Oxis Energy and Lithium Sulfur Batteries

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Taking one last look at 2011’s fifth annual Electric Aircraft Symposium, your editor regrets the fits and starts in its coverage. Next week, we’ll begin looking at the extraordinary presentations from this year’s gathering. Huw W. Hampton-Jones from Oxis Energy, a British company developing a Lithium Sulfur battery, claimed his firm’s “technology is based around the use of Lithium Sulphur to produce batteries which are superior in terms of energy, weight, cycle life, costs, ageing and safety.” Lithium sulfur is well known in military circles for providing primary (non-rechargeable) power to field operations.  Perlan I flew with SAFT 5590 primary batteries, partly because of their superior energy density compared to lithium-ion cells, and partly because of their greater resistance to thermal runaways, or self-igniting fires sometimes seen in lithium batteries. Weight was a significant concern on this high-altitude craft. When working on the fringes of the battery selection effort for Perlan II, headed by Einar Enevoldson, James Murray and Eric …