A team of University of New South Wales chemists have patented a new battery component utilising food-based acids from sherbet and winemaking.
By doing so, the team as created an ideal opportunity for some producers to create a new revenue stream while simultaneously helping to reduce organic food waste making it into Australian landfills.
This new prototype minimises environmental impacts in its materials and processing while improving energy storage capacity, making lithium-ion batteries more efficient, affordable, and sustainable.
The single-layer pouch cell, currently being optimised, resembles a smaller version of those used in mobile phones, according to lead researcher Professor Neeraj Sharma from UNSW Science.
“We’ve developed an electrode that can significantly increase the energy storage capability of lithium-ion batteries by replacing graphite with compounds derived from food acids, such as tartaric acid, that occurs naturally in many fruits, and malic acid, found in some fruits and wine extracts,” he said.
“Food acids are readily available, typically less aggressive and contain the necessary functional groups or chemical characteristics.
“Our battery component could potentially use food acids from food waste streams, reducing their environmental and economic impact. Its processing uses water rather toxic solvents, so we’re improving the status quo across multiple areas.”
Food waste costs the Australian economy around $36.6 billion each year and accounts for about three per cent of the nation’s annual greenhouse gas emissions.
“By using waste produced at scale for battery components, the industry can diversify their inputs while addressing both environmental and sustainability concerns,” said Sharma.
Sharma leads the solid state and materials chemistry group, part of the cross-faculty batteries research community of practice at UNSW. They work with government and industry partners across all aspects of battery life.
“Our research ranges from synthesising new materials, characterising new and commonly used materials and devices, to recycling and end-of-life degradation challenges,” he said.
The need for batteries has only increased in recent years as we continue to develop renewable energy infrastructure to combat climate challenges, Prof. Sharma says.
The same is true of new methods of reducing food waste, with methods such as finding a secondary use for waste products and helping reinforce a more circular economy.
UNSW’s novel approach was driven by a PhD candidate examining reported inconsistencies in food acid performance in the lab.
“We realised the acid actually reacts with the metal surface of the battery component. It’s one of the first things we teach in first year chemistry, a metal plus an acid gives you a salt and hydrogen. And it’s that salt that gives you that (improved) performance.”
The research team worked with a range of food acids and metals to identify the most affordable and materially accessible combination.
“We experimented to understand what was happening, designing reactions to maximise performance and characterising the resulting compounds and their performance,” he says.
“As a result, we have the versatility to change the combination to suit different supply streams and desired performance.
“For example, while we have got lots of iron in Australia, in other regions, manganese or zinc, for example, might be more accessible, and therefore these can be used as the metal component.”
The team are currently upscaling the technology, increasing production quantities, and transitioning from small coin cell to larger pouch cell capability.
The research team are also looking at diverting diverse bio-waste streams from landfill to use them as sources to formulate new electrode microstructures, Sharma said.
“For example, we’ve worked with Prof. Veena Sahajwalla to pyrolyse coffee grounds to use them as a carbon source to make anodes within lithium-sulphur batteries,” said Sharma.
As of 2024, more than eight million tons of waste coffee grounds enter landfill globally every year.
Meanwhile, stakeholders within the food and beverage industry have been looking at other ways to turn waste by products into viable secondary products, such as COPAR and its wheat straw fibre-based packaging for food.
COPAR, a sustainable packaging solutions company, aims to eliminate single-use plastics by utilising wheat straw.
The food and beverage industry is focusing on sustainability, particularly in packaging, and with increasing bans on single-use plastics across the country, many industries are seeking alternative solutions.
COPAR is addressing this need by developing fibre-based packaging and presents a great example of how waste by products can provide viable opportunities to increase profit.
The company will launch its first Australian factory in Bathurst, NSW. While fibre-based packaging is not new, using wheat straw for this purpose will be a first in Australia.
“The idea is to re-purpose farmers’ agricultural waste by turning it into compostable packaging, which means it will naturally degrade in the environment with no microplastics, it is truly a circular product,” said Colin Farrell, director of business development for COPAR.
“Circular economy is the hardest part to achieve and understanding it properly is critical.
Farrell said the company came across the wheat straw idea when they were tasked with helping a start-up source compostable packaging.
“From that basis we started to investigate that area and found the University of Newcastle has expertise in compostable plastics and packaging,” he said.
“So, we started our research and development there which then led to establishing our commercial and technology partners.
Demonstrating, as with the news out of UNSW, that collaboration with university level researchers is having an ongoing positive impact on the food and beverage industry.
Other examples include bioplastics, woven fabrics made from orange fibre, and fermenting corn waste to create a sugar-free sweetener.
The examples above are just a sampling of how the food and beverage manufacturing industry is converting waste products into viable secondary market applications.