The future of batteries

The future of batteries is bright! Companies, governments, and research organisations around the world are committing time and money to developing new battery technologies. Their progress will be key to decarbonising many sectors of the global economy and moving towards a greener future... And with so many new and innovative brands getting involved, interesting things are happening.

Scaling energy storage

Here’s an interesting development. The world is moving toward renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power. However, these don’t provide steady streams of electricity. The sun sets as people get home and turn their lights on, and weather patterns are unpredictable. This creates a need for a new type of battery - one large enough to store power for entire cities.

Enter the battery grid. Companies like Tesla and Ambri are creating giant battery grids capable of storing renewable energy from wind and solar farms, which can then be used on demand by nearby towns and cities. Tesla built one such battery grid in south Australia capable of supplying 100 megawatts in 140 milliseconds, and peak electricity costs dropped by 90%! As a result, the installation has already saved the Australian government tens of millions of dollars.

In 2018, it was Belgium's turn, with an equally powerful megabattery in Dilsen-Stokkem, Limburg. The first in Europe. In 2020, Ghent also received a megabattery for the New Docks, which is expected to provide optimal management of energy flows for a new building project. Since then, the number of large-scale battery storage systems in Belgium has significantly increased.

In Poland and Sweden, among other EU states, projects are popping up that seek to repurpose used electric bus batteries as renewable energy storage devices in apartment blocks and neighbourhoods. This is quickly becoming a new business model that benefits both the electric vehicle and renewable energy industries.

Powering neighbourhoods with liquid metal

Alongside Tesla are companies like Ambri, who are pioneering a fully liquid metal battery with calcium and antimony electrodes. They promise to be low cost and low maintenance with a long life-span and large enough capacity to power entire neighbourhoods.

A new contender: flow batteries

Flow batteries, also known as redox-flow batteries, are an interesting alternative to large scale lithium-ion battery farms. While the technology is still under development, it could potentially be a cheaper, more organic, less hazardous and more scalable solution to storing electricity to power cities.

Flow batteries are a cross between batteries and fuel cells. The electroactive chemicals which provide the redox reaction (producing electricity) are circulated and replenished through two large tanks of electrolyte. Current versions use a rare and expensive metal called vanadium for both the negative and positive electrodes which means there is no danger of cross-contamination or thermal runaway. This also leads to unparalleled cycle lives of around 15,000–20,000 cycles, which in turn results in a record levelised cost of energy (the system cost divided by the usable energy, the cycle life, and round-trip efficiency). Many research institutions around the world are busy fine-tuning this technology and exploring organic materials that could enable the mass production of flow batteries.

Technological innovation

The electric vehicle revolution

One of the most notable developments in the battery industry is the electric vehicle revolution, set to take place over the next few years. The move to electric vehicles will see a gigantic increase in the production of EV batteries, leading to the development of better EV battery technologies capable of charging faster and lasting longer.

This also means we need to figure out how to deal with end-of-life EV batteries on a huge scale. At Bebat and our subsidiary, Reneos, we’re expanding our EV services such as diagnostics, packaging and transportation of used EV batteries to recycling or second-life facilities. We’re developing smarter solutions and new safety features to prepare for the coming tide of EV batteries that will need responsible collection, sorting and transportation.

The difficulties of EV batteries

Whilst it is simple to sort and handle small consumer batteries using relatively simple materials handling technologies, EV batteries present a much more complicated problem. The large size of the batteries coupled with their weight presents manual handling problems.

Also, a robot in a factory may follow a prescribed series of actions to produce one type of battery, but there is unfortunately no standardisation in EV battery design to allow for an automated disassembly process. This task will require advances in artificial intelligence and machine vision in order to recognise specific battery components across different models and designs.

Solid-state batteries

European institutions are at the forefront of battery innovation. The MOBI research group at VUB (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) has become a recognised 'hotspot' for solid-state battery research, with ambitious goals to give EVs a range of 800+ kilometres. In October 2019, MOBI unveiled an ultramodern dry room for producing these revolutionary battery technologies.

Volkswagen started the first solid-state battery production lines in Europe in 2025, whilst Toyota is currently testing concept cars with this technology. These solid-state batteries replace liquid electrolyte with solid materials, making them more powerful, smaller, safer, and cheaper, with working prototypes already achieving more than 1,000 charge cycles.

Heat-resistant battery breakthrough

Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries have many advantages. But also disadvantages. Heat development, for example. The battery can then become damaged and lose capacity.

"How do we make the battery more resistant to heat?" researchers at Penn State University wondered. Their answer is a battery that heats up to +/- 60°C and then cools down again. This is ensured by the nickel foil at the negative pole of the battery. As a result, it can handle up to 1700 full charge cycles. And the battery of an electric car can be recharged in just 10 minutes. Cool, right?

New battery chemistries

New battery chemistries are being developed for various applications, which in turn is driving innovation in battery recycling. Biohydrometallurgy is a fun, strange and exciting possible future solution to battery recycling. It’s a bio-leaching process that uses various acids along with specialised bacteria that consume black mass materials and excrete purified metal oxides. Tests into this technology suggest it’s extremely efficient (recycling 100% of copper and lithium in lithium batteries) with very low running costs, but it takes far too long at present to be a scalable solution. Many other hydro- and pyrometallurgical developments are also underway as the race for better recycling methods at scale intensifies.

Battery-as-a-Service: a revolutionary business model

An innovative solution emerging is Battery-as-a-Service (BaaS), where electric vehicles are sold without batteries, which consumers then lease according to their needs. For short trips, you choose a compact battery with lower range; for longer distances, you can swap your battery at service stations for one with higher capacity.

