The post Our Use of Lithium-Ion Batteries Comes With a Big Caveat – Fire appeared first on Techso Mogro.
]]>Lithium-ion batteries are used in electric vehicles (EVs), 70% of the total by energy capacity, in stationary energy storage, 15%, and in portable electronics, 5%. That latter percentage includes smartphones. Usage since 2020 has increased 600%.
In 2024, consumer electronic devices containing lithium-ion units equalled 1.2 billion units, of which 45% were smartphones, 30% laptops, 15% tablets, and 10% wearables.
That’s a lot of batteries that, over time, can begin to degrade. It’s also a growing fire threat.
Several years ago, my wife’s Samsung smartphone began showing sporadic changes in retained charge. Overnight, while plugged in, the phone got hot and the back, where the battery’s anode was located, separated from the screen, producing a visible gap.
A second smartphone saga happened recently while I was on vacation. This time, it was my Google Pixel 7a that suddenly lost its charge. It got hot and then cooled down. I left it plugged in overnight to recharge. In the morning, the phone’s back casing had cracked, leaving two large bumps.
Why are smartphones powered by lithium-ion batteries potentially susceptible to overheating? The phones are thin and have a small form factor. There is little room to dissipate the heat. A 2021 CBC News report noted that smartphones topped the list of fires caused by electronic devices. A 2025 ABC News item reported 25,000 runaway overheating and fire incidents in smartphones over 5 years. That same story mentioned U.S. product safety agencies reporting increasing incidents of household fires from smartphone batteries or chargers overheating.
When lithium-ion batteries age or get damaged, a chain reaction can start, with the batteries reaching hundreds of degrees Celsius during incidents. What’s happening to cause this? As the batteries age, the anodes can produce surface dendrites, akin to the stalactites seen in limestone caves. Instead of these growths being made of calcium carbonate, the ones batteries produce are stray lithium filaments, which form unevenly on the anode surface as hot spots form. Phone use, particularly apps that are energy-intensive, causes the dendrites to grow. They can get so large that they penetrate the interphase layer that separates the anode from the battery cathode. That leads to short circuits, sudden battery discharge, and in some cases, runaway overheating.
A recent report from Argon Electronics, a United Kingdom company that creates training simulators focused on first responders when handling hazardous chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear material threats, states:
“When lithium-ion batteries fail, they don’t follow the usual script. They behave differently, and that’s where the risk starts to build.”
With the growth in lithium-ion battery use, Argon sees an increased need for its simulators to train clients about these types of fires. The latest press release describes the onset of a lithium-ion runaway event:
“It usually doesn’t begin with anything dramatic. A hiss. Maybe a sharp pop. Sometimes just a thin plume of grey-white smoke from something that, at first glance, doesn’t seem capable of causing much trouble. Then the temperature climbs. Gases begin to build. And what you thought you were dealing with a moment earlier shifts into something else entirely, often before anyone has had time to take stock.”
Felipe Arrighi, Director of Business Development at Argon, states:
“People still tend to frame these as ‘just fires,’ and they’re not. Once thermal runaway starts, you’re dealing with gas release, pressure, sometimes reignition. It behaves differently, has a life of its own. If you haven’t seen it before, it can throw you.”
What gas can come from a lithium-ion fire? Runaway overheating can produce hydrogen fluoride and carbon monoxide, along with fire and smoke. In enclosed or poorly ventilated spaces, these elements are life-threatening.
Only recently have regulations started to catch up in recognition of the growing volume of lithium-ion battery usage. In the United States, the US National Fire Protection Association has added new standards for firefighters, placing a greater emphasis on gas monitoring and detection. Typically, training videos are circulated. Arrighi explains that videos don’t cut it. He notes:
“You’re not making decisions, you’re not reading your detectors, you’re not dealing with the pressure of it, developing your sense of situational awareness or muscle memory. That’s the bit that stays with you.”
If you remember Apollo 13, you can appreciate the importance of using simulations for training, particularly when a crisis unfolds. Even though the scenario had never been anticipated, in the case of the Apollo astronauts, replicating what they faced on board allowed NASA to improvise several solutions to save the mission from disaster.
In that tradition, Argon is creating simulators to create scenarios as close to real as possible for training people down here on Earth when responding to hazards, including lithium-ion combustion threats. The Argon simulators build familiarity to address whatever happens in real-world situations. Argon’s Long Range Vapour Sources (LRVS) simulates gas release and dispersion. And while no simulation can perfectly replicate what a lithium-ion fire produces, the LRVS comes as close to anything responders will face in the field.
Some Argon users have even used lithium battery scenarios to simulate battery leaks, producing thermal imaging heat signatures. These scenarios, combined with Argon’s Generic MultiGAS, create highly realistic and memorable training experiences.
Lithium-ion batteries aren’t going away. Demand is projected to rise for the following reasons:
Asian-based companies dominate lithium-ion battery manufacturing, with China representing 75% of the total EV battery market today. The remainder in Asia comes from South Korea and Japan. In North America and Europe, Tesla and other automotive manufacturers represent the majority of lithium-ion battery manufacturers and integrators.
Less-established Chinese suppliers present potential quality risks as these companies have sprung up in response to lithium-ion battery demand. The biggest issues relate to undisclosed material changes during manufacturing.
