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A new concept could make more environmentally friendly batteries possible
A new concept for an aluminium battery has twice the energy density as previous versions, is made of abundant materials, and could lead to reduced production costs and environmental impact. The idea has potential for large scale applications, including storage of solar and wind energy. Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, and the National Institute of Chemistry, Slovenia, are behind the idea.
Using aluminium battery technology could offer several advantages, including a high theoretical energy density, and the fact that there already exists an established industry for its manufacturing and recycling. Compared with today's lithium-ion batteries, the researchers' new concept could result in markedly lower production costs.
"The material costs and environmental impacts that we envisage from our new concept are much lower than what we see today, making them feasible for large scale usage, such as solar cell parks, or storage of wind energy, for example," says Patrik Johansson, Professor at the Department of Physics at Chalmers.
"Additionally, our new battery concept has twice the energy density compared with the aluminium batteries that are 'state of the art' today."
Previous designs for aluminium batteries have used the aluminium as the anode (the negative electrode) -- and graphite as the cathode (the positive electrode). But graphite provides too low an energy content to create battery cells with enough performance to be useful.
