Sustainable Battery Materials from Biomass

Abstract

Sustainable sources of energy have been identified as a possible way out of today's oil dependency and are being rapidly developed. In contrast, storage of energy to a large extent still relies on heavy metals in batteries. Especially when built from biomass‐derived organics, organic batteries are promising alternatives and pave the way towards truly sustainable energy storage. First described in 2008, research on biomass‐derived electrodes has been taken up by a multitude of researchers worldwide. Nowadays, in principle, electrodes in batteries could be composed of all kinds of carbonized and noncarbonized biomass: On one hand, all kinds of (waste) biomass may be carbonized and used in anodes of lithium‐ or sodium‐ion batteries, cathodes in metal–sulfur or metal–oxygen batteries, or as conductive additives. On the other hand, a plethora of biomolecules, such as quinones, flavins, or carboxylates, contain redox‐active groups that can be used as redox‐active components in electrodes with very little chemical modification. Biomass‐based binders can replace toxic halogenated commercial binders to enable a truly sustainable future of energy storage devices. Besides the electrodes, electrolytes and separators may also be synthesized from biomass. In this Review, recent research progress in this rapidly emerging field is summarized with a focus on potentially fully biowaste‐derived batteries.

Advances in Natural Biopolymer‐Based Electrolytes and Separators for Battery Applications

“…The separator is a critical element defining the safety of the battery, as it acts as a physical barrier -preventing internal shortcircuit -between the electrodes but allows the movement of the electrolyte ions. [25][26][27][28] While biopolymer based solid and gel polymer electrolytes also function as the separator, biogenic separators in conjunction with conventional liquid electrolytes offer an alternative to commercial polyolefin based separators. [27] The fact that the polyolefin materials are fossil fuel derived and non-recyclable is not the only concern.…”

“…Most of these synthetic polymers are either fossil fuel derived, [ 26 ] or non‐biodegradable. [ 27,28 ] Therefore, in the recent decade researchers have focused on the design of SPEs and GPEs based on renewable macromolecules [ 27 ] –namely biopolymers–that are functionally equivalent of synthetic polymers, yet are biocompatible and capable of biodegradation. [ 29,30 ] Numerous functional polymeric electrolytes based on chitin, lignin, cellulose, starch, carrageenans, xanthan gum, agar, silk, etc., have been investigated aiming to replicate the electrochemical performance of state of the art SPEs, GPEs and liquid electrolytes.…”

Expansion and scale up of technology for ethanol production based on the concept of biorefinery

“…Since the fermented broths and the binary solutions have complex composition, therefore, many researchers have proposed, designed and analyzed vivid membrane systems with different compositions for the recovery of bioethanol. One such eminent example of bioethanol extraction was evaluated by Oh, Song and Bae where evaluation of Bioethanol (including; production as well as concentration) was done from Jerusalem artichoke tubers (Liedel, 2020; Song, Nguyen, Wi, Yang, & Bae, 2017).…”

Structure–property relationships in organic battery anode materials: exploring redox reactions in crystalline Na- and Li-benzene diacrylate using combined crystallography and density functional theory calculations

“…4 Some OEMs can also be extracted from abundant biomass. [4][5][6][7] Several OEMs have been proposed, often based on quinones extracted from biomass through low-cost processes free of toxic solvents, 8,9 but also organosulfur compounds, nitroxide radicals, disulfides, to cite a few. [10][11][12][13][14][15] Among these, conjugated carboxylates have become one of the most promising candidates due to the stability against dissolution in organic electrolytes while providing reasonable energy density.…”