Aluminum-Air EV Battery

won't aluminum cause alzheimers in the car occupants?

 

I believe air does that.

 

http://avem.fr/actualite-voiture-electrique-une-batterie-aluminium-air-offrant-1600-km-d-autonomie-5070.html

1000mi per charge?
40 times the energy density?

Amazing, if reaches production stage!!

 

Air batteries has been around for decades but never get into main stream.
The quotes energy density is by weight not by volume. It will take a extremely large surface area to produce the high current demand for EV use.
It is a primary battery and swapping battery is still a questionable strategy.

 

Tesla's patent is to use them as range extenders to supplement a rechargable battery. Such a BEV with an usable range of 100 miles will use the grid for the majority of its annual miles. Then it has one of these batteries for long trips and emergencies. Such a car would only need to swap the air-Al battery a couple times a year. Even less for such a car if its a Tesla with access to the Supercharger network.

Then being a primary battery eliminates some of the 'what if's' with battery swapping. With swapping a rechargable one, as has been proposed, the end user doesn't know if the battery he is getting is in as good a shape as the one he turned in or worse shape. Trade in a dead air-Al, and you get a new one that nobody as used yet. It's like swapping propane tanks for your grill. You don't worry that the tank your getting can hold less gas than the one you traded in or that it will deliver the gas at a slower rate. Same with swapping a primary battery. My impression may be off on this, but these a batteries may not suffer degradation over time from sitting and not being used. So even less worries there.

 

Swapping out the spent battery for a new or rebuild battery is not going to be cheap.
Assuming the 1000 mile battery would have energy of 200kWH, it would cost $1000 @ $5 per kWh.
It would take at least $500 per swap if the trade in is worth $500.
That is not very economical at $0.5 per mile.

 

It all depends on the final price of the battery, and what would be in its place instead.

This article calculates the raw aluminum cost for the battery at $50.
Aluminium-air battery can power electric vehicles for 1,000 miles, will come to production cars in 2017 | ExtremeTech

There will be additional costs in materials and production, but lets stick with 5 cents a mile. A Leaf costs 3.6 cents/mile. That's just for electricity. The 5 cent is the price for the electricity and the battery's materials and manufacture. Seems to be a fair cost for what you get. The grid electric will work out better for the consumer though. That, and the hassle of going primary battery only, means that these batteries will likely be used in conjunction with a rechargable pack. The 5 cents is better there than the near 11 cents for the Volt to move under gasoline. It is also better than the Prius' 7 cents/mile.

 

$0.5 per mile = 50 cent per mile

 

I had posted on this months ago, but am glad a new thread popped up to again to keep it lively. Even a car like the volt only uses its range extender 30% of the time, so 1000 mile range extending battery would need to be recycled every 3000 miles or so. Many people change their oil this often, and an oil change place is a great possibility for a recycling center. A car like a tesla its down to 5%, or maybe every 20,000 miles on average. If a vehicle gets 100 mpge (close enough for the volt (98) or tesla(95), i3 (124)), it takes 10 gge or 337 kwh of electricity in the battery. If the battery is 8 kwh/kg, then we likely have 42 kg of aluminum. Aluminum is priced around $3/kg, so if we didn't have manufacturing or labor this would cost $126 for the plates and you dispose of the valuable aluminum. Say we give the oil change place $50, the trucking cost $50, alcoa makes $50 recycling and there is 40% overhead on energy and alcoa pays $0.15/kwh for green electricity). Then we have $150 + $0.15*337*1.4 = $221, and plenty of room for profit and we have used green electricity and some diesel for trucks and trains. OK say $250 at the outside (about 100% markup for the raw aluminum), anymore and they would dispose of the hydrated aluminum oxide and just manufactured plates recycled from cans.


Let's look at the small 38 mile aer vehicle first.

If a vehicle gets about 100 mpge, and goes 200,000 miles, then it will take 2000 gge of electicity or really 1400 gge of electricty and 60 aluminum air batteries. Say a gge of electrity cost $5 and a battery $250 then we get $7,000 of electrity and $15000 for batteries or $22,000 total, if we divide this by miles it is $0.11/mile. not really bad, but the inconvience of changing the aluminum air might be a problem, and if lots of road trips are taken you might prefer the ice in the phev. Still that $15,000 is far less of a premium than hydrogen. 60,000 miles/ 37 mpge is 1622 gallons of gasoline saved though. At $4/gallon that is $6400, the ice probably cost an extra $5000, so other than the inconvience of longer stops to change the primary cell it wouldn't cost much more.

On a 60 kwh tesla that gets 95mpge and say its 10% battery (would likely be less than 5% because of superchargers) the numbers work out much better. You go 20,000 miles on primary cell or 20 changes, which is likely less than once a year. That is $5000, which is much less than the difference to buy the 85 kwh model. 180,000 miles at 95mpge is 1895gge or about $9500. Add them together and you get $14,500 or $0.073/mile for fuel. Seems like a deal.

