Lithium News

Over the past few years, the lithium markets exploded as the electrification drive went into overdrive. EV makers like Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) have been scrambling to secure supplies amid rapid EV growth and tight lithium supplies, sending lithium carbonate prices up more than six-fold and spodumene up nearly tenfold in the space of a few years. But as the old adage in the commodity markets goes, the cure for high prices is high prices, or in more common parlance, what goes up must come down: lithium prices have crashed spectacularly in the current year, reversing years of gains.

After hitting an all-time high of CNY 595,000 per tonne ($81,360 per tonne) in November 2022, lithium carbonate prices in China have cratered to the worst level in two years at CNY 174,500 per tonne ($23,860 per tonne) in the current month, good for more than 70% correction as a confluence of negative catalysts conspired to end lithium’s biggest rally ever.
Although several factors are to blame for the selloff, what has really spooked the markets is looming supply coming online from China, Australia and Chile, “Supply is coming on stream faster than you can say ‘boo’.Demand remains strong but prices have been unsustainable for some time now,” analyst Dylan Kelly of Ord Minnett has told Mining.com.

The situation is even more dire for lithium hydroxide markets thanks in large part to the sluggish performance of the nickel cobalt manganese (NCM) battery sector in comparison with the lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery sector.

“The NCM battery market is lifeless and there is barely any demand for lithium hydroxide. Therefore, the price for lithium hydroxide is not the matter, because with no demand, no one will buy the material however low the price is,” a Chinese lithium producer has told Fast Markets.

And, the lithium price crash could be a big reason American lithium giant Albemarle Corp (NYSE:ALB) has thrown in the towel in its bid to acquire Australian lithium developer, Liontown Resources Ltd (OTCPK:LINRF) for more than $4B.

“Our engagement with the Liontown team has been meaningful and productive. We appreciate the level of cooperation we have received, and we thank the entire team for their efforts. That said, moving forward with the acquisition, at this time, is not in Albemarle’s best interests,” Kent Masters, CEO of Albemarle, said in the statement.Related: Drone Attacks Syrian Gas Field as Israel Conflict Escalates

Albemarle noted “growing complexities” with the proposed transaction as a factor in its decision. Although the recent move by Australia’s richest woman, Gina Rinehart, to increase her bid to just shy of the 15% needed to potentially block Albemarle’s ~$4.2-billion takeover might have played a part, it’s worth noting that lithium prices were much higher when Albermalke made the first offer for Liontown.

Liontown is currently developing one of the largest and highest-grade hard rock lithium deposits in the world.

Both ALB and Liontown shares have crashed nearly 10% in Thursday’s intraday session.

Source: Trading Economics

But as the corollary for the adage above goes, low prices are the best cure for low prices: some experts are now predicting that the world could face a lithium shortage in just two years. BMI, a Fitch Solutions research unit, has predicted a lithium shortage could hit as early as 2025 largely due to China’s lithium demand exceeding supply.

“We expect an average of 20.4% year-on-year annual growth for China’s lithium demand for EVs alone over 2023-2032,” the report stated. In contrast, BMI sees China’s lithium supply growing at a much slower 6% annual clip over the same period, pointing out that that rate is not enough to  meet even one third of forecast demand.

The inability of China to meet its own demand for lithium despite being the world’s third largest producer spells disaster for other countries that rely on Chinese lithium.

Rapid EV adoption is the biggest reason why China has developed an insatiable appetite for the white metal with BloombergNEF predicting that new passenger electric vehicle sales in China will account for 60% of global sales at 14.1 million units in 2023. Last year, electric vehicle sales in China accounted for around a quarter of total passenger car sales in the country, nearly double the U.S.’ rate at one in seven and Europe’s one in eight. But it’s not just China recording supercharged EV growth: according to forecasts by S&P Global Commodity Insights, global EV sales will clock in at 13.8 million units in 2023, and surge to over 30 million by 2030.

BMI is not the only lithium bull here. “We do fundamentally believe in a shortage for the lithium industry. We forecast supply growth of course, but demand is set to grow at a much faster pace,” Corinne Blanchard, Deutsche Bank’s director of lithium and clean tech equity research, has told CNBC. Blanchard sees a “modest deficit” of around 40,000 to 60,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent by the end of 2025, but has forecast a much wider deficit to the tune of 768,000 tonnes by the end of 2030.

But not everybody is sold on this EV boom/lithium shortage thesis. Bank Of America analyst Steve Byrne anticipates a lithium glut will continue into 2025 with “a period of earnings and margin pressure across the value chain.” BofAhas downgraded ALB to Underperform from Neutral with a $161 price target, slashed from $212, citing continued lithium oversupply.

