Upcoming Zinc-air Batteries Store More Than Three Times the Energy of Lithium-ion

[danrok]

See front page:
http://www.aoaforums.com/frontpage/c...thium-ion.html

Comments?

[Áedán]

The downside is that rechargeable zinc air batteries thus far have been able to produce limited amounts of power. Zinc air has also traditionally had a fairly high self discharge, which means they lose power even when you're not using them.

On the other hand, zinc air lends itself to mechanical charging for larger batteries. That means you change the zinc electrodes, which could be in the form of a zinc/water slurry (IE, a thick liquid). If they're used for traction, then you could end up with a vehicle with two tanks - one for active electrode solution, and one for spent electrode solution. Recharging the battery would be a case of emptying the spent electrode solution and refilling the active electrode solution.

There are issues in that the cells need oxygen to operate. Restricting the oxygen to the cells limits how much power they can generate, so high altitude performance isn't as good.

We shall see.

[cloasters]

Zinc sounds like it's cheaper than lithium, fwiw.

[Gizmo]

Originally Posted by Áedán

Zinc air has also traditionally had a fairly high self discharge, which means they lose power even when you're not using them.

I was under the impression that zinc-air batteries only self-discharge when you store the zinc paste in the presence of oxygen? Using either an elastic bladder or a slightly pressurized dry nitrogen environment should mitigate that problem.

[Daniel ~]

Thanks for holding the flash light (torch) for me! ":O}