Altech Batteries has seamlessly revived a 28-year-old sodium-nickel-chloride battery that uses a primitive version of its own modern-day salt based “Cerenergy” battery technology. Altech says the old battery, which was found unused in a German warehouse, kicked into gear without hesitation after 28 years of storage. Management says the move somewhat validates Altech’s own similar but more advanced battery technology.
The old-school “Zebra” battery model was a precursor to Altech’s modern Cerenergy technology and employed similar chemistry using simple table salt and a ceramic electrolyte to store energy.
Left untouched for nearly three decades, the original unit was supplied to Altech for evaluation. Once warmed up to a normal operating temperature of 270 degrees Celsius, the battery sprang into action, dishing out full performance with no signs of degradation.
To study its ability to repeatedly charge and discharge while still holding capacity, Altech’s joint venture partner, Fraunhofer IKTS, is now putting the aged battery through its paces with a full suite of cycling tests. To date, the tests are proving promising and show it holding steady at 300°C and cycling between 20–80 per cent state of charge with no hiccups.
Altech says the discovery is compelling evidence of the base technology’s extreme staying power and adds considerably to Altech’s existing tests on its own technology that have so far simulated at least a 15-year life span.
While the original Zebra cell produced enough energy for about 100 watt-hours, Altech’s version punches out 250 watt-hours, with a focused design on energy density and cost efficiency.
The key to the battery’s endurance appears to come down to chemistry and clever engineering. When not in use, Cerenergy batteries stay completely inert. The electrolyte - a solid mix of sodium aluminium chloride salt crystals and nickel powder - sits dormant inside a pressure-tight, hermetically sealed cell.
Given there are no liquids to leak or moisture that can creep in and no chemical decay, the battery appears to have a major leg-up on lithium-ion technology, which slowly breaks down even while sitting on the shelf.
Additionally, by using sodium chloride, Cerenergy’s manufacturing process dodges a supply chain dependent on lithium, cobalt and graphite, making it an excellent candidate as a scalable grid storage solution.
Altech says sodium-nickel-chloride technology - with "just add heat" reactivation - could also be a game-changer for military and emergency storage sectors, where batteries are stockpiled for decades. Whether buried in a bunker or waiting in a warehouse, once the batteries are recharged, they appear to operate with no reduction in safety or power.
Meanwhile, Altech plans to commercialise Cerenergy continue to move at pace with two agreements in the bag to potentially supply almost 190 MWh of energy storage capacity in Germany.
With construction permits now in hand, the company is also making strides to nail down the necessary funding to build a 120-megawatt Cerenergy manufacturing plant in the same country.
Altech has put a multi-faceted funding strategy in place to tap into the equity and debt markets, government grants and green funds to cover capex, financing costs and operational buffers for its projects.
The company’s definitive feasibility study for the project forecast a pre-tax net present value of €169 million (A$296m), annual revenue of €106m (A$185m), a €51m (A$89m) EBITDA and a 3.7-year payback period.
With Altech showing its salt battery technology may be capable of lying dormant for nearly three decades and still fire up flawlessly, the company might just have redefined what long-term energy storage really means.
The breakthrough underscores not only the robustness and reliability of its sodium-nickel-chloride technology, but also its potential to disrupt both grid-scale storage and defence energy systems.
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By James Pearson
