Cheap zinc/manganese battery being developed commercially
adelaide.edu.au
Cheap zinc/manganese battery being developed commercially
1–10 of 35 posts
Re: Cheap zinc/manganese battery being developed commercially
#2Reminder: if an article about breakthrough battery tech touts one of energy density, number of cycles, cost, discharge/charge rate, while conspicuously not mentioning the others there is a good reason for that...
Re: Cheap zinc/manganese battery being developed commercially
#3Even if they don’t last as long as li-ion batteries the environmental/health friendly aspects of this technology might be useful.
But yeah, curious to see how it shakes out in practical application.
Re: Cheap zinc/manganese battery being developed commercially
#4It seems like there's some competition in this space after an initial breakthrough in 2016.
https://newatlas.com/rechargeable-zinc-manganese-battery-pnn...
Re: Cheap zinc/manganese battery being developed commercially
#5Zinc is very important in the diet and its deficiency is very common. Our food is already becoming scarce in zinc, potentially needing supplements from mined minerals. But these are not projected to last very long either [1]. This doesn't make me very excited for using it for batteries at all.
[1] https://www.iatp.org/documents/scarcity-of-micronutrients-in...
Re: Cheap zinc/manganese battery being developed commercially
#6Zinc is very important in the diet and its deficiency is very common. Our food is already becoming scarce in zinc, potentially needing supplements from mined minerals. But these are not projected to last very long either [1]. This doesn't make me very excited for using it for batteries at all. [1] https://www.iatp.org/documents/scarcity-of-micronutrients-in...
i wouldn't worry about Zinc, men need 11 mg/day, women even less. The common battery, the Leclanché element, already consist of Zinc, but it is not advisable to recharge them (danger of explosion). In the 90s people even claimed the could safely recharge the Leclanché element, so I could imagine the have overcome these problems
Re: Cheap zinc/manganese battery being developed commercially
#7$1m is a tiny amount to bring a battery to manufacture. That number is about what it costs to set up production to have a LiPo battery in a specific shape for your electronics.
If they had said $100m then I'd believe that there was finally going to be a serious competitor to the status quo on batteries.
Re: Cheap zinc/manganese battery being developed commercially
#8Oddly enough, non-rechargeable alkaline batteries already use zinc and manganese (dioxide) (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkaline_battery ).
The article talks about solar energy storage, vehicle batteries, and comparisons with lithium ion. The article doesn't explicitly say they're developing a type of rechargeable battery, but that seems to be implied by context.
Anyway, it would be nice to see lead-acid batteries phased out someday and reduce the usage of lead in human activities.
Re: Cheap zinc/manganese battery being developed commercially
#9Oddly enough, non-rechargeable alkaline batteries already use zinc and manganese (dioxide) (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkaline_battery ). The article talks about solar energy storage, vehicle batteries, and comparisons with lithium ion. The article doesn't explicitly say they're developing a type of rechargeable battery, but that seems to be implied by context. Anyway, it would be nice to see lead-acid batter…
Yes, the batteries are rechargeable. Apparently good for at least 2,000 or 5,000 cycles.
Re: Cheap zinc/manganese battery being developed commercially
#10Zinc/manganese has been around for decades; in fact, it's the standard issue disposable battery:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkaline_battery
"An alkaline battery (IEC code: L) is a type of primary battery which derives its energy from the reaction between zinc metal and manganese dioxide."
The new permutation which allegedly ups the energy density and allows it to be safely recharged supposedly uses a different electrolyte with more manganese ions. The research has been funded in the West for decades, with some interesting new results in 2017. Of course, this is one of those "submarine" "news" articles which originated in someone's marketing department, so it's not entirely clear it's going to be a useful result or yet another pile of woo hoping to hit "human informational centipede" the way a lot of recent woo has.