Researchers at Texas A&M University, led by Dr. Jodie Lutkenhaus, have developed a new polymer-based battery designed to operate in extreme cold.
When the polar vortex gripped Chicago in early 2024, the city’s electric vehicle charging stations turned into car graveyards. Dead Teslas were towed by the dozen as the batteries stopped working in the cold.
It was a wake-up call for the green energy transition: if batteries can’t handle a bad winter, the tech can’t handle the future.To tackle this challenge, researchers at Texas A&M University, led by Dr. Jodie Lutkenhaus, have developed a new polymer-based battery designed to operate in extreme cold. This innovation addresses a major flaw in current EV and backup batteries, which often fail when their liquid electrolytes freeze.“We’re able to do this because we replace the liquid electrolyte that freezes with a different electrolyte that does not. We also replace the hard inorganic materials that are sluggish at low temperatures with soft polymer materials that are a bit faster,” said Lutkenhaus, professor of chemical engineering and associate dean for research in the College of Engineering. Non-freezing electrolyteStandard lithium-ion batteries rely on a liquid electrolyte to move charge. When the mercury plunges, that liquid thickens or freezes, stopping the flow of energy entirely.“If that electrolyte freezes, then charge can no longer be transported. Hence, the battery will not charge or discharge,” said Lutkenhaus.“We saw exactly this issue in the cold snap in Chicago in 2024, where electric vehicle batteries were so cold and frozen that they did not charge at their powering stations,” the author added. To boost cold-weather performance, the research team developed an organic dual-ion battery that replaces standard rigid inorganic electrodes with flexible redox-active polymers. These flexible, organic materials allow ions to move freely, even at -40°C. The polymer was paired with a diglyme-based electrolyte — a specialized solution that remains liquid and functional at extreme temperatures where standard battery fluids would normally crystallize and stop working.In testing, the design mitigated cold-weather power loss, sustaining 85% of its capacity at 0°C and 55% at -40°C without sacrificing specific power rates.Carbon-fiber integrationFurthermore, the researchers improved durability by replacing heavy, brittle metal collectors with carbon-fiber weaves. This innovation created a “structural battery” that serves a dual purpose: storing energy and providing the physical strength needed to support a vehicle or device’s frame.The design reduces overall weight and prevents the mechanical cracking that often plagues standard batteries in harsh environments.Existing batteries fail in the cold because ion movement slows to a crawl, but this new design avoids that collapse by pairing a low-temperature electrolyte with flexible polymer electrodes. This development is a major move toward winter-proof energy storage that could secure everything from handheld gadgets to the national power grid. “With a massive storm or cold snap, electrical grids can go down. Batteries can cover those outages and gaps,” Lutkenhaus said. “If we want an energy system that’s resilient in all seasons, we need storage that isn’t vulnerable to temperature swings.”Although the technology is still in development, it shows that materials science can solve longstanding energy hurdles — though, for now, Dr. Lutkenhaus still recommends the simple fix of parking your EV in a warm garage to keep current batteries from freezing.The study was published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A.
Energy &Amp Environment EV Battery Extreme Cold Inventions And Machines Polymer-Based Battery
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