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Battery research

Discussion in 'Environmental Discussion' started by barbaram, Jul 25, 2014.

  1. barbaram

    barbaram Active Member

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  2. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    i think we could be seeing these very soon, and that means a paradigm shift in ev technology.
     
  3. bwilson4web

    bwilson4web BMW i3 and Model 3

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    If you'll check the local drug stores and super markets, you'll find air-zinc batteries already on the shelf. With high energy density, they power hearing aids quite effectively. The aluminum-air batteries use a different metal but the same idea. Aluminum powder is added to solid-fuel rockets to increase their energy output and produce the huge, white 'cloud', actually dust, from each launch:
    [​IMG]
    Tactical military rockets don't use aluminum powder because it leaves a smoke trail back to the launch point.

    The only drawback is a metal-air battery will weigh more as it discharges unless someone figures out how to dump the exhausted metal-air mix overboard. The extra weight comes from the oxygen that combines with the metal. In the past, aluminum-air makes a 'jell' that is non-conductive and blocks the reaction, a type of resistor. So this development is important because they appear to have solved the 'jell' problem.

    Not my area of expertise, I would prefer an air-metal battery that has the ability to dump the combined reactant overboard. In one respect, the hydrogen fuel cell is doing that by dumping water overboard while treating everything that goes before as just a series of solvable technical challenges.

    Bob Wilson
     
  4. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    You do not want to simply aluminum hydroxide overboard. It will just become another pollutant that a future generation will have to deal with. Yes, it isn't directly hazardous, but neither was carbon dioxide when we first started burning fossil fuels. If aluminum-air batteries do get used in cars in great numbers, and the waste product is simply dumped overboard, the waste dust or gel will eventually be washed into local creeks and streams. There it will eventually choke out and kill the water way. These tiny water ways tend to be used by young fish fry as a nusrey to avoid predators. Then this waste sediment will work its way into the major water ways.

    Besides potential environmental concerns, the aluminum hydroxide is a valuable material in its own right, (Aluminum Hydroxide Uses, Aluminium hydroxide - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)and it is in a very pure state when made within a battery. It will just take water to remove any potassium hydroxide mixed in with it. It can also be refined back into aluminum if need be. Simply dumping it will be like simply dumping the nickle or lithium form those batteries.

    These batteries will be designed to hold onto the aluminum hydroxide. When the battery is dead, the hydroxide will be removed and the aluminum plates replaced. It may be possible to have the aluminum hydroxide removed between plate replacements.

    What wasn't clear in this article was that the Al-air battery wasn't the main battery on the car. Phinergy, and Tesla in a patent they filed, use the Al-air battery as a range extender to a rechargeable one. It would replace the ICE and supporting systems on something like the Volt. Though I think it will allow a larger rechargeable pack due to the difference in space and weight of the ICE and Al-air battery.

    Other threads on this:
    Aluminum-Air EV Battery | PriusChat
    Aluminum-Air Battery With 1000-Mile EV Range, Too Good To Be True? | PriusChat