Many consumer electronics and EV battery recalls have happened because of the high demand and high growth of the lithium-ion battery market. Hence, there is a commensurate need for greater training for emergency responders who will likely see far more lithium-ion fires in the future.
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]]>The post Energy Storage Plays a Critical Role in Today’s Transportation Systems appeared first on Techso Mogro.
]]>In this, her second posting, she writes about electrified transportation and the role of energy storage to ensure continuity of service.
As always, your comments are welcome here.
Transportation is in the middle of a structural transformation. Across rail, urban transit, and aviation, systems that once relied almost entirely on fossil fuels are being re–engineered around electrification. The shift promises lower emissions, quieter operation, and improved efficiency, but it also places unprecedented demands on energy storage.
Unlike consumer electronics, transportation systems cannot malfunction without consequences. Trains cannot stall mid–route. Buses cannot lose power in traffic. Aircraft cannot afford the uncertainty about available energy. In these environments, reliability is not a feature; rather, it is the foundation on which safety rests.
The challenge, then, is not necessarily about how much energy can be stored, but how predictably, safely, and transparently that energy can be delivered under real–world conditions.
In consumer technology, a depleted battery may be an inconvenience. In transportation systems, however, energy failure is expensive. Compromised propulsion, braking, signalling, communications, or onboard safety controls increase the risk of service disruptions, equipment damage, or even injury or death.
This elevated risk fundamentally changes how storage solutions need to be designed, tested, and maintained. Safety–critical systems must operate within narrow tolerances. Energy delivery must remain stable across fluctuating loads, temperature extremes, vibration, and long duty cycles. Sudden voltage drops, thermal runaway, or unpredictable degradation are unacceptable risks.
As a result, transportation energy storage systems are engineered conservatively. Designers often prioritize known behaviour and fault tolerance over cutting–edge performance. Innovation still happens, but it happens incrementally, with extensive validation under worst–case conditions.
These safety–driven design principles are clearly visible in high–speed rail networks across Asia, where energy storage is used not to extend range or autonomy, but to stabilize already electrified systems.
Japan’s Shinkansen system relies primarily on overhead power, but energy storage plays a crucial supporting role. When trains decelerate, regenerative braking captures excess energy that would otherwise be lost as heat. Wayside storage absorbs that energy and releases it when nearby trains accelerate, smoothing demand spikes and reducing stress on substations.
China’s high–speed rail network applies the same logic at a larger scale. Stationary battery systems near substations manage peak loads and provide short–term resilience during grid disturbances.
In both cases, storage functions as a buffer rather than a primary power source. Redundancy, isolation, and continuous monitoring ensure that a single failure does not propagate through the network.
Across all transportation modes, one core challenge dominates energy storage design: balancing energy density and safety.
Higher energy density enables longer range and greater flexibility, but it also increases thermal and chemical risks. In safety–critical systems, designers often accept lower energy density in exchange for clearer failure modes and better control.
Materials are chosen for stability rather than sheer power or capacity. Cooling systems, containment structures, and monitoring sensors add layers of protection but also increase weight and complexity.
These tradeoffs are intentional. In transportation, the cost of failure far outweighs the benefits of marginal efficiency gains.
Nowhere are energy storage challenges more visible (or more constrained) than in aviation.
As with other forms of transportation, aircraft battery systems are designed with strict limits on charge rates, temperature ranges, and discharge behaviour. But while buses and trains can more readily sacrifice efficiency and power for safety, airplanes require both a higher standard of safety and power to address higher speeds and altitude.
For example, electric and hybrid aircraft promise quieter operation and lower emissions, but current battery technology struggles to meet aviation’s energy density requirements. Even short–range electric aircraft operate with tight margins, where every kilogram of battery weight reduces payload or range.
As a result, electrified aviation is advancing cautiously. Most current deployments focus on training aircraft, urban air mobility, and short regional routes.
Transportation energy storage systems operate in environments that are rarely ideal. Heat, cold, moisture, dust, vibration, and mechanical shock all accelerate degradation and increase the risk of failure.
Designers address these realities through robust housings, shock isolation, thermal management, and conservative operating limits. Testing extends far beyond laboratory conditions, simulating years of real–world service before deployment.
These environmental demands help explain why safety–critical transportation relies on proven technologies and incremental improvements rather than rapid experimentation.
Nowhere are the effects of environmental stress more apparent than in urban transportation networks across North America and Europe, where electric buses, trams, and light rail systems operate under constant physical and operational strain across long distances and in different climates.
Urban vehicles face relentless vibration from uneven roads, frequent stop–and–go cycles, wide temperature swings, and near–continuous daily operation. Unlike long–haul systems that can tolerate downtime, city transit must perform reliably from early morning to late night, often with minimal margin for failure.
As a result, electric buses in cities such as London, Paris, Vancouver, and Los Angeles are engineered around known routes and known stress profiles. For example, operators rely on carefully managed charging strategies, like overnight depot charging supplemented by opportunity charging at route endpoints, to reduce battery weight while maintaining dependable service.
Modern safety–critical systems rely heavily on monitoring and diagnostics to manage energy storage risk. Sensors continuously track voltage, temperature, and load behaviour, feeding data into control systems that can intervene if anomalies appear.
This real–time visibility enables predictive maintenance. Instead of waiting for a failure, operators can identify gradual degradation and replace components proactively. This approach reduces unexpected downtime and enhances safety, but it also increases system complexity and data management requirements.
