Lithium News

A team of researchers from Shinshu University in Nagano, Japan is now closer to a thin, high-capacity lithium-ion battery that could open the gates to better energy storage systems for electric vehicles.

The research team was led by professor Katsuya Teshima, director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Science (hereinafter called CEES) at Shinshu University in Japan. They published their insights online in August in Scientific Reports.

“Lithium-ion batteries are very promising energy storage systems for electric vehicles that require relatively high energy densities,” said the study’s author Nobuyuki Zettsu, a professor in the CEES and in the Department of Materials Chemistry at Shinshu University. “However, their high operating voltages commonly result in the oxidative decomposition of the electrode surface, which subsequently promotes various side reactions.”

Lithium-ion batteries store a lot of energy, but the force it takes to make the battery disperse the energy is too much — so much, in fact, that the resulting damage makes the battery lose storage capacity.

To combat this issue, Zettsu and colleagues examined the electric and electrochemical properties of the high-voltage (>4.8 V, vs Li+/Li) cathode, where the electrons enter the battery cell.

“Many researchers have attempted to mitigate the observed capacity fading through the reduction of the direct contact area,” Zettsu said, pointing to research projects where scientists covered the surface of the cathode with different materials in an attempt to reduce erosion. “Various fundamental studies have been performed to investigate the effects of the surface coating modification; however, none of them led to a considerable performance enhancement of high-voltage cathode-based battery cells.”

Zettsu may have turned the tide on surface modifiers through the use of a self-assembled monolayer. His team applied an ultra-thin coating of fluoroalkylisilane to the surface of the cathodes. Fluoroalkylisilane, a type of silicone, organizes itself into the most efficient arrangement to conduct lithium ions and insulate electrons while remaining only one atom thick.

“We discovered… that coating the surface of the active material with a self-assembled monolayer… promoted efficient transportation within the electrodes, while also suppressing the side reactions occurring at the electrode and electrolyte interface,” Zettsu said. “This coating provided improvement in both the power density and the cyclability in high-voltage lithium-ion batteries.”

The researchers saw that the direct contact between the cathode and the electrolyte entering the battery was minimized, and that the capacity of the battery did not degrade even after it was cycled one hundred times.

“The deposited self-assembled monolayer coatings reduced the activation barrier for the lithium ion transfer and stabilized ions near the surface, which positively affected the electrochemical reactions occurring at the interface between the electrode and electrolyte,” Zettsu said. “The surface stabilization coatings represent a game-changing technology for the development of high-voltage cathode materials without the limitation of the electrochemical dilemma of efficiency versus stabilization.”

However, Zettsu said, the full effects produced by the surface coating on the full battery system need to be examined in greater detail to better understand any potential negative side-effects.

“Our results can provide new directions for designing lithium-ion batteries based on high-voltage systems with superior electrochemical performance,” Zettsu said.

Zettsu plans to introduce this surface treatment technology to the market by 2022 in cooperation with automobile and cell manufacturers, with the aim of creating high-energy batteries that are also environmentally friendly.

“Due to the world’s environmental regulations, the push towards electric and hybrid automobiles is proceeding at a steady momentum. The performance level required for lithium ion batteries is very high,” Zettsu said. “Currently, we are working on manufacturing real battery cells for plug-in hybrid vehicles and battery electric vehicles using the coating process and experiments in automatic driving modes.”

This work was supported by Japan Science and Technology Agency and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

Other contributors include Dae-Wook Kim, Shuhei Uchida, Hiromasa Shiiba, and Katsuya Teshima, all of whom are affiliated with the Department of Materials Chemistry at Shinshu University. Teshima is the director of the Center for Energy & Environmental Science at Shinshu University.

A recent study, affiliated with UNIST has introduced a novel electric vehicle (EV) battery technology that is more energy-efficient than gasoline-powered engines. The new technology enables drivers to simply have their battery packs replaced instead of charging them, which ultimately troubleshoot slow charging problem with the existing EV battery technology. It also provides lightweight, high-energy density power sources with little risk of catching fire or explosion.

This breakthrough has been led by Professor Jaephil Cho and his research team in the School of Energy and Chemical Engineering at UNIST. Their findings have been published a prestigious academic journal, Nature Communications on September 13, 2018.

In the study, the research team has developed a new type of aluminum-air flow battery for (EVs). When compared to the existing lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), the new battery outperforms the others in terms of higher energy density, lower cost, longer cycle life, and higher safety.

