Summer Round Up (Part 2)
Welcome back for more summer battery news. We’ve been watching the Olympics & Paralympics, and recharging our batteries ready to kick off a busy September. Here’s our picks for this month.
We also had SUCH a great time meeting with Londoners last week catching up! 🇬🇧
We are excited to partner with TA Instruments as our sponsor - the leader in analytical instrumentation for all your battery characterization.
In the race to develop powerful, compact batteries that can last for decades, researchers must reliably predict how new designs will behave during years of use. While battery stability, cycle life, and efficiency were previously hard to quantify, emerging diagnostic techniques borrow analysis methods from other areas of research to predict battery behavior and lifetime.
Battery researchers are adopting isothermal microcalorimetry (IMC), an established technique for measuring heat production or consumption in biologic, pharmaceutical, and chemistry testing. When isothermal microcalorimetry is paired with an electrochemical analysis tool, researchers can measure the thermodynamic and electrochemical details of battery cells in real time.
TA Instruments is the leader in analytical instrumentation and offers resources to help battery developers - see how isothermal microcalorimetry supports cutting-edge battery development in this blog, explaining five published cases of IMC in battery research.
🇺🇸 After 9 years, Cuberg closes down and Northvolt pulls out of California
Swedish battery maker Northvolt has publicised a decision to move its next-generation lithium-metal battery R&D development to the R&C campus in Västerås, Sweden. This had been based in California, at subsidiary Cuberg, which was spun out of Stanford in 2015 before its acquisition in 2021. Nine years after Cuberg’s founding, the shift signals a possible winding down of Northvolt's ambitions in lithium-metal battery technology.
This move reflects both the formidable challenges of making lithium metal batteries, married with the financial pressures on Northvolt, and the growing competitiveness of batteries at scale from China. The decision also reflects the higher costs of maintaining operations in California compared to Sweden (average salaries for a typical engineer in the Bay Area can be can be 2-3x of Sweden).
Our best wishes are with the Cuberg team. As Cuberg transitions, former CEO Richard Wang has launched an employee tracker to help connect the talented team with new opportunities. If you’re looking to hire great talent, look no further.
🌊 Deep Sea Discoveries
Deep sea mining nodules have been found to produce oxygen in a study from Nature Geoscience.
About half of the world’s oxygen comes from the ocean. Previously, this was thought to come from plankton predominantly, but this discovery could change the way we think about the deep sea. The paper notes:
Given high voltage potentials (up to 0.95 V) on nodule surfaces, we hypothesize that seawater electrolysis may contribute to this dark oxygen production.
That’s a remarkable voltage on a rock several kilometers below sea level. How this affects companies trying to mine the seabed floor and the ongoing struggles surrounding the rights and responsibilities of the deep sea is yet unknown. What is certain, however, is that the natural world continues to surprise and astonish us.
🇷🇸 Serbian Lithium Mine causes rising tensions
A controversial project in Serbia that could meet up to 90% of the EU’s lithium demand is under huge national criticism. Lithium-borosilicate-hydroxide was discovered in the Jadar region of western Serbia in 2004. Rio Tinto plans to produce boric acid, lithium carbonate, and sodium sulphate, by using large quantities of sulphuric acid, and the river location led to justified fears of water and soil contamination.
Critics fear that Serbia will be an example of “sacrifice zone” where environmental degradation is accepted to fuel the electrification of wealthier nations and support the electric vehicle industry. This has ignited a huge number of ongoing protests within the capital, Belgrade. A similar wave of protests caused the Serbian government to revoke a mining license for Rio Tinto in 2022 for the same project, highlighting the deep-rooted opposition to Rio Tinto's plans.
📉 More lows…
After raising $110m in 2022, Bay-Area based Moxion Power suddenly furloughed 400+ of its remaining staff in late July and has declared bankruptcy. What happened?
A joint venture between LG Energy Solution and General Motors has suspended the construction of 3 battery plants in the USA. German chemicals company BASF has also halted plans for a battery recycling project in Tarragona, Spain. Umicore is reviewing its plans for a cathode material factory in Loyalist, Canada.
Relatedly, Rystad Energy has announced that global battery investments have dipped for the first time since 2020, driven largely by a downturn in infrastructure spending in China, which is entering a new phase of economic growth.
Li-Metal has finally been absorbed by Arcadium Lithium for $11m and Australian zinc bromide company Redflow goes into administration.
These developments underscore the ongoing challenges in the battery manufacturing sector, highlighting the complexities that continue to impede progress.
🗻 … and some highs
In an industry where electrode development takes a huge amount of work, it’s amazing to see Tesla's official milestone hit for cells launching with dry electrodes in 4680 cells last month! Tesla’s dry electrode stats so far:
Cathode dry electrodes C-sample production at 50m/min
Anode dry electrode ramp up in Q4 2024
Full cells built and demoed in validation cybertrucks
More plans… Natron Energy has announced plans for a $1.4 billion 24GW sodium-ion factory in North Carolina, and Gotion announced plans for a $1.3 billion gigafactory in Morrocco. Israel startup Addionics raises a $39m Series B to launch current collector production.
Over in the UK, UCL spin-out Gaussion has raised an €11M series A round to accelerate their magnetoelectric fast charging methods. Taisan raises £1.3 million in a pre-seed round for sodium ion cells. LFP production outside of China is gaining interest, and in the UK Integrals Power has started production of LFP/LMFP cathode powders at 20 tons/year in Milton Keynes.
🚲 Potassium? On wheels?
Anhui Guoxin New Materials Co., Ltd has announced a commercially available potassium-ion battery designed for e-bikes. This was a tiny announcement but caught our eye, because we haven’t seen much from potassium, ever. Potassium is much more abundant than lithium, but thus far the structural transformations in the cathode during cycling have limited the longevity of possible commercial cells.
Meanwhile in the US, UT Austin spinout Group1 starts showcasing some 18650 cells.
Final item…
Porsche has also repurposed batteries from its sports car Taycan vehicle line into a second-life 10 MWh BESS project, helping to power its factory in Leipzig, Germany. While these pioneering pilot projects are commendable, fully scaled repurposed battery programs in commercial vehicles remain a rarity.
🎧 What else we're reading and listening to
The BESS Book: A Cell to Grid Guide to Utility-scale Battery Energy Storage Systems. By Drew Lebowitz, Swetha Sundaram, Sean Daly. With a podcast preview on Suncast with the authors.
Our cofounder Andrew Wang spoke to C&EN about the Activate program: The rocky path from PhD to CEO
Intercalation: Three Months as a Graphite Girl by Issy Stephens
Intercalation: Calendar Aging of Next Generation Batteries: A Trivial Issue or the Final Frontier? by Ankit Verma
Catalyst with Shayle Kann: The EV market’s awkward teenage years
Matt Lacey: Northvolt's attitude to safety concerns me
Transmission: Batteries in Future Energy Scenarios
Nature Energy: Addressing the Battery Talent Shortage by Billy Wu
The Westly Group: From Lab to Grid: LDES Ready for Liftoff?
The Role of Hardware in the Climate Tech Revolution. Nicely complements our series on Battery Software.
🌞 Thanks for reading!
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