Lithium News

MIT spinout and battery maker 24M Technologies today debuted a new direct-material battery recycling process for EV batteries and battery storage.

Cambridge, Massachusetts-based 24M Technologies, which boasts Volkswagen as a commercial partner, “has simplified lithium-ion battery production with a new design that requires fewer materials and fewer steps to manufacture each cell,” according to MIT News. 24 Technologies says the design, which it calls “SemiSolid” for its use of gooey electrodes, reduces production costs by up to 40%. The approach also improves the batteries’ energy density, safety, and recyclability.

Today the company unveiled the battery recycling process Liforever, a potential battery technology game-changer for EVs and energy storage systems. What’s cool about Liforever is that 24M built it right into its battery manufacturing process, offering a way to recycle battery materials like lithium iron phosphate (LFP) more efficiently and cost-effectively.

“Better battery recycling is essential for a sustainable energy future, but the use of binders in conventional cell production has made direct recycling impractical,” said 24M Technologies CEO Naoki Ota. “Liforever solves these challenges by enabling the reuse of nearly every part of the battery cell without requiring the expensive, inefficient, and environmentally challenging processes used in conventional cell recycling.”

Traditional lithium-ion recycling methods involve processes that are not just expensive but also toxic, resulting in a kind of e-waste known as black mass. This harms the structure of key battery materials and makes recycling less economically viable, especially for cheaper materials like LFP. Usually, only the more expensive metals are salvaged for reuse.

24M asserts that Liforever keeps the battery’s active materials in their original form, bypassing the creation of black mass entirely – a feat that sets it apart in the industry. This innovation allows for the recycling of all active materials, including those from the anode and cathode. After the materials are recovered, they’re cleaned and, if necessary, re-lithiated to bring them back to their original performance levels.

The company says the Liforever recycling methodology is designed to be compatible with current and anticipated future recycling regulations. 24M says its SemiSolid process is chemistry agnostic, so Liforever will support next-gen batteries of all chemistry types.

LG Chem is planning to start the operation of one of its key subsidiaries for battery materials one month earlier than planned, TheElec has learned.

The precursor factory being built by Korea Precursor Corporation (KPC), the joint venture between LG Chem and Korea Zinc’s subsidiary Kemco, is expected to be completed in March instead of April as previously planned, sources said.

This was in response to the US’s Inflation Reduction Act and listing of “foreign entities of concern,” which means customers based in the US need to procure more aggressively battery materials they need from non-Chinese companies.

Some of KPC’s customers in the US are thought to be General Motors and Panasonic.

KPC’s precursor factory at Ulsan will start test production no later than in April and use scraps and leftovers from LG Energy Solution and Korea Zinc’s battery production processes as raw materials.

Precursors in battery production are a mix of nickel, cobalt, and other metals that are used to make the cathode of batteries.

KPC will likely seek to get customer approval from its customers for the precursors, a process that takes approximately a year.

The US is expected to enforce its foreign entities of concern list within the year, which will limit business deals of the named companies.

Sources said this could cause a surge of orders for precursors, despite the slowdown in demand for electric vehicles and batteries.

Chilean lithium giant Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile (NYSE: SQM), or SQM, released lower-than-expected fourth-quarter 2023 revenue and earnings results on Wednesday night. The biggest driver for the declines in the top and bottom line was the huge drop in lithium prices last year.

Lithium prices fell sharply throughout 2023 after soaring to historical highs in late 2022. The main catalysts were the lithium industry’s increased production capacity and a slowdown in the growth of the electric vehicle (EV) market, due in part to high interest rates. Lithium is used to make the lithium-ion batteries that power EVs.

SQM’s key quarterly numbers

Data source: SQM.

Wall Street was looking for EPS of $1.16 on revenue of $1.35 billion, so the company fell short of both expectations. The top-line miss, however, was small.

SQM ended the quarter (and year) with $1.04 billion in cash and cash equivalents and $3.21 billion in long-term debt. Last year’s big drop in lithium prices hurt the company’s balance sheet. At the end of 2022, it had $2.66 billion in cash and cash equivalents and $2.39 billion in long-term debt.

Revenue by business

Data source: SQM. YOY = year over year.

