Researchers used AI to design a new material that they used to build a working battery – it requires up to 70 percent less lithium than some competing designs.
Also, lithium is of pretty low concern when it comes to the materials in current cells. Stuff like cobalt and nickel are more critical and would be larger news.
LFP batteries are both nickel and cobalt free, and are being used in production cars right now (e.g. Tesla model 3/Y standard range options). That technology has long arrived.
Yes, also Lithium Manganese Spinel cells have been around since 1996 and also don’t contain any nickel and cobalt. This is good but many vehicles and devices still use NMC and NCA due to the better specific energy density which is where LFP is limited (but can output more power and is much safer). Tesla (and every EV manufacturer) compromises on the battery depending on what chemistry they use, where if they could reduce the need for expensive metals while maintaining specific energy it would be pretty newsworthy.
this work does nothing to address this, and they also include yttrium, because they focus on solid electrolytes for some reason (probably because chemical space is smaller)
That’s rare earths. Lithium is spread quite broadly, there is a lot in South America in particular.
In fact rare earths are pretty common as well, it’s just that only China is willing to destroy their environment with the dirty refining processes required to extract them cheaply.
Nope, in actual quantity, there is tons of lithium out there, particularly in South America (also sea water, but it isn’t cost effective to extract).
I worked in a battery lab many years ago and they figured then that with the known deposits then there were well over a hundred years of lithium available with zero recyling.
Also, lithium is of pretty low concern when it comes to the materials in current cells. Stuff like cobalt and nickel are more critical and would be larger news.
LFP batteries are both nickel and cobalt free, and are being used in production cars right now (e.g. Tesla model 3/Y standard range options). That technology has long arrived.
Yes, also Lithium Manganese Spinel cells have been around since 1996 and also don’t contain any nickel and cobalt. This is good but many vehicles and devices still use NMC and NCA due to the better specific energy density which is where LFP is limited (but can output more power and is much safer). Tesla (and every EV manufacturer) compromises on the battery depending on what chemistry they use, where if they could reduce the need for expensive metals while maintaining specific energy it would be pretty newsworthy.
Yeah, for cars, energy density is the name of the game. We honestly don’t need more output power and Tesla is not one to care about safety lol.
But indeed for grid storage, those chemistries are much more useful where energy density is less critical.
this work does nothing to address this, and they also include yttrium, because they focus on solid electrolytes for some reason (probably because chemical space is smaller)
Environmentally, right? Because the concern with lithium is that all the deposits are in China.
That’s rare earths. Lithium is spread quite broadly, there is a lot in South America in particular.
In fact rare earths are pretty common as well, it’s just that only China is willing to destroy their environment with the dirty refining processes required to extract them cheaply.
Nope, in actual quantity, there is tons of lithium out there, particularly in South America (also sea water, but it isn’t cost effective to extract).
I worked in a battery lab many years ago and they figured then that with the known deposits then there were well over a hundred years of lithium available with zero recyling.