新型流体电池，潜力惊人
With solar and wind electricity prices plunging, the hunt is on for cheap batteries to store all this power for use around the clock.
随着太阳能和风能价格的暴跌，人们开始寻找便宜的电池来储存所有的电能。
Now, researchers have made an advance with a flow battery, the type of battery being developed to soak up enough excess wind and solar power to fuel whole cities.
如今，研究员们在流体电池上有了进展，这种类型的电池研发出来就是为了吸收足够的风能和太阳能来为整个城市提供能源的。
They report the discovery of a potentially cheap, organic molecule that can power a flow battery for years instead of days.
他们报告称发现了一种很有潜力的便宜的有机分子，它可以为流体电池连年而不是连续几天供电。
Flow batteries have the same components as the typical lithium-ion cells in your cellphone, but work in a way that allows them to be scaled up to provide megawatts.
流体电池跟手机中用的经典的锂电池的组件是一样的，不过它们工作的方式使其能够集成化来提供百万兆瓦的能量。
They have pairs of electrodes that convert energy stored in chemicals into electricity, and electrolytes that ferry charges from one electrode to another.
它们含有一对电极，可以把储存的化学能转化成电能，还有电解液用来把电荷从一极送到另一极。
But where conventional batteries package electrodes and electrolytes together in a cell, flow batteries keep them separate.
然而，传统的电池会把电极和电解液组装在一个电池里，而流体电池则把它们分开存放。
Energy is stored in external tanks of charged liquid electrolytes that can be any size—which makes it easier to store large amounts of renewable power.
能量储存在带电的液态电解质的外部池里，这个池可以做成各种大小——这样就使其容易储存大量的可再生能源。
During use, positive and negative electrolytes are pumped through the electrodes, which extract electricity, a process that is reversed during charging.
使用时，正极和负极电解液被泵入电极，电极从中抽取电能，而在充电过程中这个过程被逆转。
Today, flow batteries can store and discharge large amounts of electricity more safely, cheaply, and durably than lithium-ion batteries.
如今，流体电池与锂离子电池相比，能更安全，低价而持续地储存和释放大量的电能。
But they still rely on relatively expensive electrolytes that incorporate vanadium metal particles.
但它们仍然依赖于含有金属钒颗粒的相对昂贵的电解质。
Chemists have been looking to organic compounds called quinones as an alternative.
化学家们正试图用一种叫做醌类的有机化合物进行替代。
Organic-based flow batteries can be a third the cost of those that use vanadium, but they wear out after repeated charging cycles in an industry that expects them to last for a decade or more.
有机化合物组建的流体电池是钒金属电池造价的三分之一，不过它们在重复充电放电循环数次后就损耗了，而工业上期望它们能持续工作十年甚至更久。
“The lifetime of organic flow batteries is the main reason they are struggling to be commercialized,” says Susan Odom, a chemist at the University of Kentucky in Lexington.
“有机流体电池的生命周期是它们很难商业化的主要原因，”苏珊.欧德姆说道，她是列克星敦市肯塔基大学的一名化学家。
So, Harvard University materials scientist Michael Aziz and his colleagues set out to improve the lifetimes of quinones.
于是，哈佛大学的材料科学家麦克.阿齐兹和他的同事们开始提升醌类化合物的生命周期。
He and his colleagues report the creation of a new quinone called DBEAQ, which they also call the Methuselah molecule after the long lived biblical character.
他和同事们报告称创建了一种新的醌类化合物叫做DBEAQ,他们也称它为玛士撒拉分子，是根据长期存在的圣经人物命名的。
The team added two arms called carboxylic acids to a previously discovered quinone to make it more soluble in alkaline solutions.
研究小组在先前发现的醌中加入了两个被称为羧酸的基团，使其更容易溶于碱性溶液。
They could put more DBEAQ into electrolyte solution at a lower, less chemically harsh pH.
他们可以在更低的化学强度更弱的pH下，在电解质溶液中加入更多的DBEAQ。
That and other chemical changes lowered DBEAQ’s capacity degradation loss to just 3% per year, the researchers reported this month in Joule.
这一举措加上其他的化学修饰把DBEAQ的能耗速率降到了每年3%，研究员们在这个月的《焦耳》杂志上发表了结果。
Previous quinone-based flow batteries degraded by similar amounts every day.
以前的醌类化合物流体电池每天都会损耗类似数量的。
If the Methuselah quinone can be produced at a large scale as cheaply as other quinones—and that’s currently unknown—its performance could already be good enough for commercial viability, Aziz says.
假如玛士撒拉醌可以跟别的醌类一样低价大规模生产的话—目前还不确定—它的表现已经好到商业化可行了，阿齐兹说道。
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