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This is an attempt to create an aluminum air battery - aluminum is the anode, carbon is the cathode, and potassium hydroxide (or salt) solution the electrolyte.
The energy density of these things is supposed to be 10-15 times that of lead acid - maybe better than lithium ion. But the;yre not rechargeable. In any case the materials sem to be rather cheap and easy to obtain so I figured 'why not try'. The carbon and potassium hydroxide, by the way, can both be obtained from a campfire, while the aluminum can be taken from the trash , making this possibly a battery entirely made from recycled stuff.
Current results are not great, with low voltages/currrents. I am currently using a fiberglass cloth to separate the anode from cathode. A wire mesh to hold the carbon would be good, and also maybe embedding the carbon in a porous matrix e.g. of teflon .
OK it turns out carbon fiber is a good conductor!! So having blown 200NIS on a food processor for chopping up carbon and mixing it with PMMA plastic to make a questionaly porous electrode, it turns out I have one ready to go. Also pencil lead and electric motor brushes are supposed to make good electrodes.
carbon fiber results
Just tried an aluminum-air cell with carbon fiber cathode : ~180mV continuous OCV and 30mA@35mV under whatever load my ammeter has, this from about 10cm^2 of area. I've also probably got a short since normal OCV is supposed to be ~700mV and I had such at first.
So I'll try thicker separator (fiberglass) and make some more serious current collector when I get some mesh screen.
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