In Q4, the lithium segment’s sales volume increased 19% from the year-ago period to about 51,300 metric tons (MT) of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE), a quarterly record. However, this volume gain was more than offset by the company’s average realized lithium price plunging 73% year over year. On a sequential-quarter basis, its average realized lithium price dropped 47%.

Lithium-ion batteries are widely used in various applications but need improved binders to enhance their performance to meet evolving demands. This is because silicon oxide (SiO), a promising anode material due to its high capacity and low cost, faces several challenges. These include poor conductivity, which leads to slower charging rates, and significant expansion during charging. Effective binders are thus essential to address these issues and ensure enhanced performance and prolonged durability for lithium-ion battery systems.

In a study published in the journal ACS Applied Energy Materials Professor Noriyoshi Matsumi from the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST), and researchers from Maruzen Petrochemical Company Ltd., have utilized poly(vinylphosphonic acid) (PVPA) as a binder for a micro-SiO electrodes, achieving superior performance compared to conventional cells.

According to Prof. Matsumi, “The PVPA binder should prove to be very useful in extending the life of high-performing lithium-ion secondary batteries. Particularly in the application of electric vehicles, there has been intense interest in enabling long life for lithium-ion secondary batteries. The use of PVPA will offer improved alternatives to commercially available binders, such as poly(acrylic acid) (PAA) and poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF).”

The study involved fabricating electrodes containing PVPA, PAA, and PVDF as binders, and their performance was assessed through electrochemical experiments and density functional theory. PVPA demonstrated notably stronger adhesion (3.44 N/m) to a copper support compared to conventional PAA (2.03 N/m), leading to significantly enhanced durability in lithium-ion batteries.

The PVPA-based cell also delivered almost twice the discharging capacity compared to the PAA-based cell after 200 cycles, with the PVPA-based half-cell achieving 1,300 mAhg^-1SiO after the same cycle count. Even after 200 cycles of charge-discharge, exfoliation from the current collector was not observed in scanning electron microscopy, unlike with PVDF or PAA binders.

Furthermore, the stronger adhesion of PVPA helps stabilize the SiO-based anode, preventing its exfoliation even with significant volume expansion.

Additionally, Maruzen Petrochemical Company Ltd., whose researchers were part of the study, has established an industrial production process for PVPA. Continuous collaboration between JAIST and Maruzen Petrochemical Company Ltd., along with the inclusion of additional battery production expertise from the company, may further accelerate the process toward real-life applications. Patents for this technology have been submitted both domestically (Japan) and internationally as a joint application by JAIST and Maruzen Petrochemical Company Ltd.

“An industrially feasible, high-performing binder like this will aid in the development of technology for highly durable and high-energy-density batteries. This will result in the wider adoption of EVs worldwide without concerns about performance degradation over a longer period. These materials can also be applicable to a variety of electric vehicles such as trains, ships, aircraft, etc., in the future,” said Prof. Matsumi.

As more electric vehicles hit the roads, the environmental impact of their battery production will also increase. This raises a major question: What type of EV battery will be the most environmentally friendly on a large scale?

A study published 1 February in IEEE Access suggests that, after considering five different types of EV battery cells, lithium-sulphur cells will be the most environmentally friendly. The results also suggest that cells that don’t rely on precious and critical metals are fundamental for ensuring sustainable production.

The most common EV battery today is the lithium-ion cell. But many other batteries are being developed, tested, and are slated to hit the market in the next few years. Each one involves different pros and cons when it comes to energy density and the environmental impacts of its production and use.

Batteries that have silicon in their anodes—such as silicon-polyacrylonitrile (SiCPAN) and silicon nanowires (SiNWs) cells—have much greater energy density than traditional lithium-ion cells, which are made with graphite anodes. However, these silicon-based cells currently require the incorporation of precious metals, such as silver, to help stabilize them during charging and discharging.

Another option is the use of all-solid-state cells, which offer nearly double the energy density of the best-performing lithium-ion batteries, resulting in a smaller and lighter battery pack. However, this technology also requires the incorporation of precious metals.

Lastly, lithium-sulphur cells are emerging as promising battery for EVs because they have theoretically high capacity and energy density—without containing rare earth metals. Despite that advantage, more technology advancements are needed to realize the full potential of these cells.

