Raphael Thys
This Novel Aluminium Battery Might Be The Game Changer We’ve Been Looking For
Eco-friendly with a high-energy density and cheap. What’s not to love?
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Published in
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5 min read
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Sep 20
For humanity to kick its fossil fuel addiction once and for all and save this beautiful planet from ourselves, we need batteries. Lots and lots of batteries. But we have a bit of a problem. You see, our current battery technology of choice, lithium-ion batteries, isn’t perfect. While they are quite energy-dense, last long enough and charge at a decent speed, they are also expensive and environmentally dubious. In other words, for us to genuinely save the planet, we need to find a better battery than lithium-ion. But luckily, some Australian and Chinese researchers may have found this holy grail of battery technology in the form of an aluminium radical battery. However, what is an aluminium radical battery? And why could it be the future of battery technology?
Let’s start with lithium-ion batteries: what’s wrong with them?
Well, lithium-ion electrolyte (the bit that stores the energy in the cell) must be wet-coated onto the cathode and anode during manufacturing. This means they need to fully dry before being finally assembled, so lithium-ion factories use giant oven-like machines to do this. This means lithium-ion cells take longer to make, use more energy, produce more emissions and cost more to make than alternatives that don’t need this drying process. Lithium-ion cells also need to be doped with heavy metals, such as cadmium and cobalt, to achieve high energy densities and fast charge times. These metals are toxic, making disposal or recycling of lithium-ion batteries incredibly difficult. Moreover, the mining of these metals causes toxic compounds to leach into the local water table, poisoning it. There are also humanitarian issues surrounding some of these metals, such as cobalt, as some cobalt mines in developing countries have been found to be violating human rights. On top of all of this, while their cost has plummeted over the past decades, lithium-ion cells are still too expensive, bulky and slow-charging to fully replace many fossil fuel technologies like combustion engines. Finally, one of the last significant issues with lithium-ion batteries is that their electrolyte is highly flammable; this means the cells can…