Diagnostics themselves must be reliable. False positives can cause unnecessary service interruptions, while false negatives can allow dangerous conditions to go undetected. Designing monitoring systems that strike the right balance is an ongoing challenge.
Energy storage in transportation systems is subject to extensive regulation. Certification authorities require detailed documentation covering design assumptions, testing protocols, failure modes, and maintenance procedures. Compliance is not optional and often determines whether a system can be deployed at all.
Regulatory frameworks evolve slowly, which can create tension with rapidly advancing storage technologies. Manufacturers must demonstrate that new solutions meet existing safety standards, even when those standards were written for older designs.
This oversight adds cost and time to development, but it also provides a critical safety net. Thorough certification processes ensure that storage systems entering service have been evaluated rigorously, reducing systemic risk across transportation networks.
The challenges faced by safety–critical transportation systems offer valuable lessons for broader energy storage use.
Advances will likely focus on smarter management, improved materials stability, and better integration between storage and control systems rather than dramatic leaps in capacity alone. Systems designed with these principles will tend to last longer, fail less often, and inspire greater trust.
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]]>The post Earth Day and the Carbon Removal Conundrum: Part 3 appeared first on Techso Mogro.
]]>We posed the five questions appearing below and attempted to answer most of them in Part 2.
In Part 3, we will endeavour to deal with the remaining issues not covered in the previous two segments and ask two additional questions:
For question 4 above, and these last two questions, the current answer for all is no. The global commitment, the technology and economic conditions are running counter to the execution of what we need to address global warming effectively.
If you are currently working in the fossil fuel industry, the latest Middle East conflict points to the critical value of the job you do and the products you produce for the global economy. Here in the third decade of the 21st century, the planet runs on your products, even though competition from renewable energy is rapidly on the rise.
Why is that? Modern economies are driven by growth. Developing Nations want what Developed Nations already have. That means the demand for more energy is accelerating. For fossil fuel companies, this “put the pedal to the metal mindset” is music to their ears. So, more oil and natural gas are needed. More coal is needed. More coal and gas-fired power plants are needed.
The Strait of Hormuz closing has produced a windfall for fossil fuel companies as geopolitics are raising the price for oil and natural gas. The closing has put a major chokepoint in place from which approximately a quarter of oil and natural gas is exported to world markets.
At the same time, national governments, climatologists and environmentalists are pointing to the growing global warming and ocean acidification crises. In an article I read this week, it stated that the first tipping point from burning fossil fuels has already been passed, describing the bleaching of 80% of warm-water coral reefs this year. Add to this the current predictions of a Pacific Ocean super El Niño this summer and 2026 being the warmest year on record. For Earth’s natural systems, it appears that global economic growth is turning into a disease unless we change how we grow.
Growth and prosperity are noble aspirations, but unless both can be achieved with environmental sustainability front and centre, they will lead to foreseeable, destructive consequences.
For fossil fuel providers, they envision carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) as their future “get-out-of-jail” card. With it, they can continue to seek oil and natural gas and supply it to the world. Maybe the coal can go, but liquid fossil fuels will still power the planet.
This presupposes that CCS can absorb the greenhouse gas (GHG) fossil fuel industries produce, and create a net-zero, or even a negative-zero emissions future.
In December 2024, I wrote a blog post on global CCS capacity. That year, CCS capacity was 51 million tons, up 2 million from 2023. Total capacity projections showed growth to 435 million tons by 2030. At the time, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was advocating in its latest report for CCS levels to hit 900 million tons.
The 2025 Global Status of CCS Report, described as the flagship site for the technology, indicates 77 projects operating. That’s a 54% increase over 2024, with 47 under construction, 610 in development and 106 projects in the pipeline. Total CCS projects operational or in development have reached 734, up 17% over the previous year.
How much CO₂ capture capacity is now in place? Currently, CCS projects can capture 64 million tons. Based on projects in the pipeline, capture capacity will reach 337 million tons by 2030.
The above numbers sound encouraging until you account for the annual GHG emissions produced. Data from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) show current annual emissions between 37 and 42 billion tons of CO₂ or equivalent GHGs (methane and nitrous oxide).
Fossil fuel combustion is responsible for 89 to 90% of the total. That number stands at a record high and is not expected to go down soon. In fact, it’s going the other way with projections pointing to 50 to 56 billion tons of CO₂ or equivalent GHGs by 2030, still with most coming from fossil fuels.
The scale of CCS technology buildout is well beyond the current pace of project development as described above. What we would need is over 80,000 CCS working sites, each capturing 625,000 tons annually. The current average capacity of the 77 operational sites averages 649,350 tons. So the slightly smaller capacity fits with current CCS operations. Based on the current average cost per CCS project, the industry and government would need to invest between US$ 18 and 23 trillion to make this a reality.
The last question we asked was whether the conditions were favourable for carbon capture and removal today. With that comes the question of whether market mechanisms can facilitate the rapid deployment of CCS globally?
Clearly, based on rising temperatures, sea levels, and ocean acidification, the environmental conditions favour CCS. But does the market?
Attempts to price carbon have shown signs of life recently, even though a major player, Canada, has ended consumer pricing for CO₂.
Carbon pricing coverage around the planet continues to be patchy and widely variable. Current effective pricing comes from Europe: Sweden at €116 price per ton of CO₂, and the European Union at €100.
