>> Mike Sinclair: My name is Mike Sinclair. I'm MSR in the Natural User
Interface Group and it was a very circuitous meeting with these folks.
They seem to have very interesting battery technology. Since that's all
I know other than the slide deck that I sent you. They are going to tell
us about their interesting technology. Bill?
>> Bill Burger: Thank you. So I'm the CEO for the dough. And the
history on ZAF is that it was started a little over four years ago and it
was started by this man in the right-hand, on my right, Ron Brost along
with several other founders.
>> Mike Sinclair:
Get closer to the mic.
>> Bill Burger: I'm sorry. As a goal from the company from the get-go
was to create a really transformational battery technology, or two as the
case is turning out. And that was based around Zinc Air. Zinc Air is
the technology has been around for well over a century. It is currently
in use today, every day in hearing aid batteries. One time use only type
products of various types. So the goal was to actually create the
world's first useful, that you could go into production with, version of
a rechargeable version of Zinc Air. And I would like to say at this time
that we think we are well on the road to having such a product and we are
going to talk about that in a lot more detail here today, give you
insights as to how far along we have gotten to that quest for having
something that is ready for production. So we are not there yet, but we
are closing in on that point. So it is time to share it with yourselves.
So also today we are going to talk a little bit about another technology
that we developed. It's based around Nickel Zinc and we won't say a
whole lot about that in great detail, but just if you are interested, we
are more than happy during any breakout time or at question and answer
time, address that some more. So as this first slide is talking about,
we think that we have in front of us about $50 billion of addressable
marketplace today. Some 20 billion of that is in the Zinc Air category.
And about 30 billion in rapidly growing actually, is in the Nickel Zinc
market sector. And we've really worked hard to create, you know, some
technology here that will address the real needs out there in the
marketplace. One of them being lithium itself is not the most desirable
component to have in products. So hence, the Zinc Air technology was a
major target for us. The other area that we also have chosen to address
is in the Nickel Zinc area. And there we're targeting more the lead acid
sector of the business. It can also replace lithium as well, but one
principal easy market to go towards serving the market needs is lead
acid. So our business model has been focused on a licensing model.
We're an asset life company. As a consequence of that, we are talking to
companies to license our technologies for production purposes. I think
there's some really good reasons we have been Outlooking at what the
demand might be forth product and it's extremely high. One little
company is going to be hard pressed to deliver the kind of quality and
quantities that might be needed by the marketplace.
So in the case of these two technologies, our Nickel Zinc, as I
mentioned, is our second effort. And that effort was started just over a
year ago. What's interesting about it is Zinc Nickel has also been
around a long time but it never was really commercialized very
effectively.
In fact, lots of money was spent trying to make it work without great
success, and only it was in the late 1990s that a company ever cell was
put in place that brought it to the marketplace. A gentleman by the name
of Alan Sharkey was the CEO of that company. He was responsible for the
basic inventions that were put in place for Nickel Zinc. We have the
pleasure of having him on our team.
What we found was that original effort was not successful financially.
The product technology was great. Thousands and thousands of batteries
were built very successfully and sold. But yet it went away. So we've
chosen to bring that back to the marketplace, reimagining the product as
I like to call it, with newer technology inserted into what was already
in place as a very strong technical product. And so we've done that.
And in that particular case that technology is something that we are now
sampling to battery companies as we speak. Lead acid battery companies
are looking to how are they moving to the next generation of batteries
and still maintain the same basic footprint, basic style, the basic
functionality of what they have offered for many years. Nickel Zinc
allows them to do that. In the case of Zinc Air, there were a number of
issues that have existed. It too is a technology that has been played
with for well over 100 years. In terms of rechargeability, it never was
able to be commercialized before. I think we are happy to report that we
believe now that we've survived through all of the different issues that
you might see to keep you from commercialization, so that we can bring
this type of technology to the marketplace. And Ron and Adam will be
talking about the details of what we've done to make the product what it
is today.
This slide, and I'm showing you is intended to give you a concept of
where technologies are today. And what the general performance levels
can be. You've got a vertical axis that is the power side of the
equation. And the horizontal axis which is the energy side. So this is
a comparison. As you can see, these various banana shapes reflect on
where batteries of a particular technology are likely to fall. And our
goal here was to show you that with the Zinc Air technology on the far
right-hand side of your screen, it has a couple of -- one a dot and one a
star. And as may be noted already, they are pretty far over to the right
of the competing technologies including lithium. So we think we've got a
really great solution for providing a superior product over lithium. And
this slide is intended to show, for example, on the Zinc Air how much to
the right it is. Given that these things are logarithmic in nature, it's
a bigger move than you might otherwise think, a slight move to the right
or up. Nickel Zinc shows out very well for what it is. It is a low
cost, very benign, safe technology that delivers a tremendous amount of
power with long life attributes.
We wanted to give you a quick idea of some comparisons. You can sort of
look at the chart for yourself and look at what is the most favorite
thing you might want to compare to. But we have a couple examples of
lithium here along with Nickel Zinc and our Zinc Air technology. Again,
we are primarily thinking of Microsoft here as a potential user of Zinc
Air because it is such a great alternative to lithium. And as such, the
numbers that you see I think are pretty compelling. Overall, we are
looking at a product that is somewhere in the neighborhood of one-fourth,
potentially one-eighth of the cost of lithium depending on what the
application is.
When you look at the energy density as well as the volumetric efficiency
of Zinc Air over lithium. So we have a two to one kind of ratio there as
far as how much energy you can store in a given space and/or a given
weight over lithium and lead acid is not even on the charts. So we are
not talking about that. That doesn't even begin to compare. That's a
fundamental enhanced, you know, capability that we have with our Zinc Air
over lithium. And I mentioned the cost structure is substantially lower
at one-fourth to one-eighth, again depending on what you are comparing it
to.
