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NantEnergy announces zinc-air battery

Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2018 4:45 pm
by Carl White
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/ ... -Breathing

Two things caught my eye:
  • NantEnergy announces largest global deployment of a novel air breathing zinc rechargeable battery – 3,000 installations in nine countries – has broken the $100 per kilowatt hour barrier .. "By breaching the manufacturing barrier of $100 kWh, we can electrify the world anywhere everywhere."
  • The breakthrough is in the ability of our system not only for zinc to retain its ability to charge for prolonged periods of time, but also for the cycle of charging and discharging of zinc to be sustained over 1,000s of repeated cycles without deterioration.

Re: NantEnergy announces zinc-air battery

Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2018 6:33 pm
by Maui
Also 1500 installations and 6 years of field testing? Could be legit?

Re: NantEnergy announces zinc-air battery

Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2018 7:20 pm
by Skipjack
What is the energy/power density of these? I mean, generally, they should be better than Lithium Ion but it could be different for these particular types of cells.
Also it seems like Zinc Air batteries usually are not very efficient (only 50% efficiency vs 80+ for other types). Wonder if this applies to them as well.

Re: NantEnergy announces zinc-air battery

Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2018 10:48 pm
by Maui
General ranges via wikipedia:

Lithium ion:
Energy density: 250–693 W·h/L (0.90–2.43 MJ/L)
Specific energy: 100–265 W·h/kg (0.36–0.875 MJ/kg)

Zinc air:
Energy density: 1480-9780 Wh/L (5.328–35.21 MJ/L)
Specific energy: 470 (practical),1370 (theoretical) Wh/kg (1.692, 4.932 MJ/kg)

However, the fact that they have supposedly been testing these batteries in applications that don't require high energy density certainly makes me question that their batteries are. Add to that the fact that they are touting manufacturing price, but say nothing of density. Perhaps the breakthrough that prevents degradation requires that the batteries are significantly less dense than zinc-air batteries otherwise would be?

Re: NantEnergy announces zinc-air battery

Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2018 11:08 pm
by Skipjack
Maui wrote: However, the fact that they have supposedly been testing these batteries in applications that don't require high energy density certainly makes me question that their batteries are. Add to that the fact that they are touting manufacturing price, but say nothing of density. Perhaps the breakthrough that prevents degradation requires that the batteries are significantly less dense than zinc-air batteries otherwise would be?
Yep, this is what I was thinking too!

Re: NantEnergy announces zinc-air battery

Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2018 12:04 am
by paperburn1
This was fluidic energy and they are (was) a very reputable company

Re: NantEnergy announces zinc-air battery

Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2018 12:23 pm
by TDPerk
paperburn1 wrote:This was fluidic energy and they are (was) a very reputable company
Fluidic? The article doesn't say it has liquid electrodes like a vanadium battery. Do you have a link?