ve ee
Naval research effort seeks
Li-ion replacement
Washington, 0¢ OZ 2057
However, within the 3D zine
“sponge”, eleccric currents aze
‘more uniformly distributed mak:
TheUSNaval Research Labora _ingit difficult co form dendrites,
tory (NRL) hasdevelopeda fam- according to the NRL.
ily ofzincbased batteries that “Icmeans wehave igh conf-
couldprovidea saferand more dence that che longev
affordable alternative tolithium- battery will be demonscratedas,
fon (Lion) batteries (L1Bs\. ‘wellasits high reliability. which
‘The USNavy (USN) hasbeen of courseiscritical in military
seekinganaktemativetofire- mission applications,” Michael
prone LiBsand concernsabout __‘Burz, president and co-founder ot
LiBshave ledthe service insome EnZinc, sidon 27 april
cases coban thelruse on ships imMarch 2017 the NRL
‘The NRL demonstrated announced the intent to grant
breakthrough fornickebzinc(Ni- a partially exclusive license for
Zn)batteries,inwhicha 3Dzine Nino EnZinc for wheeled
“sponge” replacesthe powdered _vehiclesstarting with two-
zinc anode taditionallyused. _whecled electric bikes all the
With 3D zine, thebatterypro- way up to ful-electrie vehicles.
vides energycontent andrecharg- Nin willbeutilised frst
ing capabilities thattival LBs because the NRL demonstrated
whileavoiding thesafecy issues more end applications for that,
that continueto plaguelithium, Debra Rolison, head of che
the NRL saidina statement. advanced electric chemical sec-
“Zinc-based barteriesarethe _tionatthe NRL, said.
goto glbalbattery forsingle- “For thesingleuse wecan take
Useapplications, but arenotcon- itdown to 90%and rechargeand
sidered rechargeable in practice get almostall ofthat back. That
duetotheirtendencytogrow isan extreme depth of discharge
conductive whiskers(dendrites]__ inabattery,” she sed
Inside che battery, which can Researchers fiom the NRL and.
sgrowlong enough to cause short EnZinc, said the NFZn system
circuits,” the NRL said, offers the energy of LiBs, but ata
cost closer to lead acid batteries.
“That enables us tomake sim
pler, less complexsystems, par
ticularly for military pplications
in which ancillary subsystems
are not required," Bur sald,
For example, the type of cool-
ing systems, sophisticated bat-
tery management, and instal-
Igtion requirements, required
bith LIBs, are not needed
with the zine batvery, Burz
noted.”From a systems point of
view the battery is ore than
reliable inthe way in which it
operates,” he said.
‘Besides reliability and safery
zine will be more afordable,
beyond the costs associated with
battery cells. he zinc battery
willbe becween 30%and 50%
cheaper than acomperable LIB
system, Burz noted,
‘Something else chats critical
fortheNRLand Enzinc is sca
ing. "Because we are creating the
aD zine fromazincemulsion
you can make it any Lizel from
micro-powered, toconsumer
electronics, to electric vehicles,
tothe {power! grid, Rolison sai.
“Wecan take thebattery
from asmalllabscaletoa larger
scaleand we think we demon:
strated that in the ARPACE {the
UUs Department of Energy's
‘Advanced Research Projects
Agency] range programme,” Burz
added. “Once we have done that
‘we will go into environmental
testing using [something] called
HALT~Highly Accelerated Life
Testing ~and poweraccelerated
stress testing”
The tral time todo thats two
years, hesald. “We fool that we
‘an have battery ready forthe
market by the end of 2019."
Although the NiZn is epplice
ble toelectric vehicles, for very
smal devices it does nothave the
energy density, Burz noted.
“But the next-generation bat
teries that Debra Rolisonandher
team are working on will abso-
Iotely beable to handle micro-
devices or small portable devices,
plusthe added factor ofabettery
‘which is divorced from the
typical cylindrical or rectangular
configuration orshape,”he said.
“One ofthe reasons we revi
ited this very old battery chemis-
‘ry was precisely because of the
navy and the broader military's
‘concern with the safety of Lion
batteries," Rolison sai.
‘TheNRLisalsomavingto
silverzine, which has power
that researchers have not even
seen out of Li-ion, Rolison noted.
“that could be ofextreme inter-
est tothe navy forsome of the
submersible applications.”
Currently, NRLSzinc battery
‘effort is ata Technology Read
ness Level and ready to move to
‘TRL4, Rolison said.