Lithium used for batteries

Calliban · 2021-07-02 04:45:34

Interesting technology, that is relatively well developed and cheap at high power levels.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium% … ur_battery

The high operating temperatures, the corrosive nature of sulphur compounds and the presence of liquid sodium, make this technology most suitable for stationary or large vehicle applications. The plus side is that sodium and sulphur are both cheap and abundant materials, for which there are no imminent supply shortages. Mass energy density for this battery type are about half that of lithium-ion.

Long distance trucking is going to become more difficult and expensive as global diesel production gradually declines. This is due to the combined effects of declining oil production and the fact that new oil entering production is getting lighter, with higher fractions of LPG and gasoline and lower proportions of heavier oils, including diesel. An obvious short term strategy is to begin converting trucks to run on LPG and gasoline. But in the longer term, rail and capsule pipelines provide more energy efficient bulk goods transportation that does not (or need not) depend upon fossil fuel based energy at all.

The catch is that both of these transportation options are suitable for transport between regional hubs. Short to medium range trucks, with range up to 100 miles, will eventually have an economic niche, in providing goods transportation between rail or pipeline hubs and the surrounding areas. A cheap battery with power levels of 10's to 100's kW will be exactly what these medium range trucks will need. The sodium sulphur (and potentially aluminium sulphur) batteries may be a sustainable option for powering these vehicles that is affordable across its life cycle.

Last edited by Calliban (2021-07-02 04:47:59)

tahanson43206 · 2021-07-02 05:56:08

For Calliban re #26

Thanks for the discussion of sodium sulfur and aluminum sulfur!

I decided to offer a post in reply, because I saw a headline this morning, while scanning the news web site, to the effect that India is thinking of making a bet on Aluminum for batteries. I did not stop to view the article, but your post suggests there is something there worth investigating, if anyone has time in the next day or so.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2021-10-10 21:14:21

https://www.army.mil/article/193407/arm … nt_explode

water-salt solution as its electrolyte

list of others

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1 … 111/ab7119
Non-flammable Inorganic Liquid Electrolyte Lithium-Ion Batteries

SpaceNut · 2022-02-21 18:01:16

So much for these expensive cars Lithium-ion batteries are fueling the fire on a burning cargo ship full of Porsches

The ship left Germany on Feb. 10 and headed for the US with about 4,000 Porsches, Bentleys and other luxury cars aboard, and some of those were electric vehicles.

Fire dies down on ship carrying luxury cars, with little left to burn

kbd512 · 2022-02-22 01:34:57

SpaceNut,

Why the heck are we importing Porsches from a country on the other side of the planet?

We make our own electric cars over here at the local Tesla / GM / Ford / Toyota plants.

The practice of importing things made locally, in extreme abundance, is downright nutty to me.

In 2020, their second-best year ever behind 2019, Porsche only delivered 57,294 vehicles to North America. 4,000 vehicles represents an extreme loss.

Why are we doing this to ourselves?

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-06-27 05:43:03

Every new passenger car sold in the world will be electric by 2040, says Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/25/exxon-m … -2040.html

SpaceNut · 2022-06-27 18:00:31

We know that the key is lower prices if you want this to happen but with this needs to be a better energy source than plugging into the overburdened grid that some live within.

kbd512 · 2022-06-27 20:36:55

In the next 20 years, the CEO of Exxon Mobil thinks we're going to replace nearly every car on the road with a new model that requires triple the energy input in terms of materials processing, thus triple the cost, as well as triple the energy to recycle the batteries, which we will have to do since eventually this entire scheme will implode from lack of resources, certainly economically recoverable resources, yet somehow that's going to reduce emissions and be better for the environment.

Lithium Facts - Lithium Mining - World reserves of lithium by country, 2020

21,055,000t = 21,055,000,000kg of Lithium Carbonate

85kg of Lithium Carbonate per 100kWh battery / 16kg of Lithium / 160g/kWh, as an average of all cell chemistries used for the purpose

21,055,000,000kg / 85kg per 100kWh Lithium-ion battery = 247,705,882 Lithium-ion powered devices (Teslas / PowerWalls / grid storage / whatever) per 100kWh of total capacity

The absolute theoretical minimum Lithium required is 80g / kWh of battery capacity.

For those who don't know, there are presently about 1.2 billion passenger vehicles on the roads.

To power all the heavy duty trucks and tractors alone, assuming nobody travels by private vehicle in our dystopian future, we would greatly exceed the known Lithium reserves.

Maybe these people suck at basic math, maybe they're ignorant and talking out their rear ends (most probable explanation), or maybe they think we're going to start mining sea water, but total global Lithium reserves would have to increase by 5X to meet the demand for passenger cars alone.

