A Firefly Energy press release on January 17 revealed a little more information, now that one of their patents has been issued on their battery technology.
Firefly Energy has received a U.S. patent for a new lead acid battery technology that it believes has the potential to revolutionize the existing $16 billion worldwide lead acid battery market as well as serve applications like hybrid electric vehicles which historically aren't suitable for lead acid batteries. ....
The invention is a battery comprised of an electrical current collector constructed of carbon or lightweight graphite foam. This foam exhibits a sizeable increase in surface area for chemical reactions to take place and eliminates the need for heavy lead plates found in traditional batteries. The graphite material resists corrosion and sulfation build-up, thus contributing to longer battery life and is lighter in weight than today's lead acid batteries. ....
The overwhelming restriction to lead acid battery efficiency to this point has been the lack of interface area between the active chemistry and the electrodes. Today, the chemistry is capable of delivering approximately 170 Watt Hours per Kilogram (Whr/kg), yet lead acid batteries only average around 30 Whr/kg. Up to now, achieving a higher surface area within a given lead-acid battery box required the addition of more and thinner lead electrodes. However, lead electrodes corrode, so increasing surface area by putting thinner lead electrodes in the battery increases corrosion and decreases battery life.
"By removing the corrosive heavy lead grids and replacing them with a graphite foam, Chief Scientist Kurt Kelley's invention has helped unleash the innate power of lead acid chemistry," adds CEO Williams. "It introduces a material that doesn't corrode and enables the weights and sizes of lead acid batteries to be reduced significantly." ....
Mil Ovan, senior vice president and Firefly Energy's other co-founder, believes the invention also addresses important environmental problems. "One of the reasons 'Firefly' was picked as the name of our company was because it's a green technology, since our battery's design drives one-half to two-thirds of the lead out of the battery through use of the graphite foam composite material. The graphite form is also easily recyclable through the existing infrastructure of lead acid battery recycling."
Firefly Energy is a Peoria, Illinois-based company which has developed a next generation lead acid battery technology that has the opportunity to address major portions of the $30 billion worldwide battery marketplace. Firefly's graphite foam-based battery technology can deliver a unique combination of high performance, extremely low weight, low cost and, all in a battery which utilizes the best aspects of lead acid chemistry while overcoming the corrosive drawbacks of this same chemistry. This product technology delivers to battery markets a performance associated with advanced battery chemistries (Nickel Metal Hydride & Lithium), but for one-fifth the cost, and can be both manufactured as well as recycled within the existing lead acid battery industry's vast infrastructure. The Company was formed after its technology, technical founder, and initial seed funds were spun out of Caterpillar, Inc. a Fortune 90 company, in May 2003, and is headed by co-founders Edward Williams (CEO), Mil Ovan (Senior VP), and Kurtis Kelley (Chief Scientist).
A previous post (1/15/06) decribed Firefly's batteries with information available at that time.
Technorati tags: batteries, storage technology, energy, technology
One drawback is that the foam is fragile compared to a normal lead-acid battery. Apparently really fragile! That may be one limiting factor towards putting these in vehicles.
Posted by: treiber | January 20, 2006 at 11:20 PM
How fragile is really fragile?
Posted by: Halvo | January 23, 2006 at 08:57 AM
I don't think that Firefly would have proceeded this far if the foam was "really fragile." My opinion is that the foam may be applied as a semi-liquid material but it is cured or dried into a stable material that is suitable for the rigors that are required in an automotive battery.
Posted by: Jim from The Energy Blog | January 24, 2006 at 04:54 PM
Um...they invented this stuff to go into CAT equipment..as in Bulldozers, backhoes, and dump trucks
I think they can handle the smooth ride of a car
Posted by: Cat guy | February 01, 2006 at 05:35 PM
As the years go by from the time of their original anouncement and there are no real world batteries available, one begins to wonder.
Posted by: steve johnston | March 21, 2007 at 03:42 PM
Firefly reports putting their batteries though a multi-hundred hour 5g test sucessfully. Remember the original application that these batteries were developed for is their parent company, Catipeller.
Posted by: Robin Pilger | August 17, 2007 at 06:35 PM
Just when we think the lead acid battery is dead. We have another company,Power Technologies Inc.,also with a similar lead acid battery technology. They call theirs a "reticulated lead foam plate"
Posted by: Probyn Gayle | September 23, 2007 at 11:58 AM
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Posted by: Payday Loan Advocate | October 22, 2008 at 02:09 AM
It is great that people are thinking about the environment and working to make the world a safer place. Not only the materials that you are using on your home are safe for the environment but dump trucks have come a long way since the earlier models. We are learning and expanding and coming up with a wide range of safer more effective vehicles for the work force. I think it is great that many auto manufacturers are turning to hybrid vehicles to protect the environment and now they are even using hybrid dump trucks.
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Posted by: nike air yeezy | April 30, 2010 at 04:24 AM
The concept of lead acid battery is not new but there would be any innovation in the manufacturing of the battery. If it is thought that this may not be fit for the vehicles but as an optimistic attitude , some amendments can be made to make it perfect.
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