Energy

Rechargeable aluminum: The cheap solution to seasonal energy storage?

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Aluminum, used in a redox cycle, has a massive energy density. Swiss researchers believe it could be the key to affordable seasonal storage of renewable energy, clearing a path for the decarbonization of the energy grid
Aluminum, used in a redox cycle, has a massive energy density. Swiss researchers believe it could be the key to affordable seasonal storage of renewable energy, clearing a path for the decarbonization of the energy grid
Aluminum holds a phenomenal amount of energy compared to batteries or hydrogen
SPF Institute for Solar Technology
Inputs and idealized outputs of the low-temperature aluminum-to-hydrogen energy release process, assuming a fuel cell efficiency of 50%
SPF Institute for Solar Technology
The solar irradiation hitting the ground in four different Swiss cities, by month and annually, demonstrating just how much seasonal variation there's going to be in the decarbonized future
SPF Institute for Solar Technology
In Reveal's proposed system, the aluminum will be "charged" at a smelter, then trucked out to be converted back into heat and electricity at apartment buildings, homes and industrial facilities
SPF Institute for Solar Technology
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Aluminum has an energy density more than 50 times higher than lithium ion, if you treat it as an energy storage medium in a redox cycle battery. Swiss scientists are developing the technology as a renewable energy stash for the European winter.

The problem is simple enough: as countries worldwide plan their moves toward zero-emissions energy, they need to deal with the intermittent nature of cheap renewable energy. On a daily basis, solar harvests most of its energy in the middle of the day, and this necessitates some kind of short-term storage solution that can park that energy in some form of battery, then release it again in the evening when everyone gets home and starts running TVs and dishwashers. These kinds of big battery projects are already installed in many areas and proving their worth.

But intermittency is a much bigger issue on a seasonal level. The further you move from the equator, the less Sun you get in the winter months. Parts of Scandinavia famously get no Sun at all for months on end – resulting in some pretty epic springtime parties, I'm told – but a much broader area is going to find itself very short on solar, every year, right when everyone's starting to crank up their heaters. The zero-carbon world needs a way to store absolutely massive amounts of excess renewable energy generated in the warmer months, then release it through the long winters. And it'll need to be affordable, or else it's not going to happen.

The solar irradiation hitting the ground in four different Swiss cities, by month and annually, demonstrating just how much seasonal variation there's going to be in the decarbonized future
SPF Institute for Solar Technology

Researchers from Switzerland's SPF Institute for Solar Technology have been studying aluminum redox cycles for many years now, and with funding from the EU's Horizon Europe program and the Swiss government, they've just kicked off a research project called Reveal, drawing in nine different partners from seven European countries, to develop what looks like a very promising idea.

As a 2020 report from the SPF team states, a single, one cubic meter (35.3 cu ft) block of aluminum can chemically store a remarkable amount of energy – some 23.5 megawatt-hours, more than 50 times what a good lithium-ion setup can do, or roughly enough to power the average US home for 2.2 years, on 2020 figures. That's by volume – going by weight, aluminum holds a specific energy of 8.7 kWh per kilogram, or about 33 times more than the batteries Tesla uses in its Model 3.

Big fat blocks like that aren't exactly practical to work with, though, so the Reveal team proposes using 1-mm (0.04 in)-diameter balls of aluminum instead. Naturally, you lose some volumetric density here, but you're still coming out over 15 MWh per cubic meter.

Aluminum holds a phenomenal amount of energy compared to batteries or hydrogen
SPF Institute for Solar Technology

Getting that energy in and out is, of course, a lot more involved. During the "charging process," excess renewable energy would be used to convert aluminum oxide, or aluminum hydroxide, into pure, elemental aluminum. This is an industrial electrolysis process, requiring temperatures around 800 °C (1,472 °F), as well as novel inert electrodes, if you want to avoid the carbon dioxide emissions that accompany today's conventional aluminum smelting processes.

The team estimates it'll be possible to "charge" an aluminum redox system like this at an efficiency around 65%. All the raw materials here are relatively cheap and abundant, some of them indeed being scrap, with the added benefits of being very simple to store and transport. Yes, aluminum oxidizes on contact with ambient air, but it's only a surface layer, less than half a nanometer thick, representing a chemical energy loss of "far less than 1%" when those tiny 1-mm balls are stored in air.

To discharge the aluminum, you simply convert it back again. This can be done at low temperatures, using aluminum-water reactions at less than 100 °C (212 °F), generating aluminum hydroxide, along with pure hydrogen, which can be run straight into a PEM fuel cell stack for conversion to electricity. The process and the fuel cell also generate heat, which can be recovered at temperatures relevant for space heating or domestic hot water.

Inputs and idealized outputs of the low-temperature aluminum-to-hydrogen energy release process, assuming a fuel cell efficiency of 50%
SPF Institute for Solar Technology

There's also a higher-temperature process, running at over 200 °C (392 °F), which reacts the aluminum with steam to generate aluminum oxide, hydrogen and much higher levels of heat, more relevant for industrial applications.

In the Reveal model, the charging process would be done at central smelting depots, and the "charged-up" aluminum would be trucked out in bulk to be "discharged" on-site at apartment buildings, industrial facilities, and even individual homes, since the equipment needed is relatively simple and low-maintenance – well, apart from the fact that the aluminum-to-hydrogen conversion system doesn't exactly exist yet at this point.

Once it's out of juice, the aluminum oxides and hydroxides would be sent back to the depot for "recharging." Ideally, the Reveal team says, this aluminum will be cycled back and forth in this process indefinitely, so there won't be any ongoing raw material costs for a given system.