The Renewables MMI (Monthly Metals Index) saw a welcome boost month-on-month, rising 6.27%. Grain-oriented electrical steel, silicon, and neodymium were the main factors that increased the index, while the lithium-ion battery market remains a point of contention. In the case of silicon, futures initially rose back in June due to production cuts within China, the world’s #1 manufacturer. It appears the after-effects of the cuts finally impacted prices, mainly due to stockpiling buyers. That said, most steel parts of the index dropped or moved sideways. The UAW strike primarily impacted these sectors, causing lower steel demand, fewer steel scrap supplies, and price hikes from Cleveland Cliffs.

Lithium-Ion Battery Dilemma: Raw Material and Fires

As the EV movement expands and batteries and new tech metals grow in demand, the battery market faces its fair share of challenges. Indeed, diversifying supply chains remains one issue. This would mean nations won’t have to rely on only one source or country for materials like silicon and cobalt. The other ongoing problem with cobalt and lithium-ion (lithium-ion battery material especially) is fire hazards, which MetalMiner touched on briefly in a March article.

A standard lithium-ion battery is perfectly safe when used correctly. In fact, according to TÜV SÜD, a global testing and certification agency, most will remain safe as long as owners follow the right storage, charging, and disposal processes.

However, because lithium-ion batteries are complex, even minor manufacturing flaws can cause significant issues. For instance, a short circuit that results from a flaw in the separator that keeps the positive and negative electrodes apart could ignite a fire. A lithium-ion battery can also overheat and catch fire if overcharged, which is an easy mistake to make.

Indeed, lithium-ion fires are becoming more and more common. According to fire departments in major cities like New York and San Francisco, rechargeable batteries, especially lithium-ion batteries, have been implicated in an increasing number of fires. These experts add that one of the best ways to ensure lithium-ion battery safety is to not overcharge them and switch them out when they reach a certain age.

Some Analysts Predict a Coming Supply Chain Shortage

The world currently faces a possible shortage of raw materials to make batteries because of the rising demand for EVs, as metals like lithium, cobalt, and nickel will continue to remain vital materials in the manufacturing process. In fact, about eight kilograms (17 pounds) of lithium go into every battery. Moreover, lithium production will more than triple this decade, causing EV manufacturers to worry about a possible oncoming shortage of raw materials.

Another obstacle that automakers must overcome as they increase supplies is a lack of refinery capacity to purify raw lithium into battery material. Also, issues pertaining to tense U.S.-Chinese ties further continue to increase uncertainty. That said, other governments, including Indonesia, Chile, and Zimbabwe, want to maximize their return on lithium, cobalt, and nickel deposits. In this case, the idea is to require miners to invest in refining and processing before they can export.

Meanwhile, costs for EV batteries remain susceptible to increases due to these possible raw materials shortages. According to a recent analysis from research firm E Source, battery cell prices will potentially increase 22% between 2023 and 2026, reaching a peak of $138 per kilowatt-hour.

Because of all of these factors, the possible shortage of raw materials for EV batteries is a significant challenge that automakers and governments must address and face head-on.

Grain-Oriented Electrical Steel MMI

The GOES MMI witnessed another huge spike month-over-month, this time rising by 24.73%. Indeed, China’s renewed demand and production could prove a prominent factor in the price increase. Prices also have a tendency to rise dramatically from September onward until the end of the year, which is (historically) right around contract negotiation time. The influx, in short, was expected. However, the index still faces long-term bearish pressure due to high construction costs, which continue to impact the cost of building power grids while hurting GOES demand.

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have played a vital role in building a future increasingly reliant on portable electronics and renewable energy sources. However, power limitations and environmental issues have plagued the LIB market.

While alternatives like aqueous rechargeable batteries (ARBs) have always represented a potential replacement–and a greener one–they have a downside: they can potentially explode.

Now, new research led by Dr. Si Hyoung Oh and researchers at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) Energy Storage Research Center may have helped resolve this issue by developing a novel aqueous rechargeable battery that stands as a potential contender to replace the ubiquitous lithium-ion batteries.

The cornerstone of this innovation lies in addressing a longstanding safety hurdle associated with aqueous batteries: the hazardous accumulation of hydrogen gas due to parasitic water decomposition. This issue has been a significant barrier to commercializing aqueous batteries despite their economic advantage due to the lower cost of raw materials compared to lithium-ion batteries.

WHAT ARE AQUEOUS RECHARGEABLE BATTERIES?

Aqueous rechargeable batteries utilize water-based solutions as electrolytes, in contrast to the organic solvents used in traditional lithium-ion batteries. This design choice makes ARBs safer and more cost-effective. During the charge and discharge cycles, ions travel between the two electrodes – the cathode and anode. In zinc-ion batteries, a type of ARB, zinc metal moves to the cathode when discharging and returns to the anode when charging. 

