Aluminum Air Battery,Experiment Reaction Equations Uses

Battery is generally heavy weight. This is the main disadvantage of using battery as source of energy in different appliances. But there is one new concept of battery which says that, battery can also be light weight if air is used as cathode. One example of the light weight battery is aluminum air battery . Here aluminum is used as anode and air rather oxygen in the air is used as cathode. The energy density i.e. energy produced per unit weight of the battery is very high compared to other conventional battery . But still aluminum air battery is not commercially produced due to high production cost of anode and corrosion of aluminium anode due to carbon dioxide of ambient air. Till date, use of this battery is restricted in military application only. It has high potential of driving electrical vehicle because of its light weight and high energy density. Well known Israeli company "Phinergy" has improved this technology and they are demanding that they will start production of commercially available aluminum air battery for electric vehicles by 2017. We will discuss the matter later in this article, now we will just try to understand how simple is to create an aluminum air battery by using simple household goods.

Aluminum Air Battery Experiment

For creating this experimentally we require,

1. Aluminum foil.
2. Saturated solution of water and salt
3. Bloating papers
4. Fine charcoal dust.
5. Two small pieces of electric wires and
6. One light emitting diode.

Procedure of Making Simple Aluminum Air Battery

Just take a piece of aluminum foil and spread it on a table. In a pot make a saturated solution of water and salt. Take a piece of bloating paper. Get the piece of bloating paper soaked by saturated salt solution. Then get the soaked piece of bloating paper spread over the aluminum foil. Now put some fine dust of charcoal over the bloating paper. After keeping a non-insulated wire lead in the charcoal dust, cover it with another piece of salt solution soaked bloating paper of same size. Now tightly roll the total thing in such a way that, no charcoal dust can touch directly the aluminum foil and insulated portion of the lead wire comes out from one end of the roll. Now take another wire and fix the non insulated portion of the wire to the aluminum foil. Now if we connect a low rated light emitting diode (LED) with these two leads (one from charcoal and other from aluminum foil) and press the roll with our fingers, the LED will glow. This is how an aluminum air battery can be created in our home.