Zinc Air Batteries to come in 2013!

Zinc-Air Batteries may indeed hold the key to EVs and HEVS (Electric Vehicles and Hybrid Electric Vehicles). Eos Energy Storage has recently unveiled a Zinc-Air battery that they plan to start production of next year (2013). And to give you a visual on what I am talking about here is a cross sectional diagram of such a battery:

And the key to this photo is:A:Separator, B: zinc powder anode and electrolyte, C: anode can, D: insulator gasket, E: cathode can,F: air hole, G: cathode catalyst and current collector, H:air distribution layer, I: Semi permeable membrane

It turns out that the folks at Argonne have been testing out said batteries as far back as the 1970's-- who knows, they have been experimenting with them longer than that.

Of course they are not placing all their effort on cars at the moment-- they are investing in this battery as a means for grid storage. Then after they are competent that their batteries are good enough to use for cars they will start producing such.

Right now their technology can last for over 2000 charges; but for cars they have set a target of 10,000 charges for that purpose. I sure hope they can reach it!

The best thing I have read about this technology is that it is about as easy as filling your gas tank-- I am assuming that they can handle even more amps than a lithium ion can. If it is really as easy as filling your gas tank. And even better than that, they purportedly only would cost just a little over $11,000!

But Eos is not the only company investing in such technology. ReVolt Technology is another firm working on zinc-air batteries. But their goal is not as lofty as what Eos' is. Revolt has concentrated on consumer devices and EVs, and are targeting between 500 and 2,000 charges per battery life, which is much lower that Eos targeted 10,000 charge cycles per battery.

I encourage your feedback on this article and these two companies. As well I will keep an ever vigilant eye on Eos Energy Storage systems and you will most likely be reading about them again here.