Lithium-ion Battery To Soon Be A Thing Of The Past?

Australian company Gelion Technologies has unveiled its new Zinc-Bromine gel battery intended for electric vehicles. The company will be testing this new battery for another year, but its findings so far seem promising and give hope that this could be the viable replacement for lithium-ion batteries.

Lithium is the most widely used material for batteries today, because of its energy density, voltage capacity and low discharge rate. However, it requires protection circuits to maintain voltage and more importantly, is expensive to manufacture. Considering the mining required to source it, isn’t really an eco-friendly option.

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Each Gelion battery uses negatively-charged zinc plates and positive bromine ions, partitioned by an internal membrane. The company claims that this proprietary gel isn’t inflammable (unlike lithium cells), but by tinkering with viscosity, allows engineers to control the discharge rate (something lithium cells are notorious for).

In fact, the company claims that this gel is so stable that it can withstand temperatures as low as -15 celsius to 50 celsius. For reference, the ideal operating temperature for lithium cells is 10 celsius to 55 celsius.

Furthermore, the Gelion battery is more environmentally sustainable than the traditional lithium-ion cell, given the abundance of zinc compared to lithium. To top that off, these are even recyclable and cheaper to manufacture.

While the Gelion Zinc-Bromine gel battery is certainly what the market needs at the moment – a cheaper, environment-friendly and more efficient power source for EVs, especially with companies announcing plans on going electric, we need some solutions in the interim. One of them is the solid-state battery showcased by Gogoro and the hydrogen-electric concept shown by Segway.