Antonella Accardo is a research fellow at the Polytechnic University of Turin, in Italy, and a member of the university’s interdepartmental Center for Automotive Research and Sustainable mobility (CARS) center. Accardo was interested in comparing the environmental impacts of these EV batteries if the manufacturing of each was scaled up to industrial levels.

To do so, her team conducted environmental impact assessments of SiCPAN, SiNWs, all-solid-state, and lithium-sulphur cells, compared to the conventional lithium-ion cell. “We selected [these] cells as current representatives of the most promising technologies for the automotive market in the next decades,” explains Accardo. “The cells were identified based on their suitability to meet the performance and safety requirements of electric vehicles.”

They conducted a novel “cradle-to-gate“ prospective life cycle assessment, which looks at the full impact of each cell over the course of its production from sourcing the raw materials to the point the end product leaves the factory. Specifically, the researchers analyzed the cells in terms of their impact on six criteria: climate change, or total greenhouse gas emissions during production; acidification, or emissions of sulfuric and nitrogen oxides that acidify water and soil; eutrophication of fresh water, or potentially harmful accumulation of algae and sediments in freshwater systems; ecotoxicity of freshwater, or the release of toxic substances into freshwater systems; the use of fossil fuels in production; and the depletion of mineral and metal reserves.

The results suggest that, overall, lithium-sulphur cells are the most environmentally friendly EV battery. Lithium-sulphur outperformed the standard lithium-ion battery in four out of six of the key environmental impact categories assessed (all but climate change and use of fossil fuel resources).

However, the lithium-ion cell remains the best in terms of cradle-to-gate impact on climate change, accounting for 30.9 kilograms of emitted carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour generated, followed by the SiCPAN cell. The all-solid-state and SiNW cells had two and three times as much carbon dioxide emissions, respectively, as a lithium-ion cell.

The SiNW cells were found not only to have the worst impact in terms of climate change, but also many other categories assessed in the study, including acidification, use of fossil fuel resources, acidification and eutrophication of freshwater. This is predominantly due to the fact that SiNWs involve the use of substantial amount of precious metals (such as the silver nitrate used as catalyst) and energy-intensive nanoscale manufacturing processes, which also release toxic byproducts.

Interestingly, the researchers also conducted a “what-if” analysis the explore the impact of SiNW, SiCPAN, and all-solid-state cells if they could theoretically be produced without precious metals. In such a case, all-solid-state cells produced without silver would be the least impactful cell among all of the next-generation cells considered in this study.

Ezio Spessa is professor in the department of energy at the Polytechnic University of Turin and a member of the executive board of the CARS center who supervised and coordinated this study. He notes that these results really underscore the fact that the environmental impact of batteries depends strongly on their material composition.

“Our recommendation is to continue researching the best solution in terms of performance and costs, while keeping an eye on the environmental benefits already at this stage,” he says.

Next, Spessa says his team plans to investigate whether these results differ between the individual cell level to battery pack level. They will also explore the impact of using recycled materials instead of newly resourced materials in cell production.

The fast charging function is, without a doubt, one of the most popular trend features of modern smartphones. That’s understandable, as it’s more than practical during the day when you don’t have to wait for an eternity to fully charge your phone.

The whole thing has now gone so far that there is a real competition between manufacturers to see who can provide the best and most powerful charging technology. At last year’s MWC, Xiaomi demonstrated its impressive charging technology, which pumped a Redmi mobile phone with 4,300 mAh to a full charge with a whopping 300 watts in just five minutes.

As fascinating as those figures above are, many smartphone users are becoming increasingly concerned. After all, can this be healthy for the mobile phone battery? A legitimate question, which we address in this article. Find out what fast charging does to your mobile phone and whether or not it can actually ruin the battery.

What happens during the charging process

All modern smartphones use either lithium-ion batteries or lithium-polymer batteries (LiPo batteries for short). However, cell chemistry is the same for both. There is a negative electrode (cathode), a positive electrode (anode), and electrolytes. The energy that powers a mobile phone is generated when the negative lithium ions flow through the electrolytes to the positive side. When the battery is empty, this flow stops. During the charging process, the lithium ions are moved back to the negative side so that the cycle can start again.

The charging process is not exclusively linear because batteries function like a kind of sponge. They absorb most of the energy when they are empty and absorb less when they are almost full. So the closer to saturation, the less efficient the charge and the flatter the charging curve. The charging voltage, on the other hand, starts at maximum power and then drops relatively quickly.

