MIT Liquid Fuel Battery
 

This is interesting. Some MIT students put together a new style battery.

We'll see.

Here's the article. MIT Figures Out a Way to Refuel Electric Cars with Liquid Fuel - Technology - The Atlantic Wire

I'll be following these developments. My chemestry prof. mentioned this today during class. Seems like this might be a viable option to the electric car "problems" (range, charge time, battery life, battery size, battery cost etc). Hopefully we can figure out a way to do something with this and make it work.

Aren’t fuel based batteries called “Fuel Cells” ????

There are already Liquid and Gaseous based fuel cells.

What's the difference ?

:confused:

I think (the report's not completely clear) the difference is that you can also charge this battery, unlike a fuel cell. So you can charge it at home for short trips, have the benefits of regenerative braking while driving, and on long trips stop at a goo station for a replacement charge of goo.

If I'm understanding their design correctly, it also seems that you could easily change the amount of goo in the system, so you'd have a lighter system for everyday use, and for longer trips you could plug in a couple of extra goo modules.

Mmmmmm, goo....

This isn't a "fuel battery," it's a Flow Battery. You can Google it or try wikipedia to get a better description but generally; Flow batteries allow storage of the active materials external to the battery and these reactants are circulated through the cell stack as required. A flow battery was used in 1884 by Charles Renard to power his airship La France.

The technology was revived in the mid 1970s. Modern flow batteries are generally two electrolyte systems in which the two electrolytes, acting as liquid energy carriers, are pumped simultaneously through the two half-cells of the reaction cell separated by a membrane. On charging, the electrical energy supplied causes a chemical reduction reaction in one electrolyte and an oxidation reaction in the other. The thin ion exchange membrane between the half-cells prevents the electrolytes from mixing but allows selected ions to pass through to complete the redox reaction. On discharge the chemical energy contained in the electrolyte is released in the reverse reaction and electrical energy can be drawn from the electrodes. When in use the electrolytes are continuously pumped in a circuit between reactor and storage tanks.

Thanks for clarifying that.

I have never heard of “flow batteries” before.

Looks interesting, here is a good diagram …..

Storing Sunshine Using Flow Batteries >> MetaEfficient Review

- Mark