3D Printed Aluminum Air Battery

hi there i'm the mechanic on rogue i'm back again with another video about my ongoing aluminum air battery experiments today i'm going to be focusing on the latest design that i've come up with some of the cool features of this design is that the battery is completely 3d printed and in addition to that it can also very quickly be switched over to an iron air battery let's get into it so here's the model in tinkercad now my goal for this battery was to try to make something that's easier to make maintain and scale the idea that i'm going for here is to use a flooded cell that is sealed with graphite sheet on the side and as a top mounted removable anode my active materials are nails aluminum foil graphite sheet and salt water i also use some copper tape silicone and electrical connectors in its construction in terms of making it obviously it needs to be printed first and then some assembly is required for anybody interested i've got links in the description with all the cad files and supplies that i used putting it together is straightforward the hardest part is getting the graphite sheet to seal with silicon let's do that first the components we are using for this part is four of the screws the battery body and the bracket i will also be using an automotive grade silicone to seal everything the goal is to have a completely watertight seal between the graphite and the battery body as you can see on the side wall of the battery there is an indented grid pattern going through it this is designed to accept a 50 by 100 millimeter cutout of one millimeter graphite sheet the indent is only 0.8 millimeters deep and the bracket has a two millimeter overhang onto the graphite so it is intended to squish the graphite into place to help with sealing using the silicone i went along all the edges of both the indent and the battery body as well as the graphite sheet itself i used my finger to smooth everything out and make sure there were no gaps [Music] with the silicone applied i put my graphite sheet in place and then installed the bracket over top of it securing it in place with the screws [Music] as a finishing touch i wiped away a little of the excess silicone that had squeezed out during installation now i'll wait for the silicone to cure [Music] while i wait i'm going to install the current collector and connector for the cathode the components used for this is the cathode terminal retainer one more screw some copper tape and one female connector with the copper tape i'm going to run it from the top left hand corner of the battery body and onto the graphite sheet [Music] next i'm going to take the retainer and place the connector into the recess located on its underside then very carefully i'm going to install both on the top left hand corner of the battery using the screw to hold them in place like so [Music] the idea is that the connector will contact the copper tape underneath it to provide a good enough connection for current flow i also ran some along the graphite sheet just to try to get extra access to all corners of the sheet this will be the current collector [Music] let's get back to that battery body once the silicone is cured i did a leak test to make sure there was no issues i just used some water and let it sit for a couple hours if there is no moisture on the outside of the battery i should be good to move forward [Music] next onto the anodes the components used here are the anode bodies the aluminum anode bracket one screw and the anode terminal retainers the idea is for the active material to be loaded onto the anode bodies and then connected to electrical terminals using copper tape not much work is needed to prepare the materials before installation for the aluminum foil i took a large sheet approximately 24 by 12 inches and folded it to size for the nails i shortened them and sanded the rust off the top of the heads to ensure good contact with the copper tape now they're ready for the nails it's straightforward drop them in and copper tape on top [Music] for the aluminum there's one extra set drop the aluminum in secure it in place with the bracket and then copper tape on top as a side note i forgot to do that last step until the anode was installed into the battery body [Music] the last thing is to install my connector using the anode terminal retainer just like the cathode side i fit the connector on the underside of the retainer and install it on the left side of the anode unlike the cathode side this one uses an interference fit to stay in place and doesn't require any screws it seemed to me like the fit on the aluminum anode was a little loose so i used some masking tape to secure it as well now that everything is assembled i can put the pieces together and see how this battery performs i should mention during early testing i was overly ambitious and tried to use my jewel thief from my last video to charge a phone with this battery that was a little too much for it and i ended up breaking something because it doesn't work anymore so for testing today i'll just be using this one kilo ohm resistor as my load and hopefully by the time my next video comes around i'll be able to have my dual fees up and running again i will still be using the battery test box and usb charger seen in that last video for the aluminum anode voltage is 1 volt which is good for a single cell using salt water amperage output is at 0.7 milliamps which is okay i guess personally i was hoping for it to be higher but i guess i can't have everything i gave it a 30 minute load test and rechecked my readings voltage was still around 0.6 volts and i was still getting 0.5 milliamps which i was quite happy about [Music] this cell is also rechargeable although it bubbles like crazy that's not a surprise being as this is salt water and it's being charged with 5 volts electrolysis is a thing i'm guessing that the bubbles are a mixture of chlorine and hydrogen but i couldn't stay for sure either way i made sure i had good ventilation when i was doing this i didn't have a problem with it overheating like last time i'm guessing this is because it's so much larger than my previous test cell i charged it for five minutes and found that pushed the voltage up to around 2.5 volts plus i was getting 2.2 milliamps out of it now that's more like it running the same load test it came back with 1.3 volts and 1.1 milliamps and after load testing it further i found that it still takes a couple hours for the battery to go back to 0.5 milliamps and 0.5 volts interesting enough though it continued at 0.5 milliamps for an additional 12 hours before dropping off not that 0.5 milliamps is enough to really do anything with but that's still cool let's see how the iron anode fares now this is my first time experimenting with iron air batteries so i'm interested to see how this performs voltage is lower at 0.43 volts and amperage is steady at 0.5 milliamps the battery does seem to recharge as well but because the readings were so low i wasn't able to test it extensively i'll have to investigate what i can do to optimize this for more power in the future [Music] so there you have it my first 3d printed battery but certainly not my last i've already started to think of improvements since i started working on this design like for instance trying to fit another piece of graphite sheet on the back of the battery body or trying to configure it for multiple cells so i can boost the voltage a little bit more and also not to mention i got to figure out a way to boost the performance of the iron air anode and there's also been some amazing suggestions in my previous videos comments about switching to magnesium or zinc based battery chemistries oh boy there's a lot to do in so little time but that's probably a good problem to have anyways that's all i got for now thank you for watching you guys are the best mgr signing out [Music] you

Channel: Mechanic Gone Rogue

Views: 3,020

Keywords: DIY, Aluminum air battery, metal air battery, 3D Printer

Id: x_23GzswdjI

Length: 9min 16sec (556 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 07 2022