Metal-Air Battery Could Store 11 Times More Energy than Lithium-Ion

November 5, 2009 by Lisa Zyga weblog
Metal air battery

Enlarge

Ionic liquids (in blue) in a beaker of mineral oil. Image credit: John Wilkes.

(PhysOrg.com) -- A spinoff company from Arizona State University plans to build a new battery with an energy density 11 times greater than that of lithium-ion batteries for just one-third the cost. With a $5.13 million research grant from the US Department of Energy awarded last week, Fluidic Energy hopes to turn its ultra-dense energy storage technology into a reality.

The new Metal-Air Ionic Liquid battery is being designed by Cody Friesen, a professor of at Arizona State and founder of Fluidic Energy, along with other researchers. The key to the new battery is that it uses ionic liquids as its electrolyte, which could help it overcome some significant problems faced by previous metal-air batteries. In the past, metal-air batteries have usually used water-based electrolytes, but due to , the batteries tended to fail prematurely.

The advantage of ionic liquids, like those used in Fluidic Energy's new battery, is that they don't evaporate. Ionic liquids are salts that are a liquid at room temperature. Compared to water, ionic liquids are much more viscous, and they also conduct electricity fairly well. The challenge will be finding an inexpensive ionic liquid that works well in the new batteries, although Friesen has not yet discussed the specific ionic liquids his company has been investigating.

A metal-air battery that uses as its electrolyte could have several advantages. For one thing, it can function for a longer period time since its doesn't evaporate. Also, the batteries could offer better electrochemical stability, which means they could use materials that have a greater than zinc. Friesen and his research team hope to achieve energy densities of anywhere from 900 to 1,600 watt-hours per kilogram. This density could lead to electric vehicles that could travel 400 to 500 miles on a single charge, Friesen said.

Finally, Fluidic Energy is tackling another problem facing rechargeable batteries: the growth of dendrites that occurs on the electrodes during charging. Dendrites limit the number of charging cycles and decrease the lifetime of the . To combat this problem, Fluidic has designed a porous electrode scaffold that prevents dendrite formation.

"I'm not claiming we have it yet, but if we do succeed, it really does change the way we think about storage," Friesen said.

via: Technology Review

© 2009 PhysOrg.com

view popular send feedback to editors
4.4 /5 (54 votes)  

Filter


Move the slider to adjust rank threshold, so that you can hide some of the comments.


Display comments: newest first

Justavian
Nov 05, 2009

Rank: 4.5 / 5 (8)
With all the various promises of new battery technology or ultra-capacitors, i hope *one* of them pans out and becomes a commercial product in the next decade...
El_Nose
Nov 05, 2009

Rank: 3 / 5 (4)
This is great -- I wish however that the question of the length of time it takes to charge the battery had been addressed. But other that it seems to be a viable technology. I wonder also the energy required to go say ten miles and the size of the battery.
enantiomer2000
Nov 05, 2009

Rank: 5 / 5 (4)
Cool. My android phone battery lasts about 8 hours. that means that it would not last 88 hours with this new battery. I could finally make it to the end of the day without recharging! Also for cars, the average electric vehicle has about a 50 mile range. If you could boost that up to 500+ miles then I think people might start to buy into the electric vehicle thing. interesting.
nkalanaga
Nov 05, 2009

Rank: 3.8 / 5 (5)
For a traditional family vacation, staying in motels at night, 500 miles in one day is a good average. It allows for meals, sightseeing, and stopping before the driver is exhausted. If it can recharge in ten hours, that would allow it charge at the motel or campground and be ready to go the next day. Faster charging would make "topping off" practical, with a partial recharge at meals and other longer stops.
Nartoon
Nov 06, 2009

Rank: 4.4 / 5 (7)
After all the other new battery formulas I've read about the last few years, pardon me if I don't hold my breath.
Birger
Nov 06, 2009

Rank: 5 / 5 (1)
In addition to recharge time, I would like to know how many charge-discharge cycles the new batteries can do without losing a significant part of their capacity.
nkalanaga
Nov 06, 2009

Rank: not rated yet
Since it (supposedly) eliminates the main cause of capacity loss, the dendrites, it should last a lot longer.
TheTim
Nov 07, 2009

Rank: 2 / 5 (4)
Aside from electric vehicle batteries, there's likely little interest in making batteries that last longer. Unfortunately, corporate greed demands consumption, and if you reduce consumption, you're reducing the potential revenue streams of the corporation...

Why aim for an electric car that can go 500 miles on a charge? Why not aim for 2000 miles? 5000 miles?
Duude
Nov 07, 2009

Rank: 3 / 5 (2)
Aside from electric vehicle batteries, there's likely little interest in making batteries that last longer. Unfortunately, corporate greed demands consumption, and if you reduce consumption, you're reducing the potential revenue streams of the corporation...


