DYNA JOURNAL ENGINEERING

According to specialists, today, ion-Li batteries are the most appropriate resource for any type of energy storage, despite presenting some marginal problems. Their price, since 2010, has fallen dramatically, and the energy density reaches, as in the plant of TESLA (Panasonic), up to 250 Wh/kg weight, although they say that soon may approach 330 Wh/kg. In any case, these seemingly insurmountable technical limits made us think of a kind of frontier, especially for the automotive industry, in weight reduction, in increasing the distance between recharges or in the life of the battery pack.

INNOLITH is a company that arose from the bankruptcy of Alevo, a battery manufacturer, which had production centers in the U.S., where it had manufactured energy storage equipment for stabilizing networks. Installed in Basel (Switzerland) and with an R&D centre in Bruchsal (Germany), it states that its new design does not contain exotic elements, but is based on an inorganic electrolyte, which therefore eliminates the current flammability problems. This electrolyte means that, in the discharge, the Li ions are not simply stored in the cathode, but react with a cathode material to form a compound that, in turn, releases them in the recharge.

INNOLITH assures that, in a period between three and five years, the manufacture and commercialization of these batteries will be available, which will mean that, with the same weight, the vehicles will be able to have a displacement between recharges of more than 1,000 km, and the possibility of reduced weights in equipment that are more affected by it, such as drones or even conventional aviation. In addition, the durability is presented as considerably greater.