Those things are so fundamental, it's hard to imagine not wanting to look
more closely at what we've done. The other thing that hasn't been
specifically stressed here so far is that the technology in Zinc Air is
environmentally really safe. You are basically using oxygen out of the
air and you're using zinc as the primarily component of the other side of
the battery, the anode side. As such, it won't catch fire. Won't
explode. It will not have any negative environmental impacts in its use
or if it's thrown away in a disposal type environment.
The Zinc Nickel product compares in a different category. We typically
look at it compared to lead acid, but we also wanted to show you here in
contrast to lithium, it's got a certain set of advantages as well. The
Nickel Zinc product applications are extremely varied. The slide is
intending to show you that it's a huge market out there. I mentioned a
dollar value at $30 billion, growing to almost $60 billion by 2020 for
lead acid applications. So we feel that we can address those markets
extremely well with Nickel Zinc.
One of the advantages that the product weighs between one-third to onehalf of a lead acid battery of equivalent energy. Much longer lived
product. And it can be discharged and shipped discharged. It can sit on
a shelf for many years and then be charged and it's just as good as if it
was kept usable all these years. Its life propositions are substantially
superior. It can be heavily discharged very quickly. On a fairly large
battery, you can dump 1300-amps out of it very quick, compared to lead
acid. It has a lot of constraints. Lithium has huge constraints on how
much energy you can pull out of it, or put back into it. So nickel has
got some real attributes in that respect. From the Zinc Air side of
things, the markets are also quite varied. And our business model, as I
started to mention earlier, is one based on licensing model. Joint
venture in some cases as well. And not actually to be the producer of
the large quantities that we anticipate that could be used.
So with that I'm going to turn it over to Ron Brost who is our CTO for
the company. He's going to talk in quite a bit more detail. Thank you.
>> Ron Brost: Thank you. So as Bill was saying, we are addressing a
number of different technologies, the Zinc Air and the Nickel Zinc, but
we do have a fairly substantial network of partners. The organization
such as you see here, Oak Ridge, Tennessee; SRI, South Carolina; Penn
State. MIT was a catalyst. We have a fairly extensive network of
partners on true retainers as coworkers, codevelopers.
Now, with that and with that structure that we have, we've been coming up
with a number of key attributes for our Zinc Air battery. Higher energy
density as Bill was mentioning in his chart. Two times longer than
lithium. By itself, that's based on the same type of current, based on a
higher energy density and specific energy.
Extremely safe operation. We have a solid electrolyte which in itself is
fairly safe but we still retain water as one of our key components. It's
not an organic based movement. We don't have volatile organics anywhere
involved, but we do have this well anchored very stable electrolyte which
actually leads to some very good things about our cell in terms of its
long-term stability, even though it is an open air battery. There is no
FAA/DOT restrictions on our Zinc Air chemistry. Freely shipped. There's
no limit on the size. Than and I'm happy to report that after years and
years of playing with this we have never ever had a fire or incident
testing these new cells. They have been extremely stable.
The materials that we use are inexpensive. Even our catalyst. It is not
a plat continue group based catalyst. It is based on fairly common
materials, fairly low cost materials. And that makes a big difference.
Even our membrane is based on a fairly common polymer, rather than say
some fluoro 98ed hydrocarbon.
The manufacturing process is again standard and in fact we've designed a
lot of our cell manufacturing to be transposed from a lithium based
coating process into a Zinc Air based coating process. You see a lot of
the common windings, the ability to make and place the lamination. In
fact a lot of our operations are now rolled good, type of thing. We have
dry membranes that get laminated. We have electrodes that are pasted and
calendared and pasted and put together. So these are fairly standard
processes. We don't have to do vapor phase deposition and don't have to
go to any great extent that will prevent us from making these in very
large quantities. The recycling is also very straightforward. It is a
shred and recover through either's electrowinning or even flotation types
of separations. So even that full lifecycle is benign and fairly simple
to contain.
Our intellectual property that we've generated. This is representing a
four years work, but we've, I think, come together with a fairly -whoops. With fairly comprehensive portfolio. It is not all around one
particular part of the chemistry. It really is spread over the entire
cell. So we have innovations around our positive electrode. I will be
speaking more about that. The negative electrode, that was in fact our
first patent. That was, how do you make the negative electrode so you
can manufacture it and treat it as a role good rather than having to
especially spray these things and to get them to cells quickly.
Our electrolyte, some very interesting innovations there. It's a solid
state electrolyte. How do you manage that? With the air, of course, how
do you keep the air from getting directly or keep the oxygen from going
directly on to the negative electrode, the zinc and oxidizing directly.
That's again part of our innovations. We have a couple of patents, one
pending and one in process on manufacturing and then there's the battery
structure itself. How do you put these things together? A number of
innovations. We tried to balance our portfolio, intellectual property.
We are a small company. We have to be efficient about it. You can spend
literally millions on patenting. We have a lot more ideas, but these are
the ones that we winnowed it down to so we have the biggest bang for our
buck. Most of our patents, all of our patents are filed in the U.S., but
we also have some PCT applications and in fact we filed in Germany and
Japan and Germany for a number selected.
Over the last 12 months, some of our break through accomplishments. We
have had a layered polymer electrolyte. This gives us a long calendar
life and essentially a dry operation. We are still developing this
material. There are many ways that we are modifying it. We take the
basis polymer. We splice groups on to that. We have cross-linking.
There are a lot of ways we can adjust that polymer to give us the
appropriate properties. Again, Adam will give us, show you some of the
results on that.