Aluminum-air batteries are primary cells, which means they cannot be recharged via conventional means. When applied to EVs, it will produce electricity by simply replacing the aluminum plate and electrolyte. Considering the actual energy density of gasoline and aluminum of the same weight, aluminum is superior.

“Gasoline has an energy density of 1,700 Wh/kg, while an aluminum-air flow battery exhibits a much higher energy densities of 2,500 Wh/kg with its replaceable electrolyte and aluminum,” says Professor Cho. “This means, with 1kg of aluminum, we can build a battery that enables an electric car to run up to 700km.”

The new battery works much like metal-air batteries, as it produces electricity from the reaction of oxygen in the air with aluminium. Metal-air batteries, especially aluminium-air batteries, have attracted much attention as the next-generatoin battery due to their energy density, which is higher than that of LIBs. Indeed, batteries that use aluminum, a lightweight metal, are lighter, cheaper, and have a greater capacity than a traditional LIB.

While aluminum-air batteries are one of the highest energy densities of all batteries, they are not widely used because of problems with high anode cost and byproduct removal when using traditional electrolytes. Professor Cho has solved this issue by developing a flow-based aluminum-air battery to alleviate the side reactions in the cell, where the electrolytes can be continuously circulated.

In the study, the research team has prepared a silver nanoparticle seed-mediated silver manganate nanoplate architecture for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). They discovered that the silver atom can migrate into the available crystal lattice and rearrange manganese oxide structure, thus creating abundant surface dislocations.

Thanks to improved logevity and energy density, the team anticipates that their aluminum-air flow battery system could potentially help bring more EVs on the road with greater range and substantially less weight with zero risk of explosion.

“This innovative strategy prevented the precipitation of solid by-product in the cell and dissolution of a precious metal in air electrode,” says Jaechan Ryu, first author of the study. “We believe that our AAFB system has the potential for a cost-effective and safe next-generation energy conversion system.”

The discharge capacity of aluminum-air flow battery increased 17 times, as compared to the conventional aluminum air batteries. Besides, the capacity of newly developed silver-manganese oxide-based catalysts was comparable to that of the conventional platinum catalysts (Pt/C). As silver is 50 times less expensive than platinum, it is also competitive in terms of the price

Everybody knows that conventional coal power plants are not designed to handle the demands on the nimble, renewables-integrated grid of today. What’s not much discussed, though, is the need for energy storage systems that can meet new demands on the grid. Those demands include electric vehicles surging into the market as well as an increase in wind and solar power.

With this in mind, let’s take a look at new energy storage technology from the Swiss company Innolith. CleanTechnica spent some time on the phone last week with Innolith CEO Sergey Buchin (with CMO Julian Tanner joining in) to discuss how the company’s new battery could help improve stability while leveraging more renewable energy into the grid as well.

Two Ways To Improve Lithium-Ion Energy Storage

As the name suggests, Innolith is focused on improving the performance of lithium-on batteries. Here’s the rundown from its press release:

The Innolith batteries use an unconventional inorganic electrolyte that delivers far greater durability, but also ensures a safer battery that is fundamentally non-flammable. This is in contrast to organic lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries that have limited usable lives and have caused multiple fires in consumer devices and grid applications.

Ouch! That thing about fire is a little over the top. To be clear, fire is not an issue for properly designed lithium-ion batteries.

The real issue is money. Conventional lithium-ion batteries are designed with an extra layer of safety engineering to prevent overheating, and that can push up costs.

If you neutralize the safety issue from the get-go, then you can avoid those additional costs.

Another feature related to cost is durability. Conventional lithium-ion batteries lose efficiency after repeated charge-discharge cycles. If you had a battery that could last for say, 50,000 cycles instead of just 10,000, your costs would go down even more.

A New Inorganic Battery For The Sparkling Green Grid Of The Future

That’s where Innolith’s new technology comes in. The electrolyte consists of lithium tetrachloroaluminate with the inorganic solvent sulfur dioxide. If that sounds a bit familiar, you may be thinking of the innovative battery company Alevo. Alevo’s technology was promising but it ran into financial difficulty last year, after which it was acquired by Innolith along with the fruits of its 20-year R&D effort.

At the end of our conversation, Sergey Buchin wrapped things up with a helpful observation on the general state of conventional lithium-ion technology, so let’s start with that (comments edited for clarity and flow):

The technology on the market is the same for all applications. Conventional Li-ion batteries were first commercialized in the 1990s for consumer applications, and this is more or less the same technology you find in a Tesla or in a container connected to the grid. This technology is coming to a limit.

The basic idea is that energy storage demands are different for grid-scale facilities, electric vehicles, and wristwatches. Having one architecture to rule them all is bound to bump up against an efficiency ceiling eventually.

