Doesn't so much feel like a battery than a new kind of chemical reactor that oxidizes aluminum plates. More like a "Shipstone" from Robert Heinlein's science fiction stories. You can't charge it at home, you just get it from the factory and use it up, except that it holds over an order of magnitude more power for the weight. 3000 mile range? I hope it doesn't have an easily reached state where it can release all of that energy at once.
Second, the energy source is the oxidization of Aluminum. It takes specific preparation (e.g. thermite) to release that all at once. The contents of this "battery" are as safe as carrying around a bunch of crumpled up beer cans (very safe) and whatever the heck that solvent is (unknown). The solvent may be toxic, acidic, etc. but hopefully no worse than what's in your car battery, which is actually pretty nasty but not terribly dangerous unless you deliberately try to make it so (e.g. by shorting out the terminals).
Aluminum is currently under $2K/1000kg, so the yearly aluminum battery replacement would probably run a few hundred dollars. Aluminum is the most abundant metal on earth and this reaction is reversible, so costs should stay low. The real cost is likely to be the solvent.
Not technically true, since almost all natural aluminum exists in oxide form, not metal. The process of turning Al2O3 into metallic Aluminum is incredibly energy intensive, requiring temperatures of over 1,000 degrees Celsius and some seriously heinous chemicals (HF among them).
That is the intent => "the car would still rely on its regular rechargable lithium-ion battery most of the time and would switch to the aluminum-air battery as a backup only if the lithium-ion battery ran out"
It's just a gasoline/diesel (or other fuel-powered!) generator that plugs into an electric car. I believe the company is looking to rent them out to people as needed, similar to renting a truck from uHaul. If they could land a contract with uHaul or something, it could take off... Seems the charging port isn't universal on electric cars though...
Personally, I'd prefer to buy my own and have it around the house as an emergency generator as well as for the rare long trip. Much simpler and more versatile than a Hybrid, for sure.
"Because the car would still rely on its regular rechargable lithium-ion battery most of the time and would switch to the aluminum-air battery as a backup only if the lithium-ion battery ran out, and because most car trips are 50 kilometres or less, Alcoa estimates the aluminum-air batteries would only need to be changed about once a year."
This is a chemical battery with very limited lifespan. Additionally without any details on recycling of used batteries "green" qualities of this battery are suspect.
> The batteries are "charged" not from the electrical grid, but from hydroelectric power generated at Alcoa's smelter in Baie-Comeau, Que., Tzidon said. When they are full-charged, they are thick, heavy panels made mostly of aluminum.
In a sense it's green if they are produced from green energy, like hydroelectric power in remote Canada. In that case it's not just green because it's hydroelectric, but also because it's inconveniently located hydroelectric it's not displacing more productive uses of the electricity. Maybe geothermal energy in Iceland would be another option.
This is actually a pretty ingenious way of solving the distance issue for electric cars. As long as replacing the backup isn't egregiously expensive, I don't see why it wouldn't work.
This solves the last issue I have with electric cars (other than cost).
It's highly recyclable. Aluminium oxide (the result of the reaction in the battery) is one of the feedstocks for industrial aluminium smelting. Recyclable isn't necessarily the same as 'efficient' or 'a good idea' though. It's energy intensive (haven't checked the efficiency of 'recharging'), and additionally has, as a byproduct, massive amounts of CO2 even before considering CO2 emitted in generating the electricity required for the smelting process.
I can't see how that a single use battery like this (which also needs swap infrastructure) has any net advantage over the rechargable swappable packs + fast chargers as Tesla use.
Maybe it could have applications in aerospace where existing lithium ion cells don't have sufficient energy density to even come close to a viable solution. But you'd want to compare it to other 'single use' options like synfuel.
and just dump the alumina result out the tailpipe - its just ceramic dust. And refill with new powder. So it becomes very much like the process of gasoline fueling.
Well, its non-reactive (doesn't break down with low or high ph). But I don't know otherwise.
A little Googling shows lots of problems with clay dust (toxins for coloring etc) but nothing about actual fired ceramic dust. For clay it seems to depend upon the particle size in large part. So some control there might help alleviate the risk.
It's energy intensive (haven't checked the efficiency of 'recharging'), and additionally has, as a byproduct, massive amounts of CO2 even before considering CO2 emitted in generating the electricity required for the smelting process.
Aw come on! I'd rather see thinking two or more steps ahead from the HN crowd. If the CO2 emitted from the battery's materials came from the atmosphere in the first place, this will be a closed cycle and won't increase global CO2 levels. Supply the power to recycle the aluminum and charge the battery from renewable sources, and you're good.
The thing that might sink this is simply the sheer amount of energy needed. There is nothing inherently carbon intensive about it, though.
>If the CO2 emitted from the battery's materials came from the atmosphere in the first place, this will be a closed cycle and won't increase global CO2 levels.
The carbon emissions of aluminum smelting come from the carbon electrodes in the electrolytic cell-- you're essentially burning them to pull the oxygen atoms off the aluminum oxide molecule.
Carbon electrodes used in industrial processes are generally formed from processed coal and mineral graphite: the fossiliest of the fossil fuels. You could theoretically produce synthetic bulk carbon from atmospheric CO2 using the Bosch process, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosch_reaction) at incredible cost per kilogram of carbon produced, which would then directly increase the cost per kilogram of aluminum smelted.
Carbon electrodes used in industrial processes are generally formed from processed coal and mineral graphite: the fossiliest of the fossil fuels.
