
Cheap zinc/manganese battery being developed commercially - porsupah
https://www.adelaide.edu.au/newsroom/news/list/2019/10/29/funding-battery-breakthrough-0
======
scottlocklin
Zinc/manganese has been around for decades; in fact, it's the standard issue
disposable battery:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkaline_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.

~~~
DoofusOfDeath
Can you explain what "woo" means in this context? I've seen it used a lot
lately, but it's new to me.

~~~
robocat
Reading the sibling link, it looks like this person is using "woo" incorrectly
in this context. Good science/technology often has failed outcomes (which
isn't woo). I'm also presuming the University of Adelaide isn't practicing
pseudoscience.

~~~
andrewflnr
Eh, it's definitely a loose/sarcastic usage of the word, but it works for me.

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nazgulnarsil
Reminder: 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...

~~~
jobu
I found an article from April 2016 that talks about an electrolyte
breakthrough with zinc and manganese batteries:

> _the test battery was able to reach a storage capacity of 285 milliAmpere-
> hours per gram of manganese oxide over 5,000 cycles, while retaining 92
> percent of its initial storage capacity._

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160418145631.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160418145631.htm)

According to Wikipedia, lithium ion batteries have an energy density of
100–265 Watt-hours per kilogram at 3.6 - 3.8 Volts with 400 - 1,200 cycles.
Converting that to Amp-hours (Wh)/(V) =(Ah) means about 74 Ah/Kg in the best
case scenario.

I'm not sure if the tech from University of Adelaide is the same as what was
published by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and I wasn't able to find
any info about discharge/recharge rate, but it looks like it compares _very_
well to lithium ion in the other areas.

~~~
aidenn0
It's not meaningful to compare Ah between different cell chemistries, because
they may have different voltages. You should convert the Ah to Wh and then
compare. For Zn-Mn typical cell voltages are a bit less than half that of Li
Ion batteries.

For actual apples-to-apples comparison you will want to compare actual battery
assemblies -- the numbers reported from labs often exclude parts of the
batteries. In this case they are comparing just the MnO2 cathode weight
judging by the quote you posted. Some of the wikipedia numbers on Li Ion will
also be from articles like this too, so who knows how it reflects on reality.

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nayuki
Oddly enough, non-rechargeable alkaline batteries already use zinc and
manganese (dioxide) (see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkaline_battery](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.

~~~
mafm
Yes, the batteries are rechargeable. Apparently good for at least 2,000 or
5,000 cycles.

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rkangel
$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.

~~~
lazyguy2
Even if it was serious you'd have to wait for the patent-enforced monopolies
to expire before there is significant benefit to us normal people.

This is one of the reasons why everybody is running around with 18650 lithium
ion batteries. It's all 1990's tech that has been evolved and improved on
since then by numerous competitive businesses.

~~~
aidenn0
18650 is a size, not a chemistry. The 18650 you'll find in a Tesla, for
example, is very different from any 18650 you could source in the 90s, and
likely contains technology patented by (or licensed by) Panasonic.

------
mafm
It seems like there's some competition in this space after an initial
breakthrough in 2016.

[https://newatlas.com/rechargeable-zinc-manganese-battery-
pnn...](https://newatlas.com/rechargeable-zinc-manganese-battery-pnnl/42930/)

[http://enerpoly.com/technology/](http://enerpoly.com/technology/)

------
Tade0
If anyone's interested here's an actual company selling a real Zinc-air
product:

[https://eosenergystorage.com/about-eos/](https://eosenergystorage.com/about-
eos/)

Two largest downsides of this technology are:

1\. Round-trip efficiency of 75%.

2\. Low power density.

Cost and cycle life are great though - should be great for grid storage.

~~~
WhoIsJohnnyGalt
75% isn't great, but if solar continues its 70 year exponential trend of
dropping by half every 3-4 years for another two decades, then round-trip
efficiency may not much matter in the long run. Too, the 75% is at 100% Depth
of Discharge - it may be better at lower total discharge. Lifetime 15 years /
5,000 cycles is almost perfectly balanced for one full cycle per day (5,475
days in 15 years). Doesn't give the price, though, so hard to calculate cost
per cycle. [https://eosenergystorage.com/products-
technology/](https://eosenergystorage.com/products-technology/)

------
JoeAltmaier
Energy density per $ is not the metric for new transportation storage. Its
kWh/pound that's critical. They don't mention it?

~~~
m463
Aren't some modes of transportation less sensitive to overall capacity or
weight?

I can imagine trains can be extra heavy, and scooters might require less
overall energy capacity.

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privateSFacct
Battery breakthrough announcements from marketing departments with not a
SINGLE commercial sale should be banned from HN.

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woodandsteel
For many years now at least once a week there has been an announcement of a
breakthrough new battery technology that is going to revolutionize energy
storage. But in spite of all these purported breakthroughs, we are still stuck
with li-ion (though it has been improving steadily).

I think it would be nice if there was a site that tracked all these
announcements, that is had a listing of all of them and how each has done in
the following years.

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baybal2
I can not imagine them reaching that cost even in China. That $10 per kWh is
basically the material cost.

On other hand, you can already source lithium batteries of cheaper varieties
at below $100 per kWh in large wholesale quantities in China

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b34r
Even 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.

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KaiserPro
what is the round trip efficiency of this "breakthrough"?

whats the energy density?

finally lifespan?

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rbx
Zinc 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...](https://www.iatp.org/documents/scarcity-of-micronutrients-in-soil-feed-
food-and-mineral-reserves)

~~~
wolfi1
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

~~~
jandrese
A kilogram of Zinc costs about $2.50[1] and is enough for an adult man for
three months. There is no zinc crunch in the foreseeable future. Plus if it
really became a problem you could recycle the zinc out of old batteries.

[1] [https://markets.businessinsider.com/commodities/zinc-
price](https://markets.businessinsider.com/commodities/zinc-price)

~~~
onemoresoop
1 kg for 3 months? Maybe 3 lifetimes..

~~~
jandrese
Bah, you're right. I put in a KG instead of G in my calculation, so 3000
months instead of 3 months. In any case I am not worried about running out
even if we go whole hog on these batteries.

