies can hardly fulfill the overall economic requirements for the large utility market due to a variety of unsolved issues (2, 4, 7). Historically, conventional nickel-hydrogen battery shows outstanding rechargeability without capacity decay for ov...

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“…The cathode Mn 2+ /MnO 2 deposition/stripping reactions were initially demonstrated in the MnO 2 ‐H 2 battery by coupling it with a catalytic hydrogen gas anode as reported by Cui and coworkers. [ 76,142,143 ] The cathode reactions were conducted between soluble Mn 2+ and solid MnO 2 by reversible deposition/stripping, which is fundamentally different from the traditional solid‐state cathode reactions in the first generation Mn‐based batteries. The electrochemical reactions of the MnO 2 ‐H 2 battery can be described in the following: …”