"Uncle Li" suddenly suffered a "backstab"? Can aluminum ion batteries really play a role in the battery industry chain?

"[notice] 2021SMM South China Nonferrous Annual meeting officially opens tomorrow. An in-depth Analysis of the Global economy, Copper, Aluminum and Zinc fundamentals and Price trend in 2022

The development history of automobile power is also the epitome of human energy application. When the car first came out, charcoal and coal cars appeared at one time because of the high price of fuel. Nowadays, the popularity of fuel-fueled vehicles has set off an upsurge of new energy vehicles.

In 1970, scientists made the first lithium-ion battery; in 1991, Sony released the first commercial lithium-ion battery. Since then, after decades of development, lithium batteries have been successfully used in new energy vehicles.

At the beginning of the week, the persistently high lithium battery sector suddenly fell, with an overall decline of 4.5% in the two trading days as of the close on December 7. The main reason is that Ningde era, Shengsheng new materials, Yiwei LiNeng three enterprises broke out bad news.

However, when the lithium battery fell, a piece of news suddenly came from the market, which gave the already "weak"Uncle Li" a "backstab". Even attracted A-share investors in the interactive platform to talk about their own companies, whether there is aluminum ion battery related research.

Aluminum electricity came out of the sky, "hanging" lithium electricity?

A few days ago, media reported that the Indian Saturnose Battery Research and Development Company announced that it would publicly release its enhanced aluminum ion battery and plan to commercialize its aluminum ion battery in 2022 to gradually replace the cost-effective lithium-ion battery.

It is reported that the project was initially funded by Saudi Arabia's Dana Venture Fund and has been in a "secret" development state for nearly five years.

Saturnose claims that the energy density of aluminum ion batteries can reach more than 1500Wh per liter, which means that every kilogram of aluminum ion batteries can provide at least 600Wh energy. A set of 150kW solid-state aluminum ion batteries will weigh up to 565kg, provide 1200 kilometers of range for electric vehicles and last at least 20000 charge-discharge cycles, stabilizing the life of electric vehicles at about 15 years.

Saturnose also said that the production of aluminum ion solid-state batteries does not use nickel and cobalt resources, but uses hybrid nanotechnology to develop its fast charging electrodes and electrolytes, which takes only 12 minutes to be fully charged.

At the same time, the cathode uses a disordered and high-energy rock salt structure, the electrolyte is solid, and other internal materials include aluminum and niobium. As a result, the battery does not have thermal runaway and dendritic problems like lithium-ion, it is safer, and the material cost and preparation technology are half as cheap as lithium-ion batteries.

This paper also compares the two kinds of batteries with reference to the data of Saturnose company.

All in all, in Saturnose's blueprint, aluminum batteries can be said to be "hanging" the current lithium batteries.

Scam or Wang Fang? It still takes time to prove

Power battery has always been the "heart" of new energy vehicles, accounting for nearly half of the cost alone.

Therefore, in a sense, the global competition for new energy vehicles is actually a struggle for power batteries. Those who master the key core technologies will be able to win the first place in the new competition track and win the future.

From the publicity of Saturnose company, aluminum ion battery can be called the "big brother" of the battery. Safe, efficient, cheap, large reserves, environmentally friendly. It seems to be the darling of thousands of people.

However, at present, the aluminum ion battery is still in the laboratory stage, and Saturnose said it plans to commercialize the aluminum ion battery in 2022, but throughout the long market, there are not a few "empty bags", and seeing is believing whether it will eventually fall to the ground.

At the same time, looking back at the development history of lithium batteries, it has accumulated for nearly 20 years from commercial use in 1991 to landing new energy vehicles. Even if aluminum ion batteries can be mass-produced on a large scale, it will take at least 5-10 years to completely replace today's lithium battery industry chain.

It is said that the prototype of the aluminum battery is currently being tested. Saturnose also plans to embed its current system to be compatible with its next phase, which includes merging battery and electronic systems into a single console. The potential of aluminum ion batteries has been repeatedly confirmed, but has not yet been commercially tested.

The ideal is plump, and the reality will not be known until the aluminum battery is really commercially available.

Industry experts also warned that although the experimental data of aluminum ion batteries are good, there is still a long way to go to cross the gap of mass production. It remains to be seen whether the mass-produced products on the market can be as excellent as expected.

The market supports letting a hundred flowers blossom, but it needs to be treated rationally.

In fact, the market needs hot spots, so it is willing to accept the development and utilization of every kind of resources.

Prior to this, Ningde era released sodium ion batteries, Gree said to develop titanium batteries, the current active layout of the hydrogen energy industry in the market, are in the new energy on the road of multi-directional exploration model.

However, there is nothing perfect in the market. Even if it seems to be able to "hoist" the battery industry chain of aluminum batteries, there must be shortcomings, although it has not been clearly reported, but the technical threshold of this product will not be low.

"No gold is perfect, no one is perfect", fuel is readily available but polluted, wind power and photovoltaic are green, but rely on heaven for food, lithium batteries have achieved mass production, but there are still many deficiencies. Therefore, for the aluminum battery which is not familiar with the market, it is necessary to take it as a theme for the time being and maintain an objective, rational and verifying attitude.

With the diversification of application scenarios, the types of power batteries will be gradually enriched. On the basis of lithium batteries, there are not only sodium ion batteries, but also vanadium matte batteries, zinc ion batteries, aluminum ion batteries, titanium batteries, hydrogen energy and even small nuclear reactors.

Under the background of the continuous expansion of the market scale and the continuous refinement of the application scenario, it is impossible to take all in one move.

What's more, at a time when resources are scarce, a dominant company is, after all, "fishing in the pool" for the market. Only by constantly exploring the potential of developing each kind of resources and realizing that a hundred flowers blossom is the truth.