Engineering Explained gives a great sophomoric take on grid energy usage, based solely on driving and the "MPGe" rating system, which totally ignores the fact that all EVs can and do experience drastic range reductions when the outside temperature changes. When it's cold or hot, vehicle range can be as little as half of what it was, which means twice as much energy is then required. I don't think people will be able to drive less simply because it's cold or hot outside. That problem won't be solved using any current battery technology, especially Lithium-ion. Not a word of this is mentioned during his presentation, so I guess he thinks that's factored-in to the MPGe rating system, except that it's not. Unrealistically slow driving speeds and acceleration rates are also used during testing to evaluate energy usage per mile. EV makers like to brag about how much horsepower their vehicles make, and of course nobody driving one would ever use all that extra power that their vehicle can generate.

At present, it takes 10 years to bring a new Lithium mine online. The reason we're not doing things like mining sea water or going to poor quality Lithium sources is the exorbitant energy cost associated with doing so. The Lithium may be available lots of places, but only if you expend a crazy amount of energy by moving a crazy amount of earth to get at it due to exceptionally poor ore concentration. Ditto for sea water. The Lithium is definitely there, but in concentrations measured in 0.2 parts per million. Someone besides myself should do some basic math on how much sea water you'd have to evaporate to meet the Lithium demand and how much energy it would take.

Last but certainly not least, unless we have some form of grid-scale energy storage that actually works at the scale required and is cost-effective, then we need to increase grid capacity by 30% merely to meet demand when everyone slow-charges their vehicle overnight, which would require building entirely new infrastructure at every apartment complex across the world.

If all the energy to drive somewhere still comes from fossil fuels, then all we've actually done is drastically increased the emissions from EV materials mining / manufacturing activities, as well as passenger vehicle recharging activities, so all of our emissions are merely shifted into other areas, so there's no net change to global emissions and likely an increase from all the heavy mining that needs to be done. Until that changes, the rest of this silliness is literally the dumbest idea ever. I know it's been sold by and to a lot of people who can't figure out where the energy box ends, but it truly is "absolutely everything" and not simply tailpipe emissions. Our environmentalists and climate scientists will be "shocked" when emissions don't go down at all between now and the time someone that simpletons listen to has figured this all out, as the oil companies simply shift who they sell their products to.

So what if gasoline isn't required by your car?

Those coal-fired boilers and natural gas turbines that provide 75%+ of the total electricity don't run on sunshine.

Since the Lithium required for the battery backups for photovoltaics will be gobbled up by electric vehicles, leaving none left for your cell phones and laptops, the power won't be stored in any form of Lithium-ion battery. Maybe I'll actually enjoy this dystopian future because everyone's head won't be glued to their phone, which will no longer have a battery if the automotive manufacturers get their way.

I'm guessing something gives before their Lithium and rare Earth miners manage to wreck what's left of Earth's natural beauty.

SpaceNut · 2022-06-28 21:06:09

By time a battery ore mine comes online the first batteries produced are ready for replacement.

kbd512 · 2022-06-28 22:04:50

SpaceNut,

The point is that there's a strictly limited supply of the amount of this stuff we can economically extract. Some of us like having things like laptops and cellphones and cordless drills. You know, the stuff where batteries truly are the best option going. Trying to power absolutely everything that moves using batteries is lunacy. Physics works against you mightily. Thus far, no new technology is truly a "game changer". Everything has been a slow and steady incremental improvement. The gravimetric energy density per unit mass of active material hasn't made any night-and-day changes. Lots of other efficiency and cell stability improvements have been made, which are great.

However... At the end of the day, you need 58 TIMES the weight of the gasoline combusted in a 50% thermally efficient gasoline internal combustion engine of the sort that Nissan has developed for their series hybrid, in terms of battery weight. A gallon of gasoline weighs about 6 pounds. A battery that stores 16.85kWh weighs about 236lbs, at 157.4Wh/kg (85kWh / 540kg Tesla Model S battery pack). You can't go very far on 1 gallon of gasoline equivalent, especially when it weighs 39.3 TIMES as much as a gallon of gasoline. The Nissan engine burns 3.9L of fuel per 100km, which is just over 1 gallon. The Tesla Model 3 needs 25kWh per 100km. You require 350lbs of batteries to drive the same distance in the Tesla, or 58.3 TIMES as much energy storage weight to drive the same distance. The constant-speed Nissan "e-POWER" engine still makes use of a very small Lithium-ion battery pack and electric motors, just not ones that weigh as much as a small car all on its own.

Could Tesla or others improve upon battery pack level gravimetric energy density? Of course they could and probably already have, but orders of magnitude (powers of 10) being what they are, they're never going to come down by more than 1 order of magnitude using any existing battery technology. Anything that improves by even 1 order of magnitude truly is a "game changer". At some level, weight matters. It takes power to move weight. For aircraft and ships that require constant high power output, you can forget about it. It's not happening and ignoring physics in favor of ideology won't change the math.

