Lithium-sulfur Battery

     Lithium-sulfur (Li/S) battery is a kind of rechargeable battery adopts lithium as negative electrode and elemental sulfur as positive active material. The theoretical specific capacity of its positive electrode is expected to reach 1675mAh/g, and the theoretical specific energy of the Li/S battery is expected to reach 2600Wh/kg. Its achievable practical energy density may reach 750Wh/g.
    In accordance with the report published at Phys.org on January 13th, 2015, the new material discovered by chemistry professor Linda F. Nazar and her research team could maintain the stability of Sulfur cathode, which is the major obstacle in the research of lithium-sulfur battery. Theoretically, the running time of lithium-sulfur battery is 2 times longer than that of ordinarylithium ion battery at same weight. What’s more, it’s cheaper than lithium ion battery.
     In July 2010, lithium-sulfur battery produced by Sion Power is applied on an American unmanned solar plane, which has attracted the attention of the public. Part of the electricity generated at daytime is stored in the lithium-sulfur batteries and discharged at nighttime. The unmanned solar plane has flown 14 days continuously.

                                                            

India continues to ramp up interest in ESS technology

India signalled its growing interest in energy storage systems during a week when its prime minister visited Tesla and a firm unveiled a new lead-acid battery.

During a tour of the US firm’s automotive campus, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi showed interest in Tesla’s Powerwall, especially for India’s remote rural areas.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs said the main takeaway was the technology behind long-term storage batteries, and Modi had been ‘very keen’ to see how India could use the battery technology to ‘leapfrog development in India’, claimed the website.

Tesla began shipping its 7kWh Powerwalls to pilot customers in North America, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Australia this week.

Meanwhile Relicell has launched a proprietary gel-based maintenance-free battery, designed for renewable energy storage, especially for home use in India’s punishing weather conditions.

Relicell is the battery brand of Greenvision Technologies, an energy storage solutions firm headquartered in Bangalore, India.

The batteries use a lead-calcium-tin-silver alloy, a synthetic separator with phosphoric acid added to the electrolyte to improve life cycle.

The batteries are available in 12V, 35 Ah to 12V and 200 Ah options and come in three variants: Solar Gel for solar applications, Ultra Gel for home inverters and deep cycle UPS applications.

Founder and Managing Director of Greenvision Technologies Biju Bruno said: "The largest adoption of these batteries is likely to be in home inverters and solar energy storage devices, while batteries used to store solar energy will be able to operate under very hot conditions and even in a state of partial charge."

Back in August ACME Cleantech Solutions launched the first power back-up storage solution in India. The lithium-ion-based EcoGrid Energy Storage System was designed for homes and small commercial units.

At the start of the year, US energy storage system developer SunEdison moved into the Indian market when it bought 1,000 Imergy Power Systems ESP 30 systems.

SunEdison bought the vanadium flow battery technology to build microgrids to store solar energy in rural India. SunEdison aims to develop 5,000 microgrids by 2020 to store solar energy for 20 million people, with the first 1,000 to be developed within three years.

New trend of battery rack

    With the rapid development of telecommunication, the load of base stations is also increasing gradually, which therefore has higher requirement for the reliability of batteries. Some customers and regional markets show growing demand for single cell batteries with large capacity, and also require the batteries to be easily installed, connected, maintained, and space-saving. 
    Recently, Sacred Sun has received a large amount of orders regarding battery rack design, which demonstrates the new trend of battery rack with following characteristics:
1. Horizontal placement of batteries to achieve multi-layer stacking, easy installation, disassembly and maintenance;
2. Modular combination and installation to save installation space;
3. Whole and systematic design of batteries, connectors, racks and related accessories to make sure the easy installation, transportation, and maintenance of the system;
4. Steel shell is equipped outside the battery to prevent the bulge of battery container, and enhance the safety of the battery operation correspondingly;
5. Two different connectors: copper bars and cables are available to meet customers’ different requirements.

Will sodium-ion battery replace Li-ion battery?

    Not satisfied with changing the appearance of lithium battery, John Goodenough, father of Li-ion battery, has now organized an international team of scientists at the University of Texas, US. Currently, the team has claimed that the mineral eldfellite ( NaFe(SO4)₂) could be regarded as a potential cathode for sodium-ion battery. This significant discovery has been published on an online Journal called Eldfellite. The title of the paper is “NaFe(SO4)₂: Embedded Cathode for Low-cost Sodium-ion Batteries”.
    Eldfellite (NaFe(SO4)₂) is composed of Na⁺ layers and Fe³⁺ layers, and is separated at a fixed distance by SO4^2-polyhedral. 80% of the material’s theoretical maximum specific capacity might be achieved because the fixed spaces allow the diffusion of sodium ions.
    Preetam Singh, a scientist of the research team, said that the problem at present is the size of the sodium ion, because the sodium–sodium interaction is much stronger than Lithium-Lithium interaction. If they simply duplicate li-ion technology by directly replacing lithium with sodium in the chemical structure of cathode and electrolyte, favorable ratio performance will not be achieved.
    Li-ion batteries bring us convenience, such as mobile phones and electric vehicles. However, the limited supply of lithium has caused the high cost of li-ion batteries and EVs, and has confined the application of the technology.
    In view of the deficiency of lithium, researchers are trying to solve the problem through replacing lithium with sodium, for sodium-ion battery could also reach 100% discharge rate and is safer than lithium-ion battery on transportation.

Transformation’s New Trends of Global Telecom Operators

At present, the world's major operators are constantly seeking transformation in the recovery, and business performance has made a comeback. North American telecom operators’ achievements on traffic management, European operators’ achievements on overseas market, and Japanese operators’ achievements on 4G have brought obvious economic growth to the operators, while Chinese operators’ growth rate on revenue has kept declining in recent years and they are still exploring the best approach for them. Generally speaking, telecom operators who adopt traffic management strategy perform better. The common points of those leading operators are that they pay high attention to enterprise market, and regard industrial internet as an important direction.

1.  Boost operating performance with 4G business, and achieve service value enhancing with traffic management.

Based on a globally analysis, 4G business has obviously boost effect to the ARPU of operators. Verizon and other mobile operators in North America have achieved performance rebound through traffic management.

2. Deploy industrial internet, and strive to seek breakthrough point

Under the situation of increasingly saturated traditional business market, telecom operators all around the world are actively exploring new revenue growth points. Deployment on industrial internet will be an inevitable trend in the future development of international telecom operators.

Sacred Sun OPzV Battery Won Telecom Tender in Nigeria

Recently, Sacred Sun has successfully won a bid in the Hybrid PV BTS in Nigeria. Sacred Sun will supply 19200pcs Tubular Gel Batteries (OPzV batteries) for 800 sites. This is the second time for Sacred Sun’s OPzV series battery to be largely applied in Nigeria’s telecom. Sacred Sun OPzV series battery adopts German tubular pure gel technology, its key raw material and production equipment are imported from Europe. All of these have ensured its superior service life, excellent reliability, good cycling performance and charge acceptance ability, and therefore enable it to be used in harsh temperature environment, poor power condition, pure cycle use solar energy systems, and wind power communication base stations.