We have a Perovskite-based air electrode. Patent in the U.S. Tested for
many hundreds of cycles. A very stable Perovskite, which serves as our
bidirectional catalyst. So manganese dioxide, of course, works great as
an oxygen reduction, but we need to have to have the oxygen evolution
reaction because it is rechargeable and Perovskite is a wonderful
candidate for that. It is not any old Perovskite. There are some
modifications. There are deficiencies and process learnings there that
give us the special properties, but that is another one of our patents.
We have an air protected negative electrode which gives us our long life,
cycle life manufacturing system simplicity. We have a metal air battery.
This is part of our manufacturing, with is this gas diffusion layers.
This allows us to wrap and make a very manufacturable product. And then
there's also the air electrode manufacturing process, which is still in
application form but is under prosecution with the patent office.
So currently we are optimizing the material interfaces. We have a number
of these innovations. Cathode electrolyte, how they interact, how they
transfer the ions between these, of course, is essential to the battery
operation. These are the things that we are optimizing now. And we are
at the stage now where we will be shipping prototypes of these
technologies. It is not perfect. But there is, we believe, a clear path
to getting into the point where we will have a commercial product.
So in terms of our, this is basically a summary of what I just said, but
we have a number of issues that were recognized from a very early stage
and this is how we approached them. Anode integrity causing short cycle
life. We had that patent 851 to handle that, to consider and fix that
issue. And so on.
So with that, I'll introduce Adam here in a second, but some of these
innovations we've put together in a prototype and we have some samples
here to wave around but I'll let Adam take it from here. This is Dr.
Adam Weinstein, our chief scientist in Zinc Air.
>> Adam Weinstein: All right. I would like to start by passing around
some of these items. First of all, I would like to pass around an
example of what our first demonstration battery will be with the Zinc
Air. And then also I want to pass around what the pouch cell that
actually -- there's four of these that will fit into this demonstration
model. And you can feel, you can bend this around. It is a nice, robust
system. So in the pouch cell, what we have is we have a diffusion layer.
This is going to be a way for us to get radio flow throughout our system,
throughout the holes that you can see in the top of the case. And
throughout the whole entire face of our cathode, of our air electrode.
On the back side of our air electrode which is actually part of the pouch
that you see right there is a non-centered PTFE film. What that is going
to do for us is resist any of our water leaving our system, since this is
an open cell. And then also what it will do is let air breathe through
to our air electrode.
Below that we have our air electrode which actually has three layers. It
has also a PTFE layer. It has a hydro phobic layer below that and it has
its active mass layer. Below the cathode we have some polyamide layers
and we have our AEM layer that Ron was talking about earlier. I'll go
into it further.
Below that is another set of polyamide layers and then our zinc
electrode. The pouch comes together with some polyethylene.
That was not the right button.
>> Adam Weinstein:
>>:
All right.
So for this demonstration battery.
What was that?
Is this the -- button?
>> Adam Weinstein: That is a dry cell right there, but that is exactly
what goes in that case that you're passing around. There are four of
those, actually. Four of those in series is what we have. What that
case is is 119 by 71 by 10-millimeters. The total capacity for this is
going to be 3.18-amp hours. That's going to give us a specific energy of
271-watt hours per kilogram. Energy density of 707-watt hours better
liter. Our energy is 17-watt hours. Power 1.3 watts. And then our
total runtime here is going to be 12.7 hours.
>>:
So these are prototype measured values?
>> Adam Weinstein: Yes, yes. The reason we are at this point now that
we can actually put this together and put a demonstration cell together
is because of the progress we've made. The progress since February of
this year we have been able to quadruple our cycle life and we have been
able to triple actually the longevity of our runtime.
The reason why for the most part is not only a better construction with
actual pouch cell, but then also improvements to the anode itself.
Morphology we know with the zinc electrode is difficult to overcome some
of the dendrite issues, zinc migration. That's what we are trying to
combat now. So realistically we are hoping to raise this number
significantly. Right now this number represents 100 percent depth of
discharge cycling. Let's say if we were to drop that to 50 percent DOD,
we should be looking at more of 100 cycles here. Now, that's not our
goal. Our goal is 500 cycles. I think with some of the improvements
we're making right now that's hopefully within reach sometime soon.
One of the reasons for the longevity of the cell, the cycle life
improvement is not only with the anode and improvements to the pouch but
also with our ion exchange membrane. We were working with the University
of Tennessee Knoxville to develop an AEM that is going to retain water
and even give us some water uptake. We know that these are open cells.
Water management can be issues. Carbonate is another issue. This is one
issue that we think we can solve with these AEMs. Water uptake we're
looking at 300 percent where a commercial AEM is very low compared to
what we are seeing. And not only do these soak up water and hold on to
water, but these are also really conductive. Again, here the red is the
commercial cell and the purple up top is the ZAF AEM membrane that we're
using, which is very similar to 4 molar KOH. So for power applications,
this is fantastic for us.
Our air electrode that we are using right now we have done long-term
cycling on. We want to make sure that this is robust. It's stable under
redox testing. This here shows 800 cycles with some spikes in data
collection. When you have potassium hydroxide and you have an air
breathing cell, occasionally you can get carbonate on your leads.
However, this does demonstrate through the 800 cycles that our cathode
right now is robust enough to handle that. This is 20 milliamps per
centimeter squared to give you an idea of how hard we are pushing this.
And these are 15 minute durations with the small rest in between. This
is an 8 molar KOH. These are half cells. We do have abundance of KOH.
But it shows that our air electrode is robust. We've developed an air
catalyst that, as you see right here, is showing better performance than
a typical platinum on black performance. Again, this is stable and both
oxygen reduction reactions and oxygen evolution reactions, which a lot of
your carbon based catalysts that you see and a lot of publications out
there aren't stable in that redox cycling.
