Lithium News

Lithium price declines steepened in China Monday, with battery-grade lithium carbonate prices seeing their biggest-one day drop of the year, a new report says. Lithium stocks rose broadly Monday.

A separate report Monday foresees last year’s lithium shortfall, which led spot prices to more than triple between November 2021 and November 2022, shifting to a surplus in 2023.

The average price of battery-grade lithium carbonate fell by 12,500 yuan per ton ($1,814 per ton) from last Friday to 312,500 yuan per ton Monday, data tracked by CnEVPost
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That is down 3.85% from Friday, which the report called the biggest drop of the year.

As of March 20, lithium carbonate prices are down about 47% from last November’s peak near 600,000 yuan and are down about 40% year to date. A recent Reuters report, citing traders and analysts, said the market is set to drop a further 25% by year end to below 300,000 yuan.

For EV makers, falling prices could ease cost pressures. For lithium miners, the price declines have whacked shares.

On a March 1 earnings call, Nio management said that they expect lithium carbonate prices to fall to 200,000 yuan per ton this year, boosting gross margins. On Feb. 15, Livent gave disappointing sales outlook for 2023.

Lithium carbonate is used to make lithium-ion batteries. Electric vehicles (EVs) make up 80% of lithium-ion battery demand, with companies racing to build better EV battery technology.

Lithium Stocks, EV Stocks

Shares of Albermarle (ALB) and Livent (LTHM) rose 2.5% and 0.9%, respectively, in stock market trading Monday. Sociedad Quimica y Minera (SQM) popped 3.2%. Piedmont Lithium (PLL) eased 0.4%. Lithium stocks broadly remain below key moving averages after their earnings tumble in February. ALB stock has cratered more than a third since last November.

Nio (NIO) jumped 5.7% to 8.73 Monday, far below the 50-day moving average.

Lithium Price Plunges

A combination of factors have led to the lithium price plunge.

Late last year, EV demand slowed sharply ahead of the end of subsidies used to stimulate sales in China, the world’s biggest and fastest-growing market for electric vehicles.

This year, rare discounts from Chinese battery giant CATL to automakers hastened the price decline.

Now, the likes of Albermarle and Livent are bringing new capacity online, while existing mines like Sociedad Quimica y Minera’s Salar de Atacama expand aggressively.

In fact, Bank of America Securities says the lithium shortfall that set prices soaring in 2022 could turn into a surplus in 2023, with “a lot of supply coming out” from mines.

“We are expecting 38% lithium supply growth this year. That’s why 2023 is likely to turn into a surplus year for lithium,” the bank’s head of Asia-Pacific basic materials Matty Zhao told CNBC Monday.

Since 2021, the rapid rise in lithium prices has fueled new supply streams, Zhao says.

China’s EV market nearly doubled in 2022 and is expected to sharply slow to around 31% growth in 2023. Zhao predicts a 22% gain this year.

By 2027, for an EV to be tax-credit eligible in the US, 80% of the market value of critical minerals in its battery must be extracted or processed domestically or by US free-trade partners (FTPs), Northwestern University researchers say.

In a commentary published in the journal Nature Sustainability, Jennifer Dunn and Jenna Trost wrote that while this goal – part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act – is well-intended, there are reasons to believe the mandate is unreachable and could create new problems.

According to Dunn and Trost, the 80%- target could be achievable for some types of batteries for plug-in hybrid vehicles, but meeting demand for fully electric vehicles with batteries that meet IRA criteria would be challenging. Instead, a mass-based target could avoid some of the challenges posed by a market-value target, such as pinning down a consistent market value for each mineral when market prices are volatile.

The researchers also concluded that the approach taken by the IRA discounts the environmental effects of mining, non-critical minerals supply, and definitions that avoid gamesmanship.

In their view, to meet the demands of the bill, a steep increase in domestic mining would be needed. This could pose environmental issues, including water pollution, in addition to creating greenhouse gas emissions from burning fuel to operate mining equipment.

Building mines also takes time. Permitting processes to protect the environment and worker safety can create delays and extend that timeline. Communities may also resist new mines because of the potential environmental impact. This means that establishing a domestic supply of minerals is unlikely to meet the IRA’s aggressive timeline.

“There’s a lot of interesting social and political dynamics. Some people don’t want new or expanded mines, and others welcome the economic activity and the opportunity to become more energy independent by building out a domestic minerals supply chain,” said Dunn, who is the director of the Center for Engineering Sustainability and Resilience. “It’s fascinating to watch how this is going to play out.”

She believes that much of the mineral supply chain will continue to be international. As a result, there’s also the issue of labour laws in countries that are not FTPs, raising the question of responsible sourcing.

