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Rapid charge, long life batteries made from low-cost and abundant aluminium are set to emerge from research led by Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI). Unveiled at the All Energy event in Glasgow last week, aluminium ion batteries could displace the lead-acid batteries commonly found in automotive applications in just two years.

Developed in a collaborative research project together with Stanford University in the USA, the aluminium ion technology is expected to possess similar performance characteristics to existing battery designs. However, in contrast to the currently dominant technologies such as lithium ion, aluminium is a very common element and is therefore easily obtained at a relatively low cost.

Aluminium battery technology is also able to withstand 10,000 charge and discharge cycles without perceptible degradation in performance, far exceeding many of the existing battery designs and significantly reducing the specific...

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