Elsewhere, however, market pricing is widely variable while low. For example, Mexico’s price is US$ 3, and China’s is $12 per ton of CO₂.
Current CCS operating projects put the needed price per ton of CO₂ at $290. As more sites are built, they will need pricing at $60 to $110 per ton of CO₂ or GHG equivalents. This price reflects the expected declining costs per project as CCS technologies scale up.
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]]>The post Energy Stories: Solar Cells, Liquid Sun and Quantum Batteries appeared first on Techso Mogro.
]]>The immediate winners in this latest conflict are developers of solar cells, batteries, wind turbines, and the nuclear industry. Here are some of the latest new energy stories that don’t involve oil and gas, and I hope, whet your appetite.
In Japan, Kyushu University researchers are breaking through the current ceiling of solar cell conversion efficiency, surpassing current highs of 33% for silicon and 34% for perovskite-silicon tandem cells.
Using molybdenum-based spin-flip (SF) emitters, these new solar cells are achieving 100% energy yields, describing that threshold as a fundamental limit, and with quantum yields exceeding 130%.
SF emitters use a specialized metal complex that flips and spins to capture photons, converting the entire spectrum of light, something conventional solar cells cannot do. Silicon and perovskite-silicon cells do not convert the infrared end of the spectrum from light to electricity. They also convert the heat emitted from high-energy blue light to electricity, something conventional solar cell technologies cannot do.
SF emitters, therefore, unlike older solar cell technology, go beyond the “one photon to one exciton rule.” Yoichi Sasaki, in the Faculty of Engineering at Kyushu University, notes that using SF generates two excitons by splitting a single photon into two lower-energy excitons, hence doubling the energy yield.
Overcoming energy loss required the researchers to experiment with different metal complexes engineered precisely to the molecular level. They chose a molybdenum-based SF emitter that harvested energy at an amplified ratio of 1.3:1, or 130% energy yield for every single photon absorbed.
The researchers plan to integrate their SF emitters into future solar cells and LEDs. You can read their recently published paper in the March 25, 2026, edition of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Researchers at UC Santa Barbara have synthesized an organic molecule to capture photonic energy and store it, releasing it on demand as heat. They call their invention MOST, or Molecular Solar Thermal reusable storage.
MOST stores energy from sunlight during the day and releases it as heat. Derived from pyrimidone, a molecule that is structurally similar to uracil, one of the four base pairs that make up DNA, it is used today in antipsychotics like risperidone and statins, like rosuvastatin, a drug I take daily to manage my cholesterol.
Pyrimidone is soluble in liquid and achieves high energy densities, storing 1.6 megajoules per kilogram, or 0.69 BTUs per pound. When switched on, it produces enough heat to boil water.
When pumped through rooftop solar collectors, pyrimidone can store energy and release it as heat at night. Other applications include off-grid heating and cooking.
This is solar energy storage without a lithium-ion or other chemical battery. It can store energy long-term with a half-life of 1,240 days. You can read more by accessing the original research paper that appeared in the February 2026 edition of the journal Science.
University of Melbourne, RMIT University and Australia’s national science agency (CSIRO) announced in March 2026 that they had created a quantum battery prototype that leverages quantum mechanics rather than chemistry. It is tiny and currently can hold a minuscule charge for a few nanoseconds. The promise comes in upsizing. That’s because of a fundamental quantum effect that is completely counterintuitive. Quantum batteries charge faster, the larger they get, which is unlike conventional battery storage technology today. So, double the size and use only half the time to charge the battery.
Dr. James Quach, at CSIRO, was the lead on the project. The prototype battery’s charging behaviour shows it retains stored energy six times longer than it takes to charge. Quach notes that the battery is charged using a laser and operates at room temperature, unlike many quantum devices.
Quach’s goal is to create quantum batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) that recharge in less than a minute. He also envisions the ability to wirelessly charge devices powered by quantum batteries over long distances.
The battery is multi-layered and organic, and, as Quach states, it lays the groundwork for “next-gen energy solutions.” He continues, “The next step…is extending their energy storage time. If we can overcome that hurdle, we’d be that bit closer to commercially viable quantum batteries.”
You can read more about the technology by accessing the March 13, 2026, article that appeared in the journal Light: Science and Applications.
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]]>The post Why Edge Computing Resilience Relies on Proactive Power Management appeared first on Techso Mogro.
]]>Why are organizations moving away from the old mainframe, big iron model to edge computing? Moving the data workload closer to the end user in support of low-latency applications and IoT networks is proving to be more efficient.
Today, edge computing has become the backbone of modern digital operations. IT teams are investing heavily in hybrid cloud observability and automated deployment pipelines, ensuring software runs smoothly across thousands of remote nodes.
There is, however, a fundamental layer that software tools cannot monitor back to health once it fails. That layer is the physical power supply. In the rapid push for digital transformation in places like Australia and elsewhere, proactive power management is often the neglected subject, treated as an afterthought until a sudden outage brings the network to an immediate halt.
When a centralized data centre experiences a power disruption, massive redundant generators automatically engage to keep servers online. Edge environments rarely have this luxury. A power spike or micro-outage at a remote telecommunications node affecting business operations can immediately knock critical applications offline. Think of the impact on emergency operations in regional hospitals when such power outages occur.