Again, there's no fundamental reason why this must be the case.
You could theoretically produce synthetic bulk carbon from atmospheric CO2 using the Bosch process, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosch_reaction) at incredible cost per kilogram of carbon produced, which would then directly increase the cost per kilogram of aluminum smelted.
Yes, but this is like saying that because our present economic/industrial configuration is the way it is, there's no escape from emitting carbon, which is simply circular logic. Or, maybe you do understand the implication, which is that the only way out is for us to make energy much cheaper across the board.
It's more like saying 'if you're looking at a new solution you better account for every step of the process, including costs and losses, and compare to viable alternatives, before deciding it's a good thing.
The logic isn't circular. Rather, you're conflating multiple independent processes. Even if we did have a commercially viable way to capture atmospheric co2 and turn it back into carbon that still doesn't mean we should then burn the carbon to make batteries. We could also bury it, and use normal rechargeable batteries.
It's more like saying 'if you're looking at a new solution you better account for every step of the process...The logic isn't circular.
In the general context of whether we can get ourselves out of carbon dioxide pollution, it is, and this happens again and again. If we assume that the current truism of our industrial society -- that you almost can't do anything without a carbon footprint -- is somehow true for all time is a vastly convoluted circular logic.
You will also note that the "two positions" above are actually the same position. The big caveat is the massive power use in recycling. We just interpret that in two different ways. "Not viable because it's not viable in our present economic infrastructure" is a position that's clearly false in the historical record. Unless you're being specific to the short term only, using that to justify a position is just obfuscated circular logic.
Uhh... I disagree. Firstly, I don't see the circle in the following:
- SolutionX puts lots of CO2 into the atmosphere compared to alternatives, and would be extremely uneconomic if we included in the cost/unitSolutionX the cost required to extract that CO2 from the atmosphere again.
- Lots of CO2 in the atmosphere is bad
-> SolutionX is either bad because it's uneconomic, or bad because it leads to lots of CO2 in the atmosphere.
-> We shouldn't use SolutionX until some factors change such that SolutionX is better than alternatives, rather than worse.
That's linear reasoning. If you want to change one of the underlying assumptions, namely that it's expensive to capture CO2 (and convert it back to carbon in this case... where at least the CO2 is coming from a concentrated point which reduces the cost of the process) then it's still linear reasoning with a slightly different result.
For it to become circular there would have to be some step where we said "If we had SolutionX it would be cheap and easy to get CO2 from the atmosphere and turn it back into carbon, but we don't have SolutionX because the methods of getting CO2 from the atmosphere without SolutionX are expensive so SolutionX is dirty".
That, interestingly, was used and is used as an argument against solar cells (e.g. solar cells made on power grids consume energy that may have a large CO2 loading). But it's easily revealed as bullshit through the use of EROEI (Energy returned on energy invested) accounting, and it's easy to show how 'SolutionX' (solar in this case) makes itself clean over time.
How is that the case with this aluminium fuel cell concept? Any advances in energy generation and CO2 capture are probably going to happen independently of aluminium fuel cell production. There's certainly plenty of incentive for both already, the aluminium fuel cells won't create a new market.
In conclusion, you're right that an aluminium based energy storage cycle would be more attractive if we had vast quantities of cheap and clean energy and low emission method of capturing CO2 and turning it into carbon.
But....
1. We have neither of those things
2. So for now an aluminium energy storage cycle is probably unattractive for most applications
3. If we did have both of those things it would totally change the economics of all sorts of other solutions, so you'd need to recalculate those as well before doing any comparisons between aluminium fuel cells and (e.g.) synthetic gasoline.
Uhh... I disagree. Firstly, I don't see the circle in the following
Having made this realization, then coming back to see this hunk of text written absent it sort of seals the deal as far as you being one of these particular kinds of circular thinkers. Namely, I 'll note that you're seemingly going on with the assumption that the Bosch process is the only way we could possibly get carbon out of the atmosphere on industrial scales. Left as an exercise.
Not at all. I'm pointing out that whatever process you assume to get carbon out of the atmosphere, you should plug the inputs and outputs of that process into your calculation.
Speaking of circular processes though... does this one look familiar?
a) Angrily and dismissively state flawed views
b) Have flaws in views pointed out
c) goto a)
Of course it's not purely circular as with every iteration there's more anger and less substance. But whatever.
Not at all. I'm pointing out that whatever process you assume to get carbon out of the atmosphere
Yeah, you don't know what it is, do you?
you should plug the inputs and outputs of that process into your calculation.
It's powered by the sun and all of the carbon gets pulled out of the atmosphere by nanomachines. As the mass of carbon used for the reaction is only 1/10th the mass of aluminum produced, the mass of the carbon needed for the current world production of aluminum would constitute a fraction of a percent of the world's total current agricultural output. Some additional energy would be needed to carbonize the material, but this fuel could be drawn from the same feedstock, and still amount to a fraction of a percent of the world's agricultural output.
a-c
Not at all. My position is that there is a kind of commenter who thinks themselves "smart" for being able to recite facts about the current world, but can't see when they are applying the facts in ways that show they can't think a few steps ahead from first principles. Instead they rigidly apply the current situation and present it in arguments as if they had actually refuted something. Any escalation is merely due to the level of annoyance from repeatedly missed hints.
The same sort of "logic" you present could be used in the Napoleonic era to "prove" that aluminum smelting would forever be impossible. (And you probably don't recognize the trap inherent in that one, or the other two traps above.)
