Panasonic CF-VZSU29 Battery

A flow battery is structured differently than most other ones: Instead of packing a bunch of reactive materials together in one unit (like normal batteries do), flow batteries store reactive liquids in separate containers and then pump them into the system to create energy. They’re also huge and designed for grid energy storage — not for electronics and things that can fit comfortably in the palm of your hand.
The original flow battery reportedly weighed 1,000 pounds and was invented in the late 19th century to power the cleverly named French airship “La France.” Interest in the modular energy storage has waxed and waned since then.
“I think what’s really driving an explosion and interest in flow batteries is not so much about making the next generation of batteries for phones or computers, but medium-to-large scale energy storage,” explains Timothy Cook, a professor of chemistry at the University of Buffalo. So, unless you’re building a steampunk cell phone, it’s unlikely you’re going to be carrying around any flow batteries activated with microscopic pumps. However, as more homes install solar power, the market for “personalized energy” storage will grow.
While making lithium-ion batteries more powerful means increasing the size of the battery, the design of the flow batteries makes it possible to increase energy by increasing the size of the liquid reservoirs. San Diego Power and Electric recently installed one that can power 1,000 homes.
“You don’t have to change any of the dimensions of the membrane [where the chemical reaction occurs], you just have to flow the larger volume of liquid through it for a longer time and you can extract that energy out,” explains Cook. “So it’s much much much easier to scale up or scale down or you can basically customize it to the installation.”
Flow batteries also have many more charging cycles than most batteries. The ability to replace the liquids or replace other modular parts means that the potential life of a battery is almost indefinite.
Even though companies currently sell industrial-size flow batteries, professor Cook doesn’t expect widespread acceptance for another five to 10 years. He even imagines a day when electric cars might use the tech. Cook describes a car pulling up to a “gas station,” discharging the spent electrolyte, and then refilling with a freshly charged one. Instead of waiting a half-hour for your car to reboot, the wheels can be spinning again in a matter of minutes. But, of course, that future is way down the road.
Making a battery out of paper has many advantages: It’s thin, flexible, and, if fabricated with the right materials, biodegradable. A team at Stanford University developed early paper batteries by coating thin sheets with a carbon and silver saturated ink. More recently, eco-heads have grown excited about the batteries being developed at Binghamton University. Professor Seokheun “Sean” Choi has made a few different incarnations of it, including one powered by spit — or more scientifically, human saliva — and another powered by bacteria. A recent incarnation of the biobattery developed by Choi and Professor Omowunmi Sadik uses poly (amic) acid and poly (pyromellitic dianhydride-p-phenylenediamine) to make the energy sources biodegradable.
“Our hybrid paper battery exhibited a much higher power-to-cost ratio than all previously reported paper-based microbial batteries,” Choi said when the innovation was announced. Although the commercial use of these eco-friendly paper batteries has been limited given their low electric output (one can power an LED light for about 20 minutes), researchers hope to see them used in electronics, wireless devices, medical applications like pacemakers, aircraft, and automobiles. Choi has written a paper about utilizing them as single-use power sources for point-of-care diagnostic tools in developing countries where batteries may not be readily available.

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