AUTONEWS

The crown jewel of electric cars: Battery with aluminum flow

Aluminum airflow battery will revolutionize the electric car market. This new technology is being developed by Koreans, they have given it the name of aluminum air flow battery and because of their properties guarantee more capacity than batteries to lithium ions. The best thing is that the risk of explosion does not exist, like those that are currently on the market!There are several brands of cars to bet on the manufacture of these new batteries, and are hopeful that it will revolutionize the market soon.There are a number of technologies to be developed to briefly replace battery technologies with lithium-ion batteries. Thus, according to the researchers, with these new aluminum-based batteries, the batteries would be replaced and not recharged, saving time for vehicle loading!And why the substitution? Because these new batteries will be much lighter than the current batteries for electric cars, and have a lower risk of explosion (although they accumulate even more energy).

Aluminum air flow battery model

Cho Jae-pil is the researcher responsible for the development of this technology, through the Ulsan Institute of Science and Technology.Batteries are not rechargeable! But rather replaced!This aluminum airflow battery is not rechargeable but rather single use. Just when used in an electric car, electricity is supplied by replacing aluminum because it has a higher energy density when compared to the same weight of gasoline!
Let's make the accounts ... 1kg of gasoline corresponds to about 1700Wh of energy density of a car, and that in aluminum, corresponds to 2500Wh per kg!So we will have batteries that will allow us to travel about 700km with an electric car with a single charge! When this load is over, just replace with another ...

This technology is not recent ...This technology comes from a well-known technology, the metal-air battery, which gets energy from the reaction of various fuels (in this case metals) with air. Being that it is also a technology in constant research, since a few years.The metal air batteries were invented by the need to store more energy than the lithium ion batteries.Now, with this new technology, the fuel used is aluminum, and is causing great noise and excitement in the electric car market as it is a lightweight, inexpensive metal, and much safer to handle and accumulate energy. In the background is a metal much better than lithium!Only that there is a problem to stop the advance of this technology to the market; your limitation of contention! It is that the existing aluminum air batteries discharge quickly due to the accumulation of aluminum by-products during their manufacture.

How was this problem resolved?
Now, Professor Cho's team has developed an electrolyte flow method, which prevents by-products from accumulating while maintaining performance.The change of metal-air battery for aluminum air flowTo give this change in batteries, it was necessary to study several technologies, such as the creation of a high performance catalyst (manganese oxide and silver nanoplate catalyst) that activates the reaction in the electrode of the air receiver.The goal is that the aluminum-air battery applied to the catalytic converter increases the autonomy of the electric car, because it has a higher density and does not explode.Compared to the aluminum air battery, the aluminum airflow battery has a discharge capacity multiplied by 17.Another point that comes with this technology is the fact that the newly developed manganese oxide and silver oxide catalysts have a capacity comparable to conventional platinum catalysts.


Renewable Energy Magazine