So basically we should celebrate this contemporary not-really-an-innovation because some future speculative innovation might make it useful... and ignore the fact that it's much more likely that the future speculative innovation would make it entirely redundant. I love it that your future sees us pulling CO2 directly from the atmosphere with nanomachines, but still driving around in cars that run on blocks of aluminium taken from aluminium oxide through smelting.
If I use your logic then I can just say "There's no issue with everyone running their cars on diesel". After all, one day we'll have nanomachines which can pull the soot, sulphur dioxide, CO2 and water vapour from the atmosphere and convert it all back into diesel again for a squeaky clean closed loop system running off the clean energy technology I have also implemented at massive scale.
I don't know why we're even bothering with clean diesel. Or any pollution controls at all for that matter. Nanomachines will sort that right out!
How're they coming along by the way? Oh, they're not ready? In the meantime then we should probably stick with assessing merit based on near term available technology, rather than saying "this thing is great, because I will solve all the things you don't like about it with my nanotech magic wand which I'm sure I'll have access to on a suitable timeframe".
Uhh... I disagree. Firstly, I don't see the circle in the following:
- SolutionX puts lots of CO2 into the atmosphere compared to alternatives, and would be extremely uneconomic if we included in the cost/unitSolutionX the cost required to extract that CO2 from the atmosphere again.
- Lots of CO2 in the atmosphere is bad
-> SolutionX is either bad because it's uneconomic, or bad because it leads to lots of CO2 in the atmosphere.
-> We shouldn't use SolutionX until some factors change such that SolutionX is better than alternatives, rather than worse.
That's linear reasoning. If you want to change one of the underlying assumptions, namely that it's expensive to capture CO2 (and convert it back to carbon in this case... where at least the CO2 is coming from a concentrated point which reduces the cost of the process) then it's still linear reasoning with a slightly different result.
For it to become circular there would have to be some step where we said "If we had SolutionX it would be cheap and easy to get CO2 from the atmosphere and turn it back into carbon, but we don't have SolutionX because the methods of getting CO2 from the atmosphere without SolutionX are expensive so SolutionX is dirty".
That, interestingly, was used and is used as an argument against solar cells (e.g. solar cells made on power grids consume energy that may have a large CO2 loading). But it's easily revealed as bullshit through the use of EROEI (Energy returned on energy invested) accounting, and it's easy to show how 'SolutionX' (solar in this case) makes itself clean over time.
How is that the case with this aluminium fuel cell concept? Any advances in energy generation and CO2 capture are probably going to happen independently of aluminium fuel cell production. There's certainly plenty of incentive for both already, the aluminium fuel cells won't create a new market.
In conclusion, you're right that an aluminium based energy storage cycle would be more attractive if we had vast quantities of cheap and clean energy and low emission method of capturing CO2 and turning it into carbon.
But....
1. We have neither of those things
2. So for now an aluminium energy storage cycle is probably unattractive for most applications
3. If we did have both of those things it would totally change the economics of all sorts of other solutions, so you'd need to recalculate those as well before doing any comparisons between aluminium fuel cells and (e.g.) synthetic gasoline.
Unless you're Iceland, with more geothermal and hydro than you know wat to do wit, and too far away from civilization. One of the largest aluminum exporters in the world.
The reaction used by is not reversible, so the alumimium in the battery will be consumed, and the battery is not rechargeable. This is only said implicitly in the article. Thus this is more a fuel cell, using aluminium as fuel.
It's not reversible in the car, but it is reversible in an aluminum smelter. The power cell is turning the metal into aluminum oxide, which is (mostly) how we find Al in its ore form.
So once you burn it out, it gets shipped back to Alcoa and they treat it like some nice clean ore and shortly turn it back into metallic Al. Which is not entirely energy-cheap, but at current prices of less than $1/lb isn't too bad.
You can see where Alcoa would like such a process.
I don't know if the idea of a high-density consumable backup power supply will take off, but it's not a terrible idea until real batteries get much better.
You can also synthesize gasoline with water + co2 + energy, not unlike this battery, but the global efficiency is very low (US navy is considering using it in nuclear powered ships for jet fuel iirc). The thermalization of the fuel (i.e. Carnot cycle) is also a significant limiter.
metal-air batteries (fuel cells), rechargeable and not, is the future. Having comparable to gasoline energy density, yet higher efficiency - 60-90% vs. 30% of gasoline, it will transform cars and especially planes (subsonic ones). You can imagine that it is absolutely not an issue to replace a 100Kg spent aluminum fuel cell block on a small plane at airport. It would also be better than gas turbine for bigger commercial, though still propeller driven, planes (for pure jets the issue is that you need air to be hot to have high exhaust speed for the plane to reach speeds beyond 450+ knots). Interesting possibility for decreasing heat
signature for military subsonic drones too :)
There is also very active development for rechargeable metal-air batteries though currently it is significantly skewed toward lithium-air which is non-starter pretty much. There is very promising results with zinc, sodium and especially potassium -air batteries.
For aircraft, I'm not sure it would be practical, but in theory you could jettison the spent batteries (which now weigh more thanks to the air adsorption) after takeoff, at which point they would fly/glide themselves to a nearby reprocessing station.
my bet actually is on potassium-air. The known and projected configurations of such batteries would most probably contain organic/aprotic electrolyte, so it is pretty nasty/flammable inside, yet they are rechargeable and availability and cost of components and efficiency seems to beat other commodity materials based schemas.
They are the highest power-density battery design available.