In Reveal's proposed system, the aluminum will be "charged" at a smelter, then trucked out to be converted back into heat and electricity at apartment buildings, homes and industrial facilities
SPF Institute for Solar Technology

In a February 2022 report, the SPF team claims a levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of just €0.09 (US$0.09) per kWh is possible for such a storage system, in a detailed analysis of the entire life cycle of a project. That's pretty remarkable, given that the current LCOE of the average recently financed "big battery" project in 2020 was around US$0.15, according to Energy Storage News – and those projects get to sell their energy much more frequently, with daily charge and discharge cycles as compared to the aluminum solution's seasonal cycles.

So it certainly seems like there's something here, capable of filling in the winter-sized hole in renewable energy grids. It's unlikely to come about soon; the Reveal team has given itself until summer 2026 to "work on solutions for this new storage concept."

There are many other metal redox energy storage and release concepts under development – notably, a Dutch brewery began burning recyclable iron in its fuel cycle at the end of 2020. But it's worth noting, anything that burns in air at high temperatures is going to produce harmful nitrous oxides – a problem these aluminum batteries won't have at all. So the Reveal project is definitely one to watch.

Source: Reveal via Renew Economy

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10 comments
windykites
Lithium will still be needed in small batteries: Cars and household storage. Sodium Acetate could be useful for heat storage, as it is very cheap, with an easy recharge.
BlueOak
If I’m understanding those cost numbers, I guess everything is relative. Perhaps this makes better sense in really high electricity cost markets like Europe.

In the US, many markets pay $0.12 to $0.15 per KWh for the power itself.

So even paying this “revolutionarily low” storage cost of $0.09 per kWh would approach doubling our electricity cost.
DaveWesely
An important consideration for a metal redox system like this is the size of the smelter. Wind turbine operators have figured out it is cheaper to turn off or feather the blades during periods of excess supply (by building excess capacity), instead of storing the energy.
And areas with high seasonal variability in energy supply use a large share of the energy for heating in the winter. So thermal energy release is good.
But why is smelter size important? If it is small enough to be operated on site by the landowner running the solar or wind farm, then the grid utilities are cut out of the picture. Routing the excess electricity through the grid requires a larger inverter as well as the political and marketing problems with utilities.
If the landowners (farmers and ranchers) can store excess energy on their own, they will have much more bargaining power with the utility operator. Their LCOE will also go down as the wear on equipment is probably based more on time than output. That and the fact they will be selling more energy.
@BlueOak How that cost is realized is based more on if the energy source is underutilized during times of excess supply. We are not talking about burning fossil fuels for energy storage.
Sergius
The impossibility of forming amalgam of Mercury (Hg) and Aluminum (Al), makes the contact of these two metals produce large amounts of hydrogen gas (H2).
The industrial production of hydrogen by this route is possible, as well as the reconstitution of aluminum, using the aluminum oxide formed in this reaction.
TechGazer
Notice that they're comparing the potential energy of bulk aluminum with batteries where the anode metal is a small fraction of the volume. If you compared aluminum metal with lithium metal, the difference is much smaller. I expect that their estimate of recharge efficiency is hopelessly optimistic, and the economic efficiency of reconverting the spent aluminum back into metal will be even worse.
imac1957
An interesting process. The big advantage is long term storage of energy with marginal cost. Aluminium is extremely common, but it has always been limited by the large amount of electricity needed to convert to pure elemental Al. The tsunami of renewable energy projects will mean that there is extremely cheap electricity regularly available, but the process will have to be able to switch on and off reasonably quickly to capture the surges of excess during times of maximum solar or peak wind. My understanding of Al smelting is that the current systems do NOT like to be shut down at all. This could be limiting, unless the scientists have found a more compact and transient way of smelting the oxides.
rdp
A cost effective long-term storage technology will be a tremendous boost to making solar and wind competitive with on-demand generated energy (e.g. gas and oil). But I struggle with the issues of capital expense vs capacity factor: you don't get paid for stored energy until it gets released. If releasing energy only happens 20% of the time (whether that's 4.8 hours a day or 73 days out of a year), it becomes that harder to recoup the cost of building and operating the system. So storage systems need a _really_ low LCOE to be a viable solution. That doesn't mean we should stop looking for an answer, though -- just the opposite!
TpPa
Aluminum mining & refining isn't exactly a CLEAN renewable energy source.
meofbillions
It would be better to show the seasonal changes with PV generation using Direct Normal Incidence, which has significantly less variation, because single tracking PV farms are used most often for utilities. In addition, wind turbine farms somewhat even out the total green energy generation mix. Winds tend to be higher when PV tends to be lower. Furthermore, you don't have to store energy to account for seasonal low points. All you have to do is increase generation capacity, which can adequately supply during the low points, if those low points are up to say 10% the average value. That's often the case with Direct Normal Incidence, providing your latitude isn't too high, say below 35 degrees.

It's not too good an idea to compare the situation in Switzerland to that in the US, because much of the US is at a lower latitude. In fact, Tulsa OK is at 36 degrees, or 10 degrees lower than Switzerland. The PV variation shown is about 50% to one side of the average. For Tulsa, the Direct Normal variation to one side is 10%. Tulsa is at an average latitude for the US, and most of the PV generation areas are at even lower latitudes. Tuscon latitude is 32 degrees.

I don't understand why go to this scheme, when the hydrogen economy is already technically feasible, it's shovel ready, and it's comprehensive, allowing both electricity and thermal energy for most all industrial processes. It also has the advantage of transport via pipeline. From the discussion here, this aluminum idea looks like a Rube Goldberg to me.
highlandboy
So efficiency = 65% (100 in 65 out)
Electricity output is 1/3 of output (the rest of the energy release is heat). (100 in 22 out)
So final electrical efficiency is just over 22%. Unless you are near enough to the redox plant to use heat directly, at least 78% of the energy put into the system is wasted as heat. I think I’ll stick with batteries!