A Navy veteran refused to accept a ‘no’ to his battery invention | Hacker News Reader

A Navy veteran refused to accept a ‘no’ to his battery invention

techcrunch.com

102 pointsgoodmachine57 comments

So techcrunch still runs one sided articles about companies that are basically glorified advertisements. They haven't changed after all these years.

They did not dwell on the biggest difference between aluminum air and lithium batteries -- that the aluminum air ones are not actually rechargable. Whenever you run out of batteries you have to send each used battery back to the factory to be re-manufactured and get a new one.

If you want to really compare these to lithium batteries, then you should compare the energy needed to re-manufacture a new aluminum air battery compared to the energy needed to merely recharge a lithium battery. I bet that the al-air battery will end up at least ten times more energy intensive. (Manufacturing aluminum is a very energy intensive process). And of course you also have to worry about shipping heavy batteries back and forth between the factory and multiple recharge centers. Whereas with lithium ion you are only "shipping" electrons over wires.

Relying on single use battery for ordinary transportation is just crazy extravagance.

I keep thinking that maybe metal air batteries only really make sense for an electric aeroplane. The energy density of lithium ion is too low and there are a lot of things to do at the end of a trip, so maybe swapping out a battery pack isn't a huge deal.

A possible issue: they get heavier as they discharge. Unless the aluminium oxide is somehow expelled out, but this is not the case.

They’re basically just printing the company’s pitch. Asking a cash-strapped magazine depending on clicks to get into extensive technical DD on every one of the 5 articles each writer needs to crank out every day seems excessive.

> Without having to charge the battery, a car could simply swap the battery out in second, completely removing ‘charge time’... Meanwhile, Hydrogen Fuel Cells would require a huge and expensive Hydrogen distribution infrastructure and a new Hydrogen generation system.

This is cool, but the above argument that battery a swap out system being much significant of a hurdle that developing an H2 infrastructure doesn't make sense. For a battery swap out, you need not only the infrastructure to deliver fresh batteries to points of use/sale, you also need to infrastrucutre to return the batteries to the recycling station, and the recycling station infrastructure itself.

H2 fuel infrastructure simply requires H2 liberation from a water source and delivery to fueling statuons. Fuel cells exhaust water. Now, the H2 fuel cells themselves and their platinum-based membranes are another hurdle, but that's not the argument the author made. This author (and others) need do a more complete cost-benefit assessment.

Exactly. The text you quote is PR-messaging to cover up the major downside that these aren't rechargeable - they have to be swapped out. So they're not really a competitor for Lithium rechargeables; they're a competitor for Duracell gold-tops.

(Interestingly, I recall that Tesla originally planned to offer battwry-swap stations, and even demonstrated over. Not sure why they dropped the plan - presume either logistics, or they developed their battery technology to allow charging more quickly than they'd originally thought possible?)

There was an Israeli company trying to do this.

Telsas now seem to be built around the battery pack, which is now a large flat heavy sled. I wouldn't be surprised if it was all to do with the practicality of low center of gravity, structural integrity, safety that such a configuration provides.

I believe it was called a Better Place, from what I recall Renault was big on it, as was the Danish government.

I wondered about this since you don't own the battery people won't be taking due care of it, it would be very capital intensive to have the battery replacement stations though.

I got the gist right:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place_(company)

The Model S and X were designed so that the battery can be swapped from below, and Tesla ran one station for several years where you could get this done. That station closed sometime in or around 2016 and they haven't talked about it since. The Model 3 and presumably future cars do not support battery swapping.

The one battery swap station was never really 'open' so much as trialled. It was a closed invite-only program, you had to book an appointment, and then come back and collect your original battery at a later date.

Saying they ran it for years is a reach, since it doesn't seem to have opened even for pilot programs until sometime in mid/late 2015[1], and was already seemingly closed in May of 2016[0].

It didn't work anywhere near as slick as in their stage demo suggested. Taking up to 15 minutes for a pack swap the first time, and 5 minutes thereafter.

