Ionic Materials in Woburn, Massachusetts, develops and supplies solid polymer electrolyte material for batteries. This may be old news, but it may have also made the biggest battery leap forward since lithium. The company announced it had resolved the question ‘ could an alkaline battery upstage lithium ‘. Moreover it promised to announce details of a ‘design breakthrough’ two days later on August 3 2017.
A Remarkable Announcement on August 3 2017
You can read the details on Bloomberg later of what followed. For now, we just want to break the news of what the company CEO told the Mountain Institute’s Energy Innovation Summit in Basalt, Colorado.
His company has apparently developed a ‘solid-state’ alkaline battery that is ‘safer and cheaper than lithium-ion’. Thus it has both solid electrodes and solid electrolyte. In that case, could we be witnessing the next battery quantum leap. But is it, we need proof first.
Could an Alkaline Battery Really Upstage Lithium?
Well it could, if it cost significantly less than the competition, and airlines judged solid-state alkaline safer to take on board. This would set the pigeons fluttering in the Giga Factory if it happened. And which way would Tesla and Hyperloop jump?
“What people didn’t really realize is that alkaline batteries could be made rechargable,” the CEO told Bloomberg. Well safely too, we add, as others have tried.
Again, if this were the case, power grids, electric cars, and consumer electronics would face a shakeup. Could an alkaline battery get us to our dream of a green world economy?
These are early days. By their own admission, Ionic Materials does not even have a factory to produce its new generation of solid-state, rechargable alkaline batteries. What do you think? Are we onto something groundbreaking? Could an alkaline battery upstage lithium? These are most interesting times, indeed. We are eagerly awaiting a prototype.
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Preview Image: Sea Surface Alkalinity