These batteries, composed of a manganese dioxide (MnO2) cathode and zinc (Zn) metal anode in a mildly acidic electrolyte, have been identified as viable candidates to meet the rising demands for superior energy storage systems, thanks to their high safety features, cost-effectiveness, and environmental sustainability. However, a significant concern has been the unregulated dendrite growth and corrosion of metal deposits within the battery, which could undermine its safety and performance.

Researchers at Monash University have developed a new lithium-sulfur battery design with a nanoporous polymer-coated lithium foil anode that reduces the amount of lithium required in a single battery.

With the transition to renewable energies a global mission, the need for more sustainable energy storage solutions is becoming critical.

In their recent paper Ph.D. student Declan McNamara, Professor Matthew Hill, and Professor Mainak Majumder of Monash Engineering, with Dr. Makhdokht Shaibani of RMIT University, outline how applying the nanoporous polymer directly onto the lithium foil anode has created a new battery design that uses less lithium, has more energy per unit volume, lasts longer and will be half the price of lithium-ion batteries. The paper was published in Advanced Sustainable Systems.

Lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries are an emerging energy storage technology that utilize metallic lithium and sulfur to deliver more energy per gram than lithium ion batteries. While the Li-S batteries are highly efficient, the process of finding, extracting and transporting lithium leaves a significant environmental footprint, so using as little lithium as possible remains important.

Li-S batteries also have their limitations. Typically they contain a lithium anode (negative electrode) and sulfur cathode (positive electrode) with a separating layer. When the battery charges and discharges, large amounts of lithium and sulfur are reacted with one another, placing the lithium metal under a lot of strain.

Ph.D. student and lead researcher Declan McNamara of Monash Engineering said the thin polymer coating on lithium significantly improved the number of times the battery could be cycled.

“The polymer contains tiny holes less than a nanometer in size—one billionth of a meter—which allow lithium ions to move freely while blocking other chemicals that would attack the lithium. The coating also acts as a scaffold for lithium, and helps it charge and discharge repeatedly.

“Metallic lithium is a bit of a double-edged sword. Lithium is packed full of energy, but in a bad battery, this energy is wasted on side reactions. On the other hand, if the energy is channeled correctly, it can make some incredible energy storage devices that are easier to make. This coating is a step towards highly efficient, easily manufactured Li-S batteries,” Mr. McNamara said.

The new design does not require nickel or cobalt, removing the need for minerals that have a significant environmental and social cost.

Professor Majumder said these developments are promising steps towards more widespread adoption of Li-S batteries and other lithium metal-based energy storage systems.

“Li-metal protection technologies will become crucial in our quest towards energy dense and sustainable batteries of the future. The study establishes a new framework to protect Li-metal from rapid decay or catastrophic failure which has been an Achilles heel for Li-S batteries,” he said.

Professor Hill said the technology could make an immediate impact.

“The market for electric vehicles, drones and electronic devices is on a steep growth pattern and this research is commercially ready for manufacturing to support that growth. Producing more economical and environmentally sensitive battery options in Australia would be a great use of this technology, and we look forward to working with commercial partners to develop and manufacture this technology,” he said.

Energy storage with more than four hours of duration could play an important role in integrating lots of renewable energy onto the U.S. power grid, but it makes up less than 10% of the storage deployed since 2010. That may change with a potential shift to net winter demand peaks, according to a new publication by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

This work builds on NREL’s multiyear Storage Futures Study (SFS) that analyzed the fundamental role of energy storage in maintaining a resilient, flexible, and low-carbon U.S. power grid through the year 2050. The Storage Futures Study identified economic opportunities for hundreds of gigawatts of 6- to 10-hour storage even without new policies targeted at reducing carbon emissions.

“Longer-duration energy storage may lead to better grid resilience,” said Paul Denholm, NREL model engineering senior research fellow and lead author. “There’s an upside to developing and deploying greater storage, whether that value is in the ability to store more renewable energy or meeting winter energy demand.”

Why 4-Hour Storage Has Been the Go-to Choice

Four-hour energy storage has historically been well suited for hot summer days in the United States, when demand peaks are shorter and energy storage is complemented with lots of low-cost solar energy. This has led to markets incentivizing four-hour duration while disincentivizing longer durations. Several wholesale market regions have adopted a fixed “four-hour capacity rule” that fully compensates storage with at least four hours of duration. That means a six-hour battery does not receive any more revenue than a four-hour battery. As a result, about 40% of new storage capacity in 2021 and 2022 was exactly four hours of duration.

On top of the fixed capacity rule, while markets value energy storage’s ability to store low-cost off-peak energy and sell stored energy during times of higher prices—also called time-shifting or arbitrage value—there is lower incremental value for this service for duration beyond four hours. The high value proposition and low storage costs of lithium-ion batteries have provided little economic incentive for development of energy storage greater than four hours, especially in the summer.