Mobile phone batteries degrade

Whether fast charging or not, all batteries wear out over time. This is because the flow of lithium ions always releases some heat, to which the chemical processes react very sensitively. For this reason, you should not plug in your mobile phone when the battery is still relatively full, as inefficient charging releases even more heat.

Note: On iPhones, this natural wear and tear can even be viewed. Under Settings > Battery > Battery Status & Charging Process, you will find a percentage indication of the maximum battery capacity that is still available.

Heat is therefore the main reason why batteries degrade. Many users see this problem with the “fast charging function,” because the more current flows into the battery, the more excess heat is generated. Acute overheating can even cause the electrolytes to crystallize and the ion current between the electrodes to fail completely.

But –and this is the crux of the matter–manufacturers know this, of course. That is why there are a number of important precautions to prevent more heat than normal being generated during fast charging.

Fast charging requires new technologies

In recent years, various fast charging standards have been developed to increase the transmission performance of power supply units. Qualcomm’s Quick Charge protocol, for example, is widely used. Version 5 enables charging from 0 to 50 percent in just 5 minutes at 100+ watts.

OnePlus’ WarpCharge technology manages 65 watts. Another standard is VOOC Flash Charge from Oppo, for example, which has also replaced the Warp Charge technology at OnePlus since the two companies became part of the same group. The OnePlus 10T mentioned above, for example, comes with a 150 watt SUPERVOOC power supply. Other standards include USB Power Delivery, Adaptive Charge (Samsung) and TurboPower (Motorola).

There are now several ways and options for protecting mobile phone batteries. The most common solutions include…

• Power supply unit with integrated power management
• Parallel charging
• Additional cooling hardware

Many smartphones with a fast-charging function are supplied with power supply units that have integrated circuits. These ensure that the heat energy can escape before it gets close to the mobile phone. The disadvantage of this solution is that the adapters are often larger than usual.

Another option is parallel charging. The idea is simple. Instead of sending the entire current into a single battery cell, it is split into two parallel cells. The two solutions are now frequently combined for the best possible charging performance. The downside of this charging technology is a slightly lower overall capacity. This is simply because the volume of two battery cells, including the housing and hardware, takes up more space.

Cooling hardware is always a solution for regulating heat development. The better the cooling system, the more power can flow into the device without overheating it. There are plenty of options: heat shields, vapor chambers, even entire fans (especially on gaming smartphones) are used to protect the batteries from excessive temperatures.

Which brings us back to the initial question. Does fast charging ruin mobile phone batteries or not? Do the solutions listed work? How quickly does a battery have to degrade to be considered “ruined”?

There are even official industry standards for the latter: Xiaomi guarantees that 80 percent of the original battery capacity is still available after 800 full charging cycles with its 11T Pro (with 120 watt fast charging). Apple promises a capacity of 80 per cent after 500 charging cycles. And then there is Oppo. At the beginning of February 2023, the Chinese manufacturer presented two new fast charging standards: 150W SuperVOOC and 240W SuperVOOC technology with 80 percent battery capacity after no less than 1,600 charging cycles. We are excited to see what breakthroughs await us this year.

Does fast charging ruin the mobile phone battery or not?

Without long-term studies, it’s not possible to answer this question definitively, but so far everything points to the fact that fast charging does not accelerate the normal wear and tear of a battery.

However, it’s also a fact that fast charging generates more heat due to the higher wattage, from which the phone must be protected. To this end, manufacturers use various measures aimed at improving energy management–be it through optimized power supply units, parallel charging or smart hardware, and sensors to regulate temperature fluctuations.

The users themselves actually have the greatest influence on battery life. Here are some quick tips on how to keep your mobile phone battery fit for longer:

• Always charge with a cable if possible, even if your phone offers inductive charging.
• Avoid complete discharges. The optimum battery level is between 20 and 80 percent.
• Do not charge your battery if it is still relatively full (over 60 percent).
• Avoid extreme temperature fluctuations, whether heat or cold.
• Always use the charging accessories supplied by the manufacturer (plug adapter, charging cable).
• Do not charge your mobile phone when performance-intensive apps or games are running.
• Do not leave your mobile phone plugged in for longer than necessary when the battery is fully charged.