The financial impact of these power disruptions is staggering. According to comprehensive industry research detailing the cost of downtime, Gartner and Ponemon Institute data reveal that an IT outage can cost a business anywhere from $5,600 to nearly $9,000 per minute, depending on the size of the company.
For an enterprise running real-time edge analytics or automated manufacturing processes, even a brief disruption creates severe financial, reputational, and operational consequences. Every minute spent attempting to restore a remote network node translates directly to lost revenue and diminished customer trust.
Unlike the carefully controlled climate of a primary tier-four data facility, edge computing hardware is frequently deployed in harsh, remote, or non-traditional environments. These distributed networks face unique physical threats. Operations teams must account for everything from fluctuating ambient temperatures and high dust levels to inconsistent local utility grids that are prone to voltage drops.
This reality highlights the critical importance of foundational hardware protections. Building envelope efficiency in edge computing units and maintaining hardware lifespan and network reliability outside of traditional facilities requires incredibly smart infrastructure design. Robust building envelopes and intelligent cooling mechanisms are necessary first steps, but they must be paired with an equally resilient power strategy to prevent catastrophic hardware failure from local grid fluctuations.
To mitigate these risks effectively, IT operations teams must move away from reactive troubleshooting and standardize their physical hardware deployments across all edge locations. Localized compute nodes need immediate protection against voltage sags, sudden surges, and rolling blackouts. Standardization simplifies maintenance protocols and ensures a consistent baseline of reliability across the entire distributed network.
Deploying enterprise-grade backup power is the most effective way to ensure smooth operations in these vulnerable locations. For example, standardizing remote power infrastructure using power backup technology like Eaton UPS ensures that distributed networks receive clean, uninterrupted power to either safely shut down critical software systems or bridge the gap until secondary utility power comes back online. By treating the physical hardware layer with the same importance as software observability, organizations can drastically reduce their vulnerability to unpredictable local power anomalies.
Building a resilient edge infrastructure requires a strategic, unified approach to power management. Operations teams should consider the following foundational steps when designing and maintaining their distributed networks:
Ultimately, the long-term success of a distributed network depends on much more than just advanced software deployment tools and hybrid cloud observability. True resilience is built from the ground up. By acknowledging the physical realities of remote deployments, understanding the steep financial risks associated with system downtime, and investing in high-quality continuous power hardware, operations teams can create edge computing environments built to last.
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]]>The post Where Freshwater Meets Salt There Is Energy To Burn appeared first on Techso Mogro.
]]>The latest new way to generate energy, defined as blue, is osmotic, a renewable way to generate power from natural salinity gradients. Salinity gradients as a power source were previously described in an article on this blog site back in 2017. That research was being conducted at the University of Pennsylvania and described the power potential of salinity gradients to always produce a constant ratio measuring 24 x 7.
Others have expressed interest in the potential of osmotic energy technology, including the Laboratory for Nanoscale Biology at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Led by Aleksandra Radenovic, EPFL researchers have developed an ion-selective membrane to harvest power from salinity gradients. The membrane contains tiny channels called nanopores, and uses lipid-coated microscopic bubbles that permeate through it to generate a consistent energy yield. The research was published in a recent paper in the journal Nature Energy.
States Radenovic, in a recent EFPL press release: “Our work brings together the strengths of two main approaches to osmotic energy harvesting: polymer membranes, which inspire our high-porosity architecture; and nanofluidic devices, which we use to define highly charged nanopores. By combining a scalable membrane layout with precisely engineered nanofluidic channels, we achieve highly efficient osmotic energy conversion and open a route toward nanofluidic-based blue-energy systems.”
Of course, what gets done in a laboratory may not scale to commercial viability. The EPFL has two goals:
The challenge of riverine estuaries flowing into the sea is that they are not clean. All kinds of debris flow downstream to the sea. Filtering large particulate matter is easy, but fine particles and chemical contaminants represent challenges that could negatively impact membrane permeability performance. Ultimately, the EPFL team wants to produce a stable GigaWatt-scale salinity gradient power station coming from their research.
Japanese researchers, back in January 2024, published their work looking at the scalability challenges of nanopore osmotic energy. They looked at blue energy conversion potentials in artificial environments, describing scalability challenges, and noting:
“There is still a huge gap between the performances of a single-nanopore and a porous membrane, highlighting a crucial factor that considerably degrades the ability of the nanofluidic osmotic power generators.”
The EPFL research has currently produced a 1,000 lipid-coated nanopore membrane arranged in hexagonal patterns. The membrane was tested in a river water-seawater environment where the nanopore hexagons produced 15 watts per square metre, more than 2 to 3 times the power produced by previous polymer salinity gradient membrane technologies. This is a significant breakthrough with EPFL researcher, Yunfei Teng, stating, “The enhanced transport behaviour we observe, driven by hydration lubrication, is universal, and the same principle can be extended beyond blue-energy devices.”
Tzu-Heng Chen, at EPFL, also noted, “By showing how precise control over nanopore geometry and surface properties can fundamentally reshape ion transport, our study moves blue-energy research beyond performance testing and into a true design era.”
EPFL takes osmotic energy produced from saltwater/freshwater interfaces closer to commercial reality. We are much closer to seeing blue energy generator installations at the mouths of rivers meeting the ocean sooner rather than later. It represents an effective and cheap technology that could also be used for seawater desalination.
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]]>The post In An Increasingly Hostile World National Power Grids Represent An Achilles Heel appeared first on Techso Mogro.
