Wednesday, August 8, 2012

The Zinc Air Battery and the Zinc Economy: A Virtuous Circle


Why the Automotive Industry Must Adopt Zinc-Air Technology to overcome Peak Oil and Global Warming
A Policy White Paper
Executive Summary
Oil Demand must be reduced greatly over the next 10 years in line with declining oil supplies and to reduce CO2 emissions. The only practicable way to achieve this is to electrify Road Transport and replace petroleum with Electric Propulsion. The Lithium Ion battery has become the prime candidate to power electrified road vehicles in the near future.
Lithium supply and future production will be far from adequate to sustain global electric vehicle production. The current focus on LiIon batteries to the exclusion of all other batteries is a grave error that will lead to EV and PHEV production quickly becoming uneconomic due to insufficient Lithium supply.
Instead, the Automotive Industry should adopt the Zinc Air Battery and Fuel Cell technologiesZinc Air Batteries have the highest specific energy and lowest cost of any Electric Vehicle rechargeable battery technology and are therefore well suited for mass market introduction in millions of electric automobiles. The Zinc Air Fuel Cell has even higher specific energy than the ZnAir Battery. The ZnAir Fuel Cell is the only electric propulsion technology that could forseeably permit very quick recharge times comparable to refuelling a conventional vehicle with petrol. Due to its low weight, ZnAir technology is the only viable contender to power large trucks and heavy commercial vehicles which would require batteries 10 times as large as a car. Zinc production is the third or fourth highest of all metals – it is therefore the cheapest and most abundant battery metal and the only metal which can sustain large battery production in the volumes required by the Global Automotive Industry.
Zinc Air batteries must be equipped with a filter to absorb CO2 from the entry air. Therefore vehicles equipped with this technology can be designed to permanently reduce atmospheric CO2 levels, contrary to conventional vehicles.
In light of the logistical, temporal, environmental and financial constraints with which the world is faced, National Governments should prioritise the development of Zinc Air Battery powered automobiles and the development of a refuelling infrastructure for Zinc Air Fuel Cell powered commercial and utility vehicles. A “Zinc Economy” using already available and simple technologypresents a viable, practicable and quickly implementable path for society to transition from oil power to renewable electric power, to maintain the essential transport infrastructure on which society depends and lay a foundation for further more advanced developments in Electric Propulsion technology to follow.

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