Magnesium Ion Batteries

Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries are the mobile power sources

of choice today, used in everything from laptop computers, smart
phones and even electric cars. For years, though, theyve been
known to overheat and, at times, catch fire.
This was made painfully clear in January, when the lithium-ion
batteries in Boeings newest commercial aircraft, the Dreamliner,
caught fire, leading to a brief grounding of the planes until the fire
hazard was resolved.
This is much less likely to happen withbatteries made with
magnesium, however. And magnesium ions in the batteries
electrolytes, which transmit electricity, carry a double positive
charge, increasing the devices energy density, or the amount of
electricity the battery can store.

 Still, no ones been able to make a commercially viable

magnesium-ion battery, mostly because of fears of
magnesiums high reactivity with other materials in a
battery, which would interfere with the movement of the
ions through the electrolyte.
Liwen Wan and David Prendergast of the Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory in California conducted computer
simulations that show this reactivity actually isnt a problem.
In the October issue of theJournal of the American Chemical
Society, they write that the interference is much lower than
had been feared, and therefore that a magnesium-ion battery
would be more efficient than expected.

 On that basis, researchers at the National Cheng Kung

University (NCKU) in Taiwan improved the stability of the
magnesium-ion battery.
Fei-Yi Hung, one of the three leaders of the team,
told the online publication EnergyTrendsthat they
accomplished this in part by turning to a new technology that
uses electrodes made of magnesium membranes and
magnesium powder.
The idea of a magnesium-ion battery has long been attractive
not only because its less likely to overheat, Hung said, but
also has up to 12 times the energy density of a lithium-ion
battery and its charge-discharge efficiency is 5 times greater.

 To illustrate magnesiums superiority over lithium, Hung said,

an electric bicycle with a fully depleted lithium-ion battery
needs about three hours to recharge fully. If equipped with a
magnesium battery, he said, the process would take a mere
36 minutes.
Also, he said, lithium batteries ordinarily cant operate
properly in temperatures below 5 degrees Fahrenheit. But if
these lithium batteries were coated with a film of
magnesium, they work fine at temperatures as low as 22
degrees below zero Fahrenheit and as high as 131 degrees
Fahrenheit.

 Only two problems remain, Hung said.

First, negative electrodes high-storage
rechargeable batteries normally are made from
graphite, which is inefficient at storing electrical
energy.
Second, graphite is derived from processed
petroleum coke, a fossil fuel that emits
greenhouse gases.
Hung said his team hopes to replace the graphite
with a more efficient material that would be more
environmentally friendly.