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by blake1
1208 days ago
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The stats are not crazy for an air battery. But the catch is two-fold. First, are they weighing the battery before or after discharging? Oxidizing will change the weight significantly. The most honest result would be the average weight during the cycle. The other catch with these air batteries is usually the purity requirements on the intake. I recall reading about earlier experiments that could not tolerate pollen, dust, and smog, and required an energy intensive purification step (maybe involving cryogenics) that was a nontrivial power draw. Those caveats aside, a back of the envelope estimate for the energy density would be something like 600-700 Wh/kg. |
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And of course, they will release oxygen if you try to charge them, which implies a way of rapidly expelling air when charging up quickly. Many past attempts avoid this problem by "mechanically" charge up the battery, meaning literally swapping out the spent chemicals with new ones. This of course require an auxiliary battery if you want regenerative braking or the ability to electrically charge.
And of course, the real catch is that we've already invented the metal-air battery in a practical way: hydrogen fuel cells. The big advantage with them is that mechanically recharging is very straightforward compared to other mechanisms. All other attempts are basically reinventing the wheel or have a very specific niche in mind.