This is also low cost. It's easy for us to basically take to the next
level as far as production goes with these particular perovskites. And
then Ron, I'll let you finish up. Or Bill, finish up and take any
questions?
>> Bill Burger: What we have done here so far is talk about the Zinc Air
technology in some depth. I'm not sure if there are specific questions
that come from what we've had to say so far or if you have some
applications that might be of interest that you would like to share. We
can comment on how well we think we can address them.
>>: From somebody who doesn't have the skills in your area, how do you
keep the air, specifically the oxygen from getting stale? Do you need an
active recycler to move the air through the battery?
>> Adam Weinstein: Well, we do also produce oxygen during oxygen
evolution. But most of these we will just basically, it's just sitting
on a table, you know, like this in a battery tester. We don't have any
sort of actual convex going on. Just ambient.
>> Ron Brost: It is a diffusion layer which is a critical part of the
chemistry of the cell. That is fairly carefully designed so it will meet
the rate but it's all passive.
>>: You have a gridlock. [laughter]
>> Ron Brost:
>>:
Not forever.
Is there a sucking sound when you discharge?
[laughter]
>> Bill Burger: The real world applications are going to be ones in
which air is available for it. You can have your own control air system.
If you think about large scale applications, whether it be an airplane,
for example, which happens to be an electric airplane which is in the
future, not too far out. There's plenty of air flowing by the plane when
it is moving, for example. And even in its stable state. Cell phones is
another kind of application. Laptops, we have had discussions around
those kinds of applications and see no issues with providing sufficient
oxygen to the phone and laptop, if it's designed for that. There's
trade-offs in almost anything. A totally sealed battery is fine, too.
The advantages of what we are bringing to the market with the Zinc Air is
such that there's huge trade-offs in cost. There's increased amount of
energy per unit volume and weight. So you can go, your battery should
last twice as long, is the logic here, in almost any application if you
only use the same size. And you know, one of the things we look at as an
example is a Tesla car, for example, that scale. And they have an 85kilowatt hour battery, weighs about 1100 pounds net with the battery.
You replace that in our, same weight, same volume, which we can achieve
on a two to one basis, you can go instead of 250 miles, you'd have about
500 plus miles of range at a cost that is one-fourth or so or less than
what you would pay for the lithium product. Plus it's totally safe and
environmentally benign. So those are some really major reasons why the
technology itself I think has a lot of places to go.
>>:
In terms much the charge and discharge curves, voltage?
>>:
What do we have on that, Ron?
>> Ron Brost:
Not in this presentation but we can supply that.
>>: I'm curious. One of the characteristics of lithium ion is it's
really flat until you get to the very end. I'm wondering how does yours
go down, linearly? Does it ->>:
In temperature, day or two?
>>: Yes, that's for both of those. In terms of the stiffness of the
curve especially at the appointment of discharge, being a metal air
system it is as good as your electrode structure. If it's large and
deep, then you will see some polarization. As the utilization becomes
more taxed and discharged. But generally it is fairly stiff
representation. I think we are more than happy to display that
[indiscernible].
>>: What is the typical discharge rates like? I fly RC planes. The
hobby grade battery you'll get like 25C, 30C kind of rates. You can get
more but you pay for it, right? What kind of C rate can you support?
>>: This is an energy battery as opposed to a power battery. So you are
normally, in terms of what we have been looking at short-term is in the
low C numbers and not to the extremes that you have been describing.
Again the battery has a different objective than a lot of power for a
very short period of time.
>>: It's pretty typical of a normal Zinc Air battery, isn't it?
a fairly low C rating?
>>:
Yeah.
>>:
Like the hearing aid battery, say?
It has
>>: Yes, this is an air based reaction. You won't get the type of lower
rates, you're not going to get a 25C out of this. Basically you have a
huge sucking sound if you ->>:
Yeah, yeah.
>>: That is not the design, that is not what the strong point of this
battery is. It is really an energy battery. The C25 has some testing to
that, longer than that, not a problem. As you start getting to higher
rates, you may have to super charge something. You may have to add
forced air.
>>: Like you were saying, if you put it on the outside of the airplane
or the bottom of the car, you can bring in all the air you want, right?
That requires a different battery structure.
>> Bill Burger: I mean, I was just going to say that if you think about
different kinds of applications, for example military. Weight is
everything. So if you can cut the weight of your backpack down by 50
percent, or for the weight of the vehicle. Those things are huge. If
you don't have to worry about an explosion or a fire because a bullet
comes through something. That's huge.
So again, lithium has all kinds of drawbacks. Lots of band aids that you
have to apply just to make it work and be reasonably safe. We are sort
of neutral on all those issues. Those are positives. The trade-off is
that it is not by nature the most powerful battery. The specs aren't too
bad. For example, on the Tesla car that we just talked about, I'll give
you 420 horsepower on that vehicle, and the normal 85-kilowatt hour
battery is only 385-horsepower. So you can see the difference in ratio.
I've got twice the amount of energy, but I've only got 10 percent more
power. So there's trade-offs, but frankly in that application you've got
more power than you can possibly use. Is it good enough? Yeah.
>>: You go back to the few slides in comparison to the [indiscernible].
Also you mentioned about your processing technology. How do you process
this stick up?
>> Bill Burger: Ron can probably speak to the details on how you build
the battery better than I can.
>>: I am not a firmware guy. So I am not the one to buy your stuff
here. So how do you make it? Just why is your energy density here? Why
you call it air, is my question. Why do you call it air, your cathode,
your anode, how it works. It's similar to mainstream he manufacturing.
