The race for battery energy is in full rage. It is likely you will soon be able to run your car on water with a newly designed aluminium air battery. There are several companies working on next generation air-battery technologies - most of them are focusing on lithium-air solutions. The aluminium-air battery system uses energy released through reaction of aluminium and water with oxygen in order to generate electricity.
Fuji Pigment is the company claiming that its new aluminium-air batteries can run for up to two weeks and can be refilled with normal water. The company also claims that the cost, travel distances and life-cycle expenses would be comparable to those of the petrol-powered cars. The moot question, however, is: how does an aluminium-air battery work? There are various metal-air batteries present in the market today; some of them includes zinc-air, aluminium-air, and lithium-air. They all have some of the highest energy densities, which could make it possible to build up the said batteries. The latest Fuji Pigment’s battery makes repeated references to the work of Ryohei Mori. According to Mori, building a secondary aluminium-air battery next to the primary will build-up by-products that normally stops the battery from working properly over a long time.
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The aluminium-air battery has the potential to meet that challenge using fully recyclable material with no CO2 emissions. Fuji is claiming a breakthrough in new aluminium-air batteries, with a commercialized design coming in 2015. The company has declared that it would soon commercialize this technology for the benefit of the automobile industry.
