Aluminum-Celmet Could Increase EV Range By 300%

LesterMoore writes "Japanese company Sumitomo Electric Industries have developed a new material that they believe can significantly improve the capacity of EV batteries. The material is a form of porous aluminum called 'Aluminum-Celmet.' 'The positive electrode current collector in a conventional lithium-ion secondary battery is made from aluminum foil, while the negative electrode current collector is made from copper foil. Replacing the aluminum foil with Aluminum-Celmet increases the amount of positive active material per unit area. Sumitomo Electric’s trial calculations indicate that in the case of automotive onboard battery packs, such replacement will increase battery capacity 1.5 to 3 times. Alternatively, with no change in capacity, battery volume can be reduced to one-third to two-thirds. These changes afford such benefits as reduced footprint of home-use storage batteries for power generated by solar and other natural sources, as well as by fuel cells."

Comments

Re:Alumninum Cermet?

[nmb3000]

I thought it odd as well, but checking the company's website it is in fact "Celmet".

It appears that Celmet is a proprietry compound they've been making for a while from nickel and chromium which is designed to be very porous (and high surface area). This announcement seems to just be that they've created an aluminum variant and figure it should work well in lithium batteries.

However, like others have noted, it appears to be pure conjecture on the company's part. There's no mention of creating an actual battery using this method and, if I were to guess, this whole thing is just an attempt to generate interest in their new (patented, trademarked, and whatever else-d) material.

This might be real

[Animats]

The actual press release is rather conservative.

This is Sumitomo Electric, annual sales about US$20 billion, not some startup. Their major businesses are wire and cable, which includes fibre optics and associated laser diodes. Looking back at their press releases, there are items like "Arrival of the "Era of High-Temperature Superconducting Wire with 200-A-Class Critical Current", followed a few months later by "World's First In-Grid High-Temperature Superconducting Power Cable System is Now Online at Albany, New York". This company doesn't typically overhype their technology.

Their "celmet" materials have been around for a while, but until recently, they were nickel-based only. They've made some NiMh batteries with this technology, but there wasn't a big win. Now they have an aluminum version, which is more useful for batteries.

This might actually work.

Re:Power Miracle

[arkhan_jg]

Nickel foam is already used in NiMH batteries to improve storage capacity, it's just expensive, so most often used in high-density NiMH car batteries. They already produce a low-nickel variant of this foam that's cheaper and simpler to produce, called celmet, that's comparable in performance to more expensive production methods - Sumitomo are not a fly-by-night company, this is part of their bread-and-butter business.

They've now applied the same foam technique to creating aluminium foam instead of nickel foam, so it can be used in Lithium batteries instead of NiMH. Given their focus, I imagine it's going to be more suitable to larger Li-ion batteries for EV purposes rather than smaller consumer electronics, but there's no fundamental reason it won't work for Li-ion batteries. After all, all you're doing is increasing the surface area of the electrode with a foam-type material; the trick is making it cheaply enough while maintaining mechanical strength. That appears to be the problem they have solved for aluminium, using their existing technique.