There are still renewable / sustainable liquid fuel options, though. Among the most interesting to me in recent months is the US Naval Research Lab's work on seawater-based Fischer-Tropsch fuel synthesis (SFTFS).
It uses electrical energy (from an external source: nuclear or OTEC in the NRL's scheme, solar, wind, geothermal, or other sources could also be substituted). The net efficiency is no better than 60% (the energy cost of electrolysis), my suspicion is that it will be around 50%, for a round-trip return of around 15-20% based on thermal engine applications (higher for electrical generation, lower for internal combustion).
But what this gives you is a sustainable, renewable, carbon-neutral source of energy-dense, highly-versatile liquid fuels.
I seriously doubt metal-air batteries will work for serious air transport.
So I've posted this before, but aluminum smelting is just plain old too hard for this to be as cheap as batteries. I mean, it's great if you're Alcoa, an aluminium smelter, but let's take a look at bulk prices:
The cost of refining aluminum from ore, in bulk, is therefore >$1.35/kg (otherwise, Alcoa would be cleaning up on the commodities market). The cost of a 3000km battery with 100kg of aluminium is therefore $135, or roughly 4.4 cents per kilometer, or 7 cents per mile.
That's nearly as expensive as gasoline, going off of commodity metal prices and assuming absolutely no overhead or profit margin. That's not to mention the environmental consequences of aluminium refining w.r.t. the massive amount of energy therefor required.
It's impressive tech, but it's not feasible. The Hall-Héroult process has been the subject of intense scientific scrutiny for over 100 years; everyone and their brother has tried to make it more efficient: we use aluminium for everything. Aluminium is not going to get any easier, barring massive breakthroughs in fusion energy and/or the Second Coming.
EDIT: Originally my calculated cents/mile was off by a factor of 10. However, the latter point, "nearly as expensive as gasoline", stands: it costs $250 for a gas car to drive 3000 km, at 30 mpg and $4/gallon. I didn't notice the error because I used this latter comparison rather than figuring out gasoline's cents/mile.
The idea is it's a backup battery instead of a backup gasoline engine. Being "nearly as expensive as gasoline" could still be a win because it could be used in electric vehicles without having to add a backup generator engine. Also it could have other benefits like being safer (less combustible), producing fewer emissions on the road, and weighing less than gas.
That said, I'm not saying I'm believer in this tech
>The cost of a 3000km battery with 100kg of aluminum is therefore $135, or roughly 44 cents per kilometer, or 70 cents per mile.
$135 / 3000km = $0.04 , not $0.44
That is the beauty of metal "burning" in fuel cells instead of gasoline - gasoline is expensive because it is too little of oil on our planet compare to any common metal.
Doesn't aluminum smelting use crazy amounts of electricity and emit significant greenhouse gases? So not only would we be doing that, we'd also have to ship these 220 lb modules back to the smelters every 1,000 miles?
Is there anybody advocating for this besides aluminum smelters?
Read article. The smelter they are using is hydroelectric and the 1000 miles air battery range is only used on long journeys as mostly the car runs on lithium.
I think... you might want to read up on aluminum smelting, which converts alumina (Al2O3) into aluminum (Al). The process involves passing a large current between two graphite (carbon) electrodes via the alumina.
Al2O3 + carbon => Al + CO2
Edit:
I can only guess that the down votes are for not providing a source? Here you go:
The smelting of aluminium is a very energy intensive process – and over 80 per cent of smelting greenhouse gas emissions are indirect (electricity-related) emissions. The remaining emissions come from direct (on-site) emissions plus the emissions associated with the production of alumina.
That's true but the direct emissions are still very substantial. It only seems small in comparison because smelting uses so much electricity to begin with.
I read the article. Hydroelectric is not free -- to scale up to powering the automotive industry requires more dams with massive ecological impact -- and you left out the part out greenhouse gases and the transportation of heavy batteries over hundreds or thousands of miles per recharge.
1K miles could be easily used up on a couple roundtrips. That's not even 2 roundtrips between SF and LA.
Aluminum does use a lot of electricity. The first time; that is why recycling aluminum which is cheap, very easy to do, and does not require much power, is such a win.
Are you suggesting "recharging" these batteries happens via recycling? That is not true. Aluminum is converted to alumina via the reaction and they need to be resmelted, just like the first time.
I hate being a naysayer - this is cool technology - but the energy economics won't work out for metal-air batteries if they're used as the main power source. Recharging a metal-air battery is grossly inefficient, and a big part of the advantage with electric cars is that they use less energy in every step of the process except initial manufacturing. This means that the general economics of metal-air batteries will not work out either, because the system requires a physical supply chain that is much more expensive to build out than the electricity distribution network that already exists. Add to this that range anxiety is for the most part eliminated with >60kWh electric vehicles, and this is a no-starter.
Where metal-air batteries could have a place, is as a trickle charging device that will be replaced only rarely, perhaps during an annual checkup, and used as a backup only on the few occasions where fast charging is unavailable or unwanted. But battery vehicle companies are onto this idea already - the Tesla Model S has space for what some suspect is in fact an upgrade slot where a metal-air trickle charging battery can be installed.
The problem is, most mainstream news articles writing about progress in battery-electric vehicles are already far behind the state of the art. Tesla's innovation and execution in this space has largely removed range anxiety for all but a small (<5%) number of trips, and already have a very strong quick charging presence in multiple countries. The future is electric and is already here - most people just haven't noticed.
