aluminium show |Expected to replace lithium batteries? The world's first aqueous aluminum battery: safe, efficient, and non-toxic

Recently, a team of scientists from China and Australia successfully developed the world's first safe, efficient, and non-toxic aqueous aluminum free radical battery. This battery boasts advantages such as low cost, high capacity, and abundant reserves, potentially brightening the future of the new energy sector. Most batteries contain harmful substances that pollute the environment when discarded in landfills or elsewhere. Materials like lead, cadmium, and mercury can poison humans and animals, contaminate soil and water, and stay in the environment for a long time.

In light of this, a research team from Flinders University in South Australia and ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOG has developed an aqueous aluminum free radical battery. According to aluminium expo data, this battery uses a flame-retardant and air-stable water-based electrolyte, providing a stable voltage output of 1.25 V and a capacity of 110 mAh/g over 800 cycles, with only 0.028% loss per cycle.

Unlike traditional batteries, the aqueous aluminum radical battery uses a water-based liquid as the electrolyte instead of an organic liquid, which is safer, cheaper and more environmentally friendly, and can effectively prevent batteries from fire or explosion. Additionally, the scientists developed a special aqueous Lewis acid electrolyte, allowing aluminum ions to be reversibly deposited and stripped between the positive and negative electrodes, while enhancing the battery's energy density through the redox reaction of iron ions. These reactions occur simultaneously on the iron-aluminum alloy formed at the negative electrode, enhancing the battery's reversibility and stability.

The researchers state that multivalent metalion batteries, including Al3+, Zn2+, or Mg2+, utilizing elements abundant in the Earth's crust, can provide higher energy density than lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). Notably, aluminum-ion batteries (AIBs) are gaining attention as aluminum is the third largest element (8.1%), making AIBs a potential sustainable and low-cost energy storage system.