Schaeffler is setting high hopes on the lithi um air battery as well This close relative of the clas sic fuel cell though based on current knowledge will not be ready for the market before 2030 according to Schaeffler s Chief Technology Officer Prof Peter Gutz mer The massive storage device is supposed to have 20 times higher specific energy than conventional lith ium ion batteries With a lithium air battery weighing only 60 kilograms 132 lbs a vehicle would be able to travel a distance of up to 500 kilometers 310 miles The Tesla S battery weighs ten times as much Scien tists are still facing a number of hurdles such as interi or deposits and oxidation that reduce output and life A potential intermediate step toward the lithium air battery is the iron air version that s slightly easier to implement It would still offer two to four times the en ergy density of a lithium ion accumulator according to predictions Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the Unit ed States and the German Research Center Jülich are regarded as particular drivers of this technology But even they themselves say that it s still a long journey until the technology will be ready for the market Al though iron electrodes in isolated laboratory trials can already be operated for several thousand cycles with out major performance losses full fledged iron air bat teries using an air electrode as an anti pole have only lasted for 20 to 30 cycles to date So the end of range concern is not yet completely within range Intermediate storage of renewable energies peak load balancing in industrial operations or charging infrastructure for electric mobility Large scale stationary energy stor age systems are becoming increas ingly important In order to drive their industrialization Schaeffler will be collaborating with specialist CMBlu in the future An attractive as pect the new organic flow storage technology does not use rare earths and heavy metals In the past five years CMBlu to gether with research groups from German universities developed the organic flow renewable storage technology for power grids to proto type level Based on this Schaeffler and CMBlu are planning to jointly develop commercial products The underlying functional principle re sembles that of conventional redox flow batteries The electrical energy is stored in chemical compounds and the reaction partners are avail able in an aqueous form as electro lytes In contrast to conventional metal based systems organic flow batteries use organic molecules from lignin for storage As a com ponent of plants lignin is a natural ly renewable material and in pulp and paper production for instance is generated as a waste product on the scale of millions of tons All elec trical engineering components in the energy transformer were adapted to these electrolytes and designed for cost efficient mass production The near complete value chain for the batteries can be covered local ly without imports In addition the storage devices are not only free from rare earths and heavy metals but not flammable either and so can be operated very safely Due to its functional principle the capacity of an organic flow system can be scaled irrespective of its electrical output and is only limited by the size of the tanks and amount of electrolytes The first commercial systems are planned to be launched starting in 2021 SCHAEFFLER COLLABORATES IN LARGE SCALE ELECTRIC STORAGE TECHNOLOGY outlook 95

Vorschau Schaeffler tomorrow 03-2018 EN Seite 95
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