Argonne National Laboratory reports success

Company announces success with new battery cathode materials.

{reg} The Argonne National Laboratory reports that it has successfully scaled up the production of a new molecule that protects advanced lithium-ion batteries from thermal overcharge reports RD Mag.

The researchers at the laboratory invented a redox shuttle additive material known as 2,5-di-tert-butyl-1,4-bis(2-methoxyethoxy)benzene or DBBB, the amount of the molecule they produced was sufficient for scientific testing and validation at the laboratory bench scale. But their process yielded too little material less than 1 g for a company that may be interested in licensing and manufacturing the material to validate and test. The laboratory says the researchers took the formula and developed an improved, scalable process that created 1,576 g in a single batch enough to study and validate in a real battery cell

The researchers say they are now working towards scaling up the process is to find economical ways to make a material. The bench scale process used to discover DBBB would have cost 20 times more and generated 50 times as much waste as the scaled up process to make 1 kg. The new process also is 3 times faster. The laboratory says there have been inquiries from battery makers and they are in talks to commercialize the technology. {/reg]