]]>When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, it thought resistance would vanish as it sent its troops on a military parade down the highway to Kyiv. After all, Russia in 2014 seized the Crimean Peninsula with almost no resistance from the Ukrainian military. The subsequent separatist outbreak in the Eastern Ukraine Donbas region did lead to Ukrainian resistance, but the war was low intensity.
The special military operation, the name Vladimir Putin gave to the 2022 invasion, now entering its fourth year, dramatically widened the conflict in Eastern Ukraine and led to attacks aimed at leaving Ukrainians freezing in the dark. If the Ukrainian armies couldn’t be defeated in the field, Russia targeted the country’s large, centralized assets: the power grid, thermal and nuclear power plants, transportation networks, and natural gas infrastructure.
Russia deployed its advantages in the air to bomb and strike targets that would most negatively impact Ukraine’s population and its ability to resist. By the end of 2024, Ukraine experienced 80% reduction in capacity from its thermal power plants, and saw a 50% drop in transmission to homes for heating and lighting.
How cold does it get in Ukraine? Last night, Kyiv experienced temperatures of between minus 14 and 17 Celsius (6.8 to 1.4 Fahrenheit). Imagine what that’s like without heating in your home or workplace.
I’ve personally experienced prolonged power disruptions twice. The two were:
I cannot imagine experiencing what Ukrainians are dealing with through rolling blackouts in freezing temperatures. It is no wonder, therefore, that Ukraine is trying to move as quickly as possible to a decentralized energy distribution infrastructure. Others should take heed.
Why? Because, as you can see from the two experiences I described, a war isn’t the only action that can make centralized power networks vulnerable. Extreme weather, earthquakes and other natural disasters can be equally threatening.
What do we mean by decentralized and distributed energy systems?
Renewable energy sources come to mind. Rooftop solar and battery packs, and passive geothermal systems are solutions that individual homes can deploy to go off the grid.
There are, however, many other technologies that Ukraine can and is using to begin to eliminate the country’s vulnerability to predatory strikes on its energy infrastructure.
These include:
What the above three do is eliminate the vulnerability that comes with a centralized energy generation with its many moving parts, including electrical substations, transmission lines, grid-scale inverters, and gas line infrastructure. Instead, energy distribution gets “islanded,” secure from large-scale disruptions.
Currently, Ukraine plans to move from its inherited Soviet-era grid, adding to its existing thermal power plants and high-risk nuclear sites, local CHPs and CHP clusters generating from 5 to 100 MegaWatts. The country has set a 2030 target to increase its use of distributed energy and renewables to deliver 27% of the country’s total power needs. Currently, Ukraine is embedding small and medium cogeneration units into urban settings to provide district heating and electricity.
That doesn’t mean Ukraine will abandon its large hydroelectric, nuclear and thermal power generation capacity. These will still be needed for electricity used in industry, transportation and other infrastructure. But now, even these larger consumers of power will have supplementary cogeneration and small-scale renewable capacity that ensures, even in the face of an aggressor state like Russia, or a set of unforeseen natural disasters, Ukrainians won’t be left in the dark and the cold.
For more background on “distributed energy” and “microgrids,” enter these terms into the search window found on the top right of the menu bar featured on this blog’s home page.
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]]>The post The Latest Battery Business: Modular, Solid State, And New Electrodes appeared first on Techso Mogro.
]]>In the latest news, Dutch students have developed detachable modular batteries to go with their new city EV. IDTechEx reports on the rapid progress in the development of solid-state batteries (SSBs), and a British university reinvents the silicon electrode.
Leave it to students to come up with an EV called ARIA, a modular city car with standardized parts, and a readable user manual that is less than encyclopedic and designed for home repair aficionados. The students hail from Eindhoven and Fontys Universities, and Summa College in the Netherlands.
ARIA design features include interchangeable modules rather than black box components found in brand EVs. Instead of a single large integrated and often inaccessible battery pack, ARIA uses six 12-kilogram (26-pound) easily removed battery modules that can be replaced by hand. Each body panel and the interior electronics are easily removed, repaired or replaced. ARIA comes with its own toolbox and an app for diagnostics, and information for doing maintenance and step-by-step home repair.
ARIA was built to meet the aspirations of the European Union when it passed the 2024 right to repair legislation for consumer electronics to make post-warranty maintenance easier and cheaper, including applying these regulations to EVs.
The developments happening in SSBs, states Dr. Xiaoxi He, an energy storage expert from IDTechEx, are rapidly transforming the future of battery technology, providing breakthroughs in energy density and safety. IDTechEx’s latest report, Solid-State Batteries 2026-2036: Technology, Forecasts, Players, projects that SSB sales are expected to grow to US$10 billion by 2035.
Leadership in SSB technology appears to be coming from non-North American vehicle manufacturers. This year, Mercedes‑Benz EQS introduced an EV with a lithium‑metal battery capable of travelling over 1,200 kilometres on a single charge. Volkswagen has showcased an SSB for a Ducati motorcycle, while BMW recently began road-testing a sulphide SSB for its i7 model.
Polymer-based SSBs are already in use by Blue Solutions’ Bluebuses in Europe, Bluecar car‑sharing fleets, and Daimler’s eCitaro models.
