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unless its artificially mandated, no team will ever run this, the weight penalty for a such a system would be far too great. This is the problem people don't seem to see with the hybrids that are on the road today, and it will be amplified a million times in F1

New Rechargeable Magnesium Battery System

A new and revolutionary rechargeable Magnesium battery system has been developed for heavy-load applications such as high performance PEVs. A team of scientists under the direction of Dr. Doron Aurbach at the Chemistry Department of Israel's Bar-Ilan University has developed a rechargeable magnesium battery system that can be recycled many thousands of times with extremely low capacity fading.

This is a "green" and safe battery technology, meaning it is environmentally non-toxic as well as being non-explosive. It is also very lightweight and incredibly cheap to produce. Magnesium is the seventh most abundant metal on earth so it's an ideal material for making into batteries. It has a repoted energy density of 60 Wh/Kg. Unlike nickel-metal-hydride technology, this magnesium battery system demonstrates virtually NO self discharge! This means that once charged, the pack can be left in a charged state for long periods of time without damage. This should make the batteries very attractive to sales outlets as they can sit on a shelf indefinitely without harm unlike most current batteries which have a limited shelf life. Dr. Aurbach's team also reports the battery has an operating temperature of -20C to 60C and possesses a stable almost constant voltage of 1.2V per cell. This is hugely significant as it means that these cells should not suffer from reduced range in colder climates. Lead acid technology can lose half of its practical range or more in sub 0C temperatures. The constant cell voltage of 1.2V per cell matches very well with applications in 6V multiples (5 x 1.2V cells) which includes most EV applications.

Aurbach and colleagues began by using pure magnesium anodes. But magnesium metal is too brittle to fashion into the thin sheets that are needed for these cells. So instead the researchers now use an alloy of magnesium called AZ-31, which is 3% aluminium and 1% zinc. This provides both the flexibility to form into thin sheets as well as incredible durability so that the anodes don't get consumed in the discharge/recharge process.

For the cathode, the team needed to use or create a material full of tiny gaps into which magnesium ions can fit. The researchers had previously discovered that magnesium ions can pass in and out of a type of molybdenum sulphide, called Mo6S8. They make this material from a version containing copper, then replace the copper with magnesium. At first they used electricity to replace the copper with magnesium, but as this is not a practical way to make commercial batteries, they have perfected a way of replacing the copper using a cost efficient chemical reaction instead.

The final ingredient in this new battery is the electrolyte. Aurbach's team uses a polymer gel, an organic liquid, and a chemical that reacts favorably with magnesium facilitating the efficient transfer of the magnesium ions.

The biggest advantage of these new cells are the extremely long life and durability of the cells themselves. Every other battery technology consumes the battery as part of the discharge/recharge process. This gives them an extremely limited shelf life. Lead acid batteries are typically good for a year or less under daily 80% depth of discharge usage. While nickel-metal-hydride cells and lithium-ion cells are supposed to last longer, in reality they are not delivering the thousands of cycles that the chemistry promises. Some only last for a matter of months due to charging and temperature issues, and these chemistries have other problems as well. These new Magnesium cells do no consume themselves as part of their normal cycle process. This means that the cells will last more than 20 years of daily full discharge usage. Your batteries should outlast any vehicle you put them into, and cycle #5000 will deliver just as much range as cycle #50. Imagine batteries that last for decades (instead of months) and never get weak! That's exactly what this technology promises.

Dr. Aurbach said he feels confident that with additional research, the new battery's energy density can be increased to rival or surpass that of lithium-ion! "Lead acid, lithium-ion and nickel-metal-hydride batteries do not have a long enough useful lifespan," said Aurbach. "In addition, there are very important safety and toxicity issues to consider when using those technologies to collect and store megawatts of energy. Because magnesium batteries are non-explosive, non-toxic, do not self-discharge and have a virtually limitless cycle life, they appear to be the best choice over all other existing energy storage systems."

"Magnesium batteries can be engineered for any electrically powered device which might benefit from the availability of a non-portable battery able to undergo thousands of charge/discharge cycles," said Meir Ezra, president and CEO of Idea One, the US company that will be marketing the cells. "Such applications could include electric cars, golf carts, electrically powered forklifts and utility vehicles, and electrically powered scooters and bicycles, to name a few."

Currently, kilo-per-kilo, the new magnesium batteries are capable of generating roughly twice the amount of energy as their lead-acid counterpart, but only half the energy of lithium-ion batteries. Aurbach and his team are currently researching methods to increase the energy density of their magnesium battery so it will produce as much or more power than the lithium-ion batteries which Aurbach helped invent and which now power millions of portable electronic and communications devices throughout the world.

"It took us several decades to come up with a good rechargeable lithium battery - the lithium-ion system," said Dr. Aurbach. "Because we have so many years of experience with Lithium science and battery electrochemistry, I can speculate we may quite quickly develop a magnesium battery with a comparable or greater energy density than is now available from Lithium batteries."

This may just be the radical battery technology breakthrough that we have all been waiting for. Because these cells can handle heavy loads both into and out of them, they are ideal for high performance electric scooters, bicycles, motorcycles, and cars. They also provide rapid recharging capabilities making them a nearly ideal battery system. Hopefully, since this technology is being developed outside of North America, this battery technology will be brought to the international market very rapidly and we will see the benefit of it across the entire EV segment within a very few years.

Bullshit. They'll just add lightness elsewhere.

With Hydrogen/Magesium or new Generation lithium batteries the weight is minimal. Its the Cost that is prohibative. For many F1 teams, that's not an issue. This may be the true test bed for Hydrogen/Magnesium battery technology.

words

What the flux are you talking about?


--Donnie