The blackout battery runs on salt water

Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have built a battery that stores electricity using salt water instead of lithium and cobalt. The breakthrough came from an accident turned advantage: the team noticed the battery's side reaction produces bleach, and realized that reaction works better than the main one they had been trying to perfect. By adding about 5% more bleach, they doubled the battery's peak power and brought its voltage close to lithium-ion levels — with no catalyst, no slow gas-conversion step, and none of the fire-risk cooling that lithium systems need. The ingredients are common, cheap, and safe by nature. The target is affordable long-duration storage for blackouts, peak demand, and renewable-heavy grids. The chemistry is still lab-scale, and scaling is the next mountain — but ORNL is already working with Coulomb Technology to move it toward the real world.