Sunday, December 22, 2013

No. 821: A new battery that has electrodes made of magnesium (December 22, 2013)

Technology:
Takash Yabe of Tokyo Institute of Technology and his team members developed a new battery that has electrodes made of magnesium. They succeeded in the driving experiment of a vehicle that loaded the new battery. Theoretically, a magnesium battery can generate seven times more electricity than a lithium-ion battery, and it attracts wide attention as a new energy source. Although it is not rechargeable, it can operate a mobile phone for one month and run an electric vehicle for 500 km.

Professor Yabe built this new battery in alliance with Fujikura Composites. They rolled up a thin magnesium film and sent it out inch by inch using the mechanism similar to tape recorder. The rolled out thin film magnesium reacts with salt water continually, eliminating the necessity of changing salt water. Although electrodes made of magnesium can be a battery in salt water, a large volume of salt waster needs to be exchanged every several hours. The research team conducted an experiment of the vehicle loaded with this new battery in one of the Fujikura’s plants. The new magnesium battery is 34 cm deep, 17 cm wide, and 2 cm thick, and it weighs 800 grams. An electric vehicle that loaded 40 new batteries with a total capacity of 560 watts travelled smoothly.  

 The driving experiment of an EV 
loaded with 40 new magnesium batteries

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