NantEnergy announces largest global deployment of a novel air breathing zinc rechargeable battery – 3,000 installations in nine countries – has broken the $100 per kilowatt hour barrier .. "By breaching the manufacturing barrier of $100 kWh, we can electrify the world anywhere everywhere."
The breakthrough is in the ability of our system not only for zinc to retain its ability to charge for prolonged periods of time, but also for the cycle of charging and discharging of zinc to be sustained over 1,000s of repeated cycles without deterioration.
What is the energy/power density of these? I mean, generally, they should be better than Lithium Ion but it could be different for these particular types of cells.
Also it seems like Zinc Air batteries usually are not very efficient (only 50% efficiency vs 80+ for other types). Wonder if this applies to them as well.
Lithium ion:
Energy density: 250–693 W·h/L (0.90–2.43 MJ/L)
Specific energy: 100–265 W·h/kg (0.36–0.875 MJ/kg)
Zinc air:
Energy density: 1480-9780 Wh/L (5.328–35.21 MJ/L)
Specific energy: 470 (practical),1370 (theoretical) Wh/kg (1.692, 4.932 MJ/kg)
However, the fact that they have supposedly been testing these batteries in applications that don't require high energy density certainly makes me question that their batteries are. Add to that the fact that they are touting manufacturing price, but say nothing of density. Perhaps the breakthrough that prevents degradation requires that the batteries are significantly less dense than zinc-air batteries otherwise would be?
Maui wrote:
However, the fact that they have supposedly been testing these batteries in applications that don't require high energy density certainly makes me question that their batteries are. Add to that the fact that they are touting manufacturing price, but say nothing of density. Perhaps the breakthrough that prevents degradation requires that the batteries are significantly less dense than zinc-air batteries otherwise would be?