Regeneration
Recharging any battery can be tricky — to make sure your battery is as good as new after each recharging, you'd really have to send a quality control team inside your battery every time you recharge your EV. Since nobody's figured out yet how to do that, we came up with the next best thing: Sending discharged zinc anodes to our quality control team for recharging. At an Electric Fuel regeneration facility, where recharged zinc anodes are always as good as new. And if you ask our quality control team, they can explain that an Electric Fuel regeneration facility is where they recycle and recharge zinc anode cassettes, with the help of some sophisticated machinery. Where they separate out undischarged zinc for later reuse without having to recharge it, and feed discharged zinc oxide, dissolved in electrolyte, to Electric Fuel electrowinning cells, where, with the addition of electricity, zinc plates out as dendritic particles. Where they reassemble the zinc particles into charged anode cassettes. Over and over again. Meeting the exact same quality standard every time. To make sure that you get zinc anodes as good as brand-new, every time. As so often happens, doing something right costs less than the alternative. Electric Fuel refueling and regeneration infrastructure actually costs less than the whole infrastructure needed for electrical recharging of EV's. And when you consider the hidden costs of electrical charging capacity, possibly to be paid by utility ratepayers, the Electric Fuel advantage is clear. By cutting the direct link between the electric vehicle and the power plant, we make it possible to use only clean, inexpensive baseline electricity for charging EV's while allowing a driver to refuel anytime, even during the electric utility's peak hours. A regeneration facility located anywhere on the power grid actually boosts efficiency and utilization of baseline generating capacity, and never has to tap peak generation or transmission capacity. Even better, regeneration can be located in areas of abundant renewable energy sources, and charged zinc anodes can then be used to transport clean energy to other areas, without the cost (and environmental impact) of building new transmission lines.
The Importance of Specific Energy
High specific energy means more than just long range, or being able to sustain high power for a long time. It also means a more efficient use of precious energy resources. Heavier battery technologies waste a lot of energy just carrying around the excess weight of the battery itself, expending as much as 35% more energy per mile than the Electric Fuel zinc-air battery. By using less energy, a lighter battery yields greater environmental benefits — and real cost savings. Energy content impacts user cost in other ways, too. High specific energy translates into many more miles per cycle, and therefore a longer battery life — even with fewer discharge cycles — and fewer, if any, battery replacements during a vehicle's life. For cargo vehicles, high specific energy translates into lower battery weight, more payload capacity, and lower cost per ton-mile of cargo transported. Fewer wasted trips for charging also saves money in a fleet environment. And when electric vehicles are no more limited in range or payload capacity than the gasoline or diesel vehicles that they replaced, then fleet managers maintain maximum flexibility in vehicle deployment and route assignment. For driver comfort and practical operation in any weather, high energy capacity means that air conditioning, heating, and other vehicle accessories use only a small proportion of the battery's energy, and make only a small dent in vehicle driving range. |
