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How the Zinc8 system works<\/strong><\/p>\n Zinc-air has long been touted as a potentially cheap and powerful form of energy storage, but it always seemed to have a fundamental flaw \u2014 the formation of a bumpy coating of zinc on the electrode called a dendrite, which caused short circuits and other problems.<\/p>\n Perversely, Zinc8 found success by embracing this flaw and using it to the company\u2019s advantage.<\/p>\n \u201cMost of the zinc-air battery research was focused on an electrolyte that would eliminate or reduce the dendritic formation,\u201d explained chief technology officer Simon Fan. \u201cWe took a totally different approach \u2014 we like dendrites.\u201d<\/p>\n Fan\u2019s team invented a process \u2014 which remains a trade secret \u2014 that easily removes the dendrite from the electrode to \u201cgive us beautiful dendritic particles that we can transfer to the storage tank\u201d.<\/p>\n In simple terms, the Zinc8 battery uses electricity from the grid to split the chemical zincate (ZnOH4<\/sub>) into zinc, water and oxygen, resulting in charged zinc particles that can store electricity for weeks at a time. When electricity is required, the charged zinc is combined with oxygen from the air (and water), releasing the stored electricity and producing zincate, which is then cycled back to begin the process again.<\/p>\n The battery itself consists of three parts \u2014 the \u201czinc regenerator\u201d, which generates the charged zinc particles; the storage tank, which contains the potassium hydroxide (KOH) electrolyte and holds the charged zinc; and the power stack, a kind of fuel cell that turns the zinc to zincate and delivers its charge back to the grid.<\/p>\n The zinc can be stored for months in the electrolyte \u2014 it literally accumulates at the bottom of the storage tank \u2014 although it loses about 1% of its stored charge per day. And these particles are then pumped to the power stack when required, via a proprietary pumping mechanism designed and built in-house, where the charge is extracted and delivered to the grid.<\/p>\n The electrolyte \u2014 in which the zinc is formed \u2014 does not degrade, being identical at the start and finish of each cycle, and there is no net consumption of zinc, oxygen or water. The only parts of the system that degrade are the electrodes and the power stack, which need to be replaced every few years, depending on usage.<\/p>\n The round-trip efficiency of the system \u2014 ie, the percentage of inputted energy that is outputted at the end \u2014 is about 65%, a far cry from lithium-ion\u2019s 95%, but this is accounted for in the LCOS figures.<\/p>\n And unlike the flammable mixture of lithium salts and organic solvents that make up the electrolyte inside lithium-ion batteries, the potassium electrolyte is extremely stable, does not get hot and cannot ignite or explode. This means that some of the additional safety requirements of lithium-ion plants, such as containment buildings, are not needed for zinc-air facilities, further reducing system costs.<\/p>\n Where did Zinc8 spring from?<\/strong><\/p>\n The zinc-air technology was originally developed by a Silicon Valley company, Metallic Power Inc, which was then acquired by Teck Cominco (later known as Teck Resources), one of Canada\u2019s largest mining companies and one of the world\u2019s biggest producers of zinc. In 2018, MGX Minerals purchased the technology from Teck, and in 2019, and spun it off into a separate company, MGX Renewables, which was listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange last year and later rebranded as Zinc8 Energy Solutions.<\/p>\n Total investment in the technology to date, by Teck, MGX and investors \u2014 taking into account last year\u2019s initial public offering and recent funding rounds \u2014 adds up to around $52m.<\/p>\n But the firm had largely been under the radar until January this year, when it won the New York Power Authority\u2019s (NYPA) Innovation Challenge, a tender aiming to find innovative eight-hour-plus storage technologies. Zinc8 is now collaborating with NYPA, the largest state utility in the US, on building a 100kW\/1MWh (ie, ten-hour) pilot project for a commercial NYPA customer in western New York state by 2022. This will \u201cshowcase the long-duration aspect of our battery and also to validate the data so that we can move forward with New York Power Authority on many of their future projects\u201d, Fan explains.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the thing that’s changed our company \u2014 going from having some interest, but nobody thinking that zinc-air was ready \u2014 to our phones ringing non-stop from big utilities and globally connected companies around the world,\u201d adds MacDonald. \u201cIt gave us a level of credibility, of realness with the bigger, broader market that would have taken us a lot of time and a lot of banging on doors [to achieve]\u201d.<\/p>\n Enquiries have been coming in from multinational utilities, transmission system operators, large and small wind and solar developers, EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) companies, technology developers wanting to collaborate on control systems and even lithium-ion battery companies, says MacDonald.<\/p>\n NYPA has been so supportive, he says, that it is providing $2.55m of funding towards the project to help accelerate the development of the technology<\/p>\n Since then, another commercial pilot project has been agreed. Zinc8 has agreed to build a 100kW\/1.5MWh (15-hour) zinc-air system in Brooklyn for New York-based clean-energy developer Digital Energy, a project that is being financially supported by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (Nyserda).<\/p>\n A third commercial pilot of about 40kW is due to be installed in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada, in the first quarter of 2021.<\/p>\n MacDonald believes that his company\u2019s zinc-air storage systems and their low price means that they could replace the need for expensive upgrades of transmission lines in grid-constrained areas like New York state.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the big opportunities and challenges for the utilities is, how do we reduce the trillions [of dollars] that we will spend on grid upgrades?\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you get to around $100\/kWh [for an energy-storage system], it changes the economics of laying copper. You can instead put large scale energy storage systems along your grid at the pinch points, and you can almost create a microgrid.\u201d<\/p>\n He points out that such a network would be more reliable than a simple transmission line.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you think about all the electricity that\u2019s coming into New York [state] from Quebec, Canada, if there\u2019s a breach somewhere along that line, New York City goes dark. If the copper snaps, there\u2019s nothing below it, there\u2019s no back-up.\u201d<\/p>\n Growth strategy<\/strong><\/p>\n Zinc8 is now working on building a factory in North America that will be able to produce 40 1MW\/10MWh systems per year, which the company acknowledges is unlikely to be enough to meet demand.<\/p>\n \u201cThe growth strategy of the company is not to go retail,\u201d says MacDonald, explaining that they are not planning to simply manufacture and sell batteries. And he is adamant that the company is not for sale.<\/p>\n Instead, Zinc8 is focusing on developing collaborations and partnerships with large multinational companies.<\/p>\n \u201cI don’t think that they want to run a company like ours. They want the technology. The way that it is normally done is they partner you [and you] come up with various arrangements where they accelerate your commercialization in exchange for a special relationship in a market.\u201d<\/p>\n Zinc8 is still looking into what such collaborations and partnerships might entail, including the possibility of licensing its technology to other manufacturers \u2014 including lithium-ion producers<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a little bit surprising for some people that those in the lithium-ion business are talking to us, but it\u2019s not surprising to me \u2014 they\u2019re not going to spend 12 years and $100m like we just did to get to where we are,\u201d MacDonald explains.<\/p>\n \u201cWe’re a very little company with very big promise and there’s a lot of larger companies that have opened dialogue with us. It’s a David and Goliath thing and you’ve gotta be very careful how you move that forward. If you become too enamoured with the size of the elephant, they’ll sit on you.\u201d(Copyright)<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/b95d6a9368f058e65d9e38d2d5334c74.jpg\")