Electric car with massive range in demo by Phinergy, Alcoa
cbc.ca
cbc.ca
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.
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.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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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).
Whoops. Still and order of magnitude more than the Tesla Model S batteries.
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.