Meanwhile, let’s start over again at the beginning of our conversation. As Buchin explained, the Innolith energy storage platform differs from conventional lithium-ion batteries:

The battery platform consists of inorganic electrolytes. This is exactly what enables the battery to have a number of distinctive features.

First, it is not flammable. Second, The system is intrinsically chemically stable, which allows for longevity.

In contrast, conventional organic electrolytes use complex compounds. You have to fight thousands of parasitic reactions. With inorganic material you only fight tens of parasitic reactions.

Also, the [solid electrolyte interface] remains stable over time. Internal resistance is low, so it means that we are talking about a battery that has a power rating unchanged over time.

Conventional batteries have a dramatic growth in internal resistance even within just 1-2,000 cycles.

This is not the case for our battery. After 50,000 cycles it still has same power capacity, and 50% of residual capacity. That makes it ideal for applications requiring high power and a high number of cycles.

So, Does It Work?

When Innolith first reached out to by email to gauge CleanTechnica’s interest in its story, one thing that grabbed our attention was the company’s PJM connection.

For those of you new to the US grid, PJM is the operator responsible for a rather large and challenging part of the nation’s electricity infrastructure. Here’s the rundown from PJM:

PJM Interconnection is a regional transmission organization (RTO) that coordinates the movement of wholesale electricity in all or parts of Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia.

Got all that? Good! Innolith left all this PJM stuff out of its press release, which only refers, somewhat mysteriously, to “the deployment of a prototype on the US grid.”

The company did mention it in its email to CleanTechnica, though. PJM has been testing an Innolith “GridBank” battery at scale in Hagerstown, Maryland, for a little over a year, so we made sure to ask Buchin why Innolith was interested in partnering with PJM.

As Buchin explained, PJM offered the opportunity to test the equipment under highly demanding conditions:

PJM has introduced a mechanism that created a market space for services in frequency management.

There are hundreds of different batteries deployed throughout this market. They compete with each other under a harsh [as in, high-standard] rating system of zero to 100. The higher your rating, the sooner you will get dispatched.

We have our system in operation in PJM for one year. We qualified with a score of 98.5 and the battery is still running with a score in the high 90s.

As for the bottom line, Buchin stated that “we think its the most economically viable way to distribute frequency management. We are about one-third the price of our competition.”

What About EVs And Renewables?

One thing to keep in mind about Innolith’s energy storage solution is that its real usefulness comes into play for grid stability, not load shifting. As a grid stabilizer in PJM, for example, it handles a charge/discharge cycle about 10 times a day.

According to Buchin, Innolith’s battery is expected to last about 10-15 years under those conditions. In contrast, conventional Li-ion batteries might last about 1-3 years if they were called upon to cycle that often.

With that in mind, Buchin foresees the need for Innolith’s energy storage as more electric vehicles enter the market:

Our battery is perfect for EV chargers. To reduce “turbulence” in the grid, you would charge the vehicle from the battery instead of directly from the grid.

That’s rather timely, considering that global companies like Enel are rushing pell-mell to build EV charging infrastructure.

The use of energy storage for grid stability also dovetails with the integration of more intermittent sources into the grid, namely wind and solar.

Though Innolith’s technology is source neutral — it can be charged with any electricity, from anywhere — the company is also making a strong pitch for renewable energy integration. In particular, part of its business plan involves ramping up renewable energy in emerging economies.

In consideration of the latest IPCC report, anything that can leverage more renewables into the grid is a good thing.

If all goes according to plan, Innolith is looking at hitting high-volume production by 2020 — just in time to help save the planet.

Here in the US, it looks like offshore wind energy is poised for a near-term breakthrough, but keep an eye on the next few years, when next-generation technology could keep pushing the cost of solar power down.

The lithium ride was a great one. Cobalt, too. All they needed was their Elon Musk moment, which came in the form of the Nevada battery gigafactory. The next Elon Musk moment won’t be about lithium at all—or even cobalt. It will be for an element that takes everything electric to its revolutionary finish line: Vanadium.

The one moment that will change everything … and that moment may be near.

Vanadium is lithium on steroids—wildly bigger and the only way forward from here. We may have already reached the peak of our electric revolution through batteries with lithium.

We need bigger batteries, preferably the size of a football field—or 20.

That’s vanadium—Element 23. The answer to our issue of scale.

“It’s no longer a technological maybe,” says Matt Rhoades, president and CEO of United Battery Metals, a Colorado vanadium explorer sitting on one of the few known sources of the next big battery metal in the entire United States.