Keeping pace are Asian producers, including Panasonic, Nissan and Yokohama in Japan and Chinese manufacturers who have introduced NIO’s 150‑kWh semi‑solid pack, and SAIC’s MG4 batteries for commercial EV models. Another semi-solid battery is being used by Forland for a new truck model. The development of semi‑solid batteries is seen as a safer battery than the current leading Li-ion liquid technology. Meanwhile, Chinese manufacturers are working to develop ceramic‑based all‑solid‑state batteries (ASSBs).
Why the interest in SSBs? This battery technology is a logical replacement for inflammable organic liquid electrolytes used today in Li-ion technology. Solid-state electrolytes (SSE) can be paired with silicon and lithium metal anodes and high-voltage cathodes to produce higher energy density. Unlike liquid Li-ion battery packs, SSBs can be designed with smaller form factors and then linked together to create flexible pack designs for different types of vehicles and applications.
Beyond EV applications, the market for SSBs can expand to large-scale applications such as grid energy storage, or smaller deployment in medical equipment, including wearables, drones, electric aviation and eVTOLs, and in robots.
Research at Queen Mary University in London, UK, has produced a double-layer silicon-based composite electrode that provides fast-charging for EVs at lower costs by between 20 and 30%. The research was recently published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. Silicon electrodes have ten times higher theoretical capacity and faster charging speeds than current commercial electrodes. The problem with silicon in the past was fewer charge/discharge cycles and rapid degradation.
This new design has the potential to be commercialized as a double-layer graphite-silicon composite electrode exhibiting lower polarization and capacity decay when compared with what is currently available today.
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Australia has adopted solar almost as much as China, with innovation driving new battery design. Homes today with rooftop solar panels that use lithium battery packs for backup can see an additional US$10,000 added to their total cost. In a search for a more affordable solution, Monash University researcher Wanqiao Liang, from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, has led a team developing an aqueous flow battery alternative to replace lithium-ion battery packs for rooftop solar panel installations.
Flow batteries are not a new technology. They have been around for decades, providing large-scale energy storage backup for utilities and industries. They feature two electrolyte solutions stored in separate tanks that feed a cell stack, featuring a semipermeable membrane, allowing free ions to pass through to generate a current while keeping the liquids apart.
Flow batteries are used to back up solar and wind farms. Solutions used vary, but the most common combination is vanadium-redox (like the battery seen above). Other flow battery types include zinc-bromine, iron-chromium, aqueous-organic, metal-air, polysulfide-bromine, sodium-bromide and polysulfides.
The biggest knock against flow batteries has been their exotic chemistry requirements as well as their size and slow recharge times. All these three have made flow batteries impractical for residential rooftop solar deployment, that is, until now.
Liang and her Monash team have been developing an aqueous organic flow battery, featuring a membrane with vastly improved ion exchange performance. She describes the merits of their invention as follows:
“This is the kind of battery you’d want in your garage. It’s non-toxic, non-flammable, and made from abundant materials, all while keeping up with solar power on a sunny day.”
An article appearing in Angewandte Chemie, a journal of the German Chemical Society, in May 2025, notes that the new battery has proven reliable through 600 recharge cycles without any performance loss.
The Monash team has been 3D-printing prototypes for tests with the expectation that a commercial flow battery will be available on the market in a few years.
Perovskite is seen as an alternative material for use in solar panels. The best performance from silicon-based solar cells today gets you efficiencies between 20 and 27%. What does that mean? The percentage indicates how much of the sunlight striking a panel gets converted to electricity. Achieving higher efficiencies beyond silicon’s limits has always been a driver for innovation in this industry segment, and tandem solar cells that combine silicon with another material seem the route to go. That’s where perovskite comes in.
Readily available and inexpensive, perovskite photovoltaics have been around for a decade. On their own, perovskite panels aren’t as energy conversion efficient as silicon. But when the two are combined in a tandem cell, the results are very encouraging.
A tandem solar cell involves two layers: perovskite in the upper and silicon in the lower. The work being described here involves the collaboration of researchers from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, the University of Freiburg, and the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems. The result is a tandem cell with energy conversion efficiencies of up to 33.1%.
The cell has a textured surface to increase the area that sunlight strikes, which enhances energy conversion efficiency. To make the mating work, these tandem solar cells use diaminopropane dihydroiodide added to the perovskite surface. In a press release from the University of Freiburg, Stefan Glunz, Professor of Photovoltaic Energy Conversion, states:
“Surface passivation of solar cells is not just a nice-to-have feature; it is an essential booster for their efficiency and stability. For today’s silicon solar cells, surface passivation was the key for high efficiencies in industrial production, and it is encouraging that the photovoltaic industry will benefit from these positive effects for perovskite silicon tandem solar cells as well.”
Eve Pope, a Senior Technology Analyst at IDTechEx, recently wrote about the role that hydrogen and helium will play in the energy mix of the future. I have borrowed some of her content for what follows, beginning with hydrogen.
Hydrogen fuel cells convert hydrogen gas into electricity through a chemical reaction with oxygen. Solid oxide fuel cells can last a long time, which makes them suitable for continuous power generation for the growing demands of data centres and AI hubs. Currently, some data centres are already using natural gas plus solid oxide fuel cells. Transitioning to hydrogen to reduce carbon footprints should soon be commercially feasible.
For automobiles, the fuel cell has always been an exotic competitor to lithium-ion battery stacks in the vast majority of today’s electric vehicles (EVs). Toyota is one of the few manufacturers building EVs powered by fuel cells. The impediment to the future growth of this transportation technology alternative to lithium-ion will be the rollout of hydrogen refuelling infrastructure.
