Aluminium air battery

Context:

Indian Oil Corporation has started into a joint venture with Israel-based start-up Phinergy to develop aluminium-air technology based battery systems.

Background

The electric vehicle segment in India is highly unexplored due to lack of recharge infrastructure. The new technology is expected to boost mobility.

Details

• Companies like Maruti Suzuki and Ashok Leyland have already signed letters of intent with the joint venture to commercially use the battery solutions produced by the company.

• Aluminium-air batteries lower the cost and are more energy-dense compared to lithium-ion batteries which are currently in use for Indian electric vehicles. 

• An aluminium-air battery undertakes use of oxygen in the air which reacts with an aluminium hydroxide solution to oxidise the aluminium to produce electricity. 

Advantages

• Aluminium-air battery-based electric vehicles offer much greater range of 400 km or more per battery compared to lithium-ion batteries.

• They will reduce our dependency on Chinese imported Lithium-ion batteries.

• After the battery life, the aluminium present in the aluminium-ion battery can be harvested to be used in other industries.

• Aluminium-air based batteries are cheaper than lithium-ion batteries, thereby reducing the final cost of electric vehicle.

Drawbacks

• One of the major drawbacks of aluminium-air batteries is that they cannot be recharged like lithium-ion batteries.

• Large scale utilisation of aluminium-air battery based vehicles would need the wide availability of battery swapping stations.