How is that explained?
>> Ron Brost:
Sure, when you paste the electrodes and [indiscernible].
So here is ->>:
[indiscernible]
>> Ron Brost:
>>:
Sure.
Those in the network lab would like to hear this.
>> Ron Brost: This is a cell node, just messing around. So this is a
cell that was just passed around. And you can see that this is actually
the back side of the electrode. That's the copper foil. In fact, this
copper foil is from the lithium world. In order to put the active
material which you can see creeping around the outside there, the
yellowish material there that is primarily zinc oxide. It's a
conventional coating process and then a drying process and there's a
calendaring. I believe you do calendaring, don't you? Oh, you don't?
Really? It's simply a coating and a drying process.
>>:
Coating process?
>> Ron Brost: Coating, correct. So you have a slurry that is then
applied to your metal foil. It's dried through another ->>:
How do you do coating?
>>:
Tape casting.
By roll staff.
>> Ron Brost: Tape casting in this case. You can use the same
equipment, you can use exactly the same equipment as for the lithium.
The cathode is a little bit more complicated in that it goes on to using
nickel foam as a substrate, but very similar. There is no real issue
there. The membrane would be applied as a solid chunk of plastic. It's
like mylar. It's pretty tough, actually. That's applied and then
pressed between the electrodes.
>>: Bill Burger: At this point we are adding small amounts of liquid,
small amounts of electrolyte as we develop our membrane material.
>>:
It is a solid?
>> Bill Burger:
>>:
It will be a true solid at that point.
And what material?
Ceramic or what?
>>: No, it's a polymer. So it actually starts off and exposes a
polyphenylene oxide as a basis. So it's not a thorough polymer, which is
nice for cost and processing and handling and recycling and then, of
course, we graft on various groups. We graft groups for the ionic
contractivity and graft on groups to hold on to the water for the water
retention. There is a particular active groups, we put them there to
hold on to that so we get that great water absorption. Something I would
like to point out on the slide.
>>:
Are there any questions on the underlying ...
>> Ron Brost: This water activity that we're talking about here, this is
relative humidity. It's a good surrogate for it. It's not quite but
very close. This is 20 percent relative humidity, all the way up to 100
percent relative humidity. One thing that's remarkable is how flat our
latest generation is. So almost independent of the humidity. And
actually, in Montana it's very important because it's very dry there.
Not Silicon Valley dry, but it is quite dry.
So this is a very, very positive attribute. Really, what we would
consider as our baseline is a minimum performance of 10 to the negative
2. That's even per centimeter. So we are well above that. So hence
Adam's comments about how excited we were actually about the performance
and how well this membrane is performing.
>>:
When would you have a sample available for testing?
>> Ron Brost:
>>:
The cells or the membrane?
It is good?
>> Ron Brost:
No, not that one.
>> Bill Burger: No, this is one we just built the other day. So we are
right at the stage now to actually supply this kind of a cell for battery
for testing. Okay? Sorry.
So what I was saying is, we now with this particular cell are going to be
looking at supplying it to selected parties for evaluation. And we've
got a charger that we've designed to work with it. So it's easy to
actually play with. And the numbers on performance are were on the
tables, pretty good for a first sample.
>>: So you said it is showing up the others, the other slides which
order numbers you made over there?
>> Bill Burger:
>>:
Yes.
The energy seems pretty high.
>> Adam Weinstein:
Yes.
[multiple speakers] [inaudible]
>>:
It is pretty high.
>> Bill Burger: That is this battery. Yeah. And we are really getting
just started. This is the very first one that we've chosen to build
that's a complete battery that we could actually show and talk about.
Everything else has been test cells only. We haven't shown anything.
>>:
So this is Zinc Air technology?
>> Bill Burger:
box.
>>:
Yes, sir.
That's exactly the same as what's in this
Okay.
>> Bill Burger: And see how flexible it is? We are just putting it in
this package because we needed something. So we came up with this
design.
>>:
I got it.
Pretty interesting.
>>:
What is the voltage of that battery?
>> Bill Burger:
This is a 5-volt battery.
>>: So you said you are building in serial, right?
parallel.
>> Bill Burger: Yes, these cells are serial cell.
quarter, 2.3-volt? Excuse me, 1.3 volts, right.
>> Ron Brost:
>>:
>>:
About a half hour.
Four cells together, 3M.
Each of the cells is three half hours.
Four equals to three?
>> Ron Brost:
>>:
They are two and a
Right, just under.
Just about the same as 3M.
>> Ron Brost:
It is not in
Right.
I saw 1.45-volt.
Is that the intrinsic cell voltage?
>> Ron Brost: That would be under load. I think the surge is about 11
points 65. 1.45 would be the operating voltage and we can take it down
to what, .9-volts.
>>: In single cell is working or no?
into the package.
>>:
It is working.
You just put it
Yes.
>>: Why did you put into this big package here?
Test this cell?
Can we just test here?
>> Adam Weinstein: One issue that we do run into is we need some sort of
compression on there. If we don't have any sort of compression on the
cell and the way it's designed right now, we can have some zinc
migration, some zinc morphology that we don't want to have basically in
there. We need some sort of force on the electrode phase.
>>:
To hold it together?
>> Adam Weinstein: To hold it together, but we are trying to get around
that by having the solid polymer that is basically almost as an adhesive
between volt electrodes.
>> Ron Brost: The polymer is really remarkable material. Of course, it
transports the ions and holds on to water but it also, you can dissolve
it. You can paint it. You can turn it into a film, as we do. We can
use it as an adhesive. It really is a very robust and very useful
material. So with the adhesion, then we would not have to worry about
retaining the electrode version.
>> Bill Burger:
We would retain the flexibility.