Rhoades should know … his company is behind the discovery that hopes to put America definitively on the vanadium map. UBM’s Wray Mesa Project in Colorado has a mineral resource base estimate indicating resource of around 2.7 million pounds of vanadium—not to mention all the uranium they already know is there for additional upside.

“Vanadium is here, and lithium is scared because the $13-billion energy storage market has already found its new poster boy,” Rhoades told Oilprice.com.

The Moment of Truth

The truth is that it’s been a long road for vanadium to not only break into the energy storage market, but to actually become the future of the energy storage market.

The next ‘moment’ will be when someone in the U.S.—always one step behind the Chinese—announces plans for an American vanadium battery gigafactory. Anyone who hasn’t gotten in before that moment will be nursing their lithium hangover.

China is already building the world’s largest vanadium flow battery (VFB) gigafactory in Dalian, with the massively powerful (200MW/800MWh) batteries to be manufactured by Rongke Power.

It covers an area bigger than 20 soccer fields.

And thanks to the Chinese, vanadium was the best-performing battery metal last year.

And this year is the kicker. In just the past month, ferro vanadium prices have soared 33%. A month ago, ferro vanadium prices were at $79 per kilogram. Now we’re looking at $105 per kilogram.

And it’s vanadium pentoxide that is the main ingredient in vanadium redox flow batteries used for grid energy storage.

For a junior minor like UBM with a market cap of just over $10 million—that potential 2.7 million pounds of vanadium begins to sound like strategy at its best and brightest.

Why Vanadium Changes Everything

But let’s back up a bit …

If you were just getting the hang of lithium and cobalt in the battery mix, vanadium might sound complicated—but it’s not.

It’s as simple as size. This is where we get to scale up because when it comes to energy storage, bigger is better. In fact, bigger is the only way forward in this game.

This is possible because vanadium flow batteries store their energy in tanks. The fluid (electrolyte) that transfers charges inside a battery flows from one tank through the system and back again, making a closed circuit. They can charge and discharge simultaneously.

We’re talking tanks that can be as big as you want them: an aquarium, a shipping container or even an Olympic swimming pool—as big as your imagination can take you.

For renewable energy it is a game-changer. VRBs will forever change the capacity of wind and solar energy, making it limitless and cheap.

Vanadium is superior to lithium in every way. Not only does it have eternal life (unlike lithium), it’s not explosive, flammable or toxic.

Not only can it be scaled up cheaply, but it’s actually cheaper to scale it up, making it the antithesis of lithium.

Put in another way: It’s tough to scale up a lithium-ion system. If you double the size, you double the cost. Not so with vanadium: All you have to do is make the tank bigger, and the bigger the scale the lower the cost.

And that scaling up is already happening. Vanadium batteries are already providing complete energy storage system for $500 per kilowatt hour. In less than a year, that is expected to be down to $300. By 2020, we could be looking at $150/kilowatt hour.

A lithium-ion battery gigafactory couldn’t come close to this fast-paced cost reduction.

Vanadium: Finally, America Gets A Piece of the Pie

Even though this is the biggest energy story right now, vanadium isn’t just a bet on batteries—that’s why Mining.com calls it “the metal we can’t do without and don’t produce”.

Just as UBM’s new vanadium discovery is also an original uranium resource, vanadium can also be used in nuclear energy. By 2025, analysts estimate that 85 percent of all vehicles will incorporate vanadium alloy to reduce their weight and increase fuel efficiency.

Still, strategic as it is, America has fallen behind, and now that the global race for vanadium is on in the battery game, that will hurt.

In China, vanadium is already becoming the alternative to lithium. The next big moment will be this:

“If a vanadium battery producer steps forward with bold plans to produce vanadium flow at mass scale, giving the industry its Elon Musk or lithium ion moment, the potential for the technology to be the second most deployed ESS battery in the world is there,” says Simon Moores of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a battery materials research and price discovery provider out of London.

Rhoades certainly agrees and UBM is in that wonderful position of potentially becoming the only American source for the key rare earth metal that will power our scaled-up “liquid electricity” breakthrough.

“The vanadium flow battery scale-up for massive energy storage makes the electric vehicle push look like child’s play,” he said. “Lithium was a teaser. Vanadium is where it all gets huge.”

We watched lithium take center stage, but that may be just the prologue. Vanadium could be the conclusion.

While a supply shortage still looms in the lithium market next decade, the industry should brace for further volatility into next year, according to Wang Xiaoshen, vice chairman of Jiangxi Ganfeng Lithium Co., which is forecast to become the second-largest producer from this year.