The researcher pointed to Argentina as a case study. The South American nation is a non-FTP country that provided 59% of the 2,618 tons of lithium mineral the US imported in 2019. Argentina does not offer the labour and environmental protections the US requires of FTP partners, but any minerals acquired from the country would still count if they were processed domestically.

Dunn and Trost argue that guidance should be provided regarding what constitutes processing, and what are allowable sources for the minerals that would be processed in the US or an FTP.

“We have ostensibly good labor protections for miners, but that’s not the case everywhere. What are the ethical implications of using minerals from other places?” Dunn pointed out. “And then, are we going to be really serious about recycling? because we’re clearly not with plastics. We have to be really serious. Investment in battery recycling is growing, but it still needs to be larger.”

Market value target

Dunn and Trost also raised concerns about the use of a market value-based target.

A market value-based target can be met before all the critical minerals in a battery are acquired from a secure source such as the US or an FTP, depending on the battery chemistry.

The environmental effects of critical minerals acquisition are physically tied to the amount of mineral produced rather than its market value.

Market values fluctuate. The researchers noted that prices for cobalt and nickel, for example, have increased by about $13,000 and $4,000 per metric ton, respectively, since 2019.

Many non-critical minerals central to batteries are mainly produced outside the US, raising supply risks.

Instead, the authors suggested using a mass-based standard. Using a mass-based target, they wrote, would reduce uncertainty and hold all automakers to the same standard in the interpretation of market value.

“Given the fluctuations in mineral market values, using a mass-based target in the policy could improve its transparency but may not incentivize production of high-value minerals domestically, which is important for mineral security,” Dunn and Trost said.

Researchers at the Kyushu Institute of Technology and Shandong First Medical University are “upcycling” crab shells to create anode materials for sodium-ion batteries — an up-and-coming competitor to lithium-ion chemistries.

In a paper published in the journal ACS Omega, the scientists explain that although chemically similar to lithium, sodium ions are larger, and thus incompatible with a lithium-ion battery’s anode, which is typically made of graphite. However, when hard carbon is combined with metallic semiconductor materials, such as transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), the material can become a feasible battery anode.

Previous research has shown that it is possible to create hard carbon using chitin in crab shells. Thus, authors Yun Chen, Yue Zhao, Hongbin Liu and Tingli Ma decided to explore how two different TMDs — tin sulphide and iron sulphide — could be combined with such hard carbon to make a viable sodium-ion battery anode.

To develop their “crab carbon,” they heated crab shells to temperatures exceeding 1000 F. They then added the carbon to a solution of either tin sulphide (SnS2) or iron sulphide (FeS2), then dried them to form anodes. The porous, fibrous structure of the crab carbon provided a large surface area, which enhanced the material’s conductivity and ability to transport ions efficiently.

When tested in a model battery, the team found that both composites had good capacities and could last for at least 200 cycles.

In the researchers’ view, this work could provide a route to upcycle other wastes and help develop more sustainable battery technologies.

Coal in the Rhenish region is not only an important fuel for power generation. It is also used by the chemical industry to produce important basic chemicals. But by the time of the coal phase-out these substances will have to be obtained from other renewable sources. One example is carbon monoxide, or CO for short, which is needed for the production of certain plastics and acetic acid.

For this, scientists at Forschungszentrum Jülich are working on a climate-friendly technology based on renewably generated power. Using CO₂ electrolysis, the greenhouse gas CO₂ is converted directly into carbon monoxide. The researchers have now overcome an important hurdle and developed a scalable cell stack for large-scale applications.

The research is part of the structural change project iNEW, which is intended to promote the growth and preservation of jobs in the Rhenish region by introducing renewable based processes.

“CO is usually produced on site by industry on a large scale. It is difficult to transport because it is a toxic and highly flammable gas,” explains Maximilian Quentmeier, graduate student at the Jülich Institute for Energy and Climate Research (IEK-9). Commonly, coal is burned with oxygen under supply to produce the gas.

But after the coal phase-out, other processes will be needed instead. In the future, CO will still be needed as a basic chemical. Among other things, it is required for the production of polycarbonates and polyurethanes, which are used, for example, to make eyeglass lenses and insulating panels.

Together with his supervisor Bernhard Schmid, Maximilian Quentmeier is working on a process that is also known as CO₂-to-CO-electrolysis. The approach uses a so-called gas diffusion electrode: a porous electrode that is fed with CO₂ on the back side and is adjacent to a liquid or solid electrolyte on the front side. The electrode connects the two media and the electric current and thus ensures that “green” carbon monoxide, CO, is produced in the end.

