Air-fueled Battery Could Last Up To 10 Times Longer: Ground-breaking Technology For Electric Cars

Air-fueled Battery Could Last Up To 10 Times Longer: Ground-breaking Technology For Electric Cars

www.sciencedaily.com

A new type of air-fuelled battery could give up to ten times the energy storage of designs currently available.

This step-change in capacity could pave the way for a new generation of electric cars, mobile phones and laptops.

The research work, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), is being led by researchers at the University of St Andrews with partners at Strathclyde and Newcastle.

The new design has the potential to improve the performance of portable electronic products and give a major boost to the renewable energy industry. The batteries will enable a constant electrical output from sources such as wind or solar, which stop generating when the weather changes or night falls.

(visit the link for the full news article)



[edit on 18-5-2009 by grover]

Cool... pardon the pun.

Finally over the past few years we have seen a resurgence of alternative technologies aiming to replace the old tired technology of the 19th and 20th centuries.

We should be further along than we are however... the so-called Reagan revolution and the policies it brought all but killed the alternative energy movement that began in the 70's with the fuel crisis.

But this is good, very good. It will be even better when it hits the markets.

www.sciencedaily.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Since this battery collects oxygen from the air in the discharge cycle it must discharge oxygen on the charge cycle.

That would make it useful as a oxygen generator.

By building the battery where during the charge cycle the oxygen is collected and compressed you could use it for other purposes as in mixing with a fuel for a cleaner burn or in a stationery system the oxygen could be compressed and sold giving a faster payback on the system.

If you were using this battery on say a hospital and charging the batteries with a solar panel system you could collect the oxygen and compress it for patient use.
Then when the batteries were being discharged at night they would collect more oxygen from the air into the battery that could be released and collected during the next night.

This would make oxygen a byproduct of this battery.

I don't know all the details... and I am certainly no scientist... I just thought it was an interesting idea and a timely one as well.

reply to post by grover


Very interesting, I wonder if this technology will be buried just as other revolutionary technology has been. The big oil companies always come in and buy the technology and then dump them.

S and F for you!

Originally posted by questioningall
Very interesting, I wonder if this technology will be buried just as other revolutionary technology has been. The big oil companies always come in and buy the technology and then dump them.

More than likely. There's been ground breaking technology for electric cars the last couple of decades, yet all we see is crap cars intended to scare people away.

Match this with the insta-recharge saturation technique (load a battery in seconds by using its entire surface) and you got a car that far, far surpass any fossil fuel car even if you where to produce the electricity with the lousiest fossil fuel power plant available.

Personally I blaim the goverment however: they're an even bigger part of it than the oil companies. Imagine if all those billions spent on helping the car companies surive went into making an electric car infrastructure, awarding electric car technology and subsidizing electric cars!

reply to post by questioningall


that's the same thing that i thought upon reading the article. brings to mind people like tesla and carr, among a host of other things that should have been made more mainstream.

To OP: great find! S&F

I think it depends on the job creation versus job removal ratio. I consider the job creation versus job removal ratio important for ANY discovery.

Especially energy.

If the battery lasts the same amount of time as current batteries but holds ten times as much that would rally fook up the combustion engine car. What are we talking like 400 miles on a single charge? 500? 1000? Might really screw every business that deals with gasoline cars. Of course it would create more jobs for power companies to produce the extra needed electricity to fill those batteries.