>>:
That's great.
>>:
That's good stuff.
>> Something that might also be of interest to some of the folks around
the campus, in wearable especially.
>> Bill Burger: Yes, when we first started talking about this technology
year and a half ago, just to test the waters? And we were building it,
it was really a big interest.
>>: One of the problems you have with the lithium batteries when you
start putting them in series is the individual cells become out of
balance and you have to be careful how you charge them back up, because
you end up over voltaging one and under voltaging another. it sounds
like in order to get up to at least voltages that people are used to
working with, 5-volts, you have four in a series, too, do you have -- you
have four cells in a series, do you have to have a balance charger to
bring these things up? Or are they inherently balanced?
>> Ron Brost: Very good question, yes. It's a very good question. One
of the attributes of our cell is actually the oxygen is the active
material and that is freely available. So within the cell, it is not
necessary to balance because basically you charge up the zinc side. Very
quickly we are expecting, and this needs to be confirmed but we are just
building the battery packs now. But we are expecting that they will self
equalize. Again, you don't have to worry about upon and negative ratio
because positive is infinite, essentially.
>>: You're saying I can charge it up to a full charge and even if it's
out of balance it will fix itself?
>> Ron Brost: That's our expectation. Again, we are just starting with
the cell packs now. It has been single cell for most of our work so far.
>>: So are you saying that would happen after you take it off the
charger or during the charging process?
>> Ron Brost:
>>:
During the charging process.
Yeah, that makes sense.
>> Ron Brost: We would be holding it at constant voltage for the pack,
but we need to confirm that.
>>: For large battery packs do you normally need to monitor the internal
temperature?
>> Ron Brost:
Not so much.
>> Bill Burger: No, we haven't yet done any of that. We've never had
any sort of issue as far as anything heating up, any sort of melting on
let's say the polyethylene laminated layer or the PTFE or anything like
that so far. So nothing has indicated any hot spots within the cell.
But that's something that we can definitely adhere.
>>:
And for rapid charging I imagine you see compromises in the cell?
>> Ron Brost:
>>:
Yeah, yeah.
What can't be rapid charged?
>> Ron Brost:
Don't know.
>> Very good question.
>> Ron Brost:
Good question.
>> One of the things also, with this particular technology, because it is
an air battery you have basically an air cooling system built into the
design, but its nature. Just because of what it is.
>> Ron Brost:
Yeah.
>> Bill Burger: So our anticipation is that it will be a lot more user
friendly and not run hot, for example. Lithium will tend to do just
because you've got the air flowing through it.
>>:
Why you call it air?
Why do you call it air?
>> It's a marketing term, or what?
>> Ron Brost: No, it's an air breathing battery. So through these
importances here, it actually diffuses in. The air comes in, the will
oxygen is used up and the nitrogen that is not used up is diffused out
again.
>>:
This air is coming in and out, too?
>>: Yes, semi-permeable.
>> Ron Brost:
Yes, that white layer, that is non-standard?
>> Adam Weinstein:
Nonstandard PTFE.
>>: Which each cell provide how much capacity?
milliamp?
It is about 800
>> Adam Weinstein: That's probably a really good guess on that one. It
depends really on how thick I can get that anode, how consistent I can
get that anode. That's something we're working on right now is to get
that anode a little bit thicker, get it more energy density out of this
right now. That would, 800 to a 1 amp hour.
>>:
[indiscernible]
>> Adam Weinstein:
Yes.
>>: So design flexibility perspective is, can I have it thinner? I mean
the width is thinner? Longer? Or it is thickness? Which one increases
capacity? XYZ.
>> Adam Weinstein: Really, the whole, it's really volume. So any more
zinc really that we can get into our system as far as any grams of zinc
that we can get in there, we are going to have a higher capacity in
there. Now, you're right. If we are talking about flex interest, if we
make our zinc anode very, very thick, then that flexibility could be out
the window if we don't design it properly.
>>:
-
How do you seal this battery?
How do you seal it?
You don't have -
>> Adam Weinstein: It's heat sealed between the two layers, between the
polytetrafluoro ethylene and between the polyethylene layers. Those
layers are sealed with a ->>:
Welder?
>> Adam Weinstein:
>>:
Is it?
Yes.
No, it's just heat.
Heat sealer, thank you.
You don't worry about material contamination or anything?
>> Adam Weinstein:
No.
>>:
Interesting.
>>:
Interesting process.
>> Bill Burger: One of the interesting things they're hinting at, from a
manufacturability standpoint, the company at the beginning, Ron had a lot
of experience with lithium.
>>: Who?
you?
Who is the ideal candidate?
Who can produce this battery for
>> Bill Burger: I'll tell you the business model. The business model is
we are looking to have a relationship with Microsoft. Let's pick on you
guys.
And you have batteries in products you make. And or you have new designs
or new concepts of things you would like to do. Maybe this kind of
battery could open up avenues which you didn't heretofore be able to do
so nicely or so cheaply or so effectively. We would like to think of
that that way.
You also have manufacturers that you go to or want to have actually make
things. Like the batteries are custom design, custom built for the
application.
>>:
Right.
>> Bill Burger:
>>:
For example, the PC that you've got there.
Sure, sure.
>> Bill Burger: Well, our model is to actually work with you two guys,
you and the battery manufacturer. And because, as Ron said earlier, it's
very similar to making lithium batteries. It's simpler, a lot cheaper
with a lot less overhead to do it. You don't need to have weeks and
weeks of forming and stuff. The battery comes up without forming, for
example. There's a lot of differences that make it easier and cheaper.
But our model would be because of volumes to go and work with that
particular company. I call it the three-legged stool. There's us as the
design team. It's you guys as the ultimate customer and then there's the
battery manufacturer. The three of us work together to create a product.
