Lithium News

Argentina’s aspiration to become a world leader in lithium production raises questions about whether the benefits will trickle down to local communities.

The government of Mauricio Macri dreams of Argentina becoming the world leader in lithium production. But it does not seem so clear that this aspiration, underpinned by the interest of multinational corporations, would also drive the development of local communities.

With just two projects in operation, Argentina today contributes some 40,000 tons per year of that key chemical element for batteries that are used around the world in, for example cell phones and electric cars representing 16% of global production, according to data from Argentina’s Energy and Mining Ministry (MinEM).

But these numbers are expected to increase significantly in the near future, because the main international companies engaged in this business – strongly linked to the energy transition from fossil fuels to clean sources –have already landed in Argentina.

Thus, in the last two years the sector has received nearly two billion dollars in foreign investment and today there are no less than 53 projects in the phases of exploration or technical and economic feasibility studies, which cover a total area of 876,000 hectares in the northwest of the country, according to MinEM.

“In Argentina what we can do so far is extract lithium carbonate. The problem is that we do not have the technology or the patents for the assembly of the batteries,” economist Benito Carlos Aramayo told IPS.

“As a result, lithium will not change the production model of the northwest of the country, which is the production of raw materials. It will only expand it a little, because today we depend mainly on sugarcane and tobacco,” added Aramayo, assistant dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the National University of Jujuy.

Together with Salta and Catamarca, Jujuy is one of the northwestern provinces that account for most of the country’s lithium reserves. In fact, of the 53 projects that are expected to begin to operate soon, 48 are in these three provinces, in the Puna ecoregion.

The Puna is an arid zone, with salt flats that are over 4,000 meters above sea level, which is part of what has been called the “Lithium Triangle” and includes northern Chile and southwestern Bolivia. In recent years, different scientific reports have pointed out that the region has approximately half of the world’s lithium reserves.

Chile has led the world market in recent years, but at present big investors in the sector seem to be looking towards Argentina, just as global demand for lithium is expected to rise threefold by 2025.

The intense exploratory activity carried out recently in the Argentine Puna increased the country’s lithium reserves, which in 2015 were estimated at 6.3% of the global total, compared to 13.8 % today.

This growth was shown in a report jointly prepared by the US Geological Survey (USGS) and Argentina’s Geological and Mining Service (SEGEMAR), which was made public in late November 2017.

“Argentina can become the world’s leading lithium exporter,” said Tom Schneberger, vice president of FMC Lithium, which through its subsidiary Minera del Altiplano produces some 22,500 tons of lithium a year in the Salar del Hombre Muerto, in the northwestern province of Catamarca.

In November, Schneberger announced investments for 300 million dollars with the objective of doubling the production in the salt flat by 2019 and gave two reasons to justify the company’s expectation: increased global demand and the “clear rules” set by the Macri administration.

“The previous government’s policies offered few certainties,” he said.

The question is whether the exploitation of lithium reserves can bring benefits to the inhabitants of northwestern Argentina, a particularly impoverished area that has been increasingly in decline in recent years.

According to a paper by Aramayo, the province of Jujuy accounted for just 1.3% of Argentina’s GDP in 1980, and for only 0.6% this decade.

Historian Bruno Fornillo, who has researched what he calls “the geopolitics of lithium,” wrote that, “the profits of the lithium energy industry – as in the case of the processing of all raw materials since the very start of capitalism – rise as you go up the value chain.”

Fornillo sees lithium as a possible tool for a new model of development and urges that local activity should not be restricted to the extraction of the metal, but that it should move towards the manufacturing of batteries, which requires a strong production of scientific knowledge.

This would, of course, involve the difficult task of breaking with the export and extractivist model.

“The extraction of lithium has things in common with other extractivisms which are disguised as industries, but they are not, because they produce nothing, they only extract,” naturalist Claudio Bertonatti, an adviser to the Félix de Azara environmental foundation, told IPS.

“These industries have such economic power that they tend to overpower institutions in poor regions. And until a while ago they were associated with neoliberal governments, but lately we have realised that these companies have such power that the extractivism does not change, regardless of who is in the government,” he added.

