Scientists Turn Industrial Waste into Batteries for Storing Renewable Energy

A team at Northwestern University has transformed triphenylphosphine oxide (TPPO), a common industrial waste product, into a battery for storing sustainable energy. Thousands of tons of TPPO are produced each year by organic industrial synthesis processes but rendered useless and carefully discarded.

Using a 'one-pot' reaction, chemists turned TPPO into a usable product with powerful potential for energy storage in 'redox flow' batteries. Unlike lithium batteries which store energy in electrodes, redox flow batteries use chemical reactions to pump energy through liquid solutions.

“Thousands of tons of TPPO are produced each year by organic industrial synthesis processes but rendered useless and carefully discarded.”

'Synthetic chemists can contribute to the field by molecularly engineering an organic waste product into an energy-storing molecule,' said Northwestern chemist Christian Malapit. The market for redox flow batteries is expected to rise 15% between 2023 and 2030 to reach $720 million worldwide.