And after you do that a few times it becomes real easy. Then we don't
have to do so much anymore.
>>:
I see.
You like licensing the royalty fees.
>> Bill Burger: Yeah, yeah. I mean really, you're talking about cell
phones and products in that category. It is tens of millions of them of
a particular design sometimes, right? So the numbers are huge. We are
not in a position to try to do a better job than a large, established
battery company wherever they might be. We have had some conversations
with some of those people out of China in particular.
>>:
Got it, okay.
Cool.
>> Ron Brost: And catalyst is really interesting because that can be
manufactured at BASF or some other chemical company in very large
quantities.
>>:
Yes, yes.
>> Ron Brost: That gives us a certain amount of control over the
production that we may not formerly have. By the way, the cost of the
material catalyst and the software in between is [indiscernible] kilogram
is fairly inexpensive for catalyst and we don't use [indiscernible].
>>: Also, by the time you have the recipe, specify the recipe to those
chemistry companies.
>> Ron Brost: We have been refining that over the last few years.
There's both the stoichiometry that is specific and also the processing.
It's truly a nano-material. You wanted to mention something, Adam?
>> Adam Weinstein: Really, we can have a clustering of particles that
can be around 250 nanometers but we can have individuals that can be
anywhere 50 nanometers.
>> Ron Brost:
We can produce that by the kilogram, various volumes.
>>: Okay. Can you talk more about how this would apply in different
form factors and you talked about these very large capacity batteries.
How does that work with it being an air breathing battery and needing the
preparation, everything like that to get the oxygen in and out? I mean,
how does that work in something like car battery or something that has a
massive amount of storage?
>> Ron Brost: It's actually now just a fuel cell, how you feed air into
a fuel cell. You can do it passively, into very small cells. You start
getting into larger cells, you're talking in tens, hundreds of amp hours,
now you need to force the air. It could be a simple fan. It could be a
conduction pressure system. It depends on your application?
Tesla designs we are playing with, at that point you are sucking a lot of
air and [indiscernible]forcing it. That would be a design application of
some kind.
>> Bill Burger: Another point to that, what you are looking at here is a
code cell type design, prismatic kind of design. We can also make it
into a cell like a 32-650 or 18-650 like Tesla uses. It rolls up real
nice.
In fact, some of the early examples we made were exactly like that. I
didn't bring one with me today.
>>:
-- cells.
>>: Would it presumably not need as many -- for example, I know Tesla,
they need a whole bunch of systems because the temperature is massive.
>> Bill Burger:
>>:
That's the inherent difference here.
All right.
>> Bill Burger: First of all, it is not going to need the kind of
supervision, I call it, that the lithium battery needs. Secondly, as far
as cooling, they have a liquid cooling system in that design in case you
don't know that.
>>:
Yes, yes.
>> Bill Burger: We think a natural air flow system would be more than
adequate because it does two things. One, it cools the battery if it
needs any cooling. Two, it provides the air needed. As Ron said it
could even be pressurized if you had a high performance environment that
you needed a lot of air, because you've got more of a power battery
application. So there's so many -- it's a real fascinate thing. It does
require or does give the opportunity for some engineering to be done, but
it's simpler engineering and frankly a lot more fun engineering in my
opinion than trying to deal with the issues that lithium has.
>>: Sure. Do you have any idea what sort of time frame you would be
looking at for producing these higher capacity packs?
>> Bill Burger: Well, as we got to this point to come here today we were
very happy to be able to be at a stage where we could do what we showed
you today.
>>:
Right.
>> Bill Burger: So that's telling you we've got something. It is not
theoretical anymore. It is not even engineering grade work. It is
actually a product that could go out the door now. If you have 100
recharges or 200 recharges on a battery, a lot of applications. Not
necessarily consumer with would be super happy, so from that perspective
we've got a battery that we could sell because a heck of a lot better
than a one charge battery and super cheap. It meets all the criteria
that we talked about. On the other hand we would be really excited to
work with a good company that wants this kind of technology and work on a
particular application. We are actually developing the battery with
whatever financial or other supports needed to get to the point where
it's production ready. I'll tell on budgeting money next year, by the
end of next year we are going to make money off of this battery. That's
our intent. So it is not years away. It's less than a year away, or a
year and a quarter away, something like that, where we think we can
actually have a product that could go into some applications.
>>: Backing up a little bit, I'm just curious. How much, what volume of
air are we talking about to produce a kilowatt hour? Or some number?
>>:
Oh, small.
[laughter]
>>: Well, I am each just curious. Something in your pocket, breathing
is limited. There's a bunch of smaller clericals with breathability of a
battery. I'm curious, how much power are we talking about.
>> Ron Brost: Consider our typical discharge would be about a zero to
five rate, five-hour rate. In that five hours how much are you
diffusing? Quite a bit. And it's not that we would take one of our
cells and seal it in a plastic bag and it would stop operating. There's
enough residual oxygen in there to process it. You will have at least
minutes of operation even in a starved environment.
>>:
What volumes are we talking about?
[laughter]
>> Bill Burger: Well, I kind of have the same idea. Right now, my
camera. I open the chamber, pop a battery in and close it. It is not
hermetically sealed, but I imagine that the air that's consumed, the will
only that is consumed gets pretty stale in there. There's no inherent
refreshing. So is that going to be a problem?
>> Ron Brost: At any rate, we'll try to come up with an answer and run
up some numbers.
>>: I may not. I'm completely, I doubt that you can engineer the
solutions, but I'm curious. Are we talking about a cubic meter of air
for. [laughter]
>> Ron Brost: Say 1 volt, try to use numbers. 1 volt of oxygen should
be 23 liters. That will provide four times 26, 100 ... 100 amp hours
electrons. So with that in mind, that's a lot of energy.