The process of extracting lithium in the salt flats begins with the pumping of brine and continues with a long process of evaporation. Thus, using chemical substances, lithium is separated from other salts.

It is a similar method, although on an industrial scale, to the one used for generations to produce salt by the indigenous populations of the area, who have lived for thousands of years in the region where the lithium reserves are concentrated.

The indigenous property of many of the territories is also a source of conflict and, in fact, 33 communities from the provinces of Salta and Jujuy filed a claim in 2010 with Argentina’s Supreme Court, to try to assert their right to to be consulted, but were rejected by the highest court for formal reasons.

Later, in 2015, the same communities presented a consultation protocol that respects the principles and ancestral values of their peoples, the Kolla and Atacama, called Kachi Yupi (“Footprints of Salt”, in their native language). The document was delivered to the authorities to be used in any project that could affect them.

Winner of the Design News Lifetime Achievement Award, John Goodenough, has touched billions of lives with his invention of lithium-ion battery technologies. But Goodenough says he’s not done innovating.

Forty years after inventing battery chemistries that have touched the lives of billions, John Goodenough is still on a mission.

Goodenough, recipient of the Design News 2018 Golden Mousetrap Lifetime Achievement Award, has certainly earned the right to kick back and enjoy the fruits of his labors. Starting in the late 1970s, Goodenough is credited with having co-invented a succession of battery chemistries that may turn out to be the most important of the past hundred years. First, there was lithium cobalt oxide, which served as the power source for countless cell phones and laptops. Then, he co-invented manganese spinel lithium batteries, now employed in tens of thousands of hybrids and electric vehicles. Later, he developed lithium iron-phosphate chemistries, which continue to serve in products ranging from handheld power tools to plug-in cars to grid storage systems.

“You don’t plan a career. It just happens. You just do what’s in front of you.” — Dr. John Goodenough

But at 95, Goodenough isn’t finished. As a professor of mechanical engineering and material science at the University of Texas-Austin, he continues to work, and to search for the next big battery breakthrough.

Asked if Goodenough still works an eight-hour day, his assistant, Melissa Truitt-Green, replies matter-of-factly, “Not always. Sometimes he works ten hours.”

Goodenough’s current mission is to develop a chemistry that solves the shortcomings of today’s lithium-ion batteries and lays the foundation for a real revolution in electric cars. The big problem with today’s lithium-ion batteries, he said, lies in their charging times.

“If you charge fast, with a liquid electrolyte and a carbon anode, you plate lithium on it and get dendrites,” he told Design News. “And then you get problems. Today, the solution is to charge overnight. But with an electric car, you don’t want to have to charge overnight. You want to drive up and get charged in 10 minutes.”

To accomplish that, Goodenough is working on a solid state lithium-ion battery. That is, no liquid electrolytes, no dendrites, no overheating. And very fast charging.

Goodenough knows that’s a tall task. “People have tried to make a solid state battery, and they could only do it with very thin films and not much capacity,” he said. “It’s a very tricky problem. But I believe it will be ready in five years.”

Colleagues say that if anyone can do it, Goodenough can. “He’s an incredibly bright physicist and materials scientist,” Michael Thackeray, who co-invented manganese spinel chemistries with Goodenough a generation ago, told Design News five years ago. “He’s been involved in all the major lithium technologies.”

The Long Road to Success

Indeed, Goodenough is recognized for his brilliance, but to hear him tell it, he was lucky.

Goodenough grew up in a Connecticut farmhouse where education was stressed, and was sent on scholarship to the Groton School, a private boarding academy in Massachusetts, at age 12. When his parents divorced, he never returned home. He finished at Groton, studying Latin and Greek, then entered Yale University, majoring in math and philosophy.

“I was dyslexic as a child and I couldn’t read very well,” he recalled. “I wasn’t going to major in history or English. So I did mathematics.”

After Yale, World War II intervened. Goodenough served in the military as a meteorologist and developed a passion for science. He applied to the University of Chicago to study physics after the War ended, earning a PhD there. But in 1952, his career took an unexpected turn. PhD in hand, he joined Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory, where he worked on massive computers for the Cold War effort. Gradually, he transitioned from physicist to material scientist to engineer. “I was introduced to electrical engineers and ceramists,” he said. “I had the good fortune of being in a lab where all these people came together.”