There's suggestions that it was, at least in part, a tactic to get a greater share of credits[1] which Tesla sells to other car manufacturers[2].

Whether it was intended to be a real program or not is unclear, but they did give up on it pretty quickly in favour of a greater deployment of their Supercharging program.

[0] https://electrek.co/2016/05/10/tesla-battery-swap-program-su...

[1] https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1096570_about-that-one-...

[2] https://www.businessinsider.com.au/tesla-sold-carbon-emissio...

two issues, super chargers were more than quick enough even when this technology was introduced. the second was that they had such little uptake it wasn't worth trying at more than the first site.

the unwritten concern was, who owns which pack? is the new pack I swap going to swap back to me or equivalent?

> is the new pack I swap going to swap back to me or equivalent?

the packs are not rechargable, you would be buying a new battery and getting paid to recycle your old battery.

Shivetya was talking about Telsa battery packs, which are rechargeable.

Convenience stores in Seoul used to (maybe they still do?) swap battery packs for Android phones for a small fee. My phone's battery time cut in half after the first time I did it. I would have been much more concerned if it was my car.

> these aren't rechargeable

The only use I could imagine for these would be for a trucking company that wouldn't mind swapping and recycling the packs to keep their trucks going continuously.

For folks who have adapted to EV cars, never having to go somewhere to fill up (or swap) would be hard to give up. And rechargable packs will get better.

EDIT: ok... what about racers? Current EV racing is limited by the batteries. A lightweight aluminum pack that can be swapped when they change tires might make EV racing interesting. That assumes the power output from these packs isn't fundamentally limited in some way.

> It's long been assumed that Tesla opened its sole experimental swapping station solely to fulfill the promise that caused the powerful California Air Resources Board (CARB) to grant the Model S extra zero-emission vehicle credits for "fast refueling" capability.

> That translates to providing the car's full range in 10 minutes or less--which gasoline, diesel, natural gas, and hydrogen fuel-cell cars can achieve, but even a Supercharging Tesla cannot.

https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/In-Gear/2015/0312/Tesla-b...

Hydrogen is probably a dead end. The net energy efficiency is terrible and not improving much. Meanwhile battery charging speeds keep improving every year.

> For a battery swap out, you need not only the infrastructure to deliver fresh batteries to points of use/sale

With enough inventory, why couldn't you charge locally?

Exactly my thought. To me this really sounds like a useful step of indirection. I guess one of the show stoppers was that all market players have to agree on a standard for batteries. It took years to standardize a charging point/ cable.

> With enough inventory, why couldn't you charge locally?

Read the article a little closer and you'll see that these Aluminum-air batteries can't really recharge. The Aluminum is converted into a new (lower energy) compound as the energy is released from the battery. To "recharge" you need to send the battery back to a recycling facility where the Aluminum compound is smelted back into pure (higher energy) Aluminum. So the smelter is where the stored energy is coming from.

I suppose someone could design a local smelter and reformer, but that seems like a pain given alternative battery options.

Also, if anyone is interested, there is also a method by which Aluminum is used to react with water to liberate Hydrogen that can then be used as fuel in a fuel cell (same deal, the resulting Aluminum compound must be regenerated in a smelter if you want to reuse it). The subject Al-air battery seems a little better as it takes the need for a fuel cell out of the equation.

The transportation and storage of an explosive gas like hydrogen is a bigger hurdle and would require new infrastructure to be build across the country. If you ameliorate this by swapping rather than recharging fuel cells, then you end up with a similar situation to aluminum batteries.

The transportation and storage of battery packs can utilize the existing dry good shipping/stocking infrastructure. The new infrastructure that is needed is limited to the recycling facilities.

Also this isn't an advantage of metal-air batteries over Lithium-ion batteries. Both can be swapped.

Way back in 1997 the German Post Office did a big trial with Zinc-air batteries in delivery vans https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15420863-500-germany-...

Zinc-air only gets you around 180 Wh/Kg, while Aluminium-air manages around 1300 Wh/Kg.

