Lithium News

Offshore wind turbines at two commercial-scale sites are now sending power to the U.S. grid.

Moments before midnight on Tuesday, a single turbine near Martha’s Vineyard delivered 5 megawatts of renewable energy to the New England grid, developers said. The turbine is one out of 62 planned for Vineyard Wind 1, an offshore site owned by utility company Avangrid and wind energy investor Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP). The firms wanted to deliver offshore wind power via the site before the end of 2023; they missed that goal by just a few days.

Still, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey called it a “historic moment.” Healey said in a statement that the farm will soon crank out “power equivalent of over 400,000 Massachusetts households.” Avangrid and CIP say the site will feature five turbines by “early” this year, to power up homes — and presumably some electric-vehicle batteries — in the otherwise natural gas-reliant state.

The Vineyard Wind news comes about a month after another offshore site near Montauk Point, New York declared a similar breakthrough. Dubbed South Fork Wind, the offshore wind project so far has two turbines installed, with one operating. The owners —  Danish energy firm Ørsted and utility company Eversource — say they’ll install 10 additional turbines in early 2024.

Yet, U.S. offshore wind has suffered some blows recently, in spite of support from the Biden administration, which made offshore turbines a key part of its strategy to reduce climate pollution.

In October, Ørsted canned two wind projects in New Jersey over supply chain delays and high interest rates. Around the same time, Avangrid paid $16 million to cancel an agreement to sell power to Connecticut, though the project itself was not cancelled. And on Wednesday, Fossil fuel giants BP and Equinor scrapped their “Empire Wind 2” contract with New York — also over interest rates and supply chain issues. In a nutshell: Commercial-scale offshore wind projects take a long time to come online. Projects planned before the pandemic look a lot less feasible now than they once did, as far as costs and rates go.

Several startups aim to drive down the price of wind energy. SkySpecs, for example, uses drones and AI to monitor wind turbines, predict equipment failures and ultimately reduce turbine downtime. The Goldman Sachs-backed startup has secured $118 million to date, including an $80 million Series D in 2022.

Iran’s Environment Department has denied any involvement of the Chinese in lithium extraction from Lake Urmia.

This follows the circulation of images on social media depicting trucks on the desiccated lakebed. The Director of Environmental Protection in West Azarbaijan, Saeed Shahand, has claimed that the activities in question solely pertain to “salt extraction, not lithium.”

Earlier reports had said that Chinese companies were acquiring brine from Lake Urmia with the aim of obtaining valuable lithium, which can be used to support the country’s nuclear program.

However, officials allege that the lake lacks lithium, underscoring the ongoing authorized extraction of salt from specific areas.

Shahand affirmed that the extraction of salt from Lake Urmia has been a long-standing practice, spanning years, claiming that it has not led to any adverse environmental consequences in authorized areas.

Researchers have sounded a cautionary note, warning about the potential repercussions of salt extraction and disturbance to the lakebed. Pertinent questions have been raised regarding research into the impact of salt compounds in Lake Urmia on plants, humans, and agricultural fields.

The ongoing drying of Lake Urmia, once the region’s largest lake, is causing growing concern among environmental experts who fear its far-reaching effects on various regions of Iran in terms of both environmental and human impacts.

A recent discovery could pave the way for safer, more powerful lithium-metal batteries. These types of batteries have twice the energy capacity of the more common lithium-ion batteries found in smartphones and electric vehicles.

Lithium-metal batteries, the predecessors of lithium-ion batteries, have not been widely adopted due to their higher risk of combustion. However, scientists from the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA believe they can avoid this danger.

A typical lithium-ion battery stores charged lithium atoms within a carbon-coated electrode. In comparison, a lithium-metal battery uses an electrode coated in metallic lithium, which can store 10 times more lithium, leading to better performance but also increased risks.

The process of applying this lithium coating in batteries often results in the formation of microscopic filaments with protruding spikes. These spikes can cause dangerous short circuits if they intersect within the battery.

The UCLA team made an astonishing observation: when the typical corrosion seen while applying the lithium is prevented, the lithium forms a specific 12-sided shape known as a rhombic dodecahedron, similar to dice used in games like Dungeons and Dragons.

“There are thousands of papers on lithium metal, and most descriptions of the structure is qualitative, such as ‘chunky’ or ‘column-like,’” says Yuzhang Li, the study’s corresponding author, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, and a member of CNSI, in a university release.

“It was surprising for us to discover that when we prevented surface corrosion, instead of these ill-defined shapes, we saw a singular polyhedron that matches theoretical predictions based on the metal’s crystal structure. Ultimately, this study allows us to revise how we understand lithium-metal batteries.”

By establishing this orderly pattern of lithium accumulation, the risk of intersections and potential explosions could be reduced, offering a safer alternative to the existing lithium-metal battery design. UCLA researchers are now considering the implications of their findings for future battery technologies.

“Scientists and engineers have produced over two decades’ worth of research into synthesizing metals including gold, platinum and silver into shapes such as nanocubes, nanospheres and nanorods,” says Li. “Now that we know the shape of lithium, the question is, Can we tune it so that it forms cubes, which can be packed in densely to increase both the safety and performance of batteries?”

To achieve their results, UCLA scientists developed a unique method to deposit lithium faster than the usual corrosion occurs. This was achieved by using a smaller electrode to push electricity out more quickly.

They were able to observe the shape of lithium using cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), an imaging method that captures detailed images at an atomic level by passing electrons through frozen samples. This breakthrough might be a game-changer in the battery industry, promising safer and more efficient batteries in the near future.