Huh, the article addresses this issue pretty directly -- did you read it?
Because the car would still rely on its regular
rechargable lithium-ion battery most of the time and
would switch to the aluminum-air battery as a backup only
if the lithium-ion battery ran out, and because most car
trips are 50 kilometres or less, Alcoa estimates the
aluminum-air batteries would only need to be changed
about once a year.
The BMW i3 Rex carries around about that weight right now for it's gas generator, plus tank, and it will only go 50 miles or so once the battery runs down! Since it seems to be selling just fine, people are obviously willing to spend weight to get range.
Think how much lighter the Volt would be with no gasoline engine!
And they also don't mention if you can choose how much to lug around. Maybe I think I'll only need 500 miles of extra range a year and I can carry around a pack half the size? I'd do that, even in the fast-charge plentiful northwest. It would be nice to have the freedom to skip a station and make some time instead.
I figured that 50 miles for the BMW had to be wrong, it's way too small, but I looked it up and it's about right. Officially it's more like 70 miles, but that's still ridiculously small. I have to really wonder what the point of that option is. I get it for the Volt, you're pure electric for most of your trips, but you have gas range when you need it. But here, you still have typical crappy pure electric range, but with all the complexity of a hybrid system, and all the cost of burning gasoline for the last half of it. Why would anyone buy this?
Well, it's a pure series hybrid, so, apart from the engine itself, it doesn't actually add too much complexity. It's a very small engine (650cc motorcycle engine) and there's never any direct connection to the drivetrain. The Volt engine is 1.4 liters and there's several clutches to hook it into the drivetrain at various speeds/modes.
The BMW Rex is so close to perfect, that I think a lot of people are getting it with the hope that maybe they will be able to swap in a larger tank somehow later down the road. The tank right now isn't even 2 gallons. It's pathetic, and done to get some kind of damn sticker in California, not for any practical reason. Make that a 6-gallon tank with some after-market solution, though, and you've got a car with an 80-mile electric range and then several hundred more miles on gas for road trips.
I can definitely see the appeal with a larger gas tank. The original size is just crazy. I guess "compliance car" may explain it, although it seems to be available in many jurisdictions.
I didn't know that the Volt has a mechanical connection from the engine to the wheels. For some reason I thought it was also a pure series design.
"... and a big part of the advantage with electric cars is that they use less energy in every step of the process except initial manufacturing."
The most important part for me for electric cars is the simpler power-train system which is less likely to break... which is why i would never buy an hybrid that has both systems.
Oddly, hybrids seem to be really reliable, despite the additional stuff to break. Priuses get top marks for reliability. I'm not sure why, but I imagine it comes down to the electric stuff being extremely reliable due to the nature of the beast, and the gasoline end being treated more nicely (more consistent RPMs and throttle settings, no idling, not being used at all for a substantial fraction of your miles) more than compensates for the tiny increase in potential failures from adding the electric system. Also consider that there is essentially no transmission in the more advanced hybrids, which removes a potentially expensive breakage that regular gas cars are subject to.
I didn't have any specific source in mind when I made that comment, it's just something I've seen in general. To double-check, I did a Google search for "most reliable used cars", then clicked on the first five links that didn't involve a price ceiling. Four out of five listed the Prius as being among the most reliable. For reference, here are the links I found:
Anecdotally, I seem to see a disproportionate number of the original Prius on the road still, despite only selling 54,000 of them in the US, and being over a decade old at this point. That could, of course, just be confirmation bias or local demographics.
I worked at a large automotive manufacturer in near Detroit a number of years ago when they were considering whether or not to design and manufacture an electric vehicle. The had engaged in full "well to wheels" analysis of potential designs as well as that of competitors and concluded that the energy economics never made sense. That analysis considered how "carbon expensive" it is to spin up manufacturing, manufacture, service and operate a vehicle going all the way back to raw materials sourcing. They felt more optimistic about diesel hybrids but also chose not to pursue that. I find it unfortunate that we don't see a more standardized process for conducting full "well to wheels" analysis that takes into account the full life cycle of a designs, manufacturing and product lifecycle. Would be awesome if a consumer watchdog group existed that had the access and technical competence needed to audit these technologies.
It sounds like this battery would be much more suitable for Tesla's automated battery swap station. Except you would install it in the frunk/trunk for longer trips, and ditch the extra weight when you're done.
87 comments
[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 184 ms ] threadSecond, the energy source is the oxidization of Aluminum. It takes specific preparation (e.g. thermite) to release that all at once. The contents of this "battery" are as safe as carrying around a bunch of crumpled up beer cans (very safe) and whatever the heck that solvent is (unknown). The solvent may be toxic, acidic, etc. but hopefully no worse than what's in your car battery, which is actually pretty nasty but not terribly dangerous unless you deliberately try to make it so (e.g. by shorting out the terminals).
Aluminum is currently under $2K/1000kg, so the yearly aluminum battery replacement would probably run a few hundred dollars. Aluminum is the most abundant metal on earth and this reaction is reversible, so costs should stay low. The real cost is likely to be the solvent.
Not technically true, since almost all natural aluminum exists in oxide form, not metal. The process of turning Al2O3 into metallic Aluminum is incredibly energy intensive, requiring temperatures of over 1,000 degrees Celsius and some seriously heinous chemicals (HF among them).
Whoops. Still and order of magnitude more than the Tesla Model S batteries.
http://www.eptender.com/
It's just a gasoline/diesel (or other fuel-powered!) generator that plugs into an electric car. I believe the company is looking to rent them out to people as needed, similar to renting a truck from uHaul. If they could land a contract with uHaul or something, it could take off... Seems the charging port isn't universal on electric cars though...
