Cheap, High Capacity, and Fast: New Aluminum Battery Tech Promises It All

upstart writes:

The big catch is that it has to be at roughly the boiling point of water to work:

There's a classic irony with new technology, that adopters are forced to limit themselves to two of the three things everyone wants: fast, cheap, and good. When the tech is batteries, adoption is even more challenging. Cheap and fast (charging) still matter, but "good" can mean different things, such as light weight, low volume, or long life span, depending on your needs. Still, the same sorts of trade-offs are involved. If you want really fast charging, you'll probably have to give up some capacity.

Those trade-offs keep research into alternate battery chemistries going despite the massive lead lithium has in terms of technology and manufacturing capabilities-there's still the hope that some other chemistry could provide a big drop in price or a big boost in some measure of performance.

[...] People have been pondering batteries based on aluminum for a while, drawn by their high theoretical capacity. While each aluminum atom is a bit heavier than lithium, aluminum atoms and ions are physically smaller, as the higher positive charge of the nucleus pulls in the electrons a bit. Plus, aluminum will readily give up as many as three electrons per atom, meaning you can shift lots of charge for each ion involved.

[...] At slow rates of discharge, the aluminum sulfur cells had a charge capacity per weight that was over three times that of lithium-ion batteries. That figure went down as the rate of charge/discharge went up, but performance remained excellent. If the cell was discharged over two hours and charged in just six minutes, it still had a charge capacity per weight that was 25 percent higher than lithium-ion batteries and retained roughly 80 percent of that capacity after 500 cycles-well beyond what you'd see with most lithium chemistries.

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