Battery Metals

Critical minerals, including rare earth elements, are used to power devices like smartphones and computers and are essential to our nation’s economy and national security. Penn State’s Center for Critical Minerals has developed a new purification process that extracts mixed rare earth oxides from acid mine drainage and associated sludges at purities of 88.5% Critical minerals (CMs), including the 17 rare earth elements (REEs), are used in many common household products like smartphones and computers, and in many commercial products such as electric vehicles, batteries and solar panels. Demand for them has skyrocketed, and they are classified as critical because they have high economic importance, high supply risk, and their absence would have significant consequences on the economic and national security of the United States. Acid mine drainage (AMD) and associated solids and precipitates resulting from AMD treatment have been found to be viable sources of multiple CMs, including REEs, aluminum, cobalt and manganese. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has funded efforts to demonstrate both the technical feasibility and economic viability of extracting, separating and recovering REEs and CMs from U.S. coal and coal by-product sources, with the goal of achieving mixed rare earth oxides from coal-based resources with minimum purities of 75%. “We have been working to develop strategies to recover CMs and REEs from these waste streams and have achieved a milestone of 88.5% grade REEs,” said Sarma Pisupati, professor of energy and mineral engineering and director of the Center for Critical Minerals at Penn State. “The current target set by the DOE for achieving mixed rare earth oxides is 75% and we have surpassed that target.” Acid mine drainage and associated sludge material representing the Lower Kittanning coal bed were obtained from three treatment sites operated by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and were characterized and evaluated for recovery of multiple critical minerals. A novel purification process, based on a previously developed three-stage AMD treatment process, was designed to recover high-grade aluminum, REE, cobalt and manganese products from the sludge materials through aqueous processing with multiple cleaner steps and precise control of the process parameters, according to the researchers. “The extraction of REEs and CMs directly from AMD eliminates the need for the dissolution of sludge and associated costs of reagents and processing, resulting in more sustainable waste disposal practices with low cost,” said Mohammad Rezaee, assistant professor of mining engineering at Penn State and co-author on the study. “We have demonstrated that we are able to turn these waste streams, which have been of environmental concerns for decades, into valuable resources, so this is a win-win for the environment, the commonwealth and the nation.” AMD is typically treated by adding lime or other chemicals to raise the pH to 7. “Typically, AMD is neutralized through the addition of various alkaline chemicals,” said Rezaee, who also holds the Centennial Career Development Professorship in Mining Engineering. “As the pH of the AMD increases during the treatment process, metals precipitate as metal hydroxides or other complexes.” In the new system, the pH is still raised to a pH of 7, but in stages. “Instead of adding sodium hydroxide, calcium hydroxide or lime all at once to raise the pH, we are raising it in stages,” said Pisupati. “The advantage of this method is that it allows certain minerals to precipitate out at different pH levels. If we add in our base all at once and bring the pH to 7, all these things will precipitate at the same time. Then we would need to go back and separate them.” The researchers raised the pH to the level needed for iron to precipitate and then to the pH needed for aluminum to precipitate. After iron and aluminum are removed, REEs are recovered through carbonate precipitation, according to the researchers. “Our challenge was that we could not get 100% of the iron and aluminum removed; there was a little bit of residue in the REE concentration,” said Pisupati. “Even if you have only 1% of aluminum content in the mixture it dominates, and your quality of rare earths will not be as pure. This was addressed in the new purification process.” In the purification process, precipitates that were removed are put back though the cycle to remove iron, aluminum and other residues. “In the purification process, we go through the cycle all over again, going back to a pH of 3 or 3.5 and starting all over,” said Pisupati. “We are getting rid of the other residues slowly, maybe two times or three times through the cycle, to increase the REE purity. In our previous research we were at about 17% to 18% grade, so this is a significant accomplishment.” Recoveries of more than 99% for the target elements were achieved with the design of a recycling load. In the original three-stage precipitation process, the cobalt and manganese precipitates had a concentration of 0.85% and 23%, respectively. As a result of the purification process, their concentrations were increased to 1.3% and 43%, respectively. The research was published in Minerals Engineering.

Zero-carbon industrial heat company Rondo Energy has launched two commercial models of its Rondo Heat Battery, which uses electric heating elements, like in a toaster or oven, to turn clean power into high-temperature heat. Rondo says its heat battery is a drop-in replacement for fossil-fired boilers.

