ve ee Naval research effort seeks Li-ion replacement Washington, 0¢ OZ 2057 However, within the 3D zine “sponge”, eleccric currents aze ‘more uniformly distributed mak: TheUSNaval Research Labora _ingit difficult co form dendrites, tory (NRL) hasdevelopeda fam- according to the NRL. ily ofzincbased batteries that “Icmeans wehave igh conf- couldprovidea saferand more dence that che longev affordable alternative tolithium- battery will be demonscratedas, fon (Lion) batteries (L1Bs\. ‘wellasits high reliability. which ‘The USNavy (USN) hasbeen of courseiscritical in military seekinganaktemativetofire- mission applications,” Michael prone LiBsand concernsabout __‘Burz, president and co-founder ot LiBshave ledthe service insome EnZinc, sidon 27 april cases coban thelruse on ships imMarch 2017 the NRL ‘The NRL demonstrated announced the intent to grant breakthrough fornickebzinc(Ni- a partially exclusive license for Zn)batteries,inwhicha 3Dzine Nino EnZinc for wheeled “sponge” replacesthe powdered _vehiclesstarting with two- zinc anode taditionallyused. _whecled electric bikes all the With 3D zine, thebatterypro- way up to ful-electrie vehicles. vides energycontent andrecharg- Nin willbeutilised frst ing capabilities thattival LBs because the NRL demonstrated whileavoiding thesafecy issues more end applications for that, that continueto plaguelithium, Debra Rolison, head of che the NRL saidina statement. advanced electric chemical sec- “Zinc-based barteriesarethe _tionatthe NRL, said. goto glbalbattery forsingle- “For thesingleuse wecan take Useapplications, but arenotcon- itdown to 90%and rechargeand sidered rechargeable in practice get almostall ofthat back. That duetotheirtendencytogrow isan extreme depth of discharge conductive whiskers(dendrites]__ inabattery,” she sed Inside che battery, which can Researchers fiom the NRL and. sgrowlong enough to cause short EnZinc, said the NFZn system circuits,” the NRL said, offers the energy of LiBs, but ata cost closer to lead acid batteries. “That enables us tomake sim pler, less complexsystems, par ticularly for military pplications in which ancillary subsystems are not required," Bur sald, For example, the type of cool- ing systems, sophisticated bat- tery management, and instal- Igtion requirements, required bith LIBs, are not needed with the zine batvery, Burz noted.”From a systems point of view the battery is ore than reliable inthe way in which it operates,” he said. ‘Besides reliability and safery zine will be more afordable, beyond the costs associated with battery cells. he zinc battery willbe becween 30%and 50% cheaper than acomperable LIB system, Burz noted, ‘Something else chats critical fortheNRLand Enzinc is sca ing. "Because we are creating the aD zine fromazincemulsion you can make it any Lizel from micro-powered, toconsumer electronics, to electric vehicles, tothe {power! grid, Rolison sai. “Wecan take thebattery from asmalllabscaletoa larger scaleand we think we demon: strated that in the ARPACE {the UUs Department of Energy's ‘Advanced Research Projects Agency] range programme,” Burz added. “Once we have done that ‘we will go into environmental testing using [something] called HALT~Highly Accelerated Life Testing ~and poweraccelerated stress testing” The tral time todo thats two years, hesald. “We fool that we ‘an have battery ready forthe market by the end of 2019." Although the NiZn is epplice ble toelectric vehicles, for very smal devices it does nothave the energy density, Burz noted. “But the next-generation bat teries that Debra Rolisonandher team are working on will abso- Iotely beable to handle micro- devices or small portable devices, plusthe added factor ofabettery ‘which is divorced from the typical cylindrical or rectangular configuration orshape,”he said. “One ofthe reasons we revi ited this very old battery chemis- ‘ry was precisely because of the navy and the broader military's ‘concern with the safety of Lion batteries," Rolison sai. ‘TheNRLisalsomavingto silverzine, which has power that researchers have not even seen out of Li-ion, Rolison noted. “that could be ofextreme inter- est tothe navy forsome of the submersible applications.” Currently, NRLSzinc battery ‘effort is ata Technology Read ness Level and ready to move to ‘TRL4, Rolison said.