As California transitions rapidly to renewable fuels, it needs new technologies that can store power for the electric grid. Solar power drops at night and declines in winter. Wind power ebbs and flows. As a result, the state depends heavily on natural gas to smooth out highs and lows of renewable power.
"We are developing a new strategy for selectively converting and long-term storing of electrical energy in liquid fuels," said Waymouth, senior author of a study detailing this work in the."We also discovered a novel, selective catalytic system for storing electrical energy in a liquid fuel without generating gaseous hydrogen."Batteries used to store electricity for the grid -- plus smartphone and electric vehicle batteries -- use lithium-ion technologies.
Yet methods to produce isopropanol with electricity are inefficient. Two protons from water and two electrons can be converted into hydrogen gas, then a catalyst can produce isopropanol from this hydrogen."But you don't want hydrogen gas in this process," said Waymouth."Its energy density per unit volume is low. We need a way to make isopropanol directly from protons and electrons without producing hydrogen gas.
"This is basic fundamental science, but we think we have a new strategy for more selectively storing electrical energy in liquid fuels," said Waymouth. Additional Stanford co-authors are Conor Galvin, PhD '23, and PhD student Julia Dressel. Waymouth is also a member of Stanford Bio-X and the Stanford Cancer Institute, a faculty fellow of Sarafan ChEM-H, and an affiliate of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.A research group has used nanosheet technology to develop a dielectric capacitor for advanced electronic and electrical power systems. Innovations in energy storage technology are vital for the ...