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Scientists Discover Way to Send Information into Black Holes Without Using Energy

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Chinese Scientists Just Created a Battery That Could Store Renewable Energy for Months

As the world rapidly shifts toward clean energy, solar panels and wind turbines are becoming a common sight across cities, villages, and industries. These renewable technologies are helping reduce pollution and dependence on fossil fuels. However, they all share one major challenge: they only generate electricity when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing.

What happens on cloudy days, calm nights, or during seasons with less sunlight? This is where energy storage becomes critical. Scientists around the world are racing to build batteries that can store excess renewable energy for long periods and release it whenever needed.

Now, researchers from Fudan University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed an innovative battery that could become a major breakthrough in renewable energy storage. Their newly designed flowing zinc (Zn) slurry battery, published in Nature Energy, offers a promising solution for storing clean electricity safely, efficiently, and for much longer than many existing battery technologies.

The Biggest Challenge of Renewable Energy

Renewable energy sources such as solar and wind are clean, sustainable, and abundant. Yet they are also unpredictable.

Solar panels generate electricity only during the day, while wind turbines depend entirely on weather conditions. During periods of low sunlight or weak winds, electricity production drops significantly. Without effective energy storage, power grids must often rely on coal, natural gas, or other fossil fuels to maintain a steady electricity supply.

Large-scale batteries can bridge this gap by storing surplus electricity produced during peak renewable generation and delivering it when renewable sources are unavailable. However, today's storage technologies still face limitations such as high costs, limited lifespan, safety concerns, and performance degradation over time.

Why Zinc?

Among many battery materials, zinc has long attracted scientists because it is inexpensive, widely available, environmentally friendly, and capable of storing large amounts of energy.

Despite these advantages, conventional zinc batteries have one serious drawback. During repeated charging and discharging, zinc electrodes gradually deteriorate. This degradation reduces battery efficiency, shortens lifespan, and limits their use in long-term energy storage systems.

Professor Fei Wang, senior author of the study, explained that his team's research began with the goal of overcoming these long-standing challenges.

Interestingly, inspiration came from an unexpected place—a zinc electrowinning plant, where zinc ions are converted into pure metallic zinc during industrial production.

Watching this process sparked a new idea: instead of using zinc as a fixed electrode, why not make it a moving energy carrier?

A Completely Different Battery Design

Traditional batteries use solid electrodes that remain fixed inside the battery throughout their lifetime.

The new flowing zinc slurry battery works differently.

Instead of keeping zinc stationary, the battery suspends tiny zinc nanoparticles inside a specially designed electrically conductive liquid called a slurry. This slurry continuously circulates between storage tanks and the battery cell.

As the battery charges, zinc ions gain electrons and transform into metallic zinc particles. During discharge, these particles convert back into zinc ions, releasing stored electricity.

Because the zinc material is constantly moving, it avoids many of the problems that plague traditional zinc electrodes, such as uneven deposits, cracking, and surface degradation.

This innovative approach transforms zinc from a static battery component into a dynamic energy carrier.

Three Key Components Make It Work

The researchers combined three carefully engineered elements to achieve this breakthrough.

The first is nanoscale zinc particles, which act as the primary energy storage material.

The second is a hollow carbon network that provides continuous electrical pathways while keeping the zinc particles evenly dispersed throughout the slurry.

The third is a specially designed ligand-controlled electrolyte, which stabilizes the chemical reactions occurring between zinc particles and the surrounding liquid.

Together, these components prevent zinc particles from clumping together, reduce unwanted side reactions, and maintain highly reversible charging and discharging.

This combination significantly improves battery stability and extends its operational life.

Outstanding Performance in Early Tests

The laboratory results were highly impressive.

The battery achieved a remarkable Coulombic efficiency of 99.94%, meaning almost all the electrical energy used to charge the battery could later be recovered during discharge. High Coulombic efficiency indicates minimal energy loss and excellent chemical stability.

Even more impressive was its durability.

The researchers successfully operated symmetrical flowing zinc slurry battery cells continuously for 5,128 hours, demonstrating exceptional long-term stability.

In another experiment, zinc-manganese dioxide batteries based on this new design retained 81.1% of their original capacity after 5,500 charge-discharge cycles.

Such long-lasting performance is particularly important for renewable energy systems that require batteries capable of operating reliably for many years.

Why Flow Batteries Matter

Flow batteries have several advantages over conventional battery technologies.

Unlike standard batteries, where energy storage capacity is fixed by the battery size, flow batteries store energy inside external tanks filled with liquid electrolytes.

This means increasing storage capacity is as simple as adding larger storage tanks or more liquid electrolyte instead of redesigning the battery itself.

The flowing zinc slurry battery takes this concept even further by making the zinc itself flow through the system.

This design separates energy storage from power delivery, making the battery easier to scale for large renewable energy installations such as solar farms and wind power plants.

A Safer and More Affordable Alternative

One of the most attractive features of zinc batteries is safety.

Unlike lithium-ion batteries, zinc-based systems are far less likely to overheat or catch fire. Zinc is also significantly cheaper and far more abundant than lithium or cobalt, two materials whose prices have risen sharply due to increasing global demand.

Using zinc could reduce manufacturing costs while improving supply chain stability for future energy storage systems.

This makes the technology particularly attractive for developing countries seeking affordable renewable energy infrastructure.

Moving Beyond the Laboratory

Although the battery has shown outstanding laboratory performance, researchers say further work is needed before commercial deployment.

Future studies will focus on building much larger battery systems capable of storing electricity for entire communities, renewable power stations, and industrial facilities.

The research team also plans to improve slurry composition, optimize chemical reactions, increase energy density, and test long-term operation under real-world conditions.

Engineering challenges such as efficient slurry pumping, large-scale system integration, and continuous operation will also be addressed.

The Future of Metal-Based Energy Storage

The researchers believe this breakthrough may extend far beyond zinc alone.

The concept of using flowing metal particles as energy carriers could eventually be applied to other metals, opening entirely new directions for battery technology.

If successful, future metal slurry batteries could combine high energy capacity, excellent safety, long operational life, and low manufacturing costs—qualities that today's energy storage industry has been seeking for decades.

A Step Toward a Cleaner Energy Future

Renewable energy can only fully replace fossil fuels if reliable, affordable, and long-lasting energy storage becomes widely available.

The flowing zinc slurry battery represents a major step toward solving one of clean energy's biggest challenges. By transforming zinc into a circulating energy carrier, scientists have created a battery that delivers exceptional efficiency, impressive durability, and outstanding scalability.

While commercial deployment may still take several years, this breakthrough offers a promising glimpse into the future of renewable energy storage—one where clean electricity generated on sunny or windy days can be safely stored and delivered whenever the world needs it most.

Reference: Chen, W., Wang, Y., Liu, Z. et al. Flowing zinc slurry for long-duration energy storage. Nat Energy (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-026-02091-w

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