Lithium News

Samsung recently made a splash in the industry by showcasing its recent advancements in battery technology, especially related to solid-state batteries.

At the SNE Battery Day 2024 expo in Seoul, South Korea, the company revealed that its pilot solid-state battery production line is now fully operational.

“We built a pilot line last year to mass-produce all-solid-state batteries by 2027,” said Samsung SDI, as reported by The Elec.

Moreover, the battery’s initial batches have already been delivered to EV manufacturers for testing.

“We supplied samples to customers from the end of last year to the beginning of this year and are receiving positive feedback,” Samsung SDI stated.

Notably, these batteries could power electric vehicles with a 600-mile range, charge in 9 minutes, and have a lifespan of 20 years.

Promising features and initial focus

These solid-state batteries are expected to be smaller, lighter, and safer than the lithium-ion batteries currently used in most electric vehicles. They hold significant potential to revolutionize the EV industry.

“All-solid-state batteries can enhance safety by replacing liquid components with solid ones. When used in the same pack size as existing products, they reduce weight and take up less space,” highlighted the company.

However, due to their high production costs, these batteries’ initial application will be limited to the “super premium” EV segment.

The “super premium” segment here implies a driving range of around 600 miles per charge. In addition, Samsung will be introducing high-nickel NCS products for the premium segment.

Advanced energy density

Samsung’s oxide solid-state battery technology boasts an energy density of 500 Wh/kg, nearly double the 270 Wh/kg density of mainstream EV batteries.

This increased density could potentially double the driving range of current electric vehicles.

Besides, Samsung’s claim of 9-minute charging likely refers to the standard metric of charging a battery from 10% or 20% to 80% capacity rather than a full charge from 0% to 100%.

This practice is common in the industry as charging speeds typically slow down significantly beyond the 80% mark to protect battery health and longevity.

In addition to its work on solid-state batteries, Samsung is developing more affordable lithium iron phosphate (LFP) and cobalt-free batteries, as well as a dry electrode production method to reduce costs.

“We will not only match the price in the popular and entry-level segments, but also mass produce products that can be rapidly charged in 9 minutes by 2026,” emphasized Samsung SDI.

Focus on longevity

That said, limited availability of charging infrastructure remains a significant hurdle. While some Chinese battery makers already offer 5C or 6C charging speeds, equivalent to 480kW and even 600kW charging stations, they are quite few in numbers.

However, notable is the visible approach of all battery makers to offer longer lifespans of batteries. CATL and other battery makers have already announced batteries with 20-year lifespans, often referred to as “million-mile” batteries. Samsung’s vision to “extend the battery life to 20 years” aligns with the broader market trend.

While Samsung’s solid-state battery progress is significant, the company must navigate a competitive landscape dominated by Chinese manufacturers.

Albemarle, the world’s largest lithium producer, said on Wednesday it would slash costs for the second time this year and that everything but its dividend could be on the chopping block.

The aggressive move was caused by tumbling prices for the metal used to make electric vehicle batteries after the company swung to a second-quarter loss.

Shares fell 2.9% to $91 in after-hours trading.

The Tesla supplier and its peers have been buffeted in the past year by lithium oversupply from China and a softening of aggressive EV adoption rates that has dragged down prices for the ultralight metal and delayed expectations for how long the energy transition could take.

General Motors, for example, earlier this month backed away from its target of producing 1 million EVs annually by 2025 in North America.

Albemarle, with operations across the globe, had already slashed staff in January. Yet lithium prices have continued to tumble, from an average of $20 per kilogram at the end of last year to a current range of roughly $12 to $15 per kg, the company said.

“The market is not improving. It’s actually probably getting a little worse,” Albemarle CEO Kent Masters told Reuters. “We’re using the term ‘lower for longer’ from a pricing perspective, and we have to be able to operate through that downturn.”

To save costs, the company is launching a “comprehensive review of its cost and operating structure” that should be complete by October, Masters said. Albemarle also plans to pause construction of an Australian processing unit and idle production at a second one at the site.

“We will look at everything to get us kind of a mean and lean position,” he said, adding that additional layoffs and asset sales are on the table.