That experience served him well when he moved to the University of Oxford in England in 1976. There, he began his legendary string of successes with lithium battery chemistries. Working with grad students in 1978, he focused on lithium cobalt oxides. “We didn’t know that you weren’t supposed to be able to get such a big voltage out of it,” he remembered. “But because I didn’t know that, we went ahead and did it. And it was stable. Sometimes, you do the right experiment for the wrong reasons.”

Later, he and Thackeray turned their focus to the so-called manganese spinel chemistry, succeeding hugely again.

At the time, Goodenough never guessed the applications for his chemistries would be so stunningly broad. “You don’t plan a career,” he explained. “It just happens. You just do what’s in front of you. Did I know what this would become? No, I didn’t. Not at all.”

Today, he hopes fortune will smile on him again, as he continues his work on solid state battery technology. Automakers are eyeing him and others and they race to make the battery that that could eliminate the issue of electric car charging time.

“Now I’m having the fun of realizing that there’s a whole new area of electrochemistry ahead of me,” Goodenough said. “We’re working to make the battery that will take the internal combustion engine off the road.”

Goodenough remains on a mission for the betterment of mankind. And he’s optimistic it will happen — if not in a production car anytime soon, at least in prototype vehicles. “I’m 95, but I think we can get it done in five years,” he told us. “I’m not folding up my tent.”

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have observed an unexpected phenomenon in lithium-ion batteries, the most common type of battery used to power cell phones and electric cars, creating possibilities to develop batteries that “charge faster and last longer.”

The discovery, published in the newly released journal Science Advances, shows that as a model battery generates electric current, the concentration of lithium inside individual nanoparticles reverses at a certain point, instead of constantly increasing.

It is a major step toward improving the battery life of consumer electronics.

“If you have a cell phone, you likely need to charge its battery every day, due to the limited capacity of the battery’s electrodes,” said Esther Takeuchi, a SUNY distinguished professor at Stony Brook University and a chief scientist in the Energy Sciences Directorate at Brookhaven Lab.

“The findings in this study could help develop batteries that charge faster and last longer.”

Inside every lithium-ion battery are particles whose atoms are arranged in a lattice — a periodic structure with gaps between the atoms. When a lithium-ion battery supplies electricity, lithium ions flow into empty sites in the atomic lattice.

“Previously, scientists assumed that the concentration of lithium would continuously increase in the lattice,” said Wei Zhang, a scientist at Brookhaven’s Sustainable Energy Technologies Department.

“But now, we have seen that this may not be true when the battery’s electrodes are made from nano-sized particles. We observed the lithium concentration within local regions of nanoparticles go up, and then down. It reversed,” Zhang added.

“Similar to how a sponge soaks up water, the overall level of lithium continuously increases inside the nano-sized particles,” said Feng Wang, the leader of this study and a scientist in Brookhaven’s Sustainable Energy Technologies Department.

“But unlike water, lithium may preferentially move out of some areas, creating inconsistent levels of lithium across the lattice.”

The scientists explained that the uneven movement of lithium could have lasting, damaging effects and can lead to fatigue failure of the battery.

“Before lithium enters the lattice, its structure is very uniform,” Wang said.

“But once lithium goes in, it stretches the lattice, and when lithium goes out, the lattice shrinks. So each time you charge and drain a battery, its active component will be stressed, and its quality will degrade over time. Therefore, it is important to characterize and understand how lithium concentration changes both in space and time,” Wang added.

While the study focused on lithium-ion batteries, the scientists say the observed phenomenon may also occur in other high-performance battery chemistries.

Worldwide, there were nearly one billion passenger vehicles and 335 million commercial vehicles on the road in 2015. This number has been rising steadily over the past few decades, fueled by rising economic growth around the world. In China alone, more than 21 million passenger cars were sold in 2015, up from only 6 million in 2008.

The transport sector is responsible for a third of global energy demand and one-sixth of global greenhouse gas emissions. It is also the sector with the lowest penetration of renewable energy: in 2016 only 4% of energy consumption in the transport sector came from renewables.

