UK Man Invents Aluminum-Air Battery in His Garage

cleantechnica.com

18 points·joak··4 comments

I don't know, but the final note on the article doesn't seem like inspiring much confidence:

>[Author’s note: A Google search for “Austin Electric Essex UK” failed to turn up any information or website for the company. The photos in the Daily Mail story are proprietary and cannot be republished by CleanTechnica, but nothing prevents you from reading the Daily Mail story yourself. I have guests from the UK staying with me at the moment and they suggest the Daily Mail may not enjoy the highest reputation for journalistic excellence.]

Link to the Daily Mail article:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7592485/Father-eigh...

Not a battery. It's a fuel cell that's "burning" aluminum by oxidizing it.

Once the reaction is complete, you end up with basically aluminum ore that has to be re-refined, at great energy cost.

My guess is that this is highly inefficient and will not turn out to be very useful.

Refining is just electrolysis though and which could be done in the sunny parts of the world.

What you have here (potentially) is solar storage that can be shipped in ingots

Maybe not for mass adoption but i can think of a few highly specialized applications where an incredibly lightweight and energy dense power source is needed for a short period of time, but they are all pretty terrifying

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