The company’s dividend, which has been raised annually for 30 years, likely would not be affected. “It’s important for our shareholders. So our plan is we would stick with that,” he said.

The pace of EV demand growth across the globe has this year failed to keep up with robust expectations, spooking lithium industry investors. Goldman Sachs analysts, for example, doesn’t expect global lithium demand to outpace supply until 2030.

Results

Albemarle reported a net loss of $188.2 million, or $1.96 per share, compared to a net profit of $650 million, or $5.52 per share, in the year-ago quarter.

Excluding one-time items, Albemarle earned 4 cents per share. By that measure, analysts expected earnings of 41 cents per share, according to IBES data from LSEG.

Albemarle did keep its full-year profit outlook, helped in part by results from its catalyst division and cost cuts, which have saved more than $150 million this year.

Despite the price drop, Albemarle and its peers have repeatedly said they expect demand for lithium to jump later this decade as EVs go mainstream.

The Charlotte, North Carolina-based company plans to discuss the quarterly results on a Thursday morning call with investors.

Lithium is a finite resource, and the more we lock inside rechargeable batteries, the less we have to use. A new speedy method to free the element from such sources could be a game changer in terms of the material’s availability.

Thanks to our modern day way of purchasing rechargeable everything – including cars – the demand for the lithium-ion batteries that power much of our consumer technology has been skyrocketing. Currently valued at approximately $65 billion, the market for lithium-ion batteries is expected to grow by 23% in the next eight years.

As a relatively lightweight material with the ability to store a lot of energy, the value of lithium is clear. But mining the element can be environmentally destructive, and geopolitical concerns in several of the areas where it is plentiful can threaten supply chains. Plus we’ve previously reported that there are predictions that current lithium mines will only be able to produce half of what’s needed to satisfy demand by 2030.

Taking those factors into account, it’s important to either find ways to produce lithium-free battery technologies, look to new methods and sources for extracting it, or find ways to recycle the lithium stored in used up batteries. Yet recycling lithium can be time consuming, use harsh chemicals, and lead to the recovery of less than 5% of the total amount of the element originally used.

Nuking it

So researchers at Rice University came up with a better solution. They started by using chemicals known as deep eutectic solvents (DES), which are eco-friendly liquids that can precipitate lithium and other metals out of a solution.

“The recovery rate is so low because lithium is usually precipitated last after all other metals, so our goal was to figure out how we can target lithium specifically,” said Salma Alhashim, a Rice doctoral alumna who is one of the study’s lead authors. “Here we used a DES that is a mixture of choline chloride and ethylene glycol, knowing from our previous work that during leaching in this DES, lithium gets surrounded by chloride ions from the choline chloride and is leached out into solution.”

Normally a compound needs to be heated in order to force metals to precipitate out and in the case of lithium-containing compounds, an oil bath usually provides that heat source. But the process takes a fair bit of time during which the lithium itself can begin to degrade.

To speed things up, the Rice team decided to give microwaves a try, knowing that the choline chloride that leads to the isolation of the lithium is very good at absorbing microwave radiation.

15-minute milestone

The speed boost was impressive. The researchers were able to precipitate out the lithium almost 100 times faster than an oil bath. In fact, it took them just 15 minutes to get back 87% of the lithium – a process that would take 12 hours using an oil bath.

“This allowed us to leach lithium selectively over other metals,” said Sohini Bhattacharyya, one of the other lead authors and a postdoctoral fellow in the Nanomaterials Laboratory. “Using microwave radiation for this process is akin to how a kitchen microwave heats food quickly. The energy is transferred directly to the molecules, making the reaction occur much faster than conventional heating methods.”

The researchers say the method can also be tailored to target other elements by tuning the DES composition, so it could have the ability to recover other metals like cobalt or nickel from batteries. The team also highlights the eco-friendly benefits of its approach.

The “white gold” of clean energy, lithium is a key ingredient in batteries large and small, from those powering phones and laptops to grid-scale energy storage systems.

