BATTERY WARS: A LIQUID REPLACEMENT FOR LITHIUM

Influit, a start-up spun off of the Illinois Institute of Technology, has unveiled the latest entry in the contest to replace lithium batteries. The company refers to its creation as “nanoelectrofuel.”

It’s a version of a flow battery—a cell in which two chemical solutions flow past each other on opposite sides of a membrane, transmitting electrons and creating an electrical current.

However, flow batteries don’t generate a lot of energy for their size, so they tend to be huge and suitable only for grid-scale power storage.

Part of the problem: active battery material settles to the bottom of the tanks instead of staying afloat.

Influit says it has solved the problem by suspending nanoparticles of active battery material in a fluid. The nano-size keeps the particles from settling. Also, the particles’ surface has been designed so the nanobits don’t stick together to make sludge.

As a result, Influit’s flow batteries can be scaled down for use in a car, truck, or airplane.

When the battery loses its charge, it can be re-energized by popping out an old “fuel pod” and slipping a new one—or the battery can be plugged in and recharged from a wall socket, the way electric vehicle batteries are now.

The batteries use no lithium or other rare or costly minerals, the company says, making them much cheaper than lithium batteries while they also can yield 23 percent more power per charge than today’s electric car  batteries, Influit claims.

The nanoelectrofuel also poses no danger of fire or an explosion in case of a crash. 

Pouring the battery’s contents onto a fire will simply extinguish the blaze, Influit says.

Influit already has made a practical demonstration of its technology and refueling system using a utility vehicle supplied by a partner company in the flow battery’s commercialization.

With substantial funding from NASA, Influit is now at work on an advanced version of the battery it says will boast four to five times the energy density of current lithium batteries and cost two-thirds less.

TRENDPOST: Influit’s battery faces a higher hurdle than many lithium replacements do: the battery has four chambers, two to separately handle the live and spent versions of each of the two battery fluids.

This makes it a less likely candidate to become the next EV battery of choice.

However, by reconceiving flow batteries, Influit makes them more widely useful across a range of applications.