Increasing Value With Increasing Winter Peaks

As extreme weather conditions increase and we electrify more building heating systems, peak demand is becoming more significant in the winter than in the summer. Demand peaks in winter also tend to be longer. This is particularly true at night when solar energy is not available. Solar deployment will accelerate the shift to net winter peaks through much of the country, adding an incentive for longer-duration storage development. Some regions of the United States are already experiencing winter peaking.

“Energy storage could help meet increasing winter demand,” Denholm said. “Increased storage can also support transmission and resilience, further increasing the value of developing energy storage with more than four hours of capacity.”

Shifting the value proposition of longer-duration storage also means advancing storage technologies and highlighting the value of additional storage capacity. Various technologies—such as thermal storage or next-generation compressed-air energy storage—have the potential to reach cost parity with Li-ion batteries and longer service lifetimes. New battery storage technologies are another avenue for development. Emerging technologies must compete with the Li-ion technology market, which is growing due to the popularity of electric vehicles, meaning those new technologies will require deployment at scale.

“We have promising technologies that, with development, can meet winter demand peaks and compete with lithium-ion technology,” Denholm said. “Reliability of the grid is the goal—greater storage can help us get there.”

Ten billion. That’s how many commercially procurable molecules are available today. Start looking at them in groups of five — the typical combination used to make electrolyte materials in batteries — and it increases to 10 to the 47th power.

For those counting, that’s a lot.

All of those combinations matter in the world of batteries. Find the right mixture of electrolyte materials and you can end up with a faster charging, more energy dense battery for an EV, the grid or even an electric airplane. The downside? Similar to the drug discovery process, it can take more than a decade and thousands of failures to find the right fit.

That’s where founders of startup Aionics say their AI tools can speed things up.

“The problem is there’s too many candidates and not enough time,” Aionics co-founder and CEO Austin Sendek told TechCrunch during the recent Up Summit event in Dallas.

Electrolytes, meet AI

Lithium-ion batteries contain three critical building blocks. There are two electrodes, an anode (negative) on one side and a cathode (positive) on the other. An electrolyte typically sits in the middle and acts as the courier to move ions between the electrodes when charging and discharging.

Aionics is focused on the electrolyte and it’s using an AI toolkit to accelerate discovery and ultimately deliver better batteries. Aionics approach to catalyst discovery has also attracted investors. The Palo Alto-based startup, which was founded in 2020, has raised $3.5 million to date, including a $3.2 million seed round from investors that included UP.Partners.

The startup is already working with several companies, including Porsche’s battery manufacturing subsidiary Cellforce. The company has also worked with energy storage firm Form Energy, Japanese materials and chemical maker Showa Denko (now Resonac) and battery tech company Cuberg.

This whole process starts with a company’s wish list — or performance profile — for a battery. Aionics scientists, using AI-accelerated quantum mechanics, can run experiments on an existing database of billions of known molecules. This allows them to consider 10,000 candidates every second, Sendek said. That AI model learns how to predict the outcome of the next simulation and helps select the next molecule candidate. Every time it runs, more data is generated and it gets better at solving the problem.

Enter generative AI

Aionics has taken this a step further, in some cases, by bringing generative AI into the mix. Instead of relying on the billions of known molecules, Aionics started using this year generative AI models trained on existing battery materials data to create or design new molecules targeted at a certain application.

The company is super-charging its effort by using software developed in the Accelerated Computational Electrochemical systems Discovery program at Carnegie Mellon University. Venkat Viswanathan, who was associate professor at CMU and led that program, is co-founder and chief scientist at Aionics.

Aionics has also started using large language models built on GPT 4 from OpenAI to help its scientists winnow down the millions of possible formulations before they even start running them through the database. This chatbot tool, which has been trained on chemistry textbooks and scientific papers selected by Aionics, isn’t used for the actual discovery, but it can be used by scientists to eliminate certain molecules that wouldn’t be useful in a particular application, Sendek explained.

Once trained with those textbooks, LLMs allow the scientist to query the model. “If you can talk to your textbook, what would you ask it?” Sendek said. But he was quick to note that this isn’t doing anything different than a person curating scientific papers. “This is just providing some next level interaction,” he said, adding that everything is verifiable by pointing back to the sources used to train the chatbot.

“I think what is good for our field is that we’re not looking for specific facts, we’re looking for design principles,” he said as he explained the chatbot feature.

Picking a winner

Once the billions of candidates have been screened and narrowed down to just a couple — or designed using the generative AI model — Aionics sends its customer samples for validation.

“If we don’t get on the first round, we iterate and we can run some clinical trials to prove it until we get to the winner,” Sendek said. “And once we find the winner, we work with our manufacturing partners to scale that manufacturing and bring it to market.”

Curiously, this process is even being used in some novel areas like cement. Chement, a startup co-founded by Viswanathan and that is also partnered with Aionics, is working on ways to to use renewable electricity and raw materials to drive chemical reactions to make zero-emissions products like cement.