The Aluminium Air Battery is a simple design that truly gives us hope for a pollution free future for transport and industry as a whole. Technically it is a fuel cell but with the near 100% recyclable nature of this concept, you can think of it as a battery that is recharged by an industrial process rather than plugging in the mains.
So Why has it not been done before?
The problem is that it has always required the purest aluminium to achieve a good power output in the past but now a Genius, Trevor Jackson, has made it possible with standard Drinks can grade aluminium and his secret fluid, it might be just sugar water but we don't know just yet. I would love for him to 'open' this knowledge to create global change in power storage. There is a link at the bottom of the page to the Manufacturers website "metalectrique" if you are eager to find out more of their data..
Why am I so excited?
To be frank, It is great, long range electric vehicles has been a generational challenge that has been plagued with preference of convenience over environment, and I am disapointed that I did not come up with this and instead focused on capturing the pollution of older cars by compressing exhaust gas into canisters for recycling and swapping them for new empty ones when you buy your fuel. So when I first heard about this - I thought, damn what wasted research but quickly became elated as this answers not only basic transportation requirements and why we use the convenience of fossil fuels over current battery or electric vehicles as listed below which were similar to my Design Brief but the processes involved in the recycling of the batteries produces so many more benefits as mentioned later.
but wait, there are so many other applications too.
Is this too good to be true?
Not really, and it gets better with imagination, but there are hurdles to overcome in addition to the new technology integration challenges. One such hurdle is that of Bauxite Ore to Aluminium is a highly intensive process that contributes to approximately 1% of Global Greenhouse Gas emissions. The related Carbon Trust report can be found at the below link.
www.carbontrust.com/media/38366/ctc790-international-carbon-flows_-aluminium.pdf
It is inevitable that there would be a steep increase in production of alumina from Bauxite, in the early days to prevent a steep market price rise of Aluminium through supply and demand, Although many process facilities will derive their power from green technologies, there will still be a large proportion that do not. Having said that, It would surely balance out with the reduction in transport CO2 Emissions.
In time the above issue will be reduced as recycling the used aluminium uses approximately 95% less energy and actually create usable side products like Hydrogen, Acetylene and Ammonia.
There is another potential for Acetylene based carbon capture, is that, when Acetylene is subjected to pressure shockwaves instead of heat, it explodes creating Hydrogen and Solidified Carbon. This creates a potential to remove carbon from the air in a controlled and measured fashion as we do not want to remove so much that we start having a global cooling or destroy Plantlife that require CO2.
Having said that, these explosions can be used as another energy source if they can be controlled sufficiently and create an alternative redesigned diesel engine that could eject the solidified carbon through a side valve or maybe invert the engine operation "upside down" so the crank and camshaft swap positions. I may have to put more thought into this idea.
So I hope you want to find out more about this technology and please follow the link below to the metalectrique website to find out more specifics https://www.metalectrique.com/ . Alternatively, Searching for them in your favorite search engine should show their webpage as a result.