HYDERABAD: A new sustainable low-cost dual carbon battery has been developed by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad. It could as well turn out to be an alternative for conventional lithium-ion batteries, which are not only costly, but also contain heavy transitional metals as components.
The new battery has been developed by Electrochemical Energy Storage (EES) Lab of IIT-Hyderabad under supervision of Dr Surendra Kumar Martha, associate professor in the department of chemistry.
The IIT-H researched battery may find potential uses in high-voltage applications, sophisticated battery-run medical devices, regenerative braking systems in electric vehicles, and stationary grids.
“The novel dual carbon battery, comprising zero transition metals, is environmentally benign. It may cut down the overall battery cost by 20-25 per cent, apart from curbing unpredictability in the market prices of batteries,” Dr Martha said.
He announced that their study will be extrapolated to push energy density limits of their battery further. Their broad vision includes introducing the dual carbon system as a cheaper LIB alternative within Indian market.
A research article, ‘Multifunctional utilisation of pitch-coated carbon fibres in lithium-based rechargeable batteries’ has been published in ‘Advanced Energy Materials’, an online library. The study was carried out by Shuvajit Ghosh and Udita Bhattacharjee, PhD students at IIT-Hyderabad, under supervision of Dr Martha.
