Have you ever imagined of keeping your car or phone charged 5 times more efficiently? Scientist Kyeongjae Cho from Texas University has devised a new catalyst that can give this dream efficiency.
The concept of using lithium-air batteries and its huge projected efficiency have been known for a while to man, but there is a necessity to have a catalyst for this battery. This catalyst has been found after several research operations and the scientist has revealed that this will open up newer advancements in the area.
Traditional Lithium-ion batteries have an oxidizer as the catalyst and therefore have a limited charge releasing capacity. With the Lithium-air battery, as the name applies, it reacts with the oxygen found freely in the air to trigger the chemical reaction thus releasing electricity. The catalyst was artificially created and called dimethyl phenazine. It is this electrolyte catalyst that combined with the oxygen to make the lithium-air battery a more practical battery with increased capacity.
With this kind of energy release, the battery is supposed to have an energy density which will be 10 fold the traditional lithium ion battery. The energy density is relative to that of gasoline.
Reports suggest that by using this kind of Lithium-air batteries, the cost to run a car for about 640 km can be reduced by five times. The car can also run on a single charge for 640 km. The expected battery charge of a phone can be raised to 7 days that means you can keep your phone charged for a full week and you need to put it on charge only on the weekends. That does seem to be a good note for all those people who find it difficult to put their phones on charge. But the wait will take about 5-10 years more to see this battery become a reality in the consumer market, as stated by Cho.