Chinalco breaks through the technical bottleneck of aluminum fuel cell industrialization

Aluminum fuel cells have huge commercial applications in military, civilian, and telecommunication system backup power sources, portable power sources, and new energy vehicle power batteries due to their advantages of high specific energy, strong adaptability, long service life, and environmental friendliness. Potential has become the focus of industry research. However, due to some technical bottlenecks that remain unresolved, the pace of industrialization is slow.

A few days ago, the reporter learned at the 15th China International Aluminum Industry Exhibition that China Aluminum Group's enterprise engaged in the research and production of metal-air battery products-Ningbo Aluminum Aluminum New Energy Co., Ltd. (abbreviated as "Aluminum Aluminum Company") broke through the aluminum fuel cell industry At the exhibition, three products were released for the first time at the exhibition: aluminum fuel communication backup power supply, portable aluminum fuel emergency power supply, hydroelectric heating integrated aluminum fuel emergency support equipment, and large-scale production will soon be achieved.

It is reported that the above-mentioned three products respond to the country's strategic needs in energy and meet the urgent needs of military and civilian emergency and backup fields. The battery performance is significantly leading, and has received widespread attention and has received huge responses in the industry.

Aluminum fuel cell performance is superior

With the progress and development of human society, in order to avoid the excessive consumption of traditional fossil energy and carbon dioxide greenhouse gas emissions, etc., the upgrading of the energy industry and the use of clean energy are increasingly concerned. Especially in recent years, with the rapid development of technologies such as new energy vehicles, smart microgrids and 5G mobile communications, human society has become more and more dependent on electric energy, and human social activities have increasingly demanded power and economic requirements. The higher. However, the existing fuel generators and various chemical power sources (such as lead-acid batteries, lithium ion batteries, hydrogen fuel cells, etc.) are difficult to fully meet people's diverse needs for power supply safety, economy, and long life. Especially in the fields of military and civilian problems such as environmental pollution of emergency power supply, emergency guarantee of hydroelectricity, short battery life, power supply safety in wartime and strategic alternative energy, the traditional energy system is difficult to provide suitable power solutions.

Metal-air battery, also known as metal-air fuel cell or metal fuel cell, is a power generation / energy storage device that directly converts chemical energy of light metals such as magnesium and aluminum into fuel into electrical energy. It has the advantages of high specific energy density, low cost, high safety, low thermal radiation, low noise, long storage time, long discharge life, wide temperature range, rich resources and green pollution-free; especially high specific energy density Among other traditional batteries, the theoretical energy density of aluminum can reach 8140 watt-hours / kg, which is dozens of times that of current commercial lithium-ion batteries. Therefore, it is called "green energy for the 21st century".

In view of the above-mentioned advantages of the metal-air battery, it is very suitable as an emergency and backup power source to solve the pain points of certain scenarios for military and civilian use. The metal-air battery has been clearly included in the "Thirteenth Five-Year" National Strategic Emerging Industry Development Plan and "Energy Technology Revolution Innovation Action Plan (2016-2030)", which is expected to be implemented in electric vehicles and smart microgrids. , Large-scale applications in communication base stations and emergency disaster relief.

Chinalco breaks through aluminum fuel cell

Industrial technology bottleneck

Seeing the performance advantages of aluminum-air batteries, as well as their potential for solving the problems of military power supply safety, power supply during major natural disasters, and battery life, Chinalco actively responds to the call of the national energy technology revolution and actively carries out Strategic new energy and new material technology research and development and project investment cooperation, through industry-university-research integration innovative activities to provide energy solutions that meet industry needs, lead the new trend of energy technology revolution, and promote the development of China ’s metal-air battery business. Contribute to the pain points of military and civilian emergency backup power supplies. In March this year, Chinalco Innovative Development and Investment Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Chinalco Group, funded the establishment of Alnic Aluminum.

Professor He Lizi, the core member of the research and development team of the Aluminum Aluminum Company and the director of the Melting and Casting Research Institute of the Southeast Branch of the China Aluminum Research Institute, told reporters that in order to achieve the demonstration operation and scale of the aluminum fuel power system in the fields of communication base stations, emergency disaster relief and military emergency support energy, etc. For application, the company cooperates closely with the Southeast Branch of China Aluminum Central Research Institute, Ningbo Institute of Materials, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Graphene Manufacturing Innovation Center of Zhejiang Province to gather various technical advantages and strengths, combining the graphene air electrode technology and aluminum anode technology. Power and system integrated control technology actively promotes the industrialization and commercialization of high-performance graphene-based aluminum fuel cell technology.

