Developer Touts High-Performance Battery Electrolyte

Batteries could cost less and be as much as 10 times as powerful as today's lithium-ion batteries if they used ionic liquid electrolytes, according to Boulder Ionics Corp., an 18-month-old startup company in Arvada, Colo.

Founder Jerry Martin tells MIT's Technology Review that the "Iolite" family of proprietary salt electrolytes his company is developing remains molten at a relatively low 100 C, doesn't evaporate, isn't flammable and can operate at high temperatures and voltages.

Martin says Iolite ionic liquids could double the energy storage limits of ultracapacitors by simply replacing the material previously used. And because the electrolyte does not evaporate, it could be used in rechargeable metal-air batteries.

Boulder Ionics is developing technology to produce ultra-high-purity ionic liquids in a continuous process that makes material in six minutes. Martin tells Technology Review that conventional batch processing takes three days to do the same. He says the equipment to produce enough ionic liquid for the batteries of 100,000 electric cars could fit into a space the size of a living room.

Martin tells the magazine his company has demonstrated the major pieces of hardware needed to make the electrolyte. But he concedes that scaling up the continuous production system may be difficult.