Possible climate-negative path

The process not only appeals to the chemical industry, but also contributes to the climate protection . ” When operated with renewably produced power, CO₂ electrolysis plants would operate climate-neutrally . If the carbon dioxide is sourced from the atmosphere, for example by direct air capture, or from the workup of biogas, the technology is even potentially climate-negative,” explains Bernhard Schmid.

All in all, the technology could help to actively reduce the CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere. “In principle, future renewable plastics become a carbon sink similar to wood,” says Bernhard Schmid.

Milestone achieved towards practical application

Quentmeier and Schmid have already reached an important milestone on the way to commercialization. They have succeeded in transforming the the single cell to a stack type electrolyzerby making multiple improvements and replacing components, and have tested it in various performance tests. The results were recently published in ACS Sustainable Chemical Engineering.

In a stack, the cells are compactly packed on top of each other. A stack of smaller cells is much cheaper to manufacturecompared to a large single cell. “There are several aspects to consider when designing a stack starting from a single cell. For instance, the cells for the gas reaction have multiple chambers which ar typically unsupported in laboratory size.. The cells of a stack must withstand compression force and at the same time remain permeable,” explains Maximilian Quentmeier.

Under the assumption of realistic process conditions, the Jülich researchers optimized the design of the gas flowfield and electrical current collector for this purpose. Instead of the usual liquid electrolyte, a solid flow through polymer electrolyte made of ionically conductive synthetic resin is used as a supporting element, which structurally supports the electrolyte gap.

Thanks to a clever anode design, the researchers were also able to completely omit the electrolyte chamber between the membrane and the anode. For the stack, the positive and negative electrodes, cathode and anode, of adjacent cells were replaced by a single component (the bipolar plate) that connects two cells..

In the current experimental set-up using modular components which are not optimized for efficiency, the stack achieves an efficiency of 30%. “For this type of process, which already operates below 100°C, it is already a quite promising result,” explains Institute Director Prof. Rüdiger-A. Eichel.

“Compared to high-temperature co-electrolysis, for example, plant design is relatively simple and produced pure CO instead of synthesis gas which further simplifies processing for many applications. Thus, a decentral supply of the platform chemical CO can be provided to the industrial companies in the Rhenish region, saving transport cost,” says Rüdiger-A. Eichel. The next steps are further developments and improvements in efficiency to bring the cell stack to the final stage of readiness for mass production.

In times when energy is scarce and sustainable ways of energy production are being explored, thermoelectric materials are being considered for power generation to transform waste heat into electricity. However, to make this transformation more efficient, and thus usable on an industrial scale, a better understanding of the functional and structural properties of the materials is needed.

A researcher team led by the Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung (MPIE) has now been able to tune the microstructure of a promising new thermoelectric material for efficient energy conversion. The team published their results in the journal Advanced Energy Materials.

Tuning thermoelectric properties through grain boundary engineering

Previous research has shown that the structure and composition of grain boundaries are crucial for the thermal and electrical conductivity of thermoelectric materials. Usually, grain boundaries reduce both the thermal and electrical conductivity of the material while it is desirable to have a low thermal, but a high electrical conductivity.

The aim of the researchers from MPIE, the Northwestern University (U.S.) and the Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research Dresden (Germany) was to modify the grain boundaries so that only thermal conductivity is reduced, while their electrical conductivity remains high. They used a Ti-doped NbFeSb half-Heusler intermetallic compound—a recently developed, but promising thermoelectric alloy.

It has excellent thermoelectric properties at mid to high temperatures, a good thermal and mechanical robustness and its elements are earth-abundant and benign.

“We used advanced characterization techniques like scanning transmission electron microscopy and atom probe tomography to unveil the microstructure of the alloys down to the atomic scale. Our analysis showed that the chemistry and atomic arrangement of the grain boundaries can be tuned to engineer the electronic and thermal transport properties,” says Ruben Bueno Villoro, doctoral researcher in the independent research group “Nanoanalytics and Interfaces” at MPIE and first author of the publication.

As the grain size is small, the increased number of grain boundaries significantly reduces the electrical conductivity. “By doping the alloy with titanium, we found that grain boundaries become titanium-rich and no longer resistive, so that we can fully utilize the beneficial low thermal conductivity provided by the small grain size,” explains Dr. Siyuan Zhang, project leader in the same research group and corresponding author of the publication.

After demonstrating the strategy of grain boundary engineering, the researchers are exploring new ways to selectively dope the grain boundaries. By relating functional properties to the atomic structures of critical microstructure features such as grain boundaries, the researcher team is developing new design principles for materials critical to a sustainable future.