If we think about it, the number of devices we use every day that use lithium batteries is outrageous and worst of all, the demand for this material is going to increase in the years to come due to the stubbornness of politicians when it it’s about forcing yes or yes the electric car. In the world of computer hardware, they are essential to the operation of laptops. Well, the next step seems to be that they will be the air-lithium batteries.
We all wish our laptop lasted more hours on each charge or its battery could deliver more power. Unfortunately, the size of the batteries as well as the chemical limitations of lithium-ion mean that you cannot go further. To all this we must add the huge amount that ends up in the trash, being a growing pollution problem. This is why alternatives to the classic one-life batteries are being developed, one of the most studied in recent years being those based on lithium peroxide.
What are lithium-air batteries?
This is a type of battery recently developed by the Illinois Institute of Technology that is based on lithium peroxide or Li2O and has the ability to deliver four times the power per volume of current rechargeable batteries. All thanks to the use of a mechanical polyethylene electrolyte.
Translated into more common parlance, this means you can either get equally sized batteries with four times the life per charge, or failing that, have the battery occupy only 25%. In other words, less dependence on such a precious and rare raw material as lithium is becoming.
Although this is not the only important advantage of these batteries, they also promise to have a very long life, as they only lose 5% of the total charge capacity after 1000 recharges. Which is a truly remarkable number that will make products that use it have a long lifespan.
It keeps on being a promise for now
There are currently no batteries used in a commercial product based on this technology. Therefore, although its development promises to deliver better products to the real world, we cannot forget that planned obsolescence is one of the drivers that drives the hardware industry.
The challenge isn’t just to convert research into a real-world lithium-air battery, but if it doesn’t have a series of associated products that use it, it will remain a mere promise.
On the other hand, and finally, the ability to deliver a greater amount of energy results in a greater ability to release energy during the explosion. And let’s remember that it usually happens that batteries explode, at least one out of every certain number, so we’ll have to see what the level of potential danger is in air-lithium batteries, lest that turn the devices into small portable bombs.