Though relatively abundant, the silvery-white metal could soon be in short supply due to a complex sourcing landscape impacted by the electric vehicle (EV) boom, net-zero goals and geopolitical factors. Valued at over $65 billion in 2023, the lithium-ion battery (LIB) global market is expected to grow by over 23% in the next eight years, likely heightening existing challenges in lithium supply.

What’s more, recovering lithium from spent batteries is environmentally taxing and highly inefficient ⎯ something a team of Rice University researchers led by Pulickel Ajayan is working to change.

In their latest study published in Advanced Functional Materials, the researchers describe a rapid, efficient and environmentally friendly method for selective lithium recovery using microwave radiation and a readily biodegradable solvent. Findings show the new process can retrieve as much as 50% of the lithium in spent LIB cathodes in as little as 30 seconds, overcoming a significant bottleneck in LIB recycling technology.

“We’ve seen a colossal growth in LIB use in recent years, which inevitably raises concerns as to the availability of critical metals like lithium, cobalt and nickel that are used in the cathodes,” said Sohini Bhattacharyya, one of the two lead authors on the study and a Rice Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Nanomaterials Laboratory run by Ajayan. “It’s therefore really important to recycle spent LIBs to recover these metals.”

Conventional recycling methods often involve harsh acids, while alternative eco-friendly solvents like deep eutectic solvents (DESs) have struggled with efficiency and economic viability. Moreover, current recycling methods recover less than 5% of lithium, largely due to contamination and loss during the process as well as the energy intensive nature of recovery.

“The recovery rate is so low because lithium is usually precipitated last after all other metals, so our goal was to figure out how we can target lithium specifically,” said Salma Alhashim, a Rice doctoral alumna who is the study’s other lead author.

“Here we used a DES that is a mixture of choline chloride and ethylene glycol, knowing from our previous work that during leaching in this DES, lithium gets surrounded by chloride ions from the choline chloride and is leached out into solution.”

In order to leach other metals like cobalt or nickel, both the choline chloride and the ethylene glycol have to be involved in the process. Knowing that of the two substances only choline chloride is good at absorbing microwaves, the researchers submerged the battery waste material in the solvent and blasted it with microwave radiation.

“This allowed us to leach lithium selectively over other metals,” Bhattacharyya said. “Using microwave radiation for this process is akin to how a kitchen microwave heats food quickly. The energy is transferred directly to the molecules, making the reaction occur much faster than conventional heating methods.”

Compared to conventional heating methods like an oil bath, microwave-assisted heating can achieve similar efficiencies almost 100 times faster. For example, using the microwave-based process, the team found that it took 15 minutes to leach 87% of the lithium as opposed to the 12 hours needed to obtain the same recovery rate via oil bath heating.

“This also shows that selectivity towards specific elements can be achieved simply by tuning the DES composition,” Alhashim said. “Another advantage is solvent stability: Because the oil bath method takes so much longer, the solvent begins to decompose, whereas this does not happen with the short heating cycles of a microwave.”

This breakthrough method could dramatically improve the economic and environmental impact of LIB recycling, providing a sustainable solution to a growing global issue.

“This method not only enhances the recovery rate but also minimizes environmental impact, which makes it a promising step toward deploying DES-based recycling systems at scale for selective metal recovery,” said Ajayan, the corresponding author on the study and Rice’s Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor of Engineering and professor and department chair of materials science and nanoengineering.

Power supply specialist EA Elektro-Automatik, a business unit of Tektronix, has launched an enhanced version of its EA BTS 10300 Battery Test System.

The EA BTS 10300 is “specifically designed to meet the rapidly evolving demands for higher power battery technologies in the EV industry and beyond.” It features a compact design with high power density—300 kW in a single 42U-high rack and only 6.5 square feet of floor space. Multiple units can be combined for a maximum 3.84 MW of testing capability.

The BTS 10300 supports voltages of up to 2,000 VDC, and can supply and sink up to 2,400 A per rack, reaching a total capacity of up to 30,720 A. As EA explains, this high-current capability is essential for rigorous battery module tests and battery cell tests, including pulse testing, which demands exponentially higher currents. The 10300 Series delivers a complete COTS turnkey solution, encompassing battery cycling, drive cycle simulations, insulation resistance tests and more.