 

D'oh.
I knew something was off, but it was clicking when I posted.

Still comes down to the final battery replacement price. Where did you find the $5 per kWh? The best I'm finding is estimates for the raw aluminum.

Then the cost has to balanced against what it replaces. It is a range extender for a plug in. That is how it is used even in the demonstration vehicle. An ICE range extender takes up a lot of space factoring in the subsystems. The exhaust and emission controls are bulky because of the heat concerns. The Al-air battery maybe a better option despite higher cost per mile by allowing the installation of a larger traction battery. Longer EV range means less use of the range extender. The lack of fluids, stale gas, and other ICE maintenance concerns with the Al-air need to be factor into the balance.

We don't know the actual costs of a fuel cell, but if it is cheaper than the Al-air, the hydrogen fueled ones still have larger obstacles than the battery in terms refueling infrastructure.

Another factor to consider in the overall battery cost is reusability of the 'waste'. The talk is of recycling it, but that will be more energy intensive than recycling soda cans. It needs to be smelted back into a metal. The aluminum hydroxide waste will likely be quite pure. It isn't really a waste, and has many uses on its own. Aluminum Hydroxide Uses
Wikipedia also mentions it use as a fire retardant.

 

If more wants to be added to Austin's calculations, the aluminum hydroxide from a dead battery has a whole sale value of a little over $300 a ton by itself.

 

When I said recycled, some could just be purifying the aluminum hydroxide and distributing it. Here we have $3Kg of aluminum - $0.30 kg value of spent aluminum as aluminum hydroxide. you still need people in the chain to make profits, but $2.70/kg net aluminum.

I believe they are using simple aluminum plates that would be changed and wouldn't cost anymore than this to bulk manufacture. Then we get to how you get them distributed and recycled, maybe twice as much would be a big profit. I doubt it would take any longer than an oil change to grab the gell and replace the plates, and those are $25 here including oil at jiffy lube (ok for the prius, I bought synthetic oil at walmart for $25, but $20 to change it and the filter, recycle or dispose of the old oil, etc).

1000 miles should take less than 45 kg of aluminum. Say the rest of the battery is 25 kg, then 70kg is much lighter than most ice + emissions control (prius ice alone weighs 100kg). It is also much less expensive than fuel cell + hydrogen.

 

My estimate of $5/kWH is very optimistic for matured product.
The aluminum plates have to be processed to increase surface area, not just plain old plates.
The electrolyte also need to be replaced.
See Aluminium–air battery - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The estimate is $29/kWH according to wikipedia.

 

From a link I posted above:
"Phinergy’s prototype Al-air battery has 50 aluminium plates, with each plate providing enough fuel for 20 miles.
...
and one pack of 50 plates weighs 25kg"

 

Base on the cost of raw aluminum is just marketing hype, wait untill they announce the cost of the battery pack.

 

I don't know what the cost of the "battery" would be but $5/kwh is crazy high for recycling and replacing plates and electrolyte. The battery would need to be able to wipe the plates or somehow remove the hydrated aluminum oxide. To see how simple aluminum air batteries are, build one, you can do it with aluminum foil, paper towels, activated charcoal, salt, and water. Its crazy cheap, but the gel stays on the foil, so it needs to be wiped off and stored for the battery to keep working in a mobile device. If they have figured out that part, then recycling should be straight forward, especially if only the plates and electrolyte needs replacement, and the rest of the device lasts as long as the vehicle.

 

Bob Wilson[/QUOTE]

Also posted last year!
Aluminum-Air Battery With 1000-Mile EV Range, Too Good To Be True? | PriusChat

 

That estimate is from a paper published in 2002. Design and analysis of aluminum/air battery system for electric vehicles
Now the full battery may be expensive due to the cathode, but the only things that need to be replaced are the electrolyte and anodes. The electrolyte is distilled or di water. It needs to be filled every 200 miles. No mention of how much is needed, but gallon jugs cost from 50 cents to a dollar. The refueling network will likely be supermarkets at first.

The anodes are the aluminum plates. If the company had released raw aluminum costs, I would also call it marketing hype, but it is being calculated off the the details the company has released by others. The actual plated will cost more than that simply because they need to be formed into a shape that fits the battery. If not pure metal and an alloy, that will also increase production costs. Tin was mentioned in the Wiki article, another inexpensive metal.

A question to be answered is if the anodes will replaceable with the battery in the car or not. Might be a moot point. I suspect Tesla is one of the companies Phinergy mentioned having an agreement with, and they have already demonstrated a 90 second battery swap.

The real news this time is the partnership with Alcoa, one of the biggest aluminum producers in the world.