Electric car with massive range in demo by Phinergy, Alcoa
1–10 of 88 posts
Re: Electric car with massive range in demo by Phinergy, Alcoa
#2Chances of the magical electrolyte that removes the corundum being mercury based?
Re: Electric car with massive range in demo by Phinergy, Alcoa
#3Doesn't so much feel like a battery than a new kind of chemical reactor that oxidizes aluminum plates. More like a "Shipstone" from Robert Heinlein's science fiction stories. You can't charge it at home, you just get it from the factory and use it up, except that it holds over an order of magnitude more power for the weight. 3000 mile range? I hope it doesn't have an easily reached state where it can release all of that energy at once.
Re: Electric car with massive range in demo by Phinergy, Alcoa
#4[deleted]
Re: Electric car with massive range in demo by Phinergy, Alcoa
#5Doesn't so much feel like a battery than a new kind of chemical reactor that oxidizes aluminum plates. More like a "Shipstone" from Robert Heinlein's science fiction stories. You can't charge it at home, you just get it from the factory and use it up, except that it holds over an order of magnitude more power for the weight. 3000 mile range? I hope it doesn't have an easily reached state where it can release all of t…
I highly doubt it can release that much energy at once, it's a catalytic reaction that removes the oxide from the aluminum.
Re: Electric car with massive range in demo by Phinergy, Alcoa
#6"Because the car would still rely on its regular rechargable lithium-ion battery most of the time and would switch to the aluminum-air battery as a backup only if the lithium-ion battery ran out, and because most car trips are 50 kilometres or less, Alcoa estimates the aluminum-air batteries would only need to be changed about once a year."
This is a chemical battery with very limited lifespan. Additionally without any details on recycling of used batteries "green" qualities of this battery are suspect.
Re: Electric car with massive range in demo by Phinergy, Alcoa
#7The reaction used by is not reversible, so the alumimium in the battery will be consumed, and the battery is not rechargeable. This is only said implicitly in the article. Thus this is more a fuel cell, using aluminium as fuel.
Re: Electric car with massive range in demo by Phinergy, Alcoa
#8The reaction used by is not reversible, so the alumimium in the battery will be consumed, and the battery is not rechargeable. This is only said implicitly in the article. Thus this is more a fuel cell, using aluminium as fuel.
But can the spent fuel cell be processed and used for something else? Perhaps not related to a car at all.
Re: Electric car with massive range in demo by Phinergy, Alcoa
#9metal-air batteries (fuel cells), rechargeable and not, is the future. Having comparable to gasoline energy density, yet higher efficiency - 60-90% vs. 30% of gasoline, it will transform cars and especially planes (subsonic ones). You can imagine that it is absolutely not an issue to replace a 100Kg spent aluminum fuel cell block on a small plane at airport. It would also be better than gas turbine for bigger commercial, though still propeller driven, planes (for pure jets the issue is that you need air to be hot to have high exhaust speed for the plane to reach speeds beyond 450+ knots). Interesting possibility for decreasing heat
signature for military subsonic drones too :)
There is also very active development for rechargeable metal-air batteries though currently it is significantly skewed toward lithium-air which is non-starter pretty much. There is very promising results with zinc, sodium and especially potassium -air batteries.
Re: Electric car with massive range in demo by Phinergy, Alcoa
#10Doesn't so much feel like a battery than a new kind of chemical reactor that oxidizes aluminum plates. More like a "Shipstone" from Robert Heinlein's science fiction stories. You can't charge it at home, you just get it from the factory and use it up, except that it holds over an order of magnitude more power for the weight. 3000 mile range? I hope it doesn't have an easily reached state where it can release all of t…
First, it was 3000 kilometers, not miles.
Second, the energy source is the oxidization of Aluminum. It takes specific preparation (e.g. thermite) to release that all at once. The contents of this "battery" are as safe as carrying around a bunch of crumpled up beer cans (very safe) and whatever the heck that solvent is (unknown). The solvent may be toxic, acidic, etc. but hopefully no worse than what's in your car battery, which is actually pretty nasty but not terribly dangerous unless you deliberately try to make it so (e.g. by shorting out the terminals).
Aluminum is currently under $2K/1000kg, so the yearly aluminum battery replacement would probably run a few hundred dollars. Aluminum is the most abundant metal on earth and this reaction is reversible, so costs should stay low. The real cost is likely to be the solvent.