How it works
Al-CO2 & Al-Ion cells with aluminum’s electrochemistry for superior energy storage
In Al-CO2 cells, aluminum reacts with CO2 to form aluminum oxalate, which enables high specific capacity and efficient recharging. This can be realized in a sealed architecture where the CO2 remains in the battery and cycles between the charged and discharged forms. It can also be operated with an open cathode design where CO2 is provided from a CO2 source (e. g. a Direct Air Capture installation, or a cement factory) during discharge and gets released as a stream of pure CO2 upon recharge. In this way the energy storage installation doubles as a CO2 capture and concentrator facility.
Benefits of aluminum battery chemistry
Cost-effectiveness
Aluminum is abundant and inexpensive, significantly reducing the material cost of batteries.
Lower battery costs
Substantially lower material cost and manufacturing is the same or lower than competitive chemistries at the same scale.
Safety
Aluminum batteries are inherently immune to thermal runaway, providing safer energy storage solutions.
Wide operating temperature range
Aluminum batteries perform efficiently across a broader range of temperatures compared to lithium batteries.
Expand addressable markets
Better performance, much wider operating temperature and inherent immunity to thermal runaway.
Eliminate supply chain risk
Use of wildly abundant materials and no concentrated in any one country.
Aluminum Flow battery advantages for grid storage
Flow Aluminum results are based on latest lab test and/or current projection. Li-Ion represents the currently available technology. Vanadium and Zinc-Bromine reflect publicly available data from existing competitors or analysts.
| Features | AI-CO2 Flow | Vanadium Flow | Zinc-Brom Flow | Li-Ion NCA | Li-Ion LFP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Max discharge time | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Long cycle life | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Wide operating temperature | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Safety | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Levelized cost | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Low material cost | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| No supply chain risk | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ |
Why aluminum batteries are now possible
Rechargeability
- Before: Aluminum battery designs were not rechargeable.
- Breakthrough: We adapted pioneering work at MIT and University of New Mexico and engineered it into an efficiently rechargeable, inherently safe AI-CO2 battery format.
Cathode specific capacity
- Before: Aluminum cathode designs had limited specific capacity which limited the total discharge capacity of a given form factor.
- Breakthrough: Aluminum Oxalate in an aluminum-CO2 compound delivers high specific capacity of 505 mAh/g in the cathode to match the lightweight aluminum anode (2,980 mAh/g)
Case studies
Innovations and Future Plans
At Flow Aluminum, we’re not just imagining the future of energy storage—we’re actively creating it. Our groundbreaking Aluminum-CO2 battery technology is designed to meet the evolving demands of a world increasingly powered by renewable energy. Here’s how we’re driving innovation and what we have planned for the future.