If the article is correct that Trevor Jackson has solved practical problems with the electrolyte, then it is time to dig out the results from the old German Post Office trial. Why did it go nowhere? If the main problem was simply that Zinc-air batteries were too heavy, then a practical Aluminium-air battery is a big step forward. If on the other hand the problems were to do with swapping and re-smelting, then Aluminium-air might be solving the wrong problem.

Thanks for that link. It mentions a postal van lasting a week on one battery stack and testing with full loads. Cynical me says politics and oil industry but manufacturing and logistics surrounding it must have been challenging as well.

[edit] [0] Mentions the Deutsche Post thing as a pilot project with a "regeneration" plant for recycling. So might just have been funding drying up when the project ended.

[0]: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/661884

Having a good aluminum-air battery would be fantastic, even if it was non-rechargeable. It makes no sense to replace the existing battery pack in BEVs, but they could be used for range extension when going on road trips.

I'd be really curious to know how many kWh you could pack in a hand-swappable unit like Gogoros batteries. Make two slots in the bottom of the trunk (in a way that it can be used for storage when you don't have batteries in there). When you go on a long trip, just go to a station, pick up two batteries, and drop them off at your destination.

The problem is, considering that this is the main use case, it's not a technology with a huge market potential like lithium-ion. It's nice-to-have, but not essential.

Could also make sense for electric air planes or boats.

"The technology development has peaked and unlike aluminum, lithium is not recyclable"

This is just false. Solid state lithium-ion batteries are arguably more mature than aluminum-air, which is a huge step forward. Lithium is also recyclable. That process is not as mature as the process for making aluminum, but I'm guessing there's a bit more to scaling up the recycling of these batteries than just handing over the spent cell to an aluminum smelter.

Assuming the technology is as described and I don’t know enough to comment on that, it doesn’t surprise me, the British government is terrible at exploiting technology that is come up with inside the UK.

Another example is the SABRE folks, honestly innovation in this country is “men in sheds” relies refusing to take no for an answer.

If it is not possible to manufacture those cells on site, at home or at charging/swapping station he should probably give up. But entropy... more energy you pack, more it wants to get out.

if you can pack 10x more energy in the same size as lithium cells and they wont explode on damage, maybe there will be some benefit to making whole delivery network for aluminum cells

Is there a reason to not use a combination of battery types in an EV? Have a smaller rechargeable lithium battery for daily commutes and regenerative breakes. Have a space/socket for a larger single-use aluminum battery for when you need the extra range.

Assuming these things are stable enough, it really would not be hard for gas stations to keep a couple of these on a shelf. The hardest part would be scheduling the pickups for recycling.

Gas stations already have several vendors--for fuel and snack foods--coming in and out. With the Al/air batteries being just a swap, why would it be any different than the bread man dropping off fresh product and picking up stale?

The battery's "only waste product is aluminum hydroxide..."

Producing Al(OH)3 is an intermediate step in the Bayer process (used worldwide) to convert bauxite to Al2O3 - a process which requires a lot of energy and produces a lot of (dangerous) waste.

So there may be potential there for this battery's 'waste' to actually save -more- energy.

No, the step that converts the aluminium hydroxide into aluminium metal is an extremely energy intensive step. You won't be saving energy unless you use solar thermal to heat the kiln. And you'd have to do this if you wanted to use the batteries again as the batteries are single use.

There's got to be a catch. If the technology is so much better, why is it so shunned? I have great trouble believing that Big Lithium would really be preventing it's use given that aluminium is abundant everywhere.

The catch is that this battery isn't rechargeable, it has to be swapped out and recycled.

Ah, this explains it 100%.

well they claim that aluminium smelting is clean - it isn't, they emit evil fluorides, including HF. They also consume the carbon anodes making large amounts of carbon monoxide which best case is oxidised to CO2 and released into the atmosphere

Lithium probably has similar or worse issues, though?

Much simpler would be join the scooter scheme of ~swappable rechargeable batteries ... a ready made standard that could then work for any vehicle up to a car

By forcing ownership of batteries outside of consumers effective recycling could be much more effective too. Right now there is a huge cost, almost a planned obsolescence, when a EV's battery degrades ... as is inevitable with current tech.

