What is bioenergy and energy from waste?
Bioenergy is a form of renewable energy generated from the conversion of biomass into heat, electricity, biogas and liquid fuels. Biomass is organic matter derived from forestry, agriculture or waste streams available on a renewable basis. It can also include combustible components of municipal solid waste.

Biomass can be converted to bioenergy using a range of technologies depending on the type of feedstock (raw material), scale/size of the project and form of energy to be produced. Conversion technologies include combustion, pyrolysis, gasification, transesterification, anaerobic digestion and fermentation, or may be linked to processes such as biorefining.

Some conversion processes also produce byproducts that can be used to make useful materials such as renewable bitumen and even biomass-based concrete. Additional benefits include emissions reduction, waste disposal, providing support for rural economies, and improving air quality.

Australia produces 19 useful minerals in significant amounts, from over 350 operating mines. From these minerals, useful materials such as metals can be extracted.

Australia is one of the world's leading producers of bauxite (aluminium ore), iron ore, lithium, gold, lead, diamond, rare earth elements, uranium, and zinc.

Australia also has large mineral sand deposits of ilmenite, zircon and rutile. In addition, Australia produces large quantities of black coal, manganese, antimony, nickel, silver, cobalt, copper and tin.

Australia has abundant reserves of critical minerals such as lithium, silicon and rare earths, which are key components of low-emissions technologies such as batteries, solar panels and electric vehicles which will help Australia and the world to lower emissions.

Australia already produces almost half of the world’s lithium, is the second-largest producer of cobalt and the fourth-largest producer of rare earths.
However, demand for low-emissions technologies is projected to skyrocket over the next three decades, which is expected to lead to more demand for lithium, cobalt, graphite and rare earth elements, among others.

Flow batteries were first developed in the 1980s, by now-Emeritus Professor Maria Skyllas-Kazacos at the University of New South Wales.

“Most of the batteries that we use are enclosed systems,” says Associate Professor Alexey Glushenkov, a chemist and research lead in battery materials at the Australian National University’s Battery Storage and Grid Integration Program.

In the coming decades, renewable energy sources such as solar and wind will increasingly dominate the conventional power grid. Because those sources only generate electricity when it’s sunny or windy, ensuring a reliable grid — one that can deliver power 24/7 — requires some means of storing electricity when supplies are abundant and delivering it later when they’re not. A promising technology for performing that task is the flow battery, an electrochemical device that can store hundreds of megawatt-hours of energy — enough to keep thousands of homes running for many hours on a single charge. Flow batteries have the potential for long lifetimes and low costs in part due to their unusual design. In the everyday batteries used in phones and electric vehicles, the materials that store the electric charge are solid coatings on the electrodes.

A flow battery contains two substances that undergo electrochemical reactions in which electrons are transferred from one to the other. When the battery is being charged, the transfer of electrons forces the two substances into a state that’s “less energetically favourable” as it stores extra energy. (Think of a ball being pushed up to the top of a hill.) When the battery is being discharged, the transfer of electrons shifts the substances into a more energetically favourable state as the stored energy is released. (The ball is set free and allowed to roll down the hill.)

At the core of a flow battery are two large tanks that hold liquid electrolytes, one positive and the other negative. Each electrolyte contains dissolved “active species” — atoms or molecules that will electrochemically react to release or store electrons. During charging, one species is “oxidized” (releases electrons), and the other is “reduced” (gains electrons); during discharging, they swap roles. Pumps are used to circulate the two electrolytes through separate electrodes, each made of a porous material that provides abundant surfaces on which the active species can react. A thin membrane between the adjacent electrodes keeps the two electrolytes from coming into direct contact and possibly reacting, which would release heat and waste energy that could otherwise be used on the grid.

A critical factor in designing flow batteries is the selected chemistry. The two electrolytes can contain different chemicals, but today the most widely used setup has vanadium in different oxidation states on the two sides. That arrangement addresses the two major challenges with flow batteries.

