2015

Aquion Battery Technical Specs

Ampetus Energy Pty Ltd

www.ampetus.com.au
info@ampetus.com.au
0419 191 729

BSD

Introduction
Ampetus Energy Pty Ltd was established to help energy consumers slash their energy prices. We sell
products and systems that assist our clients to:
1.
2.
3.

Significantly decrease energy bills (or eliminate them altogether)

Potentially enable complete grid defection!
Appreciably reduce a households carbon footprint!

Mission Statement
To use the most ideal energy storage technology to promote the efficient operation and use of energy
for the long term interests of consumers of energy with respect to:
Price, quality, safety, reliability and impact on environment.

Battery Products
We are constantly searching for improved technologies at ever lower costs.
We have scoured the globe looking for a battery that produces the most cost effective, clean and
reliable energy storage.
Our criteria for a battery is that they should not only be less expensive than other batteries, but also
that they be less expensive than the most economical alternative used today to provide the same
energy to the end user.

Our criteria:
The battery that we supply our customers needed to satisfy the following criteria:
+ Made of low-cost, ubiquitous materials
+ Have exceptional durability (thousands of cycles)
+ 100% Depth of Discharge (DoD)
+ Highly efficient
+ Non-toxic components
+ Needs to be commercially available today, with extensive thirdparty testing to back up manufacturers claims, as well as demonstrable case studies, which have
successfully used the battery in real world scenarios.
+ Utilize a simple manufacturing approach (borrowed technologies).

BSD

And the winner is

Aquion Energys Aqueous Hybrid Ion (AHI) Batteries, which are based on an innovative technology
originally developed for NASA. These batteries are third-party tested, and commercially available today.
The battery is modular (48V stack and module building blocks), scalable (to 1000 VDC and multi-MWh
Installations). The battery is simple to operate with no active management required.
The basic configuration is the so called S-Line Stack which contains 2.4kWh of storage capacity. The
M-Line Module is a forklift-ready size model that stores 25.5 kWh of energy.

Aquion Energy
Aquion Energy is an American company, and distributed in Australia by Ampetus Energy. Their battery
technology was developed out of Carnegie Mellon University in 2010. The company is headquartered in
Pittsburgh, PA. They raised more than $130 million dollars from a group of top tier investors which
include Bill Gates. Aquions Stateoftheart manufacturing facility is housed in a 300,000 ft2 facility
which has been in production and shipping batteries since early 2014.

BSD

Ideal for

BSD

Technology Comparison

Models

BSD

Aquion S-Line Battery Stack

Aquion M-Line Battery Module

BSD

Bulk Energy Storage Configurations

Case Studies

BSD

BSD

BSD

Summary of benefits

Manufacturing Process
To keep costs down, our manufacturer assembles our batteries using food preparation methodology,
thus borrowing proven, efficient approaches, that keep manufacturing costs to a mimimum.

BSD

Battery Chemistry
Lets look under the hood of the battery, and specifically, a high level overview of the battery chemistry.

The Electrolyte:
The battery contains an aqueous, ambient temperature, sodium sulphate electrolyte

Hybrid Reactions:
+ An asymmetric/hybrid electrode configuration:
Cathode: Intercalation reaction
Anode: seudocapacitive and intercalation interaction

Multiple Ions:
+ The chemistry uses sodium and lithium ions as the primary charge carrier to store energy inside the
battery.

10

BSD

Building Blocks: Internal Contents and Structure

11

BSD

Test Results
The battery has been laboratory tested with the following results:

Outstanding Performance: Battery Testing

12

BSD

Performance: Cycle Life

Large Format System Cycle Stability: Partial State of Charge (PSOC) Test

Sandia is a third party engineering and science laboratory operated by Lockheed Martin.
+ 4000 Partial State of Charge Swings executed on full stack at 40C
+ Batteries in string are well balanced

13

BSD

Large Format System Cycle Stability: 40C PSOC Test

Applications Testing: PV/Battery Hybrid

14

BSD

+ Left plot: 2A 100% DoD reference cycle after 70+ days of cycling; excellent capacity documented after
significant use.
+ Right plot: voltage and current as a function of time after resuming cycling after reference test
V increasing; unit is significantly more efficient than 80%

MnO2-based cells: Energy Density

+ Na functional in cubic spinel -different recipe is optimal

+ >40 Wh/kg specific capacity, same long term stability
+ > 80% round trip energy efficiency

15

BSD

Performance: Cycle Life

+/-4A cycling on large format battery; typical voltage response

Abuse Tolerance: Partial State of Charge

+ Batteries can stand at partial state of charge with no significant degradation

Pulse: The batteries are cycled between 45-55% SOC using 10A. Two full cycles are run every 1000 pulses.

16

BSD

A Brief Chemical History Of The Batterys Development

First Generation Chemistry
Stability/Capacity of Cathode Material

Cycle Life/Columbic Efficiency

The coulombic efficiency of a typical lead-acid battery is >95%.

+ At 1000 cycles, there was negligible loss in capacity equating to almost 100% Columbic efficiency

17

BSD

Second Generation Chemistry: Lambda-MnO2

+ Much higher specific capacity compared to Na4Mn9O18

+ In balanced device, over 100 Wh/kg (cathode) at lower rates
+ Still extremely stable
+ Added cost of using Li2CO3 to template material is justified.

Lambda MnO2 in Na2SO4

+ MnO2 has over 2 times the capacity and 3 times the energy of Na4Mn9O18
+ Rate capability also found to be very good

18

BSD

The Anode: Activated Carbon in Neutral PH

+ Over 200 F/g can be had from carbons derived from simple carbohydrates
+ Over 120 F/g can be gained from low cost (<$2/kg) carbons derived from woods

Polyionic Functionality
+ 3 different species are functional:
Lithium cathode materials templating, extracted into electrolyte during first charge, remains
functional
Sodium electrolyte cation, intercalates into MnO2of cathode and also performs EDLC
function at anode
and Hydrogen. . . .

19

BSD

Anodic Pourbaix Shift at Anode Enables High Cell V

+ At the anode: as the potential of hydrogen evolution is reached, local OH-species are generated, and
are not extracted rapidly
+ This increases the pH inside the negative electrode, and subsequently re-stabilizes the local water.
There is also the natural overpotentialof water splitting on Carbon
+ So minimum stable anode potential is -0.9 V (vs. NHE) at local pH of 14 plus ~0.2 to 0.4 V of over
potential.
+ If cathode is pinned at ~+1 V, then, we have a cell voltage of over 2 V
+ BUT hydrogen is evolved during this process what of it?
*Nature Chemistry, 2, 2010, pg 760

20

BSD

Three-Electrode Data:

+ There is excess cathode material to pin the positive electrode potential below the point of oxygen
evolution

Making it Practical: Electrode Thickness

+ In thin format cells, the material displays excellent rate capability, excellent round trip energy
efficiency.
+ However, these cells are far too costly to scale with these dimensions . . .

21