How To Make an Aluminum Air Battery

what's up guys i'm the mechanic on road today we're going to be talking about aluminum air batteries now this has been a fun project that i've had for a number of years now and i found that while there's some information on youtube it's generally hard to come across so i figured that i could throw in my experience with them now keep in mind it's definitely something that i didn't pick up while fixing cars i did this purely for the interest of it so take everything i say with a grain of salt because i'm certainly no expert and if it's not obvious electricity can be dangerous if not handled properly so definitely use this information at your own risk and don't try this at home i'm not going to get a whole lot into the science behind the name of battery because if you're watching this video chances are you've already read the wikipedia page on it and that's all i've really done let's build one what exactly do i need to have to do that first i need a source of carbon for the cathode i chose to go with powdered graphite i'm going to use some paint to mix with the graphite powder so it doesn't get everywhere and i can easily apply it next i need some aluminum for the anode i went with some good old-fashioned aluminum foil some salt water to act as my electrolyte some copper mesh to conduct everything some parchment paper to act as a separator between the battery cells some scissors to cut everything up with a deck of playing cards to keep everything in uniform shape i used some paper towel to hold the electrolyte and the cathode and of course this would not be a proper project without duct tape to hold everything together if you missed any of that don't worry i've got a list down in the description also not all these materials need to be exact other people have made aluminum air batteries in very different ways but i picked most of these materials because they complement the design that i've come up with all right we've got our supplies now how do we put it all together easy put it into a pile and snap your fingers like this okay maybe it's a little tougher than that let's start with the cathode this battery has 10 cells so i'm going to take my paper towel and i'm going to come out with 10 pieces using my playing card as a template i want these pieces of paper towel to be slightly smaller than the playing card next i'm going to get my copper mesh and i'm going to cut out 11 strips i'm gonna make them about a quarter inch to a half inch wide and about one inch longer than the playing card i'm going to attach the strips to the paper towel with a couple clips of duct tape making sure to leave about an inch of it overhanging and remember we've made 11 strips so set aside that 11th strip for later all right let's get some graphite onto these i'm going to mix my paint my graphite together i don't have specific proportions for this i just keep on adding graphite to the paint until i get a smooth pasty mixture next i apply it onto my pieces of paper towel on the same side as my copper strip with the paint on i now need to let these dry while the capitals are drying i'm going to prepare my atoms i'm going to take 10 of my playing cards and again i'll use one of them as my template and i'm going to cut out 10 pieces of aluminum again i want these pieces of aluminum to be slightly smaller than the playing card with the exception of one card which i'm going to make double the length of the playing card this step is really critical because if the aluminum pieces are larger than the card they could arc out to other cells and that's going to short-circuit the battery which after spending all this time on is definitely something you don't want to do believe me next i'm going to attach my aluminum foil to my cars using you guessed it duct tape i'm going to go around the rim of the card with duct tape and this is also going to help to stop the battery from shorting itself out when all the duct paint has been applied to the edge of the card trim the excess duct tape off so the size of the card is not altered for the double-sized piece of aluminum foil wrap it around the card like so then take that last strip of copper mesh that you saved from earlier and attach it with duct tape make sure that the copper strip is touching both sides of the card like so because when you trim the duct tape remember chances are you could have cut off the edge of that aluminum foil and so there's actually two separate pieces now i also need to take my parchment paper i'm going to cut out 10 squares again the same size as my playing cards this parchment paper is going to act as a spacer between each of the battery cells again to help prevent shorting out next i'm going to move on to my electrolyte it's super simple just salt and water i like to boil my water first i just keep on adding salt until it stops dissolving this way i get as much salt into my electrolyte as possible and that is it we got all the components made now we just need to put everything together first i'm going to grab my bottom animal that's the one with the copper strip on it next i'm going to grab one of my cathodes and i'm going to put some electrolyte on then i'm going to lay it on top of the cathode like so at this point i'm going to check the voltage just to make sure everything's working properly look at that we're almost at 0.6 volts oh there we go past 0.6 volts that's good let's get the next one i'm going to grab one of my parchment paper pieces and we're going to put that on top and that is going to help isolate the cells next i take another one of my anodes lay it on top and i bend the copper strip over like so then i take another cathode and i put some more electrolyte on [Music] and this time i put my cathode the copper strip in the opposite direction and then before we go ahead we're going to check the voltage again and we should be reading double what it was previously [Music] perfect 1.2 volts now basically i just have to repeat these steps until i've assembled all 10 cells all right we're done let's see what the final voltage reading is [Music] so as you can see we got 5.5 so we'll say 5.5 volts we check that the voltage is good now we just need to hold this all together i'm going to wrap this cell with duct tape [Music] now i don't want to do this too tightly because air still does need to get between these but we just want it so that everything's held together [Music] there we go more or less good to go so here we have our finished product let's see what power this is putting out [Music] voltage is just over 5 volts let's see what the mill amps are like [Music] [Music] all right so it jumps up to about 10 and it drops down still not terrible so i've got this light here with the batteries taken out of it let's see if we can get this power with our new battery [Music] so [Music] oh we got a little bit [Music] novel up a little bit this one's a little brighter and just to prove that this is the actual battery [Music] as soon as they take it off it does boom a little bit on the dim side but hey that's not too bad for some aluminum and salt water i hope you enjoyed this and learned something new today if you did like this video be sure to smash that like button drop a comment and subscribe if you really really did like this video you can support this channel by following the link in the description and buy me a copy that's all i got for today mgr out

Channel: Mechanic Gone Rogue

Views: 302,966

Keywords: battery, metal, aluminum, metal air battery, aluminum air battery, DIY, oxygen, air

Id: DdFqTQKjICI

Length: 10min 23sec (623 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 02 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/HedwigQuan]

In fact it can give you some voltage, but the current are very littttttttttttttttle.

[u/YeeteringYeeterYeet]

I have seen this guy many times on youtube and he doesent fake stuff on his chanel, just makes videos about things that interest him. So I dont think its fake altho I cant say for 100% because maybe he just decided to start making videos on fake ideas. But as one comment before mine suggest it most likely is real but gives a tiny amount of energy.