One company, Phinergy, is developing an aluminum air battery to provide electric cars with 1,000 mile range. Here is a company video that explains the technology:
One of the companies that is advancing the technology is Fluidic Energy, based in Scottsdale, Arizona. Fluidic is targeting the backup power market for telecommunications, which currently is dominated by diesel generators and lead acid batteries. Fluidic is also partially funded by the United States Department of Energy, raising $5.13 million in 2009, and ARPA-e, raising close to $3 million. More recently, it was announced in March, 2013, that Fluidic secured a Series B round of funding, although no mention of the amount raised can be found. This is in addition to a company regulatory filing in January, 2011 that stated a capital raise of $17.3 million.
The advantage of metal-air batteries is the significant amount of energy stored, with upwards of three-to-four times as much energy stored as compared to lithium-ion batteries. This offers great promise, although the key challenge has been the difficulty in the ability to recharge the batteries. In addition, it is also rarely mentioned that metal air batteries also have low round trip efficiency, perhaps as low as fifty percent (50%).
Some of the companies that are active in developing metal air batteries include:
No comments:
Post a Comment