Innolith AG reported that it is developing what the company claims to be the world's first 1000Wh/kg rechargeable battery. Under development in the Swiss company's German laboratory, the company also asserts that the new Innolith Energy Battery would be able to power an EV for over 1000km on a single charge.
The design of the battery would avoid exotic and expensive materials and would have a very high energy density, thereby radically reducing costs, the company says. In addition to its variety of cost advantages, the Innolith says its Energy Battery will be the first non-flammable lithium-based battery for use in EVs.
The battery uses a non-flammable inorganic electrolyte, unlike conventional EV batteries that utilize a flammable organic electrolyte. Switching to non-flammable batteries removes the main cause of battery fires that have plagued EV manufacturers.
"The EV revolution is currently stymied by the limitations of available batteries," explains Sergey Buchin, CEO of Innolith AG. "Consumers want an adequate range on a single charge in an affordable EV, and confidence that it is not going to catch fire. The Innolith Energy Battery is the breakthrough technology that potentially can meet all these needs."
Innolith plans to bring the Energy Battery to market via an initial pilot production in Germany, followed by licensing partnerships with major battery and automotive companies. Development and commercialization of the Energy Battery is expected to take between three and five years.
The company employed an innovative conversion approach in the chemistry of its Energy Battery to generate the high energy density seen in each cell. Conversion reaction materials can offer a new and promising route to high-energy-density battery cells as they supersede the poor performance of traditional intercalation-based materials. Innolith further claims that this new approach will enable batteries to reach unprecedented cell-level energy content values.
"This new breakthrough has been made possible by years of dedicated research into all aspects of inorganic electrolytes and their application to rechargeable batteries," comments Innolith Chairman, Alan Greenshields. "Simply put, the experience gained in how to build high power batteries with exceptional robustness and cycle life has proved to be the right basis for building high energy products too."
"The absence of organic materials, a key aspect of Innolith's battery technology, removes the critical source of safety risk and chemical instability of high energy batteries. It all fell into place in 2018 from an R&D perspective, with several extraordinary breakthroughs," Alan Greenshields observed.
The company holds pending patents for the key inventions of the Energy Battery and is also maintaining commercial confidentiality on the cell chemistry mechanism. Under all licensing agreements for the Energy Battery, Innolith says it will retain control of all specialty chemical supply to protect its intellectual property.
Previously, Innolith proved the performance of non-flammable, inorganic rechargeable batteries with its first product, the Grid-Scale Power Battery that is currently used in the PJM grid in the US to provide fast frequency regulation services. The chemistry that this battery utilizes has demonstrated more than 55,000 full-depth discharge cycles, which is between 10 and 100 times the maximum number of cycles of existing Li-ion batteries in use today.