The BaaS model is expanding rapidly in Asia and cautiously growing in Europe. NIO already operates more than 2,000 battery swap stations in China and is also active in several European countries, including Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Norway. In Belgium, where such systems remain rare, interest from leasing companies is increasing significantly.

Tomorrow's battery technologies

Replacing carbon graphite with silicon

Sila Nano has successfully replaced the carbon graphite in lithium cells with silicon, which can store about 20 times more lithium and charge up to 9 times faster.

Aluminium-iron batteries

Aluminium-iron batteries are in development too, promising to be more stable, cheaper to produce, and better for the environment since aluminium is one of most abundant resources.

Revolutionary charging speeds

Perhaps most spectacular is the technology from Israeli company StoreDot: batteries that charge completely in just 5 minutes. This technology was being tested in 2024 in collaboration with car manufacturers Polestar and VinFast, with commercial breakthrough dependent on infrastructure such as extremely powerful charging stations and adapted network capacity.

Lithium-sulphur batteries

Flemish research institutions (VITO, UHasselt, IMEC, KU Leuven, and EnergyVille) are collaborating on promising lithium-sulphur batteries. These revolutionary batteries don't require cobalt and nickel - toxic materials requiring large amounts of water and energy to extract. Instead, they use sulphur, the third most common raw material on earth, often considered a waste product. The technology has potential to store five times more energy than current lithium-ion batteries!

CO2-powered innovation

Researchers at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) developed an electro swing battery that removes CO2 from surrounding air or industrial gases, using a polyanthraquinone coating around electrodes - comparable to a hoover for CO2. An improved version in 2023 showed 30% higher CO₂ absorption capacity.

Additionally, lithium-CO2 batteries using carbon dioxide as active material can hold up to 7 times more electricity than today's lithium-ion batteries. The University of Illinois tackled the challenge of CO2 solidification using molybdenum disulphide (MoS2), achieving a viable lithium-CO2 battery in 2019.

More sustainable alternatives

Sodium-ion (natrium-ion) batteries are emerging as a promising and more sustainable alternative to lithium-ion. While they have a slightly lower voltage than LFP batteries, they are up to 30% cheaper, charge faster, and perform well even in freezing temperatures. With multiple chemistries already available, sodium-ion batteries are increasingly considered suitable for both energy storage systems (ESS) and electric vehicles (EVs). They require no cobalt, no nickel, and no lithium.

The implementation of robotics

One last exciting trend to mention is the implementation of robotics to assemble and disassemble larger battery packs and improve recycling outputs. Automated robotics could be particularly useful when it comes to disassembling EV batteries, which could then be re-used or recycled more efficiently. In the long run our goal is to close the loop on battery production through improved recycling techniques and intelligent second-life solutions for batteries big and small. Keeping batteries safe and sustainable, producing more efficient and powerful battery technologies through ethical practices.

A circular future powered by traceability

With increasing consumer awareness about the ethical issues concerned with the sourcing of materials from some batteries, there is a clamour to provide improved traceability to understand the provenance of materials. There is a need to provide secure verification of this traceability information. Block chain technologies may in the future provide information that can be of use in ascertaining information about batteries, what is in them and where that material came from. There is also the potential to add information to a battery’s block chain over its life. Thinking about a circular economy of batteries in the future, we can imagine a scenario where large batteries may be cascaded through different uses – first in an electric vehicle then in a stationary power installation. At each stage of the battery’s life cycle, information could be added to that blockchain about the condition of the battery, its service life, any faults that have arisen in the pack. At the point of transfer from one application to the next - or on to recycling – this information could aid decision making about the value left in the battery, or how to correctly treat it.

More about blockchain

Blockchain technology will be used to track the responsible sourcing of raw materials from credited mines and recyclers around the world and log the journey of the battery from production, to use, to collection, sorting and recycling. This information will be easily accessible via QR codes found on battery packaging.

Beyond recycling: the power of battery reuse
While recycling is certainly better than throwing our waste in landfills or burning it, this requires large amounts of energy and often produces downcycled materials and unwanted byproducts. Our methods are continually improving, but there is also a third route that is not often enough discussed - reuse. Bebat, along with other organisations around the world, is particularly interested in exploring second-life solutions to used batteries.

Reuse entails repurposing used batteries without having to treat them first. When done right, this reduces pollution, energy consumption and waste. Some industries have already found ways to repurpose waste products, such as dirty water and soil, instead of sending them directly for processing and recycling. The same is true in the world of batteries.

For example, used EV batteries are being repurposed as electric storage grids for towns and cities. In Finland a company called Tracegrow extracts the zinc and manganese from used alkaline batteries and turns them into fertiliser for a green-focused approach. Even something as simple as replacing single-use batteries (such as typical AA and AAA batteries) with rechargeable batteries is a step toward re-use and closing the loop on batteries.

Batteries are getting smarter and smarter... But they still need recycling

In looking to the future, the next 25 years will see equally significant changes in batteries.

First, chemistries will continue to change. They will become more organically based instead of using metals. Second, they will become increasingly integrated into products, materials and the fabric of our lives. The concept of “wearable” technology is only now beginning to take hold. Think of a garment that cools or warms based on body temperature. Finally, batteries will become much more pervasive, powerful and smarter. They will power almost every motive device. They will manage our homes and buildings in which we work.

Even with all these changes, a constant remains the need to recycle. While recycling habits have slightly improved over the last 25 years, the amount of waste society generates has, if anything worsened. Batteries are just one of many materials where diversion must improve and continue to grow.

Safety

concerns

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