The supplier to Tesla Inc. and BMW AG fell as much as 28 percent on its debut on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange Thursday amid turbulence in the lithium and boarder markets. Its Shenzhen shares tumbled to their daily limit for a second day. In anticipation of industry expansion, Ganfeng is developing its battery interests and sees challenges ahead for new entrants, Wang said in edited highlights of an interview on Oct. 9.

On lithium’s future

We think that the near future — until middle of next year — will be volatile, for several reasons. On the supply side, there may be some new spodumene suppliers coming on in the next several months. On demand side, some of the new car projects could be delayed. However, Tesla is another important factor in near-term demand. It looks like the Model 3 is now ramping up steadily and we think their purchasing should be very strong — not like the start of this year.

On risks

The risk is that the market is overestimating the potential on the supply side. Of course there is room for newcomers, but they will likely have lots of problems with production. They (investors) are scared because they realize this industry still has lots of barriers, even in the upstream. You need the technology, you need of course the market — it’s very challenging for some new entrants to become qualified battery-materials suppliers.

On the prospect of a supply squeeze

Not in the near term, but in the longer term there is still risk of a shortage. Especially 2023 and 2024 — that’s the period we’re a little bit concerned about. That will be the time when EV production will be ramping up quickly and that’s when most of the battery makers will be expanding their capacity. The OEMs want to secure long-term supply. They probably share the same view that come 2023-2024 there will be tight supply when everyone is ramping up the EV production. But in the short term we have to fasten our seat belts and be careful.

On solid-state batteries

We are targeting production of the first generation solid-state batteries from the second quarter next year. We are already starting some testing work with several Chinese and European manufacturers. We think we can support a few thousand EV cars and then we will make a decision on how we want to scale up this technology. From this technology to the next level, there’s still another eight or 10-year window for that. Our first generation is a drop-in technology in which we replace the liquid electrolyte.

We are quite advanced compared with our peers. There are two groups currently. One is the existing battery makers. They are more focused on their current technology, which they are trying to improve bit by bit. There are many start ups, but they just do not have enough years experience and it will take them three to four years or more before before they can reach our level.

On research

Our solid-state battery base is in Ningbo. The whole team just joined Ganfeng in 2016 (from a national-level technology research center there). It’s about 80 people and the leader has been working on solid-state since 2001. Besides that we have bought all the institute’s patents for this technology.

On whether Ganfeng may become known as battery company?
That’s possible. But we don’t have the resources to support the whole world and it’s impossible do this by ourselves. We still think its a good idea to work together with other battery makers. The lithium industry needs to create new demand and we want to be active in creating new demand.

On his early career days

After university in 1990 I worked nine months on the production line at the Xinjiang Lithium Plant in my home province. Conditions there were very poor, very dusty. Every day I found some new little marks on my skin because when you sweat, the moisture reacts with the hydroxide particles in the air and hurts the skin. Our factories now are totally, totally different but I still remember those working conditions very clearly.

The cells were delivered into space by the ISS’s H-II Transfer Vehicle, which was launched by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) on 23 September from the Tanegashima Space Centre. This was the second of four batches of GS Yuasa lithium-ion batteries to be delivered to the ISS – the first delivery being back in December 2016.

The GS Yuasa lithium-ion cells will replace older nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) cells currently installed on board the ISS. Just 24 of the new lithium-ion cells will deliver the same performance provided by 48 nickel-metal hydride batteries. This means only half the number of GS Yuasa cells are needed to provide the same capacity and high energy density, therefore contributing to a reduction in transportation costs.

GS Yuasa’s lithium-ion cells have high energy density and long life plus boast a track record of being installed in numerous spacecraft and rockets, both in Japan and abroad. First adopted on board the ISS in 2012, the cells have a design optimised for space operations, which require highly efficient charge-discharge.

All energy on board the ISS is produced by solar panels and stored in the space craft’s batteries. This stored energy is then used to power on-board systems during nocturnal periods – of which there are 16 every 24 hours due to the ISS’s orbit around the earth.

The replacement of the batteries will be carried out by astronauts during space walks outside the space station, scheduled to take place in October. Going forward, GS Yuasa will continue to contribute to space development projects through the development and manufacturing of high performance lithium-ion batteries.

GS Yuasa leads the world with innovative power solutions ranging from the manned research submersible “the Shinkai6500”, to high-performance batteries used in automobiles, motorcycles, marine, rail, and aviation applications including the state-of-the-art Boeing 787 Dreamliner.