Zinc sponge anode makes Li-ion alternative rechargeable | Hacker News Reader

Zinc sponge anode makes Li-ion alternative rechargeable

electronicsweekly.com

39 pointsrbanffy10 comments

Nice to see an article with a link to the underlying academic paper, even if it is paywalled (http://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6336/415).

">100 high-rate cycles at 40% depth of zinc discharge at “an energy content competitive with lithium-ion batteries”." is the problematic part.

But context helps...

"Nickel-zinc alkaline is seen as a less fire-prone alternative to lithium-ion cells, which have been banned for some US military applications, according to NRL."

So they now have a battery that works with a few hundred cycles with density close to that of Li-Ion that won't explode. It may not replace Li-ion in your vape stick but still sounds like a win for the emergency lights in the armory of a battleship (for example).

I'd expect a battleship to stay in operations for a very long time without spare part and replacements available.

The battery will long be dead by the time they'll need it.

An aircraft carrier needs resupply with avgas every three days when operating up-tempo. Warships use up resources like crazy, they're not going off on five year missions like Star Trek.

...avgas? I'd hope it get refilled with JP-5, unless the naval aviation field has suddenly moved back to piston aircraft when I wasn't looking.

Indeed, although the article I found in Quora (from a carrier guy) actually used the term avgas and I didn't parse it :-)

Wouldn't that depend on how often the batteries were actually needed? That is, if the system is primarily externally powered and only alternately powered by a battery (under various conditions), it shouldn't exhaust those charges too rapidly. Or like some systems I worked on, the batteries were strictly for things like maintaining a clock and some volatile memory, very slow discharge rates, when the aircraft were totally shutdown.

Why? What will kill it before then? What kind of a battery would have a long enough shelf life?

Missiles tend to have molten salt batteries which have an excellent inert life: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_battery

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