New Concept Make Aluminium Battery Twice the Energy Density

Science Direct reported that a new concept for an aluminium battery has twice the energy density as previous versions, is made of abundant materials, and could lead to reduced production costs and environmental impact. The idea has potential for large scale applications, including storage of solar and wind energy. Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, and the National Institute of Chemistry, Slovenia, are behind the idea. Using aluminium battery technology could offer several advantages, including a high theoretical energy density, and the fact that there already exists an established industry for its manufacturing and recycling. Compared with today’s lithium-ion batteries, the researchers’ new concept could result in markedly lower production costs.

Previous designs for aluminium batteries have used the aluminium as the anode (the negative electrode) and graphite as the cathode (the positive electrode). But graphite provides too low an energy content to create battery cells with enough performance to be useful. But in the new concept, presented by Patrik Johansson and Chalmers, together with a research group in Ljubljana led by Robert Dominko, the graphite has been replaced by an organic, nanostructured cathode, made of the carbon-based molecule anthraquinone.

The anthraquinone cathode has been extensively developed by Dr. Jan Bitenc, previously a guest researcher at Chalmers from the group at the National Institute of Chemistry in Slovenia. The advantage of this organic molecule in the cathode material is that it enables storage of positive charge-carriers from the electrolyte, the solution in which ions move between the electrodes, which make possible higher energy density in the battery.

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