Today, as part of the Eighth Session of the Assembly, IRENA held a high-level Ministerial Roundtable to explore the links between an increasingly electrified transport sector and accelerated renewable energy deployment, with a view to scaling up the use of renewables in e-mobility.

Members were clear about the importance of a platform like IRENA to the endeavor. As H.E. Taro Kono, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Japan put it, “The IRENA Assembly gives Japan a chance to adopt innovative solutions to engage the advanced technology and power of our innovation to address renewable energy.”

Despite its low starting point, there are reasons to expect renewables to comprise a larger share of the transport fuel mix in the future. According to IRENA’s The Renewable Route to Sustainable Transport: A working paper based on REmap, between 2015 and 2016, the number of electric cars sold doubled (to around 1% of total car sales). Today, one out of every five cars sold in the Netherlands and Norway is an electric vehicle, and countries including China, France, Germany, India and the United Kingdom are setting electric mobility targets. China has announced an obligatory target of 10 percent EVs in total car sales by 2019, potentially representing a huge proportion of all new car sales. Rapid technological progress is leading to longer ranges on a single charge, faster charging times, and cost competitiveness with conventional cars.

Zhu Guangchao, Vice Chief Engineer, State Grid Corporation of China provided participants with an overview of the vastness of the Chinese power grid. China’s new hydro, wind and solar projects have transmitted more than 90TWh to centers across the country. At the end of 2017, China’s wind and energy installed capacity was 215GW, contributing to a 36% share of renewable energy in China’s mix at the end of the year. China is now also building the world’s largest fast smart charging grid, with 170,000 charging ports. These ports will integrate real-time data, price comparisons, and will use big data to enable real-time maintenance and response support.

As Mr. Guangchao put it, “Not only is China massively scaling-up its deployment of renewables, but also replacing coal, oil and gas powered facilities and industries with electricity.” – Zhu Guangchao, Vice Chief Engineer, State Grid Corporation of China

In a 2017 KPMG survey of over 1000 automotive executives from around the world, most agreed that the strong influence on the market exerted by the Paris Agreement could cause the share of electric mobility to rise to up to 30% of global automotive production by 2023.

Renewables, which are now cost-competitive with conventional fuels in many contexts, are well poised to generate the electricity needed for this. Indeed, IRENA’s REmap reports show that renewables could as much as quadruple within the transport sector by 2030 and go even further by mid-decade. This is driven by a strong business case for renewables, with private sector companies leading the way in many cases. Or, as Thierry Lepercq, Vice-President Innovation, Research and Technology, ENGIE put it, “Electric mobility is not just a vision, it’s business. We’re making money.”

Although early signs are promising, some challenges remain. For one, the infrastructure to power electric vehicles at scale is not yet fully developed. Charging technologies are not yet standardized, charging times are either too long to be widely practicable (conversely, ultra-fast charging technologies are expensive and energy intensive), and the impact of widespread charging on electricity loads and infrastructure is likely to exacerbate system stress.

Frederic Busin, Senior VP Development Customers and Services, EDF, summed up the challenges of adapting smart charging to the future needs of the electric mobility system, “By 2025 France will have nine million electric vehicles on the road. That means that 30GW of power that could be used at peak hour, which is 25% of current usage. We need to have terminals that are 100% automated in order to manage this demand.”

Improved battery technologies will thus play a critical role in the future potential of electric vehicles, and on the ability of renewables to provide the required energy.

Driven by technology improvements and rising demand, battery electricity storage systems have been growing exponentially in recent years. This has led to rapid cost reductions. In Germany, for instance, household-scale lithium-ion battery costs have fallen by over 60% since the end of 2014.

Better batteries will not only improve vehicle ranges between charges, but they will also help integrate higher shares of variable renewable power by providing the requisite flexibility to balance supply and demand (Electricity Storage and Renewable Energy: Costs and Markets to 2030, IRENA). So-called vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology, which allows car batteries to support and interact with renewables-based power systems, holds tremendous promise. With V2G technology, electricity not only flows from the grid to the EVs to charge them, but it can also flow from the EV injecting electricity into the grid.