Personally, I'd prefer to buy my own and have it around the house as an emergency generator as well as for the rare long trip. Much simpler and more versatile than a Hybrid, for sure.
This is a chemical battery with very limited lifespan. Additionally without any details on recycling of used batteries "green" qualities of this battery are suspect.
In a sense it's green if they are produced from green energy, like hydroelectric power in remote Canada. In that case it's not just green because it's hydroelectric, but also because it's inconveniently located hydroelectric it's not displacing more productive uses of the electricity. Maybe geothermal energy in Iceland would be another option.
This solves the last issue I have with electric cars (other than cost).
I can't see how that a single use battery like this (which also needs swap infrastructure) has any net advantage over the rechargable swappable packs + fast chargers as Tesla use.
Maybe it could have applications in aerospace where existing lithium ion cells don't have sufficient energy density to even come close to a viable solution. But you'd want to compare it to other 'single use' options like synfuel.
A little Googling shows lots of problems with clay dust (toxins for coloring etc) but nothing about actual fired ceramic dust. For clay it seems to depend upon the particle size in large part. So some control there might help alleviate the risk.
Aw come on! I'd rather see thinking two or more steps ahead from the HN crowd. If the CO2 emitted from the battery's materials came from the atmosphere in the first place, this will be a closed cycle and won't increase global CO2 levels. Supply the power to recycle the aluminum and charge the battery from renewable sources, and you're good.
The thing that might sink this is simply the sheer amount of energy needed. There is nothing inherently carbon intensive about it, though.
The carbon emissions of aluminum smelting come from the carbon electrodes in the electrolytic cell-- you're essentially burning them to pull the oxygen atoms off the aluminum oxide molecule.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_smelting
Carbon electrodes used in industrial processes are generally formed from processed coal and mineral graphite: the fossiliest of the fossil fuels. You could theoretically produce synthetic bulk carbon from atmospheric CO2 using the Bosch process, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosch_reaction) at incredible cost per kilogram of carbon produced, which would then directly increase the cost per kilogram of aluminum smelted.
Again, there's no fundamental reason why this must be the case.
You could theoretically produce synthetic bulk carbon from atmospheric CO2 using the Bosch process, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosch_reaction) at incredible cost per kilogram of carbon produced, which would then directly increase the cost per kilogram of aluminum smelted.
Yes, but this is like saying that because our present economic/industrial configuration is the way it is, there's no escape from emitting carbon, which is simply circular logic. Or, maybe you do understand the implication, which is that the only way out is for us to make energy much cheaper across the board.
The logic isn't circular. Rather, you're conflating multiple independent processes. Even if we did have a commercially viable way to capture atmospheric co2 and turn it back into carbon that still doesn't mean we should then burn the carbon to make batteries. We could also bury it, and use normal rechargeable batteries.
In the general context of whether we can get ourselves out of carbon dioxide pollution, it is, and this happens again and again. If we assume that the current truism of our industrial society -- that you almost can't do anything without a carbon footprint -- is somehow true for all time is a vastly convoluted circular logic.
You will also note that the "two positions" above are actually the same position. The big caveat is the massive power use in recycling. We just interpret that in two different ways. "Not viable because it's not viable in our present economic infrastructure" is a position that's clearly false in the historical record. Unless you're being specific to the short term only, using that to justify a position is just obfuscated circular logic.
- SolutionX puts lots of CO2 into the atmosphere compared to alternatives, and would be extremely uneconomic if we included in the cost/unitSolutionX the cost required to extract that CO2 from the atmosphere again.
- Lots of CO2 in the atmosphere is bad
-> SolutionX is either bad because it's uneconomic, or bad because it leads to lots of CO2 in the atmosphere.
-> We shouldn't use SolutionX until some factors change such that SolutionX is better than alternatives, rather than worse.
That's linear reasoning. If you want to change one of the underlying assumptions, namely that it's expensive to capture CO2 (and convert it back to carbon in this case... where at least the CO2 is coming from a concentrated point which reduces the cost of the process) then it's still linear reasoning with a slightly different result.
For it to become circular there would have to be some step where we said "If we had SolutionX it would be cheap and easy to get CO2 from the atmosphere and turn it back into carbon, but we don't have SolutionX because the methods of getting CO2 from the atmosphere without SolutionX are expensive so SolutionX is dirty".
That, interestingly, was used and is used as an argument against solar cells (e.g. solar cells made on power grids consume energy that may have a large CO2 loading). But it's easily revealed as bullshit through the use of EROEI (Energy returned on energy invested) accounting, and it's easy to show how 'SolutionX' (solar in this case) makes itself clean over time.
How is that the case with this aluminium fuel cell concept? Any advances in energy generation and CO2 capture are probably going to happen independently of aluminium fuel cell production. There's certainly plenty of incentive for both already, the aluminium fuel cells won't create a new market.
In conclusion, you're right that an aluminium based energy storage cycle would be more attractive if we had vast quantities of cheap and clean energy and low emission method of capturing CO2 and turning it into carbon. But.... 1. We have neither of those things 2. So for now an aluminium energy storage cycle is probably unattractive for most applications 3. If we did have both of those things it would totally change the economics of all sorts of other solutions, so you'd need to recalculate those as well before doing any comparisons between aluminium fuel cells and (e.g.) synthetic gasoline.