Depleting all the known Lithium reserves to make outsized battery packs attempting to do what they physically can't, at least not in any practical way, is a waste of time and resources. Improve the battery tech, find more Lithium that's economically recoverable, switch to a more abundant material, or take a different approach that doesn't require so much in the way of battery weight.

SpaceNut · 2022-07-02 12:39:23

How Much Do EV Batteries Cost?

upward depending on what is done to repair or replace to $10,000.

On the other fronts the materials are as well-being an issue but of course the million miles, nuclear and solid-state batteries are all being worked on as well.

SpaceNut · 2022-10-10 17:14:58

A driving force of battery cost is the elements that make them up
The gold rush is back, but this time the focus is on "white gold" lithium – a major player in the world's shift toward green energy.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-10-12 08:34:29

South Korean researchers say they have developed an anode-free lithium-ion battery that is 40% more energy dense than existing batteries and will enable EVs to travel 630km (390 miles) on a single charge.

https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News … nsity.html

SpaceNut · 2022-10-12 21:24:58

This not the only maker that has this happening to just this one Some Samsung phone batteries are swelling up — what does that mean?
This includes other products that will have those battery types such as tablets and more.

SpaceNut · 2022-10-22 12:43:39

We know that the metal is in short supply for the large-scale boost in building more but the issue for EV owners is how to increase range. Can You Upgrade Your EV’s Battery and Increase Its Range?

Of course, the answer is not a simple yes as a vehicle battery well is design for a specific size to be contained within the safe boundary of use. The swapped battery can only gain from internal battery specific parameters that increase its capacity. Sure, you can invest to make an addon box for a second battery to be used but the cables must be changed to make it share currents correctly.

SpaceNut · 2023-02-03 19:48:03

Scientists Find the Holy Grail: the Reason Why Lithium-Metal Batteries Fail

There’s just one problem: Lithium-metal batteries have a tendency to short circuit thanks to tiny fissures in the ceramic electrolyte called dendrites. conducting more than 60 experiments, the researchers discovered that small “nanoscopic” cracks in the ceramic solid electrolyte, some as wide as only 20 nanometers (a human hair is 80,000 nanometers by the way), occur when under pressure during fast charging.

Said it before to much current.

Electric Vehicle Chargers Are Breaking Electric Vehicles

SpaceNut · 2023-02-04 18:38:30

Another shoe is dropping as GM Tells Chevy Bolt EV Owner It's “Not Responsible” For Fast Charging At Non-Approved Public Stations

Chevrolet is recalling every 2017-2022 Bolt EV and 2022 Bolt EUV to replace their batteries due to an issue that has resulted in several fires. For one owner, that recall process might be causing additional headaches. The owner alleges that after getting the new pack, his 2021 Bolt EV no longer supports DC fast charging.

kbd512 · 2023-02-04 21:25:42

SpaceNut,

If fast-charging causes Lithium-ion battery degradation, then that rules out routine fast-charging of the batteries if no solution is forthcoming. I think the build-out of the "fast charger" network is its own form of "planned obsolescence". If all these batteries don't last as long as claimed, then they also start to look pretty awful in terms of emissions. Those air-powered cars are starting to look better and better, especially if the heat from compressing the air is used to heat water. Maybe "gas stations" could become the hot water sources for the neighborhoods around them.

SpaceNut · 2023-02-04 21:28:38

I would settle for a nuclear plant feeding the hot water into homes for heating at this point as it would provide a lessening of cost to do so from electricity or fuels.

kbd512 · 2023-02-04 21:58:41

SpaceNut,

Nuclear power would be great, as there are no known material supply constraints associated with using nuclear power, but we would need a lot more money to do nuclear thermal than solar thermal, unless you can convince DoE and EPA to clear away some of that red tape. Nuclear is not a solution for Africa, either, especially if the reactors were designed and built in Russia or China because they take "saving money" to even more absurd levels than we do.

Murica would need 3,200 1GWe nuclear reactors if we insist on electric everything to provide the 3.2TW (20% of the 16TW global total, which is America's share of energy usage), or 1,600 reactors if we can go back to using direct thermal power for most of our "personal infrastructure". Each new-build 1GWe reactor costs $5B USD. My proposal is cheaper by a lot, and it will still produce reliable power. I'm willing to pay more money for a better result, but there are no premium grade photons or electrons that I'm aware of.

We're gonna need a real educational system if we intend to run 64 reactors per US State, but the people you like having in power only want to indoctrinate people, which is how Hollyweird comes up with bizarre utter nonsense like nuclear reactor cores melting through the (already molten) core of the Earth and popping out somewhere in China. I'm not saying that makes any sense, but even Louis was on here questioning me about having reactor cores melting through the ground on Mars.