~swappable

https://electrek.co/2019/06/10/yamaha-ec-05-electric-scooter...

Not sure I understand why this guy keeps turning to governments for funding instead of the private sector.

Is there some sort of regulatory hurdle he's trying to overcome?

I think the above comments are the clue that the private sector isn't interested.

Too many downsides in being a primary battery. BTW hearing aid batteries are zinc air. So the metal-air technology has certain uses, but as for EVs the highly energy intensive process of re-generating the batteries is probably what causes potential investors to pass.

Sounds useful as an emergency power backup — where you could simply store lots of Al rods and worry about returning the oxide byproduct only after power has been restored. This system has a dramatically higher energy density per cost and volume than any secondary batteries, which makes up for any loss of energy in refining Al

Corrosion and self discharge are the big problems for metal - air batteries.

They typically self discharge in less than a month once they are activated.

https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/120466

It's unbelievable how bad the editing in this article is. I barely skimmed this and came across four typos.

I'm surprised he found it so hard to get funding. They definitely need to get their story out to more people.

Being non rechargeable I wonder if these batteries could be used for things like watch/remote control/torch/etc batteries since the typical ones you buy are also non rechargeable and I imagine not very environmentally friendly.

It really reads like an inventor story in Europe. The German who invented Lithium Ion batteries also run across the country and nobody was interested until Sony came along and needed something for their walkman...so the story goes...

Being that it’s not rechargeable and cost £60/kWh.. does that make a 60kWh recharge $3600? If so it is a very expensive ‘tank of gas’ equivalent?

Although it’s confusing as they say it’s £0.08/mile so the bit the exchange must be cheap but something else in there is expensive?

Sounds like the main benefit vs other batteries is a high weight energy density, would it be enough to enable new applications for batteries?

Batteryswap makes sense to me. More sense than attempting to retrofit charge onto streets

Swapping out a few hundred kilos of battery is going to require some tools and equipment. That doesn't sound like something you'd do on the side of a road. Building facilities for that would be quite a bit of effort. Probably installing a charging point is a lot less complicated and costly.

Also the logistics of moving tons of batteries around are going to be a bit challenging. The infrastructure for that would also need to be built and unlike charging points there's none of it anywhere. Finally, having a lot of middlemen messing around with batteries adds a lot of cost as well.

Anyway, now that in car batteries are good enough now and on track to get way better still, this seems completely redundant. There are plenty of charging points and EV owners typically install one in their homes as well. None of the infrastructure for swapping batteries exist, no standards for such a thing exists, and fixing that seems to not really solve a problem anyone actually has.

The only logistics are for initial supply and replacement. The battery swap points would be what we call gas stations. The batteries would clearly be designed to slide in and out in some motorised manner with a lift, And have positive latch connects.

Contrast the costs of battery swap with retrofitting power reticulation to large developments, upscaling the distribution network, fitting individual charge points, and swap has good economics.

I agree it's unlikely. I just think it makes more sense.

Sounds like a lot of infrastructure would be needed to swap, handle, transport and store the batteries. Also presumably at some point you'd need to charge the batteries, which means you need .... charging points. So the economics are those of charging points plus a lot of logistics and man power. That sounds like bad economics to me.

Repurposed gas stations have most of what you need. Delivery of power to an array of chargers cheaper than reticulated suburbs.

Could this process work at grid scale as a power storage for renewable energy?

Aluminum refineries are often just that. But I doubt that they're workable and/or efficient enough at anything less than hugely industrial scale.

These batteries are not rechargeable - though you could create them with the 'spare' energy when wind power isn't needed for eg. Issue is the time that should plants could remain unused if the plant is not profitable at normal energy costs.

There is still a lot more bribe money in blocking new tech than in advancing it.

Everything that effectively brings the end of the Fossil Economy closer hits roadblocks in government. Anything ineffective has it easier, so dominates funding.

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