World's First Battery Fueled By Air

Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports on the revolutionary 'STAIR' (St Andrews Air) battery could now pave the way for a new generation of electric cars, laptops and mobile phones. The cells are charged in a traditional way but as power is used an open mesh section of battery draws in oxygen from the surrounding air that reacts with a porous carbon component inside the battery, which creates more energy and helps to continually 'charge' the cell as it is being discharged. The battery has a greater storage capacity than other similar-sized cells and can emit power up to 10 times longer. 'The key is to use oxygen in the air as a re-agent, rather than carry the necessary chemicals around inside the battery,' says Professor Peter Bruce of the Chemistry Department at the University of St Andrews. 'Our target is to get a five to ten fold increase in storage capacity, which is beyond the horizon of current lithium batteries.'"

Comments

Re:Powered by Air?

[sakdoctor]

Nice headline Taco.
This is "fueled by air" in the same way an internal combustion engine is.

This is a Lithium battery. Why isn't Lithium in TFS?

Re:Wow.

[moon3]

/. gets this kind of miracle technology often, most of the stuff has also an "Achilles heel" that prevents real worlds deployment.

This might be an exception (hopefully), but until you can get one off NewEgg people stay cool and cautious.

Re:Question

[Tweenk]

According to the article the lithium is oxidized to Li2O2, so 1 mole of lithium takes half a mole of molecular oxygen during discharge. If the battery contains 100g of lithium (a large laptop battery might contain this amount), a total discharge would need

100 g / 6.941 g/mol * 0.5 * 22.4 dm3/mol * (100%/20%) = 806.8 l

of air, or less that one cubic metre. The second figure is the atomic mass of lithium, the third is the ratio of the stoichiometric coefficients of oxygen and lithium in thhe reaction, the fourth is the molar volume of ideal gas, and the last is the factor from oxygen concentration.

So unless you are in a coffin this is not a risk.