During the research and development process, the entrepreneurial technical team broke through many technical bottlenecks of aluminum fuel cells, such as low oxygen catalyst activity, large air cathode polarization resistance, severe self-corrosion of aluminum anodes, thermal runaway, and difficulty in secondary startup. In the preparation of aluminum alloy electrodes, a new design idea of ​​multi-alloying combined with microstructure control is proposed to reduce the self-corrosion rate, and at the same time improve the electronegativity of the electrochemical corrosion potential of the aluminum electrode, greatly improving the fuel utilization of the aluminum anode In the preparation of air cathodes, the advantages of graphene materials such as electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity and cooperative catalysis are fully utilized, which greatly reduces the ohmic polarization resistance and reaction overpotential of the battery, and significantly improves the power output performance of the battery; in the battery stack module In terms of structural design, the integrated technology of heat sink and current collector is cleverly adopted to overcome the heat escape problem in the practical process of aluminum fuel cells; in terms of power system integration, the flow field, temperature field and control information flow are boldly and innovatively proposed The architecture design of the real-time multi-directional linkage power management system breaks through the technical bottleneck of the integration of no-clean and water-free cooling systems. The integration scheme leads the country and is the first in the world.

Prospects for aluminum fuel cells

Need the industry to work together

Long Jiangtao, general manager of Aluminum Aluminum Company, said that the company's current mass production of core components, such as electrolyte consumption, is more than twice higher than similar products; and has successfully developed aluminum fuel communication backup power supply, portable aluminum fuel emergency power supply And three series of aluminum fuel emergency support equipment integrated with water, electricity and heating.

According to reports, the portable aluminum fuel emergency power supply series products developed by Alnic are mainly developed for camping, field units, rescue units and other problems in the field, such as difficulty in power supply and concealment. They have small size, light weight, easy to carry, noise / infrared Low-profile advantages. It can solve the problem of "where does electricity come from", as long as there is water, it can supply power, generally full load continuous power supply for more than 10 hours, and can quickly replace aluminum fuel to achieve continuous power supply beyond time.

Hydro-electric heating integrated aluminum fuel emergency support equipment series products mainly solve the problems of hydropower heating guarantee in the absence of mains electricity, such as training, field exploration, emergency rescue, wartime emergency support. The product can use ordinary water sources (including river water, rainwater, etc.) to realize power supply, water supply and heating functions. Through integrated portable equipment and shelters, it can solve the power supply, water supply and supply in different scenarios such as field, disaster settlements or urban refuges. Heat demand. It is reported that this product has also filled the domestic gap.

The standard product of the aluminum fuel communication standby power supply series is a 3kW power output power supply system, and can be modularly expanded to 4.5kW, 6kW, 10kW, 12kW and above series products according to customer needs. It is mainly developed for the pain points of traditional communication base station lead-acid batteries, such as large weight and volume, short backup time and short service life, noise disturbance from gas turbine generator sets, and difficulty in expanding capacity of 5G base stations. Under the same circumstances, the backup time will be delayed by more than 2 times, which can be applied to the backup power supply of more than 1.98 million communication base stations and other communication systems nationwide. It is understood that this product is expected to be trialed in September this year on towers, telecommunications, mobile, China Unicom and other base stations, replacing the original diesel generator and lead-acid battery as a backup power source.

Longjiang Tao is very optimistic about the development prospects of aluminum-air batteries. He said that although the entire industry is still in the stage of promotion and application, the industry is facing problems such as fewer aluminum-air battery production enterprises, fewer upstream and downstream supporting enterprises, conceptual, laboratory products, and fewer products for real application, but the market prospect is very broad. The development of metal fuel cells has also entered the fast lane, which requires industry companies to work together to jointly promote industrial development.

He revealed that the first-phase project of Aluminium Aluminum is currently under construction, with an annual design capacity of 3,000 sets. It is expected to be put into production in September this year. The second-phase annual design capacity is 10,000 sets. The company will actively develop cold chain vehicles Aluminum fuel power batteries for special fields such as man-driven vehicles and drones.