>>:
23 liters is about right.
>> Ron Brost:
[multiple speakers] [inaudible]
That's oxygen, air versus --
>>:
I thought that was right.
>>:
Oh, that's oxygen.
>> Ron Brost: Just running the numbers. It is not a lot of air. And
mass diffusion usually takes care of it. That's not a concern here. At
altitude, yes, you may have to supercharge it if you're at higher
altitudes. But you always get performance.
The other extreme is the zinc oxygen battery. It is not air, but oxygen.
And we have been doing extensive work on that. Some very interesting
experiments with straight up oxygen and our numbers go way, way up.
Because now instead of 21 percent you have 100 percent because we want to
make it as small and as sealed as possible. We put it under pressure.
So it goes kind of crazy there, in a good way.
>>:
So when you are recharging, can you recover that oxygen?
>> Ron Brost:
>>:
Oh, yes.
You have a closed loop?
>> Ron Brost: It is, exactly. If you had enough volume around your
battery, yeah, you could run it forever.
>>:
So you could put your pouch inside a pouch of oxygen?
>> Ron Brost:
Right effectively, because the function is you really --
[multiple speakers] [indiscernible]
>> Ron Brost: Your specific energy.
>>: The power use, for solar energy storage or something, because it has
some potential. Ron.
>>:
So is it possible we can get some working sample for testing?
>>:
It comes from the product side.
So that's really important to them.
>>: We can work out, we have to work out the battery technologies is
basically to see, to touch, to test, to believe.
>>: Right. The fact that you have a fairly steep slope, congratulations
getting your credentials higher and higher. It also indicates you're on
the front end of the technology. But he's right. If they don't have
anything to see, touch, feel, it's kind of like let us know when you get
to where you think you should be.
>> Bill Burger: Part of the reason for coming today is to find if there
was some opportunities, like you just described.
>>: Actually, we appreciate Mike to make the introduction, this
introduction meeting here because all I learned about is about in planes
in California which is a few years away before they can present this
stuff. But they are still standing than around in zinc, zinc is not even
called zinc you presented today, but Zinc Air seems to be much more
interesting to be able to fill in some of our stuff which we are looking
for. The energy densities and capacity and form factor seems pretty good
and especially it's safe. So we are looking for something which is
alternative to the mainstream D.C. Because it looks like to me the next
five to ten years still lithium, nothing else. But at least more is
coming out.
>>:
And the battery, it's about 4 percent a year.
>>:
We need something different.
>>:
That's why we are here.
We need something.
>>: You are right, a lot of models you forget about, that's exactly what
we try to do as well. We are not blocking you. We hope you can give us
two years something ahead of anybody and I will present in business
development, too.
>>:
Not my skill set. [laughter]
>>: So anyway, we certainly interested about the stuff you are
presenting today from the product side.
>> Bill Burger: Great, great. Personally, let's exchange business cards
and have a conversation about it.
>>: You will be able to reach out to the whole hardware team, every
single Microsoft hardware devices, I represent them from the battery
team.
>>:
Great.
We got the right guy![laughter]
>>:
I buy.
>>:
But he has to be convinced.
>> Bill Burger: I have to tell you, I actually took one of your products
apart about two years ago. We looked at the battery and we were
thinking, dreaming about the day that we would be able to put a battery
into one of your products and show it off. Well, we did this instead.
It's a start.
>>:
Good, good.
Quite interesting.
>>: I have a different question. So as I understand it, Zinc Air was a
very stable voltage and a very useful life. but I'm curious, you have
not slowed it at all?
>> Ron Brost: Well, at very low rates and we are talking about days for
a hearing aid. So the current density, sure, it's going to be very, very
flat.
>>:
Flatter than lithium then?
[indiscernible]
>> Ron Brost: Lithium is pretty flat, but for different reasons.
talking least mass, the stiff, and nothing ... [indiscernible]
>>:
We are
Clearly, the flatter that rate, the better it is to build around.
>> Ron Brost: It's a diffusion, actually.
fast reaction.
I think it's actually a very
>>: So forcing it could, like a forced air system could provide an even
more stable environment?
>> Ron Brost: Yes, it will increase the diffusion coefficient and
[indiscernible] on the electrode side. A lot of times designing around
porosity in terms wetting agents, I guess [indiscernible] agents. Part
of that electrode. And there are plug-in permutations, depending on the
applications, you get a five-hour battery, a two-hour battery, or a fiveday battery.
>>:
It's all within the most knowledgeable
[indiscernible].
>> Bill Burger: Another one is the advances in diesel pumps and managed
pumps. You can build something like that to be pretty efficient.
>> Ron Brost: Sure. It does not take a lot of air. We're just sitting
around having a conversation. For example, Bill was mentioning a spiral
line cell, which was one of our first ideas and concepts.
We built itself around that. It's very expensive to get those electrodes
for that log, rolled them up and we went to the smaller cells just to get
through, but one of the possibilities in fact we went to the three
[indiscernible], for about 80 of these cells and you know, the manifolded
the air through it and out again and that was at least through our
calculations. We don't need these cells. We didn't have the resources
for that. But at least our understanding of the fluoro rates and
consumption of oxygen literally wasn't that bad, but enough to keep both
those cells voltage up around the [indiscernible].
It's really modest. Another way to look at it is the internal combustion
engine where you're pushing hundreds of horsepower. It really isn't that
much air. You consider our system to be more efficient. But still it
does not require a lot of oxygen.
>>:
Thank you.
[applause]
>>:
Thank you.