EA’s bidirectional power supply with SiC-based switching is designed to reduce electrical costs by regenerating power back to the grid with up to 96.5% efficiency, and to minimize HVAC expenses due to its low heat generation. Fast data acquisition rates of up to 1.5 kHz enable precise and comprehensive EV battery testing.

The EA BTS 10300’s autoranging capability allows for a wide range of voltage and current adjustments without interrupting the test cycle.

“The EA BTS 10300 Battery Test System represents a leap in testing technology, offering significant cost and space savings while being environmentally friendly,” said Russ Gaubatz, EA Elektro-Automatik Senior Applications Engineer. “Its power regeneration and efficient operation cut electrical and HVAC costs, and its compact design requires only a third of the floor space compared to competitors. With high-voltage capabilities and autoranging, it’s a future-proof investment that pays for itself by adapting to evolving testing needs.”

The new EA BTS 10300 System is currently available in the US and Canada.

At first glance, the plan sounds compelling: invent and develop future electrolyzers capable of producing hydrogen directly from unpurified seawater. But a closer look reveals that such direct seawater electrolyzers would require years of high-end research. Furthermore, DSE electrolyzers are not even necessary—a simple desalination process is sufficient to prepare seawater for conventional electrolyzers.

In a commentary in Joule, international experts compare the costs and benefits of the different approaches and come to a clear recommendation.

Fresh water is a limited resource; more than 96% of the world’s water is found in the oceans. If seawater could be fed directly into a future electrolyzer to produce green hydrogen using renewable energy from the wind or sun, it could be a feasible solution. Hundreds of millions of dollars in research funding are spent on this idea, and in 2023 alone, there were more than 500 publications (this number is growing exponentially) on direct seawater electrolysis.

No need for new development

However, a techno-economic analysis shows that this argument collapses as soon as the costs and benefits are analyzed in more detail.

“There is no convincing reason to develop DSE technology because there are already efficient solutions for using seawater to produce hydrogen,” says Dr. Jan Niklas Hausmann, electrolysis researcher at HZB and lead author of the Joule commentary. International experts from various disciplines from renowned research institutions such as Yale University, universities in Canada, Germany and HZB contributed to the commentary.

It is already possible to use seawater to produce hydrogen. Proven processes such as reverse osmosis can be used to purify seawater for “normal,” commercially available electrolyzers. From a thermodynamic point of view, the purification of seawater needs only 0.03% of the energy required for its electrolysis. This is also reflected in the current cost: purifying seawater to produce one kilogram of hydrogen costs less than two cents. However, one kilogram of hydrogen costs 13.85 euros at German filling stations.

Investing money wisely

The development of new types of electrolyzers that can operate steadily in seawater would only save this cheap purification step. In contrast, the development of DSE electrolyzers is extremely challenging and it is highly questionable that they would ever be able to match the efficiency and long-term stability of today’s electrolyzers.

Experts see major challenges here: Seawater contains a wide variety of organic and inorganic substances that can cause corrosion and fouling, affecting all parts of the electrolyzer. DSE is currently being advertised as a real-world solution for hydrogen production—a promise that cannot be kept and could swallow up a lot of taxpayers’ money, the researchers warn.

“We can compare this with the direct use of crude oil to run cars,” explains Hausmann. “It is possible to develop such cars, but they would just not be as efficient and long-lasting as ones running on purified petrol. This is despite the fact that the cost of purifying crude oil (via refinery) is up to 16% of the final price of the fuel, which is significantly higher than the relative cost of purifying seawater for electrolysis (<1%).”

Getting electrolysis research on track to contribute to decarbonization

“Academic research does not necessarily have to lead to immediate solutions. However, if DSE is presented as a quick fix and is pushed or hyped to the detriment of other more promising approaches, it will tie up resources that will be lacking elsewhere for the development of key decarbonization technologies,” explains Dr. Prashanth Menezes, an expert on catalysts at HZB.

“If we want to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050, funding must be directed to developments that can quickly contribute to this,” says Menezes.