Lithium News

Recently published patents and an interview give a few insights into the possibilities being considered for Dyson’s first electric vehicle.

The Telegraph has a few more details about James Dyson’s thoughts on the car, as obtained from a memo sent to staff. The company is still planning to launch the vehicle in 2021, with Dyson saying it will be “entirely designed by Dyson, manufactured by Dyson, and sold by Dyson.”

Dyson told staff the car would contain “fundamentally new technologies and make some inventive leaps,” and such advances could be seen in the vehicle’s aerodynamics, efficiency, and architecture.

The drawings in the patents admittedly don’t reveal much. They are instead said to “show an androgynous vehicle and provide a glimpse of some of the inventive steps that we are considering.”

Nevertheless, the patent hints at relatively large wheels. According to The Telegraph, Dyson says the wheels were inspired by the Mini’s design, which would make the vehicle more efficient and ready to take on both “city and rough terrain.”

Third-row seats can also be seen in a patent sketch. “Androgynous vehicle” claims notwithstanding, their inclusion leads us to believe Dyson is at least considering this possibility.

To that point, Dyson also mentioned in his memo that he’s uninterested in smaller electric cars, noting that the “ride comfort of such vehicles tends to limit their attractiveness and utility.”Autocar spoke to Dyson, who confirmed the vehicle would have an aluminium body. The article emphasizes the vehicle’s expected long wheelbase, high floor and low roof, with sedan-style seating — Dyson described that as a “command” driving position. Autocar also mocked up the patent filing to a real looking form:

Dyson also spoke to the Financial Times, and he told them the company has already signed on with a major tire manufacturer.

He also expressed his desire to see the UK move up its ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars to 2030. A government committee recently recommended the date be moved up to 2035 from 2040.

Dyson announced last October it would build its electric vehicles in Singapore. Another report last year claimed Dyson is planning to build three electric vehicles.

Lithium Australia has signed a letter of intent with Chinese battery producer DLG Battery Co. Ltd. to establish a 50:50 jointly owned business for the supply and sale of DLG lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), packs and modules in Australia; and to form a technology alliance that will fast-track the commercialization of VSPC Ltd’s patented cathode powders for use in DLG batteries.

As one of the 10 largest battery manufacturers in China, DLG has six development and manufacturing facilities there, as well as sales and support offices in the United States and Europe. DLG is a developer and manufacturer of cylindrical LIB cells, packs and systems, producing not only lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) and lithium-nickel- manganese-cobalt (NMC) battery cell types but also battery-management-system and pack technology.

DLG sells products for use in consumer electronics, electric vehicles, energy-storage systems, e-bikes and other applications, and has customers in every major world market.

DLG has been working withLithium Australia to test (in China) LFP cathode powders produced by VSPC Ltd (a wholly owned subsidiary of Lithium Australia) at its pilot plant in Brisbane, Australia. DLG used the VSPC powders to manufacture commercial LFP cells in China.

Under the LoI, DLG and Lithium Australia intend to incorporate Lithium Australia DLG as a 50:50-owned business, the aim of which is to ameliorate supply chain constraints for LIB batteries, packs and modules entering the Australian market. The new Lithium Australia DLG business will apply the following supply-chain solutions:

• Improve the availability of LFP and NMC LIBs to equipment manufacturers and consumers in the Australian market.
• Maintain local (Australian) stock levels to meet demand.
• Manufacture packs and modules within Australia.
• Produce an Australian DLG/VSPC battery for both local and global markets.
• Offer a battery-recycling solution through Lithium Australia’s recycling business unit.

As part of the Company’s undertaking to DLG, it will complete a business plan designed to service the burgeoning demand for LIBs in Australia. There will be a particular focus on the energy-storage industry, a sector in which Australia is experiencing strong growth.

As part of establishing the business, Lithium Australia has agreed to purchase an initial battery inventory through the issue of 12,500,000 company shares to DLG at the prevailing market price of 8 cents per share.

Technology alliance. Under the LoI, the parties will facilitate technological cooperation between VSPC and DLG for both cathode and battery development. DLG will work with Lithium Australia to further develop VSPC’s cathode powders, initially with an initial focus on LFP, the ideal battery chemistry for Australian energy-storage applications.

LFP is very safe (not prone to thermal runaway and fires), demonstrates superior longevity and operates reliably at elevated temperatures. Subject to certain performance and cost hurdles being met, DLG will award VSPC preferred supplier status to provide LFP powders for the manufacture of DLG LIBs at DLG’s manufacturing facilities in China.

We all know that we have only a mere 11 years to save the planet from the global warming apocalypse. We know this because everyone from Boulder Weekly to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has told us so.