First, vanadium doesn’t degrade. If you put 100 grams of vanadium into your battery and you come back in 100 years, you should be able to recover 100 grams of that vanadium — as long as the battery doesn’t have some sort of a physical leak.

And second, if some of the vanadium in one tank flows through the membrane to the other side, there is no permanent cross-contamination of the electrolytes, only a shift in the oxidation states, which is easily remediated by re-balancing the electrolyte volumes and restoring the oxidation state via a minor charge step. Most of today’s commercial systems include a pipe connecting the two vanadium tanks that automatically transfers a certain amount of electrolyte from one tank to the other when the two get out of balance.

Remote microgrids are perfect for flow batteries of all scales.

They’re not temperature sensitive, like lithium-ion batteries, so they can operate quite comfortably in hot conditions, which is a real benefit. And they’re non-flammable.

Australia has around 18% of the world’s vanadium reserves, mostly in Western Australia – hence Australian Vanadium’s interests. The element is still, mostly, used in steel, but flow batteries are going to change things.

Fusion power is a proposed form of power generation that would generate electricity by using heat from nuclear fusion reactions.

Fusing atoms together in a controlled way releases nearly four million times more energy than a chemical reaction such as the burning of coal, oil or gas and four times as much as nuclear fission reactions (at equal mass). Fusion has the potential to provide the kind of baseload energy needed to provide electricity to our cities and our industries.

The Future Battery Industries Cooperative Research Centre is enabling the growth of battery industries to power Australia’s future. We bring together industry, researchers, governments and the community to ensure Australia plays a leading role in the global battery revolution.

Our work is critical in making our industries more competitive by harnessing the research skills and industry expertise required to create new economic opportunities.

The Hydrogen Industry Cluster will drive crucial collaboration across the emerging hydrogen value chain, building the scale and capabilities of existing industry start-ups, scale-ups and SMEs and further leveraging and developing their technologies that will sustain a clean, innovative, competitive and safe hydrogen industry.
The Cluster will also connect cluster members with leading Australian research organisations, supporting the commercialisation of their IP in Australia, creating high value jobs, securing investment and ultimately supporting hydrogen exports driven by a world-leading hydrogen supply chain of technology solutions and services.
The announcement of the Hydrogen Industry Cluster and NERA’s role forms a key part of the National Hydrogen Strategy released by the Council for Australian Governments (COAG).
The National Hydrogen Strategy has been developed by Australian Governments to create the necessary social and regulatory framework that allows the hydrogen industry to expand, and sets out the foundations needed for Australian businesses to develop a vibrant hydrogen industry that benefits all Australians, while meeting safety and community standards. The aim of the strategy is to:
• build a clean, innovative and competitive hydrogen industry;
• position Australia’s hydrogen industry as a major global player by 2030; and
• coordinate the approach to projects that support hydrogen industry development.

At the Newcastle Institute for Energy and Resources (NIER), multidisciplinary teams are driving productivity and sustainability gains through applied research that is delivering transformational solutions in sectors of national significance.

Pumped hydro energy storage (PHES) constitutes most energy storage worldwide. When electrical energy is plentiful and cheap, it is used to pump water from a lower reservoir to a nearby upper reservoir through a pipe or tunnel. During periods of peak demand, when electricity is expensive, the pumped water is released downhill through a turbine to generate electricity (see Figure 1). About 80% of the electricity used to pump the water uphill is recovered, and 20% is lost.

Australia already has river-based pumped hydro energy storage facilities at Wivenhoe, Shoalhaven and Tumut 3. Construction of Snowy 2.0 has commenced—this project would add 2,000 MW of generation to the National Electricity Market (NEM) and provide about 175 hours of storage. The Kidston pumped hydro scheme in an old gold mine in Far North Queensland has received Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF) funds. A further six pumped hydro energy projects have been shortlisted in the Underwriting New Generation Investments program.

Wind power is currently the cheapest source of large-scale renewable energy. It involves generating electricity from the naturally occurring power of the wind. Wind turbines capture wind energy within the area swept by their blades. The spinning blades drive an electrical generator that produces electricity for export to the grid.