Scientists have long been using flow battery to store huge amounts of energy because it's cheap and effective; however, they had to make use of expensive, not to mention, hard to maintain chemicals that resulted in the costs going up considerably.

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For example, Vanadium, which is one of the most commonly used flow battery technology due to it being more advanced than other metals, is also on the expensive side. This is a problem that appears to have been or has the potential of being resolved by a team of U.S. researchers.

This team of researchers is from Harvard University, according to the BBC News. Thanks to the Cambridge, Massachusetts' Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) research team, it is possible that electricity can now be stored through the use of a new battery that does not utilize any type of precious metal catalyst, performs similarly to the more expensive Vanadium flow batteries, and features a metal-free underlying chemistry.

The researchers further report that their new flow battery makes use of not only affordable chemicals, but also more naturally abundant chemicals. These compounds they are referring to are known as quinones.

Michael Aziz, one of the authors of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences research, explained that the molecules are cheap and that they can be found in various sources, including crude oil and green vegetables. He also pointed out that, while the batteries they have developed still have limitations, these are mostly dependent on the tank size as well as the amount of the storage chemical to be used.

The research shows results that are so promising, as General Electric Global Research's Grigorii Soloveichik described, that the new batteries have the potential of changing the way energy is consumed and stored.

All of the details of the research can be found in the Nature journal.

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