American Lithium Energy (ALE), a company which supplies batteries to the US military, has developed a new technology to improve safety in rechargeable lithium-ion batteries.
The equipment is derived from a US Department of Energy project to provide high-energy electric vehicle batteries that do not burn in a crash and has been named “Safe Core”.
Safe Code has currently been applied to wearable “bullet safe” batteries for soldiers and used in ALE’s own lithium-ion products.
Jiang Fan, the president and co-founder of ALE, explained the principle of Safe Core – “What we’ve done is to put a fuse inside the cell, so when something is wrong inside, our fuse will kick in and break the current and then the battery will be safe.”
ALE has launched a new firm called Amionx to commercialise Safe Core and expects to license the technology for use in lithium-ion batteries globally.
Fan said, “It is not a lab project. It is at real scale, and it has been validated by the U.S. military.”
ALE claimed its technology could be rolled out in existing battery production lines in six months without a rapid increase of costs in aspects of equipment and materials.
Brian Morin, president of Dreamweaver International (lithium-ion batteries separator manufacturer) has commented on Safe Core in an American newspaper, The Detroit News, “Whether the implementation works or not I don’t know. But the concept works.”
