What Battery Choices Do We Have?

What Battery Choices Do We Have
By Dr. Sadeg Faris & R.J. Peters

In order to achieve energy security and sustainability, experts acknowledge we need to establish an indigenous battery industry that meets the needs for:
1. Electric transportation
2. Utility scale storage for load leveling and peak shaving
3. Wind and Solar storage
4. UPS
5. Distributed Storage for Smart Grid
The establishment of an indigenous battery technology ecosystem will not only create jobs but will also maintain US technological leadership in an increasingly competitive global economy.

The most recognizable battery technology is the Li-based battery species. Thanks to successful use of very small Li-based batteries in cell phones and notebook computers, these batteries have become leading candidates to be scaled up for electric vehicle applications. Owing to the billions of dollars invested in these batteries, they garnered all the attention (and also hype) from industry, academia, private and government laboratories, and policy makers. This is based on the familiarity due to every day use in cell phones and because of the ranking (blue rectangle) in terms of energy density.

The interest in Li-based batteries has grown so overwhelmingly out of proportion that the whole world has all but declared them to be the only choice for meeting the aforementioned needs. The State of Michigan has declared its determination to be the world hub of Li-battery industry and began to offer attractive incentive packages to achieve its goal. Honda and Toyota have recently committed several billions of dollars for expansion of their Li-battery manufacturing facilities.

However, upon closer scrutiny based on fundamentals of science and technology, it is possible to conclude that the world has made the wrong choice betting on a risky technology for the following reasons:


1. The success in small cell phone Li-batteries (5-20 Watts) does not necessarily translate into scalability success for vehicles requiring 50,000-100,000 Watts. There are heat issues, BoP (Balance of Plant) issues and availability issues.
2. For vehicles and other large scale applications, the safety concerns lead to adding many ancillary components that weigh down the whole system. This results in reducing the energy density significantly, in some cases by more than a factor of two. This drops the performance to a level close to lead acid batteries at 7 to 10 times the cost!
3. It will not lead to energy sovereignty because the lithium global reserve primarily is indigenous to Latin America and China. And big oil controls import/export of this material.
4. The global reserve is so low that it will be depleted at a much faster rate than known petroleum reserves. This will increase the already high cost of Li-Batteries many fold.

So, if the performance of Li-battery is a factor of two or more lower than people thought, its price is 7-10 higher than lead battery, and Lithium is so scarce, then why all the hype? And why is Lithium receiving the lion’s share of R&D subsidies? Simply put, control and we’ve been told this is the only choice!

The Nickel Zinc Battery (NiZn) is the other choice. It is the sustainable choice. And since oil companies cannot dominate supply of it, we can’t have it.

The NiZn battery is positioned close to Li-battery in the energy density chart above. It has been known for over 100 years to have interesting characteristics. However, in spite of hundreds of millions of dollars and decades of attempts to make it manufaturable, failure was the result and the zeal gave way to despair and abandonoment. Consequently, this type of battery gained the reputation of being non-manufacturable and incapable of reaching hundreds of cycls due to the zinc dendrite problem. With all that investment, no body knew fundamentally why and how the dendrites formed and hence no one could get rid of them. And for this reason the Li-battey continued to garner all the attetnion.

However, the eVionyx, Inc., founders succeeding in understanding the fundmental reason for dendrite formation and has invented a breakthrough membrane as well as innovations to suppress dendrite formation. For the first time, they managed to show to the world that 500 deep discharge cycles with no dendrites were possible. Based on the fundmantal understanding of the problem and the solution, eVionyx believes that thousands, perhaps tens of thousnads of cycles are achievable at deep dicharge. At present, however, even 500 cycles are sufficient. A vehicle equipped with NiZn battery capable of 150 mile range will run a total of 500x150 = 75,000 miles. Given the low cost of the battery, this is very attractive both economically and technically.

eVionyx manufactures all its prorietary componenets and has built a pilot line that produces a modest volume of these batteries.

So what makes NiZn batteries so sepcial relative to Li-batteries that NiZn may be considered the right and perahps the only choice. These attributes are listed below:

1. Higher performance than Li-battery
2. Five times lower in cost
3. Can have 10 times higher power density
4. Self suffciency in Nickel and Zinc metal reserve that is sufficient to meed the demand, all in US and in Canada
5. NiZn is a patented US technology
6. Indigenous technology will create jobs to manufacture batteries to meet the local demand and for export
7. There are so many competitors all playing in the Li-battery space. The world has only two companies capable of making rachargeable NiZn batteries, both are in the USA
8. The technology is manufacturable and is being tested by many laboratories
9. Will give USA leadership in the energy field while achicieving energy security
10. The batteries are recyclable
11. Xellerion batteries are not considered Haz-Mat and are shipped standard UPS/Fed-Ex and US Mail

The better part of the world believes Li-Ion technology is the end-all solution to portable, stationary and propulsion power needs. However, I consider the eVionyx-Xellerion™ battery the only real sustainable choice.

Company information: eVionyx, Inc.
6 Skyline Drive
Hawthorne, NY 10532
646-539-3900 phone
914.345.0450 fax
info@evionyx.com
businessdev@evionyx.com
investors@evionyx.com