Lithium ion batteries have been around since 1991. Over the years vendors such as Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic have tinkered with the anode, cathode, and separator chemistry and structure to make them the high-energy storage devices they are today. You could make a good argument that they are almost as significant an enabler of today’s consumer electronics as the microprocessor. Try to imagine a cell phone, or an iPod, or a blue-tooth –enabled headset without energy-dense, rechargeable lithium ion batteries.

I had the chance at CES yesterday to talk with Ross Dueber, founder of the silver-zinc battery company ZPower which is a potential rival to lithium ion for energy-dense storage. Intel’s venture capital arm, Intel Capital, thinks enough of the technology’s future that it’s financially backing ZPower, a significant vot of confidence. Dueber was on the CES panel, Top 10 Technologies You’ve Never Heard Of.”

Silver-zinc chemistry has three significant advantages over lithium ion, according to Dueber: It’s inherently safer because it lacks the volatile cathode makeup that leads to a thermal runaway, it’s very green since both silver and zinc are non-toxic as well as recyclable, and, perhaps most importantly, it packs 40% more energy into a battery pack than lithium ion can.

Silver-zinc has a long history that pre-dates ZPower. It was used by the military and aerospace where programs could afford to pay for the higher-priced silver in exchange for increased energy density. However, it was not rechargeable. ZPower’s contribution has been to tweak with the silver-zinc formulation to make the batteries rechargeable. But now that ZPower has the chemistry down pat, there’s still the two-pronged challenge of developing a widespread manufacturing base (think of the number of Chinese lithium ion battery vendors) as well as introducing design engineers to silver-zinc’s different charge-discharge profile.

[Note: Check the PowerSource post with the comment from Gannon & Scott agreeing with the recyclability of the technology.]