If it were up to me, I'd have a reactor built under my home so I have guaranteed power, even if aliens land and block out the Sun.

SpaceNut · 2023-02-04 22:12:58

That are just some of the issues as most people will only use a tiny bit for that size reactors which are classed small in the 300 Mega watt size when most homes barely use 5k watts at their worst an hour.

tahanson43206 · 2023-03-17 13:03:44

Update on Lithium battery research:

https://www.popularmechanics.com/scienc … ries-fail/

Popular Mechanics
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Scientists Find the Holy Grail: the Reason Why Lithium-Metal Batteries Fail
Story by Darren Orf • 4h ago
Scientists finally discovered why lithium-metal batteries fail. We always knew they’d power the EV revolution, as long as we learned why they short circuit.
Scientists finally discovered why lithium-metal batteries fail. We always knew they’d power the EV revolution, as long as we learned why they short circuit.
© Rashad Aliyev - Getty Images
Scientists always knew lithium metal could revolutionize batteries, but they have one fatal flaw: they often short circuit.
No one knew why this happened—until now.
Now, scientists can build better lithium-metal batteries to eventually produce more electric vehicles.
When looking for an anode material for your next-gen battery, you can’t do much better than lithium metal. Due to its high capacity, low density, and non-flammability, lithium-metal batteries could be an absolute game changer for electric vehicles and the green tech revolution at large.

There’s just one problem: Lithium-metal batteries have a tendency to short circuit thanks to tiny fissures in the ceramic electrolyte called dendrites.
The quest to figure out why this happens (and design a battery that circumvents this unfavorable outcome) is a Holy Grail of sorts for material scientists—and the science world has maybe found its Galahad.
This week, researchers from Stanford University and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory revealed evidence as to why these dendrites form within lithium-metal batteries.
Previous theories have suggested unintended electron flow or some other mishap of chemistry could be the cause of the battery’s failure. But after conducting more than 60 experiments, the researchers discovered that small “nanoscopic” cracks in the ceramic solid electrolyte, some as wide as only 20 nanometers (a human hair is 80,000 nanometers by the way), occur when under pressure during fast charging.
These cracks allowed a lithium-metal “bridge” to form between the anode and cathode, causing a short circuit. The results were published in the journal Nature Energy.
“Just modest indentation, bending or twisting of the batteries can cause nanoscopic fissures in the materials to open and lithium to intrude into the solid electrolyte causing it to short circuit,” lead coauthor William Chueh says in a statement. “Even dust or other impurities introduced in manufacturing can generate enough stress to cause failure.”
The researchers combined an electric probe and an electrolyte to create a miniature battery in an attempt to understand why lithium burrowed into certain areas and caused a short circuit. When resting, the lithium anode performed as designed, but any indenting, bending, or twisting (along with specks of dust gathered during the manufacturing process) increased the chances of failure.
Lead coauthor Xin Xu compared the process to potholes. As car tires pound rain and snow into tiny imperfections in the road causing an ever-increasing structural failure, the same happens inside lithium-metal batteries (albeit on a much smaller scale).
Luckily, this isn’t a death knell for lithium metal’s future—in fact, it’s great news.
Now, engineers who are already hard at work designing lithium-metal batteries can take these findings into consideration to circumvent these shortcomings. The paper’s authors also mention that they’re now investigating ways to strengthen the electrolyte during manufacturing as well as develop ways to coat the ceramic barrier so that it self-repairs damage when it occurs.
In 2019, the same Stanford lab developed a method for lithium-metal batteries to retain 85 percent charge after 160 cycles—a major improvement compared to the previously reported 30 percent.
“These improvements all start with a single question: Why?” says coauthor Teng Cui. “Once we know that, we can improve things.”
Now that researchers have convincingly answered the question of why, the overall question of lithium metal’s future is looking less like “if” and more like “when.”

(th)

SpaceNut · 2023-03-18 12:43:12

Dendrites ceramic breakdown has been known for over several decades as to the cause for one to go nuclear and smolder in a ball of fire. It has to do with heat dissipation within the cell structure itself. That is made even harder to remove in fast charge and discharge conditions that a motor vehicle is designed to do.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-03-31 11:30:36

Inexpensive and environmentally friendly mechanochemical recycling process recovers 70% of lithium from batteries

https://techxplore.com/news/2023-03-ine … cling.html

kbd512 · 2023-03-31 12:59:07

Mars_B4_Moon,

Since the battery waste is ground up into a paste, what else is mixed in with the recovered Lithium?

Can the recovered Lithium be used to make a new battery?

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#26 2021-07-02 04:45:34

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