Why must small-minded conspiracy theorists obsess over their own inabilities to make it in life? If anything corporate greed inspires innovation. That's what capitalism is all about. How many batteries would a manufacturer of laptop batteries sell if they could design a battery that only need a recharge every week, month, or year? If greed kept corporations from innovating how is it that rechargeable batteries ever made it to the market?
retrosurf
Nov 08, 2009

Rank: not rated yet
One other argument about "corporate greed" ruining the lifetime of new batteries is that a successful product will be rapidly adopted.

Lifetime is something you tamper with late in the product cycle, when you have good penetration. When everyone wants your battery, the most profitable thing to do is to make them as quickly as possible, not manipulate them with designed premature mortality.
thesemiretiredelectrician
Nov 12, 2009

Rank: not rated yet
Why not a plug-in electric car with: The best battery today and ultracapacitors. They could be recharged by plugging at home or by a sterling engine on the road or at the mall. The sterling enging will run on just about any fuel and would provide ample energy to propel the vehicle at 60 mph and charge the storage system.

During acceleration the ultracaps would quickly bring the vehicle to cruising speed and during "braking" the drive motors at each wheel would recover much of it.

If we could standardize on a physical size of a battery they could be exchanged at "battery stations" every 300 miles. Low cost sterling compatable fuel would also be available there.

We would now have a light weight vehicle free of: heavy engines, exhaust systems, transmissions, cooling systems, power trains, etc. that would have unlimited range, be virtually pollution free that could outrun a corvette in a quarter mile.
Rank 4.4 /5 (54 votes)
Tags

energy, battery, ionic liquids, electrolyte, materials science, energy density, water evaporation
Related Stories
more news
Relevant PhysicsForums posts
  • Tennis Court Speed Measurement
    created12 hours ago
  • Fastest way to cool water
    created20 hours ago
  • Counter-weights
    createdFeb 02, 2012
  • Composite electric glass heating elements
    createdFeb 02, 2012
  • pipe stress analysis
    createdFeb 02, 2012
  • Interested in average household energy consumption in 2011...
    createdFeb 01, 2012
  • More from Physics Forums - General Engineering

More news stories

Hackers intercept FBI, Scotland Yard call (Update)

(AP) -- Trading jokes and swapping leads, investigators from the FBI and Scotland Yard spent the conference call strategizing about how to bring down the hacking collective known as Anonymous, responsible ...

Technology / Internet

created 13 hours ago | popularity 5 / 5 (7) | comments 22

Japanese entrepreneurs aim for Silicon Valley

For an emerging generation of Japanese innovators, the dream isn't a job for life at a big company. They have new ambitions, and they're determined to go places. Especially Silicon Valley.

Technology / Business

created 11 hours ago | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 1

A 'natural' solution for transportation

As the United States transitions away from a primarily petroleum-based transportation industry, a number of different alternative fuel sources—ethanol, biodiesel, electricity and hydrogen—have each ...

Technology / Energy & Green Tech

created 14 hours ago | popularity 3 / 5 (2) | comments 13

Hackers deface website of lawyers for US Marine

Members of the hacker group Anonymous defaced the website on Friday of the law firm that defended a US Marine who faced charges in connection with the 2005 killing of 24 Iraqi civilians.

Technology / Internet

created 8 hours ago | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 2

TV executives crave viewers who watch 2 screens

Forget the small screen and the big screen. The hottest new thing in television is the "second screen" - the one on the tablet computer or cell phone that an increasing number of viewers keep an eye on while they're watching ...

Technology / Telecom

created 7 hours ago | popularity 1 / 5 (2) | comments 0


Amazon fungi found that eat polyurethane, even without oxygen

(PhysOrg.com) -- Until now polyurethane has been considered non-biodegradable, but a group of students from Yale University in the US has found fungi that will not only eat and digest it, they will do so even in the absence ...

Scientists chart high-precision map of Milky Way's magnetic fields

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) are part of an international team that has pooled their radio observations into a database, producing the highest precision map to date of ...

Whole exome sequencing identifies cause of metabolic disease

Sequencing a patient's entire genome to discover the source of his or her disease is not routine – yet. But geneticists are getting close.

Hearing metaphors activates brain regions involved in sensory experience

When a friend tells you she had a rough day, do you feel sandpaper under your fingers? The brain may be replaying sensory experiences to help understand common metaphors, new research suggests.

Renowned physicist invents microscope that can peer at living brain cells

(PhysOrg.com) -- Ever since scientists began studying the brain, they’ve wanted to get a better look at what was going on. Researchers have poked and prodded and looked at dead cells under electron microscopes, ...

New kind of high-temperature photonic crystal could someday power everything from smartphones to spacecraft

A team of MIT researchers has developed a way of making a high-temperature version of a kind of materials called photonic crystals, using metals such as tungsten or tantalum. The new materials — which ...