New battery technology

Raboa

Esteemed Pedelecer
Aug 12, 2014
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Hi, I read this today.


He says in the article he is going to look at electric bikes, might be worth an existing manufacture contacting him.

Enjoy.
 

Benjahmin

Esteemed Pedelecer
Nov 10, 2014
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Very interesting read. So higher power density, enviromentaly cleaner, no bad side affects, ...... hang on - haven't we heard this kind of thing before somewhere?

Colour me sceptical. We shall see.

Not to mention, 'The Daily Mail sees a conspiracy' shock horror.
 

Danidl

Esteemed Pedelecer
Sep 29, 2016
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I had read about this. My understanding is that aluminium metal converted to a hydroxide has a lot more energy than an equivalent weight of lithium , but produces a gelatinous gunk which clogs things up. If this guy has a recipe which stops this happening he could be onto a winner.
The other point is that it is not actually rechargeable but re manufacture able . The entire cartridge would be returned to a manufacturing site and the gunk removed and chemically reduced to a metallic foil. And the entire assembly rebuilt. Actually this might be its major attraction ,and the market would be more like the laser printer cartridge market or maybe the butane gas cylinder market.
 

Woosh

Trade Member
May 19, 2012
19,406
16,387
Southend on Sea
wooshbikes.co.uk
this DM's article has been discussed elsewhere. When it comes to new battery technologies, take every claim of new inventions with a large dose of salt.
problems with fuel cells are well understood. We can produce electricity from wind or solar power. Why would you want to spend vast amount of energy to make aluminium then burn it?
 

Danidl

Esteemed Pedelecer
Sep 29, 2016
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this DM's article has been discussed elsewhere. When it comes to new battery technologies, take every claim of new inventions with a large dose of salt.
problems with fuel cells are well understood. We can produce electricity from wind or solar power. Why would you want to spend vast amount of energy to make aluminium then burn it?
Woosh, that is unlike you. The potential value of an aluminium foil based fuel cell is that it allow us to store a lot of immediately useful electrical energy for months on end and if necessary transport it long distances. Aluminium as a fuel is virtually inexhaustible,it is the process of turning it into a metallic film ,which is the energy intensive action. So rather than being anti renewables it actually is potentially a game changer.
At the level of an electric bike, it could create another market, where the user goes in to Halfords or Curry's or Aldi and replaces a used cartridge with a fresh one. The used one gets re manufactured.
Obviously it depends on the detailed energetics and chemistry,but chemistry books were discussing this 15 years ago.
 
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Woosh

Trade Member
May 19, 2012
19,406
16,387
Southend on Sea
wooshbikes.co.uk
Woosh, that is unlike you. The potential value of an aluminium foil based fuel cell is that it allow us to store a lot of immediately useful electrical energy for months on end and if necessary transport it long distances. Aluminium as a fuel is virtually inexhaustible,it is the process of turning it into a metallic film ,which is the energy intensive action. So rather than being anti renewables it actually is potentially a game changer.
At the level of an electric bike, it could create another market, where the user goes in to Halfords or Curry's or Aldi and replaces a used cartridge with a fresh one. The used one gets re manufactured.
Obviously it depends on the detailed energetics and chemistry,but chemistry books were discussing this 15 years ago.
you could say the same about using hydrogen fuel cells.
The difference between Lithium ion batteries and fuel cells such as Aluminium Air is that the loss in each cycle of charge for secondary batteries like our Lithium ion ones is very small, less than 10% and cheap, we spend about 50p to £1 on overall running cost when we recharge our e-bikes. You can't say the same for primary batteries such as fuel cells.
Each time you want to recharge an aluminium air battery, you have to dismantle it, pull out the electrodes and replace them with new ones. The cost of remanufacturing against the useful charge is uneconomical.
It's not just the case for Al-Air, even the most developed fuel cells can't match the low cost of use of secondary batteries.
That's why the world has not switched over to fuel cells yet.
 

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