Panasonic has a purchase order with a California company to provide a common Earth element that could transform electric vehicle battery tech.

Sila touts its Titan Silicon powder as a superb alternative to the graphite commonly used in batteries. The anode is opposite the cathode in battery cells. Both are needed for the charge/discharge cycle to work.

The results of Sila’s work could be big for drivers. A report from Wired notes that Titan could help EV batteries achieve a 40% increase in mileage, providing an 80% charge in the “time it takes to leisurely fill a tank with gas.”

The tech provides 20% more energy density, according to Sila’s website. Energy density is the amount of power a battery can store “with respect to its mass,” per the U.S. Department of Energy.

“It took us 12 years and 80,000 iterations to get to this point,” Sila co-founder Gene Berdichevsky said in the Wired story. “It’s sophisticated science.”

Silicon is the second-most common element in the Earth’s crust. Sila claims its production method, which is underway at plants in California and Washington, is ready to turn it into anode powder with bulk production. The material is compatible with a variety of battery cell types and creates up to 70% less air pollution during production than graphite. The process is “sustainable for the environment,” per Sila.

Silicon’s benefits haven’t gone unnoticed, as other companies are using the element for various battery applications as part of the search for cleaner and less expensive transportation tech with a stable supply chain.

Many of the materials needed for EV batteries are produced internationally.

China, the world’s leader in graphite production, recently placed export rules on the material. The news caused anxiety in the sector about the supply. Bar graphs shared by data collector Statista show a similar pattern for graphite and silicon: China leads world production for both elements — by a wide margin.

As an answer, Sila plans to hire up to 600 employees to ramp up production at the Washington facility to meet what it expects to be high demand for Titan, according to the Wired story.

“We can replace anywhere from 50% to 100% of the graphite in lithium-ion batteries,” Berdichevsky told Wired.

Panasonic, a mainstay technology brand, seems to be a perfect partner.

The Japan-based company has long worked on silicon battery tech, “successfully mass-producing the industry’s first silicon-based EV batteries,” the tech giant said in a press release.

The company makes about 10% of the world’s EV batteries, many of them in the U.S. are for Tesla, per the Wired report.

Now, Panasonic’s plan is to bolster the North American supply chain with help from Sila’s product.

“In the past, the U.S. has been a leader in advanced battery research, but much of the actual manufacturing has taken place abroad. It is exciting to see U.S.-developed research being scaled at U.S. factories,” Wellesley College environmental professor Jay Turner commented in the Wired story.

In July 2018, not long after the boom in lithium, and lithium batteries, began, people were pondering where the boom would end.

The former chief scientist, Alan Finkel, wrote an article for Cosmos “Long live the power of lithium!” and said: “It is difficult to predict where the next big battery breakthrough will come from.”

Finkel said at the time the competition is intense and advances are announced daily.

“My money is on replacing the liquid electrolyte with a solid-state electrolyte that is a kind of glass. If successful, the solid-state electrolyte will allow faster charging, increased safety, up to three times the energy density and longer lifetimes.

“Sound too good to be true?” asked Finkel then. He added: “The latest announcement from Toyota Motor Corporation confidently claims it will introduce solid-state lithium-ion batteries in 2022. While it is early days, solid-state lithium-ion batteries can provide a step change in performance that will give us electric cars able to go 1,000 km and smartphones that can be used for several days between charges.”55

Toyota In 2017, said it was on the cusp of a major technological breakthrough that could see solid-state batteries in showrooms by 2020.

Lithium batteries: What happened next?

Toyota said about solid-state batteries in October 2023: “The aim is for the batteries to be ready for commercial use by 2027/28”.

The RACV of WA reported two months ago: “BMW aims to have a working prototype by 2025. One of the battery suppliers to Ford and Volkswagen believes it will have solid-state batteries in mass production in 2028. And Nissan wants to debut solid-state batteries around 2027, potentially utilising them in sports cars and four-wheel drives.”

Nevertheless Finkel was close and remains optimistic about the future of lithium-ion batteries, telling Cosmos not long ago: “I was optimistic then, but the actual uptake in the intervening five years has outperformed my expectations.  Lithium rocks!

“Other important elements in rechargeable batteries come and go, such as nickel and cobalt.  However, for the high-performance batteries used in electric vehicles, lithium has been a constant.  The technical reasons are what I said back then – lithium is the lightest metal and has the highest working voltage.

“The combination of science and engineering has seen the lifetime of lithium-ion rechargeable batteries improve to the point that I am confident the vast majority of lithium-ion electric vehicle batteries will last the lifetime of the vehicle.

“The investment in scientific research and manufacturing scale-up has led to prices coming down and energy density per kilogram going up.  What’s not to love?

“There is, though, a new contender on the block.  Another metal – sodium – is capturing headlines.

“Sodium is the extremely common element that is the major constituent of common salt.  Sodium-ion batteries were commercially introduced to the market this year (2023) in small quantities.

“They do not have as high energy density per kilogram as their lithium-ion battery older cousins, but they are made from earth-abundant, harmless materials that are cheap, cheap, cheap.   My prediction is that sodium-ion batteries will be used in huge quantities for stationary energy storage to reduce the intermittency of household solar rooftops, and utility-scale solar and wind power.

“It will be fun to look back in five years to see the trajectory of sodium-ion batteries.  There is room for lithium-ion and sodium-ion batteries to co-exist as the demand for storage continues to grow at a rapid rate.”