A team of researchers from the University of New South Wales has achieved a significant breakthrough by patenting a new battery component. This innovation utilizes food-based acids sourced from sherbet and winemaking. By doing so, they have opened up an ideal opportunity for certain producers to generate a new revenue stream while also contributing to the reduction of organic food waste that ends up in Australian landfills.

Revolutionizing Batteries and Reducing Food Waste

Minimizing Environmental Impact

The single-layer pouch cell, currently being optimized, resembles a smaller version of those used in mobile phones. This new prototype not only improves energy storage capacity but also minimizes environmental impacts in its materials and processing. It makes lithium-ion batteries more efficient, affordable, and sustainable. The electrode developed by the team can significantly increase the energy storage capability by replacing graphite with compounds derived from food acids like tartaric acid (naturally found in many fruits) and malic acid (found in some fruits and wine extracts). Food acids are readily available, typically less aggressive, and contain the necessary functional groups or chemical characteristics. This battery component could potentially use food acids from food waste streams, reducing their environmental and economic impact. Its processing uses water instead of toxic solvents, thus 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.

Identifying the Best Combinations

The need for batteries has been on the rise in recent years as we continue to develop renewable energy infrastructure to combat climate challenges. The same is true for new methods of reducing food waste, 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. They realized that the acid actually reacts with the metal surface of the battery component. It’s a fundamental chemical reaction - a metal plus an acid gives you a salt and hydrogen. And it’s that salt that gives the improved performance.The research team worked with a range of food acids and metals to identify the most affordable and materially accessible combination. They experimented to understand what was happening, designing reactions to maximize performance and characterizing the resulting compounds and their performance. As a result, they have the versatility to change the combination to suit different supply streams and desired performance. For example, while Australia has a lot of iron, in other regions, manganese or zinc might be more accessible and can be used as the metal component.

Upscaling and Diversifying

The team is currently upscaling the technology, increasing production quantities, and transitioning from small coin cell to larger pouch cell capability. They are also looking at diverting diverse bio-waste streams from landfill to use them as sources to formulate new electrode microstructures. For example, they have worked with Prof. Veena Sahajwalla to pyrolyse coffee grounds to use them as a carbon source to make anodes within lithium-sulphur batteries. 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 exploring other ways to turn waste by-products into viable secondary products. COPAR, a sustainable packaging solutions company, aims to eliminate single-use plastics by utilizing 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. 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. These examples are just a sampling of how the food and beverage manufacturing industry is converting waste products into viable secondary market applications.