We also know that the only way to prevent said apocalypse from happening is to eliminate the use of fossil fuels (coal, petroleum and natural gas primarily) by replacing them with electric energy from renewable sources (wind and solar primarily).

We also know that the principal technological bottle-neck clogging the transition to an all-electric powered civilization is the absence of batteries with the performance to power the transition.

(Battery performance is measured by metrics like how much electricity can they hold [energy density], how fast can they deliver the energy stored in them [power density], how many times they can be charged and discharged, how fast they can be recharged, and how much it costs to make them.)

We know that without producing enough batteries to hold enough energy to power more than 200 million electric cars and trucks, the U.S. won’t be able to quit using gasoline and diesel (more than four billion barrels of it a year) for ground transportation. Without high-performance batteries, wind and solar power will be unable to provide more than a third (if that) of the country’s electricity due to wind and solar energy’s erratic nature.

We also know that the only currently available batteries up to the task are lithium-ion batteries. There are theoretically better non-lithium batteries under development, but we know that we have only 11 years to save the planet, and that it will take a national effort equal to what it took to win World War II to get off of fossil fuels by 2030. Thus the putative Green New Deal.

We also know that, in the words of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had. The same applies to the war against fossil fuels. In the war against fossil fuels, lithium-ion batteries are what we have. And that makes lithium a strategic material.

We also know that global lithium production capacity will have to be increased by two or three orders of magnitude to implement a U.S. transition to an all-electric economy by 2030, never mind the needs of the rest of the world. And we also know that most of the world’s current lithium production capacity is outside of the U.S., which means that the country is dependent on foreign suppliers for a strategic material needed to meet an existential threat.

In light of all this, what are we supposed to make of a story that appeared in last Tuesday’s Los Angeles Times headlined, “A war is brewing over lithium mining at the edge of Death Valley”?

It seems that an Australian company named Battery Mineral Resources, Ltd. has asked the federal government for permission to drill four exploratory wells targeting lithium deposits in the Panamint Valley, which is on the edge of Death Valley National Park in California.

According to LA Times reporter Louis Sahagun, “The drilling request has generated strong opposition from the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club and the Defenders of Wildlife, who say ‘lithium extraction would bring industrial sprawl, large and unsightly drying ponds, and threaten a fragile ecosystem that supports Nelson’s bighorn sheep, desert tortoises, and the Panamint alligator lizard, among other species.’”

So now we know that American environmental organizations don’t take their own narrative about global warming very seriously. If they really thought climate change was the existential threat they claim it is, they would be doing everything humanly possible to expedite lithium mining and lithium battery production, even if the mining is going to trash the environment around the mine. And they certainly wouldn’t do anything to interfere with it. If you want to wage war on fossil fuels in order to save the planet, you ought to be adult enough to realize there is going to be some collateral damage and that you are going to have to live with it. C’est la guerre.

We also know that American environmentalists are incapable of setting meaningful priorities. Most sane people would tell you that saving the planet is more important than saving the desert tortoise, or even saving the desert. Today’s enviros seem to be having trouble with the concept.

And we know intuitively that if there is one place in the United States that had to be declared a national sacrifice area in the interest of saving the planet by 2030, it would be the desert region the environmental groups are currently exercised about. It’s called Death Valley for a reason.

Anson Resources Ltd (ASX:ASN) has had the engineering design of its brine pre-treatment and lithium carbonation processes completed by Hatch Engineering as part of Anson’s planned industrial-scale in-field pilot plant.

Lilac Solutions has also nearly completed design and construction of the pilot plant’s lithium extraction processes, with Anson having assessed Hazen Research’s work on incorporating the extraction of other chemical products in the pilot plant flowsheet.

This has enabled the company to update its pilot plant flowsheet, which is presented below:

Brine pre-treatment processes

Anson shortlisted suppliers for the pilot plant’s pre-treatment sections after Hazen completed test work on methods to extract additional chemical products from brine.

Lithium extraction by ion exchange

Lilac Solutions is expected to complete the lithium extraction sysstem’s design and construction in quarter-two, using ion exchange with no upstream nanofiltration, evaporation ponds or other concentrating processes.

The pilot-scale lithium extraction system will require minimal water and energy inputs, using a wastewater reverse osmosis mini-plant and simple gas-powered electricity generators.

Lilac has also begun designing a commercial-scale ion exchange extraction system which will be demonstrated on-site as part of the pilot project.

This will de-risk the ion exchange technology process block of the Anson flowsheet and demonstrate a clear pathway to commercial production.

Albemarle Corp, the world’s largest producer of lithium used to make electric vehicle batteries, posted a better-than-expected quarterly profit on Wednesday as surging sales of flame retardant chemicals offset a dip in lithium sales.

The weakness in its lithium unit, which executives have repeatedly labeled as the company’s future, was largely due to torrential January rains at the company’s mines in Chile, which rely on evaporation ponds to produce the white metal.