Having made this realization, then coming back to see this hunk of text written absent it sort of seals the deal as far as you being one of these particular kinds of circular thinkers. Namely, I 'll note that you're seemingly going on with the assumption that the Bosch process is the only way we could possibly get carbon out of the atmosphere on industrial scales. Left as an exercise.
Speaking of circular processes though... does this one look familiar?
a) Angrily and dismissively state flawed views
b) Have flaws in views pointed out
c) goto a)
Of course it's not purely circular as with every iteration there's more anger and less substance. But whatever.
Yeah, you don't know what it is, do you?
you should plug the inputs and outputs of that process into your calculation.
It's powered by the sun and all of the carbon gets pulled out of the atmosphere by nanomachines. As the mass of carbon used for the reaction is only 1/10th the mass of aluminum produced, the mass of the carbon needed for the current world production of aluminum would constitute a fraction of a percent of the world's total current agricultural output. Some additional energy would be needed to carbonize the material, but this fuel could be drawn from the same feedstock, and still amount to a fraction of a percent of the world's agricultural output.
a-c
Not at all. My position is that there is a kind of commenter who thinks themselves "smart" for being able to recite facts about the current world, but can't see when they are applying the facts in ways that show they can't think a few steps ahead from first principles. Instead they rigidly apply the current situation and present it in arguments as if they had actually refuted something. Any escalation is merely due to the level of annoyance from repeatedly missed hints.
The same sort of "logic" you present could be used in the Napoleonic era to "prove" that aluminum smelting would forever be impossible. (And you probably don't recognize the trap inherent in that one, or the other two traps above.)
So basically we should celebrate this contemporary not-really-an-innovation because some future speculative innovation might make it useful... and ignore the fact that it's much more likely that the future speculative innovation would make it entirely redundant. I love it that your future sees us pulling CO2 directly from the atmosphere with nanomachines, but still driving around in cars that run on blocks of aluminium taken from aluminium oxide through smelting.
If I use your logic then I can just say "There's no issue with everyone running their cars on diesel". After all, one day we'll have nanomachines which can pull the soot, sulphur dioxide, CO2 and water vapour from the atmosphere and convert it all back into diesel again for a squeaky clean closed loop system running off the clean energy technology I have also implemented at massive scale.
I don't know why we're even bothering with clean diesel. Or any pollution controls at all for that matter. Nanomachines will sort that right out!
How're they coming along by the way? Oh, they're not ready? In the meantime then we should probably stick with assessing merit based on near term available technology, rather than saying "this thing is great, because I will solve all the things you don't like about it with my nanotech magic wand which I'm sure I'll have access to on a suitable timeframe".
- SolutionX puts lots of CO2 into the atmosphere compared to alternatives, and would be extremely uneconomic if we included in the cost/unitSolutionX the cost required to extract that CO2 from the atmosphere again. - Lots of CO2 in the atmosphere is bad -> SolutionX is either bad because it's uneconomic, or bad because it leads to lots of CO2 in the atmosphere. -> We shouldn't use SolutionX until some factors change such that SolutionX is better than alternatives, rather than worse.
That's linear reasoning. If you want to change one of the underlying assumptions, namely that it's expensive to capture CO2 (and convert it back to carbon in this case... where at least the CO2 is coming from a concentrated point which reduces the cost of the process) then it's still linear reasoning with a slightly different result.
For it to become circular there would have to be some step where we said "If we had SolutionX it would be cheap and easy to get CO2 from the atmosphere and turn it back into carbon, but we don't have SolutionX because the methods of getting CO2 from the atmosphere without SolutionX are expensive so SolutionX is dirty".
That, interestingly, was used and is used as an argument against solar cells (e.g. solar cells made on power grids consume energy that may have a large CO2 loading). But it's easily revealed as bullshit through the use of EROEI (Energy returned on energy invested) accounting, and it's easy to show how 'SolutionX' (solar in this case) makes itself clean over time.
How is that the case with this aluminium fuel cell concept? Any advances in energy generation and CO2 capture are probably going to happen independently of aluminium fuel cell production. There's certainly plenty of incentive for both already, the aluminium fuel cells won't create a new market.
In conclusion, you're right that an aluminium based energy storage cycle would be more attractive if we had vast quantities of cheap and clean energy and low emission method of capturing CO2 and turning it into carbon. But.... 1. We have neither of those things 2. So for now an aluminium energy storage cycle is probably unattractive for most applications 3. If we did have both of those things it would totally change the economics of all sorts of other solutions, so you'd need to recalculate those as well before doing any comparisons between aluminium fuel cells and (e.g.) synthetic gasoline.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall-H%C3%A9roult_process
So once you burn it out, it gets shipped back to Alcoa and they treat it like some nice clean ore and shortly turn it back into metallic Al. Which is not entirely energy-cheap, but at current prices of less than $1/lb isn't too bad.
You can see where Alcoa would like such a process.
I don't know if the idea of a high-density consumable backup power supply will take off, but it's not a terrible idea until real batteries get much better.
There is also very active development for rechargeable metal-air batteries though currently it is significantly skewed toward lithium-air which is non-starter pretty much. There is very promising results with zinc, sodium and especially potassium -air batteries.
For aircraft, I'm not sure it would be practical, but in theory you could jettison the spent batteries (which now weigh more thanks to the air adsorption) after takeoff, at which point they would fly/glide themselves to a nearby reprocessing station.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall-Héroult_process
There are still renewable / sustainable liquid fuel options, though. Among the most interesting to me in recent months is the US Naval Research Lab's work on seawater-based Fischer-Tropsch fuel synthesis (SFTFS).
