A well-known chemistry professor at MIT is the recipient of the 2022 European Inventor Award for his work on liquid metal batteries.
Donald Sadoway was recognized by the European Patent Office as the award winner in its “Non-EPO countries” category. Sadoway, who has spent more than 40 years at MIT, has developed batteries made of liquid metal that can be used to store renewable energy on a large scale.
Launched in 2006, the European Inventor Award recognizes individuals and teams developing solutions to some of the world’s biggest challenges. Winners are selected by a jury of former award finalists.
“By enabling the large-scale storage of renewable energy, Donald Sadoway’s invention is a huge step towards the deployment of carbon-free electricity generation,” António Campinos, president of the European Patent Office, said in a statement.
Sadoway has spent his career working in applied electrochemistry. In the mid-2000s he turned his attention to stationary storage solutions as wind and solar became a more viable energy option.
“Solar and wind were starting to become cheaper and cheaper and yet there was no answer to the question of how do you bridge the gap when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t flow,” Sadoway said.
Sadoway quickly ruled out lithium-ion batteries, the type found in most electronic devices.
“Lithium ion is kind of temperamental,” Sadoway said. “As you get larger and larger with lithium ion, you’ve got the danger of overheating.”
The liquid metal batteries Sadoway and his team designed contain two liquid layers of molten metals, with a middle layer of molten liquid salt. The batteries operate at extremely high temperatures to keep the metals liquid. Sadoway designed a self-heating and insulated system that requires no external heating or cooling. The resulting batteries can maintain 99% of their capacity over 5,000 charging cycles.
“What sets the liquid-metal battery apart is the long surface lifetime and also the immunity to fire,” Sadoway said.
Batteries: 'not very sexy'
In 2010, Sadoway co-founded the startup Ambri with David Bradwell and Luis Ortiz to commercialize this technology. Two years later, Ambri, formerly called Liquid Metal Battery Corp., raised a $15 million Series B round, with backers including Bill Gates and energy firm Total.
The company eventually moved from its offices in Cambridge to Marlborough as manufacturing picked up, Sadoway said. He told BostInno that with more customer orders on deck for their batteries, the company is in the process of moving further westward but will remain in Massachusetts.
Sadoway received his award during a ceremony in Europe last week. He said he didn’t expect to win the award for his liquid metal batteries, a field of study he admitted was “not very sexy.”
“They announced my name and I was just blown away,” he said. “All I said when I got on the stage was, ‘I’m astonished.’”
Ambri and Sadoway have a big year ahead, including a move and the installation of its batteries on a 3,700-acre development for a data center in Nevada.
“There’s an order book and we are being very careful about when we release the product into customer hands so that we’ve got the confidence that there will be a response from the customer, essentially a third party, that will say ‘Yeah, this thing is really good. It really works,’” Sadoway said.
Sign up for The Beat, BostInno’s free daily innovation newsletter from BostInno reporter Hannah Green. See past examples here.
