Aluminium-Ion Battery Technology

[Adverse Effects]

Aluminium-Ion Battery Technology

While the manufacturing process is similar to that of lithium cells, the raw material costs are substantially lower, resulting in a market enabling price point.

200Wh/kg cells have been tested and are market ready. 600Wh/kg cells have been prototyped and tested. Up to 1,000Wh/kg expected after further R&D.

this sounds interesting

anyone else know much about them?

[Faz]

Cells with 5 times the energy density of LiFePO4 have been made already and they expect 8-9 times LiFePO4 energy densities after R&D!
I'm suspicious. Seems far too good to be true.

[coulomb]

Cells with 5 times the energy density of LiFePO4 have been made already and they expect 8-9 times LiFePO4 energy densities after R&D!
I'm suspicious.

Yes. The lack of any real details, plus "Vantage Power is in the process of raising funds..." is suspicious to me too. There is one similar sounding battery here: http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory: ... _Batteries, but "On Nov. 5, 2007 it was brought to our attention that Europositron is under scrutiny for alleged fraud." Nothing else seems to come close, possibly other than "Al-Fe-O, Al-Cu-O and Al-Fe-OH batteries were proposed by some researchers for military hybrid vehicles" (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_ ... _batteries). Presumably, these must be rechargeable, but it's not stated.

[Adverse Effects]

Yes. The lack of any real details, plus "Vantage Power is in the process of raising funds..." is suspicious to me too.

Vantage Power are a bunch of guys from this TV show racing green endurance that have started a business together

the is is where i got the Vantage web site from

some have continued on their research at Imperial College and some have started a company providing services and consultancy in electric and hybrid vehicle drive trains with a particular focus on commercializing a revolutionary new battery technology for electric vehicles (read more at www.vantage-power.com).

[bga]

They must have a pile of TS cells in their battery:
the racingendurance website says:
550V @ 56kwh (I guess 170 x 100AH LiFePo) for the battery.
(I found this by hovering over the battery on the car page)

That makes the 400km range believable, but with 540kg of cells.




Aluminium Ion does look to be credible, here is an ORNL Aluminium Ion battery presentation

This paper indicates that Aluminium Ion is a real technology and that it can offer the performance indicated. The theoretical energy density is 8140 Wh/kg vs 1462 for Lithium-Ion.

Interesting comments about valence electrons in aluminium (3) vs lithium (1) being responsible for the high energy density and also because the voltage is lower, non-flammable solvents (water based?) can be used.

I would be inclined to belive the claims, now for a beer cans to batteries campaign

[wheresmyEV]

The Link about ORNL al Ion battery is vague at best.
It is clear that AL Ion batteries do exist but the link does not explain how Hydrogen prodcution and oxidation are dealt with.
You will also note that europosition were charged with fraud as they seem to not have done any R&D in relation to AL batteries but seem to be just raising funds through share sales.
I didn't find any real world examples of AL batteries that are in commercial production.
If anyone finds someone devloping or producing these then I would be interested to try and build some for myself to test and play with.
A 500Wh/kg al battery was made in the 1950's so a 100Wh/kg should be possible today which make them extremely attractive for EV use. What is the current rating on these types batteries? (W/kg)

[Squiggles]

Sodium Ion batteries will be the answer, problem is development progress has been slow to date.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2011/08 ... 10801.html