Hydrogen for aluminum, steel and cement production is the next evolutionary step for these industries. Hydrogen-based DRI (H2-DRI) processes represent the next logical evolution to green these primary manufacturing industries. IDTechEx has produced a Green Steel 2025-2035: Technologies, Players, Markets, Forecasts report that predicts that by 2035, 46 million tons of steel will be produced annually using hydrogen.
Hydrogen also has a role to play in the future of nuclear energy. Canada’s CANDU fission reactors today use deuterium (heavy water). Deuterium is a hydrogen isotope that is twice as heavy as hydrogen. Future commercial fusion reactors will use deuterium as well as tritium (see the next subheading) as essential fuels.
IDTechEx has produced a report entitled, Fusion Energy Market 2025-2045: Technologies, Players, Timelines, that highlights the race to commercial fusion reactors, describing material opportunities and supply chain challenges.
Among the challenges facing hydrogen is sourcing a green version of the gas. Today, if not naturally sourced, most of the hydrogen produced is a byproduct of fossil fuel production. Hydrogen, however, exists in abundance in water, and that can be the primary green resource using electrolyzers to separate the gas from oxygen. To be perfectly green, electrolyzers need to derive energy from renewable sources.
The electrolyzer sector is still in early growth stages, with the need to create a supply chain containing catalysts, electrodes, porous transport layers, gas diffusion layers, bipolar plates, and gasket sources. Future electrolyzer innovations will need new catalysts with less iridium because the latter adds to the cost. For gas separation membranes, new palladium-alloy metallic membranes need to be developed to unlock ultra-pure hydrogen separation.
The helium challenge may be bigger than the ones faced by hydrogen.
Helium natural reserves exist underground, found along with natural gas deposits. To harvest the helium, the gas needs to be captured as it escapes during initial drilling and exploration. Otherwise, it rapidly escapes into the atmosphere into space.
Helium is used by many industries. It is a coolant for MRIs and for semiconductor manufacturing processes. It is used by companies developing artificial intelligence (AI) Large Language Models (LLMs), and in the creation of autonomous vehicles. Demand for its thermal management properties continues to grow. How much? Read the Helium for Semiconductors and Beyond 2025-2035: Market, Trends, and Forecasts from IDTechEx to get a good idea of how essential helium is for now and the future.
One of the justifications for the Artemis Program to return to the Moon is the existence of abundant amounts of Helium 3 in the lunar regolith.
Tritium, like helium, is a scarce material. It exists in trace amounts in the atmosphere with a half-life of 12.3 years. Total natural reserves, therefore, are minuscule. The current source for tritium comes from Canada’s CANDU reactors, which produce a few dozen kilograms annually at a price tag per kilo of US$33 million.
Tritium is the fuel of the future commercial nuclear fusion sector. It combined with deuterium produces vast amounts of energy from very small amounts with minimal waste.
Other fission reactors can be a source of tritium, but it needs to be harvested from the spent fuel they use. That’s where scientists at America’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) have been looking to create tritium from nuclear waste using a particle accelerator to bombard the spent fuel. The accelerator would switch on and off to avoid the risk of a runaway nuclear reaction.
Terence Tarnowsky is a physicist at LANL who is spearheading the research project. It would require a 1 Gigawatt energy source (roughly equivalent to the annual energy needs of 800,000 homes) to power the particle accelerator with a net yield of about a kilogram of tritium per year.
With no other Earthly source for tritium, very little cosmogenic-sourced tritium to be found beyond Earth, unless lots of new CANDU heavy water reactors are manufactured, tritium will remain a very scarce and valuable material.
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]]>From an environmentalist perspective, there is significant pushback and skepticism. Environmentalists see CCS as a means by which industrial polluters get to continue to pump greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. They see CCS as an industry strategy rather than a climate solution, a delaying tactic to postpone the low-carbon economic transition. They point out the cost of existing CCS projects, the delays in implementation, and the amounts of captured carbon to date as being negligible compared to what gets pumped into the air every day.
What is the public stance? Younger people fascinated with technological progress are interested in seeing if CCS works. Low-income groups hope it will work because they are the most impacted by rising global atmospheric temperatures. City dwellers are also in the hopeful group for the same reasons.
The older the age group, the greater the opposition to CCS, with women more skeptical than men because of potential health risks. Farmers and rural populations are skeptical for other reasons, pointing to a likelihood that a CCS facility ends up being built in their backyard. Indigenous groups see CCS as endangering the environment and as an unproven technology that will cause more harm than good.
On the political side, if you are right of centre, you are probably more CCS-friendly. If you are left of centre, you are opposed. Betwixt and between is a muddle of confusion with some pro and some against.
In the past few weeks, all kinds of CCS-related news have appeared in the press.
CCS has been promoted by the fossil fuel industry as a way for life to continue as normal, giving us the means to have our cake and eat it too. The industry reality is that the current capacity and scale to grow it, despite billions of dollars already invested, are unable to get us even close to where we need to be to mitigate climate change. That’s why converting to low-emitting energy solutions and industrial processes is critical. The fossil fuel industry is greenwashing the public and the governments it seeks funding from for CCS project subsidies, grants, carbon credits and loans with its current propaganda.
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