Reply #15: Let me suggest another article

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/23877/?a=f

Betting on a Metal-Air Battery Breakthrough

A government-funded start-up claims it can make ionic liquid energy storage feasible.

By Tyler Hamilton

Thursday, November 05, 2009

A spinoff from Arizona State University says it can develop a metal-air battery that dramatically outperforms the best lithium-ion batteries on the market, and now it has the funding it needs to prove it.

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Friesen, whose Arizona State research team has spent the past few years experimenting with various ionic liquids, says a metal-air battery using an ionic liquid as its electrolyte not only functions significantly longer--because drying out is no longer a problem--but it also gets a big boost in energy density. "These liquids have electrochemical stability windows of up to five volts, so it allows you to go to much more energy-dense metals than zinc." He says his research team will target energy densities of at least 900 watt-hours per kilogram and up to 1,600 watt-hours per kilogram in the DOE-funded project.

The problem with ionic liquids is that they're still made in small quantities, making them expensive compared to many other solvents used to dissolve salts. "But some people are making ionic liquids now out of things that are already known and produced in high quantities, like detergents," says Wilkes.

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Friesen downplays the cost concern, pointing out that the liquids become quite economical when developed in-house in large volumes. He's careful, however, not to say too much about the ionic liquids his team has developed, revealing only that there are "several contenders that seem to work well."

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