The Rondo Heat Battery captures intermittent electricity from solar and wind, stores the energy from that electricity as high-temperature heat in brick materials, and delivers the stored energy on demand as high-temperature heat and/or electricity.

The battery, which is made only of brick and iron, charges in as little as four hours and stores heat energy at temperatures up to 1500C for hours or days, delivering zero-carbon heat for such processes as steel, cement, chemical manufacturing, and low-temperature food processing.

Rondo, which is is backed by Bill Gates-founded Breakthrough Energy Ventures and utility-backed Energy Impact Partners, says its Heat Batteries maintain continuous output power (95% annual capacity factor) while operating on input power as low as 15% capacity factor (four hours a day). It also asserts that a single RHB300 eliminates more than 40,000 tons of CO2 per year – more than is eliminated by 8,700 electric vehicles.

Replacing just the industrial heat used today in California with RHB zero-carbon heat would eliminate five times more CO2 than all of the EVs on the road in the US today – 13.6 million EVs.

Carmichael Roberts, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, said:

The Rondo Heat Battery could prove critical to eliminating emissions, and its commercial availability will help companies turn to its zero carbon heat for their processes.

The Rondo Heat Battery will help companies in industries such as cement, fuels, food and water desalination to begin leveraging the falling costs of renewables without modifying their facilities.

The Oakland-based company says that the battery’s models now available, the RHB100 and RHB300, are fully automatic, charge intermittently either from local wind or solar facilities or from the grid, and deliver heat on demand 24 hours a day.

Rondo is manufacturing its batteries at its facilities in California and has begun commercial deliveries.

Nio, one of the most well-known EV manufacturers in China, is ramping up its presence in parts of Europe.

The company has just opened its first EV battery swap station in Sweden as it prepares to launch in various European markets before the end of the year. This was shared on Nio’s Sweden’s Linkedin page and was also reported by cnevpost.

Nio delivered its first EVs to Sweden last week followed by the opening of its first battery swap station in the country. The site is near the locality of Varberg. The site is found next to a highway that runs between Gothenburg and Malmö in the southwest of Sweden.

At the opening, the audience was seen closer to the ground seeing the battery swap process being undertaken on a Nio ET7 model.

Nio calls the battery swap technology to be very similar to refuelling when it comes to the time taken for the EV to have a low-charge pack swapped with a fully charged battery.

The company’s head of Nio Power division, Kajsa Ivansson-Sogne described the process to the visiting public as:

“With battery swap stations, NIO makes powering up an electric vehicle as fast as refuelling a conventional fuel car”

The whole process has previously been seen to take under 7 minutes at Nio’s other European stations, like those found in Norway.

In the European market, Nio is offering a subscription service to lease a Nio EV over purchasing one. European customers will be able to choose between the ET7, EL7 and ET5 ground-up EVs. This was announced by the company last month with deliveries already having started.

The subscription model hasn’t been well received in the market so Nio will be allowing customers to purchase a Nio EV in Europe from November 21 2022. These purchased vehicles will be delivered to customers by the beginning of 2023.

Battery swapping is one of the main points of difference Nio has back in its home market of China with recent reports confirming over 1,200 battery swap stations now online.

Nio has doubled the number of battery swap stations in under a year and with European expansion, it’s looking to grow it even further.

Indonesia’s proposal to create an organisation to control nickel output and prices along the lines of OPEC would be an uphill struggle, industry analysts say, as production is controlled by privately-owned companies and not governments.

The proposal to “coordinate and integrate nickel policy” in the way that OPEC does, to ensure nickel producing countries optimise their returns, was made this week by Indonesia’s investment minister in talks with Canada.

However, oil companies in many Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) such as Saudi Arabia are owned by the government while in countries such as Nigeria contracts stipulate that the government can tell private companies to adjust production.

“In OPEC, oil production is essentially a ‘country’-run business…production can be increased or decreased by a relatively small group to influence the global situation,” said Wood Mackenzie analyst Andrew Mitchell.

“In nickel its more disparate – although Indonesia obviously controls a lot of output, there are large producers elsewhere.”

Canada produced 130,000 tonnes of nickel in 2021, according to US Geological Survey (USGS). It is “very unlikely” to participate in any OPEC-like group, a Canadian source familiar with the discussions said on Thursday.

Indonesia is expected to produce between 1.25 and 1.5 million tonnes of nickel this year, more than 40% of world mined production estimated at between 3 million to 3.2 million tonnes.

