Chinese Researchers Develop New Battery Technology

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://english.cas.cn/newsroom/news/201603/t20160325_160961.shtml

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Chinese Researchers Develop New Battery Technology[/font]

Mar 25, 2016

[font size=3]A Chinese research team from the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed a novel, environmentally friendly low-cost battery that overcomes many of the problems of lithium ion batteries (LIB).

The new aluminum-graphite dual-ion battery (AGDIB) offers significantly reduced weight, volume, and fabrication cost, as well as higher energy density, in comparison with conventional LIBs. AGDIB’s electrode materials are composed of environmentally friendly low cost aluminum and graphite only, while its electrolyte is composed of conventional lithium salt and carbonate solvent.

The research “A Novel Aluminum–Graphite Dual-Ion Battery” was recently published in Advanced Energy Materials (IF=16.146).

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“Compared with conventional LIBs, this battery (AGDIB) shows an obvious advantage in production cost (~ 50% lower), specific density (~1.3-2.0 times), and energy density (~1.6-2.8 times),” said TANG Yongbing, leader of the research team. The AGDIB mechanism follows a dual ion intercalation/alloying process.

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[immoderate]

1. Cheers, Tang Yongbing!

--imm

[Javaman]

2. You mean something like this one...

Stanford's aluminum battery fully charges in just one minute

http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/06/stanfords-battery-charges-in-one-minute/

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. They both use aluminum and graphite

https://news.stanford.edu/news/2015/march/aluminum-ion-battery-033115.html
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v520/n7547/full/nature14340.html

[font face=Serif][font size=3]…
We constructed Al/graphite cells (see diagram in Fig. 1a) in Swagelok or pouch cells, using an aluminium foil (thickness ~15–250 μm) anode, a graphitic cathode, and an ionic liquid electrolyte made from vacuum dried AlCl3/1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride ([EMIm]Cl; see Methods, residual water ~500 p.p.m.). The cathode was made from either pyrolytic graphite (PG) foil (~17 μm) or a three-dimensional graphitic foam9, 10. Both the PG foil and the graphitic-foam materials exhibited typical graphite structure, with a sharp (002) X-ray diffraction (XRD) graphite peak at 2θ ≈ 26.55° (d spacing, 3.35 Å; Extended Data Fig. 1). The cell was first optimized in a Swagelok cell operating at 25 °C with a PG foil cathode. The optimal ratio of AlCl3/[EMIm]Cl was found to be ~1.3–1.5 (Extended Data Fig. 2a), affording a specific discharging capacity of 60–66 mA h g−1 (based on graphitic cathode mass) with a Coulombic efficiency of 95–98%. Raman spectroscopy revealed that with an AlCl3/[EMIm]Cl ratio of ~1.3, both AlCl4− and Al2Cl7− anions were present (Extended Data Fig. 2b) at a ratio [AlCl4−]/[Al2Cl7−] ≈ 2.33 (ref. 11). The cathode specific discharging capacity was found to be independent of graphite mass (Extended Data Fig. 3), suggesting that the entirety of the graphite foil participated in the cathode reaction.
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[KelleyKramer]

4. Wow 1 minute!

And it doesn't lose anything for over 7000 cycles, wow!

[OKIsItJustMe]

5. But…

http://blogs.wsj.com/briefly/2015/04/07/the-aluminum-ion-battery-how-big-of-a-breakthrough-the-short-answer/

[font face=Serif][font size=5]The Aluminum-Ion Battery: How Big of a Breakthrough?[/font]

6:52 pm EST Apr 7, 2015

[font size=3]…

The Stanford scientists admit their battery’s energy density is not as good as Lithium-ion. Mr. Dai says his team has lots of basic research to do still, but they are already in talks with manufacturers.[/font][/font]

The Chinese cell is claimed to have a better energy density than Lithium-ion cells.