Delegates highlighted an interesting convergence of renewables with digital technology and artificial intelligence, “Autonomous driving is a major driver of electrification. A new systems-driven transportation paradigm is emerging where you don’t own cars but summon autonomous ones.”, as Martin Keller, Director, NREL put it. The future of our cities is emerging, with full, electric autonomous mobility. Those changes are driven by affordable electric mobility today.

One thing that is certain is that e-mobility can significantly contribute to reducing local air and noise pollution. IRENA’s analyses indicate that if air polluting emissions from conventional vehicles—nitrous oxide, volatile organic compounds, and others—were valued by their impact on human health and agricultural crops, external global costs from use of fossil fuels in the transport sector would be in the range of USD 460 billion to USD 2.4 trillion per year, based on 2010 data.

IRENA Director-General Adnan Z. Amin reminded participants that the business case for renewables is inescapable, and that the global conversation is no longer about Global North and South, about ODA, or about building new technology. The technology is available, private sector investment is happening, and policies exist. All that’s needed is to put them together in the right way and, as we have seen with many countries where renewables are taking off, significant change will happen.

In closing, the IRENA Director-General reminded delegates, “The energy transformation will not be a simple, linear thing. We must create the pool of knowledge, expertise and understanding so that all countries can make an informed choice about their energy future.” Global platforms like IRENA are vital to this process.

Looking at national and state grids, progress has been extremely impressive. In Costa Rica, for example, renewable energy supplied five million people with all of their electricity needs for a stretch of 300 consecutive days. Meanwhile, the U.K. broke 13 green energy records in 2017 alone, and California’s largest grid operator announced it got 67.2 percent of its energy from renewables (excluding hydro) on May 13, 2017.

The corporate front is also looking promising, and Google has led the way by buying 536 MW of wind power to offset 100 percent of the company’s electricity usage. This makes the tech giant the biggest corporate purchaser of renewable energy on the planet.

But while these examples are plentiful, this progress is only the tip of the iceberg – and green energy still represents a small but rapidly growing segment. For a full green shift to occur, we’ll need to 10x what we’re currently sourcing from renewables.

To do this, we will need to procure massive amounts of natural resources – they just won’t be the fossil fuels that we’re used to.

First principles

How do you get a Tesla to drive over 300 miles (480 km) on just one charge?

Here’s what you need: a lightweight body, a powerful electric motor, a cutting-edge battery that can store energy efficiently, and a lot of engineering prowess.

Putting the engineering aside, all of these things need special metals to work. For the lightweight body, aluminum is being substituted in for steel. For the electric motor, Tesla is using AC induction motors (Model S and X) that require large amounts of copper and aluminum. Meanwhile, Chevy Bolts and soon Tesla will use permanent magnet motors (in the Model 3) that use rare earths like neodymium, dysprosium, and praseodymium.

The batteries, as we’ve shown in our five-part Battery Series, are a whole other supply chain challenge. The lithium-ion batteries used in EVs need lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite, and many other metals or minerals to function. Each Tesla battery, by the way, weighs about 1,200 lbs (540 kg) and makes up 25 percent the total mass of the car.

While EVs are a topic we’ve studied in depth, the same principles apply for solar panels, wind turbines, nuclear reactors, grid-scale energy storage solutions, or anything else we need to secure a sustainable future. Solar panels need silicon and silver, while wind turbines need rare earths, steel, and aluminum.

Even nuclear, which is the safest energy type by deaths per TWh and generates barely any emissions, needs uranium in order to generate power.

The pace of progress

The green revolution is happening at a breakneck speed – and new records will continue to be set each year.

Over $200 billion was invested into renewables in 2016, and more net renewable capacity was added than coal and gas put together:

Power Type	Net Global Capacity Added (2016)
Renewable (excl. large hydro)	138 GW
Coal	54 GW
Gas	37 GW
Large hydro	15 GW
Nuclear	10 GW
Other flexible capacity	5 GW

The numbers suggest that this is the only start of the green revolution.

However, to fully work our way off of fossil fuels, we will need to procure large amounts of the metals that make sustainable energy possible.