
New Aluminum-Air Battery Powered Car Travels 1,800 Kilometers Without a Recharge - nkurz
http://www.21stcentech.com/aluminum-air-battery-powered-car-travels-1800-kilometers-recharge/
======
abalone
Previous thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7847829](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7847829)

This is not a very green technology. It is _not_ the same as recycling
aluminum. The aluminum is turned back into alumina by the reaction.
"Recharging" this "battery" (it's more of a fuel cell) means shipping a 220lb
module back to a far-away aluminum smelter and reforging it anew.

Forging aluminum is a _hugely_ energy intensive process that produces
significant greenhouse gases. It's a cheat to say the smelters use hydropower
-- if this were to scale up to power the automotive industry it would require
more dams which have major ecological impact. Plus there's still the
greenhouse gas emission and transport problem.

~~~
AlisdairO
This still has the potential to be quite green, despite CO2 in the
manufacturing process. When combined with a Li-ion pack for regular journeys,
the average driver isn't going to be using the Al-O2 battery very much.

Our current solutions to range issues are packaging a shit-ton of li-ion
capacity (model s), or including a separate engine (volt). These both add
enormous weight and manufacturing costs to the car. The much higher energy
density of this solution means that you carry a lot less weight with you
during most of your journeys.

Let's say that these guys' estimates hold up, and the average driver does <
2000 miles in long distance journeys out of a total of, say, 12000 miles per
year. How much difference in total energy consumption will shaving 200kg (lose
300kg for 2/3rds of the tesla's battery pack, gain 100kg for the new al-o2
pack) off the weight of the car make?

edit: I realise this is rather hand-wavy, considering the 1800 mile range for
this system is based off a smaller car than the model s, but I still think
it's worth considering the difference in overall energy consumption that the
higher energy density of this pack provides.

~~~
stonemetal
> 1800 mile range for this system

It is 1800KM, which is closer to 1000 than 2000 miles. At 12000 miles a year
that is about a battery a month rather than a battery every other month.

~~~
AlisdairO
They're claiming that it has a max range of 1860 miles for a 100kg battery
system:

> The Phinergy aluminum-air battery at 100 kilograms (220 pounds) weight
> contained enough on board energy to allow the vehicle to travel up to 3,000
> kilometers (over 1,860 miles)

The article does seem slightly unclear on that point, though.

Again, if you have normal driving patterns this Al-O2 system is a backup
battery. You'd be using a smaller li-ion battery for the day-to-day drives.
That means a normal user wouldn't need a new Al-O2 battery every month,
because they'd only rarely be using it.

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jcr
Phinergy claims an energy density of 8kWh/kg here:

[http://www.phinergy.com/default.asp?catid={00658B18-2755-468...](http://www.phinergy.com/default.asp?catid={00658B18-2755-468E-92CB-E66021BB4D4C})

The following ComputerWorld article is related, but it's worse than the linked
article that nkurz submitted.

[http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9248966/Electric_car_...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9248966/Electric_car_battery_tech_lets_you_go_1_000_miles_between_charges)

EDIT: The two Alcoa press releases are below, but they don't add much:

[http://www.alcoa.com/canada/en/news/releases/2014_phinergy.a...](http://www.alcoa.com/canada/en/news/releases/2014_phinergy.asp)

[http://www.alcoa.com/car_truck/en/news/releases/2014_02_05_A...](http://www.alcoa.com/car_truck/en/news/releases/2014_02_05_Alcoa_and_Phinergy_to_Develop_and_Commercialize_Batteries.asp)

~~~
filleokus
8kWh is around 28 MJ which places it several orders of magnitude above the
currently available battery technology according to Wikipedia:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density)

------
spingsprong
As I understand it, these types of batteries are not rechargeable. They would
need to be taken back to a factory and be recycled.

I'd like to know how energy efficient the recycling stage would be. I've not
seen that information anywhere so far.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Recycling is not desirable unless the battery casing is valuable. The alumina
is nearly worthless, especially in small chunks (and to an aluminum plant
200kg is tiny).

Instead I'd like to see some continuous process, granulated aluminum perhaps,
and the alumina simply ejected as granules. Its present everywhere already, so
not an un-green thing to do.

~~~
jessaustin
You mean the alumina ejection will be a manual procedure performed by the
car's owner or mechanic, right? When I first read this I pictured a spray of
dust out the tailpipe. I'm sure there would be complaints...

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Yes I meant exactly that. Its one of the least objectionable things a car
could spray (dribble?) out the tailpipe.

------
AndrewDucker
There are two big questions here:

1) What's the cost per mile (over the car's lifetime, including battery
replacement costs) compared to petrol and standard electric cars?

2) What's the CO2 per mile (over the car's lifetime, including battery re-
smelting) compared to petrol and standard electric cars?

Without knowing either of these figures it's impossible to make a decent
comparison.

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jsudhams
Just thinking of different use case here, this would make great alternate for
home inverter (India) for me if the size is like small fridge. Please note
currently i use small UPS for home computer and battery fan to cope up with 3
to 4 times a day power cut and it work fine. But once month if get 10 to 12
times power cut then there is no time for UPS to catch up. I will wait for it
to make to developing countries. I hope the safety requirements are similar to
current UPS/Inverter batteries

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gambiting
>>For the air-battery operator it will mean swapping out the old battery for a
new one every few months

I don't know how much the author of this article drives, but 1800km range
would mean that I would have to swap the battery every month. And I imagine
that the range depends heavily on how you drive, so I would like to see real-
world usage test.

~~~
chacham15
"The recharge of the aluminum-air [battery] is user-friendly and consists of
refilling water and replacing aluminum when depleted," a spokesperson for
Alcoa said in an email response to Computerworld. "The water refill is an easy
task that can be performed by using tap water  on average every one or two
months according to mileage driven.

The battery's aluminum replacement is also a "quick operation" that will be
performed at periodic maintenance checks at a local service station  on
average once a year according to mileage driven, the spokesperson added"[1]

[1]
[http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9248966/Electric_car_...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9248966/Electric_car_battery_tech_lets_you_go_1_000_miles_between_charges)

~~~
gus_massa
You can’t just dispose the old water into the sewer because it has a lot of
aluminum salts. You must store it and send it back for recycling. Probably
this task should be done in a gas station or a car repair shop and not at your
home, so they have the tanks for the old liquids.

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option_greek
While overall benefits of using them in EVs are speculative, it might be a
good idea to use them in robotics applications. If a 100kg battery can power a
EV through 1000 miles it might power a simple robot for years - like a
powercell in terminator movies :)

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peeters
One problem is that these battery swap stations need to be almost as
ubiquitous as gas stations (at least along highway routes) to be convenient,
otherwise it'll take very careful planning on road trips. But because swap-
outs are the rare exception rather than the norm, they don't benefit from
scale, so it's unlikely they'll be ubiquitous unless there's a cheap way to
automate it.

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weedow
Haters Gonna Hate: this is developed in Israel.

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lafar6502
ok, Aluminum industry has come up with new aluminum battery. Of course, they
couldn't invent any other battery type, even if the alluminum one is an
environmental disaster, non-rechargeable, troublesome to use and replace,
because they _are_ alluminum industry and they aren't interested in anything
that's not alluminum.

