Alva Energy — Changing The Way We Use Energy
Moving Towards A More Sustainable and Efficient Future.
At Alva Energy, we’re developing battery technology using nanowires and new solid-state technology capable of powering massive airplanes and rockets. By increasing the pace of the transition to clean energy, Alva hopes to be at the forefront of renewable energy technology.
Current Methods
If you are like many people, flying may be a large portion of your carbon footprint. The aviation industry accounts for 11 percent of all transportation-related emissions in the United States and in 2018, 918 million tonnes of CO2 were produced.
According to some estimates, about 20,000 planes are in use around the world serving three billion passengers annually. By the time we roll into 2040, more than 50,000 planes could be in service generating up to 2 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions a year.
Rockets — although not talked about much — are detrimental to the environment. On top of greenhouse gas emissions, rockets tend to emit reactive gases that cause ozone molecules to break apart. They further discharge microscopic particles of soot and aluminum oxide, which increase the rate at which those gases wreak havoc.
A New Era Of Electrical Propulsion
Electrical propulsion offers many benefits compared to chemical propulsion. Among those is the very quiet operation of such engines. Additional advantages include a very simple and reliable start and operation of the motor. The motor itself is a very reliable device that requires minimal maintenance when compared to a piston engine. Another important consideration is the environmental benefits and pilot/passenger safety; since no fossil fuels are consumed there is no chance of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Solid-State Batteries
There are a lot of different kinds of batteries, but they all function based on the same underlying concept. Essentially a battery is a device that is able to store electrical energy in the form of chemical energy and convert that energy into electricity when needed. There are three main components of a battery: two terminals made of different chemicals (typically metals), the anode and the cathode, and the electrolyte, which separates these terminals. The electrolyte is a chemical medium that allows the flow of electrical charge between the cathode and anode.
A solid-state battery is a battery technology that uses solid electrodes and a solid electrolyte, instead of the liquid or polymer gel electrolytes found in lithium-ion or lithium polymer batteries. Solid-state batteries are better than Lithium-based batteries in all aspects — Better energy density, lighter, and safer.
Graphene Batteries
Just like lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries, graphene cells use two conductive plates coated in a porous material and immersed in an electrolyte solution. But while their internal make-up is quite similar, the two batteries offer different characteristics.
Graphene offers higher electrical conductivity than lithium-ion batteries. This allows for faster-charging cells that can deliver very high currents as well. This is particularly useful for aircraft batteries. High heat conductance also means that batteries run cooler, prolonging their lifespan even in cramped cases like a smartphone.
Lithium-ion stores up to 120–180Wh of energy per kilogram while graphene can store up to 1,000Wh per kilogram. In the next few years, we plan to increase the energy density to 10 000Wh/kg.
Challenges
Having a lot of energy and having a lot of power are two different things. For example, you can have a fuel cell that has high capacity but can’t generate enough power quickly, whereas, a supercapacitor can release massive amounts of power for only a few seconds. This creates a trade-off barrier making it difficult to power rockets and aircraft.
Moreover, batteries are massive and heavy. While fossil fuel delivers an NCV(net calorific value) of 12,000Wh/kg, a manganese type lithium-ion battery offers 120Wh/kg, which is one hundred times less per weight. Even at a low efficiency of 25 percent, the internal combustion engine outperforms the best battery in terms of the energy-to-weight ratio. This poses many obstacles in the way of creating electrical engines for long-duration flights and makes it almost impossible to implement on rocket ships.
Timeline
Implementing electrical motors into commercially used airplanes and rockets is no easy task. Here’s our plan for the coming years:
As of 2020, we can create electrical engines for light aircraft with single-engines such as the Cirrus SR22 and a few multi-engine aircrafts for cargo delivery. With current lithium batteries, a flight can last up to 160 km — sufficient for short-haul flights.
By 2022, Alva aims to develop solid-state batteries utilizing a boron nitride nano-coating which can produce batteries that offer up to 10 times the charge capacity of graphite-based Li-ion batteries. In addition, ceramic electrolytes often used in solid-state battery design are non-flammable, reducing safety concerns.
In the next 5 years, Alva will develop and implement gold nanowire batteries. Gold nanowires hold great potential with high capacity and low degradation over time. According to researchers at the University of California Irvine, gold nanowire batteries result is no loss of power even when recharged 200,000 times over three months. Alva Energy will continue developing graphene batteries that could offer energy close to that of fuel engines. Currently, graphene batteries offer 1000Wh/kg compared to the industry-leading performance of 12000Wh/kg for fossil fuels. As technology advances graphene batteries have the capability of producing more energy.
In the next 10 years, Alva Energy will implement its technology into spacecraft and rockets. Developing a new electric propulsion method to re-invent the way rockets work.
Our website: alvaenergy.ca