Most of the nickel produced in Indonesia is controlled by Chinese companies such as Tsingshan Holding Group, CNGR Advanced Material and Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt.

“Important to note is that China retains leverage over Indonesia with regards to nickel. China is not just a key consumer of Indonesian nickel,” said Citi analyst Tom Mulqueen.

“China-linked companies also have a dominant ownership stake in Indonesia’s nickel industry, representing an important source of investment and expertise for its development.”

Battery demand growing fast

Other top nickel producing countries include the Philippines accounting for 370,000 tonnes last year and Russia for 250,000 tonnes, according to USGS.

USGS data shows New Caledonia produced 190,000 in 2021 and Australia 160,000 tonnes.

Nickel producing companies include Vale with 168,000 tonnes last year and Glencore with 102,300. BHP Group’s output in the 12 months to June 2022 was 77,000 tonnes.

Around two-thirds of global nickel production is used to make stainless steel mostly in mills located in China.

The use of nickel in electric vehicle batteries is also growing fast – amounting to nearly 15% of the total this year and expected to reach 20% by 2025 and nearly 35% by 2030.

“Geopolitics is starting to play an outsized role in the development of the battery supply chain, with Indonesia largely falling into the Chinese sphere and Canada in the US,” said Greg Miller, an analyst at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.

“I sense geopolitical considerations would override the influence of any OPEC style organization.”

If you’ve ever wondered how and why lithium-ion batteries in devices like smartphones and laptops combust, iFixit is here with an explosive video and some accompanying wisdom on safe battery-handling.

Tech writer team lead Arthur Shi and teardown techie Shahram Mokhtari from the DIY electronics repair site got together to stab some iPhones and laptop batteries, and even shot a giant battery with a nail gun – all for science, of course.

The pair’s objective wasn’t only to show how awesome shots of batteries exploding in slow motion looks, but also to demonstrate what they said is a key part of staying safe when working around lithium-ion polymer (li-po) batteries: their charge level.

“The batteries in our electronics tend to grab headlines when they go awry, but the truth is those are extreme edge cases,” Mokhtari said.

Why li-po batteries go bust

If you’re not familiar with the makeup of a lithium-polymer battery, Shi’s explanation in the video breaks it down pretty plainly. Think of it like a fruit rollup, packaged tightly in its cellophane plastic wrapper to keep the layers from sticking together.

A single li-po cell is like a wrapped fruit roll that’s filled with an electrolyte slurry, and a thin separator sits between the positive cathode and negative anode to prevent them from touching and causing a short circuit.

The typical li-po fire is caused when a battery is punctured or damaged in such a way that the separator is damaged, causing a short circuit. With enough energy contained in the battery, the flammable vapors caused by the decomposition of battery electrolytes can be heated to the point they explode, leading to thermal runaway that can burn for hours, depending on the size of the battery and damage.

As li-po batteries age, the chemical reaction that supplies power can degrade, leading to the creation of gasses that cause swelling. While swollen batteries are hazardous, the iFixit team said that even when swollen, a battery won’t explode if discharged.

To demonstrate how batteries at different charge levels explode or don’t, Shi and Mokhtari stabbed an iPhone 12 Pro Max with a fully charged battery and one discharged to 25 percent. When punctured with a metal tool, the results were radically different.

The battery charged to 25 percent smoked and emitted some sparks, but never caught fire because there wasn’t enough energy in the battery to lead to thermal runaway. The full one, on the other hand, was more than happy to go up in flames.

Stopping thermal runaway

Techies working on lithium-ion devices should take some basic precautions, iFixit said, like the aforementioned discharging of batteries to 25 percent before beginning repairs. Batteries should also be the first thing disconnected and last reconnected.

It’s also ideal to use plastic tools whenever possible. Shi and Mokhtari demonstrated stabbing an iPhone battery with a plastic spudger, which damaged the battery but didn’t cause any smoke or damage as the plastic reduces the chance for a puncture to cause a spark.

One final word of warning from the pair was to do with the handling of large li-po batteries, like those in laptops and larger hardware. Even when discharged to 25 percent, such batteries can still contain enough potential energy to cause combustion. For safety, discharge larger batteries completely, but recharge them as soon as repairs are complete to prevent damage.

And it goes without saying, but don’t shoot a battery with a nail gun, regardless of its size.