The effects from the rain – lithium sales fell 2 percent during the quarter – had been expected, but still comes as anxiety grows about short-term demand for the metal.

Albemarle posted first-quarter net income of $133.6 million, or $1.26 per share, compared with $131.8 million, or $1.18, in the year-ago period.

Excluding one-time items, Albemarle earned $1.23 per share. By that measure, analysts expected earnings of $1.22 per share, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

Sales of bromine, a chemical used to make fire extinguishers, jumped 10 percent during the quarter. Sales of catalysts, which are primarily used in oil refining, dropped 4 percent.

Albemarle confirmed its companywide 2019 sales forecast of $3.65 billion to $3.85 billion, in what would be an 8 percent to 14 percent increase from 2018 levels.

“We remain confident in our expectations for the full year,” Chief Executive Luke Kissam said in a statement.

Albemarle rival Livent Corp , which produces in Argentina, cut its full-year profit forecast on Tuesday, citing lower lithium demand and weaker prices. Livent’s shares tumbled more than 15 percent on Wednesday after those results.

Shares of Charlotte, North Carolina-based Albemarle fell 0.8 percent to $72 in after-hours trading on Wednesday. The company’s executives plan to hold a conference call on Thursday morning to discuss the quarterly results.

Albemarle operates the only functioning lithium mine in the United States.

Lithium-ion batteries power everything from laptops to lawn mowers. But they can ignite when damaged because they rely on flammable components. Now, researchers report they’ve redesigned these batteries to work with nonflammable materials. As a bonus, the new batteries might even store more power than current models.

The work is “absolutely remarkable progress,” says Gleb Yushin, a materials scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, who was not involved with the research. If commercialized, the new batteries could help keep drivers of electric vehicles safe even if they wind up in an accident.

Lithium-ion batteries contain three main components: two charge-storing electrodes and a liquid organic electrolyte that separate them. The electrolyte ferries lithium ions back and forth between the electrodes during charging and discharging, but they’re flammable.

In recent years, researchers have experimented with replacing these organic electrolytes with solid electrolytes or water-based versions that can’t catch fire. But if the operating voltage of these water-based batteries exceeds 1.23 volts (V)—below that of even a 1.5-V AA battery—electrode materials can react with water molecules, splitting them into hydrogen and oxygen gases, often with explosive results. Yet when researchers stay below the 1.23-V threshold, they end up with batteries that store far less energy than traditional lithium-ion cells, which operate at about 4 V.

Hope for an alternative arose in 2015, when researchers led by Chunsheng Wang, a materials scientist at the University of Maryland in College Park, reported they created a novel salt-rich water-based electrolyte. This water-in-salt electrolyte (WiSE) promotes the formation a protective solid shield around the electrodes that prevented them from ripping apart water molecules in the electrolyte’s interior. But the electrode materials in those batteries could only muster 3 V.

Prospects brightened in 2017, when Wang and colleagues reported they had come up with a positively charged electrode, or anode, material that was compatible with 4-V operation and worked with the WiSE. That just left them to address the negatively charged electrode, or cathode.

Now, Wang and his colleagues have done just that. They report today in Nature that they’ve come up with a graphite-based cathode that works with the WiSE at 4 V and above. The new electrode material includes bromine and chlorine, and it ends up protected from the water-based electrolyte by locking reactive electrode materials in solid salt particles around the electrode. The battery starts with lithium bound up in solid lithium-bromine and lithium-chloride salt particles surrounding a graphite electrode made up of layers of carbon atoms. When the battery charges, bromine and chlorine atoms ditch their lithium partners, give up electrons to the cathode, and wedge themselves between graphite’s carbon layers, forming another nice tight solid. The voltage difference between the two electrodes then drives the positively charged lithium ions through the water-based electrolyte to the anode, where they meet up with electrons provided by an external circuit.

When the battery discharges during use, the lithium ions give up those electrons and reverse course to the cathode. The electrons travel back through the external circuit to the cathode, where bromine and chlorine atoms grab them and end up with a negative charge. This charge causes them to diffuse back out of the graphite. The lithium ions then snag them, reforming the solid salt particles that stay put until the next round of charging.

Wang and his colleagues note that gram for gram, their cathode materials already have about 30% greater charge storage capacity than conventional cathode materials. But it remains to be seen whether the full batteries, including the new electrolyte, will end up holding more energy than commercial versions.

Even if they don’t, the new WiSE batteries would not require cobalt, a toxic metal in conventional lithium-ion cathodes. Cobalt mining has been tied to widespread deaths of miners—often children—in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the rare metal is relatively abundant. That would make the batteries safer for not only consumers, but miners and the environment as well.