It uses electrical energy (from an external source: nuclear or OTEC in the NRL's scheme, solar, wind, geothermal, or other sources could also be substituted). The net efficiency is no better than 60% (the energy cost of electrolysis), my suspicion is that it will be around 50%, for a round-trip return of around 15-20% based on thermal engine applications (higher for electrical generation, lower for internal combustion).
But what this gives you is a sustainable, renewable, carbon-neutral source of energy-dense, highly-versatile liquid fuels.
I seriously doubt metal-air batteries will work for serious air transport.
Aluminium costs $1.80/kg: http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=aluminum
Alumina, the product of the aluminium-air reaction, costs ~$0.45/kg: http://www.indexmundi.com/en/commodities/minerals/bauxite_an...
The cost of refining aluminum from ore, in bulk, is therefore >$1.35/kg (otherwise, Alcoa would be cleaning up on the commodities market). The cost of a 3000km battery with 100kg of aluminium is therefore $135, or roughly 4.4 cents per kilometer, or 7 cents per mile.
That's nearly as expensive as gasoline, going off of commodity metal prices and assuming absolutely no overhead or profit margin. That's not to mention the environmental consequences of aluminium refining w.r.t. the massive amount of energy therefor required.
It's impressive tech, but it's not feasible. The Hall-Héroult process has been the subject of intense scientific scrutiny for over 100 years; everyone and their brother has tried to make it more efficient: we use aluminium for everything. Aluminium is not going to get any easier, barring massive breakthroughs in fusion energy and/or the Second Coming.
EDIT: Originally my calculated cents/mile was off by a factor of 10. However, the latter point, "nearly as expensive as gasoline", stands: it costs $250 for a gas car to drive 3000 km, at 30 mpg and $4/gallon. I didn't notice the error because I used this latter comparison rather than figuring out gasoline's cents/mile.
How about vast solar thermal plants in the Sahara?
That said, I'm not saying I'm believer in this tech
$135 / 3000km = $0.04 , not $0.44
That is the beauty of metal "burning" in fuel cells instead of gasoline - gasoline is expensive because it is too little of oil on our planet compare to any common metal.
Is there anybody advocating for this besides aluminum smelters?
Al2O3 + carbon => Al + CO2
Edit: I can only guess that the down votes are for not providing a source? Here you go:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_smelting
It doesn't matter if the smelter runs on fairy dust or hippie juice. Reducing aluminum oxide to aluminum produces CO2 no matter the energy source.
From http://aluminium.org.au/climate-change/smelting-greenhouse-p...
The smelting of aluminium is a very energy intensive process – and over 80 per cent of smelting greenhouse gas emissions are indirect (electricity-related) emissions. The remaining emissions come from direct (on-site) emissions plus the emissions associated with the production of alumina.
1K miles could be easily used up on a couple roundtrips. That's not even 2 roundtrips between SF and LA.
Where metal-air batteries could have a place, is as a trickle charging device that will be replaced only rarely, perhaps during an annual checkup, and used as a backup only on the few occasions where fast charging is unavailable or unwanted. But battery vehicle companies are onto this idea already - the Tesla Model S has space for what some suspect is in fact an upgrade slot where a metal-air trickle charging battery can be installed.
The problem is, most mainstream news articles writing about progress in battery-electric vehicles are already far behind the state of the art. Tesla's innovation and execution in this space has largely removed range anxiety for all but a small (<5%) number of trips, and already have a very strong quick charging presence in multiple countries. The future is electric and is already here - most people just haven't noticed.
Think how much lighter the Volt would be with no gasoline engine!
And they also don't mention if you can choose how much to lug around. Maybe I think I'll only need 500 miles of extra range a year and I can carry around a pack half the size? I'd do that, even in the fast-charge plentiful northwest. It would be nice to have the freedom to skip a station and make some time instead.
The BMW Rex is so close to perfect, that I think a lot of people are getting it with the hope that maybe they will be able to swap in a larger tank somehow later down the road. The tank right now isn't even 2 gallons. It's pathetic, and done to get some kind of damn sticker in California, not for any practical reason. Make that a 6-gallon tank with some after-market solution, though, and you've got a car with an 80-mile electric range and then several hundred more miles on gas for road trips.
I didn't know that the Volt has a mechanical connection from the engine to the wheels. For some reason I thought it was also a pure series design.
The most important part for me for electric cars is the simpler power-train system which is less likely to break... which is why i would never buy an hybrid that has both systems.
https://autos.yahoo.com/blogs/motoramic/car-dealer-scientifi...
http://www.forbes.com/pictures/ehmk45iidj/toyota-prius-2/
http://editorial.autos.msn.com/18-most-dependable-cars-on-th...
http://www.edmunds.com/car-reviews/best-used-cars-2013.html
http://wallstcheatsheet.com/automobiles/10-most-dependable-c... (This is the one without a Prius, but even this one has a hybrid on the list in the form of the Volt.)
Anecdotally, I seem to see a disproportionate number of the original Prius on the road still, despite only selling 54,000 of them in the US, and being over a decade old at this point. That could, of course, just be confirmation bias or local demographics.
Also, could it power sensor that wirelessly communicates gathered data from time to time for extended periods of time?
Everything aside, that's quite a deceiving field test, considering they aren't simulating any type of normal driving pattern.