Batteries International Issue 120, Summer 2021 by hamptonhalls

Issue 120

Summer 2021

A cure for acid stratification

New additive solves traditional problem Tough summer for lithium with recalls, fires, explosions galore,

The known unknowns of our future energy storage landscape

Desulfurization of lead paste, hydrometallurgy using urea Europe's gigafactories, far too many and far too late

Bringing the industry together

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T AS L E TH

M RO F LES A T GE N A TR S : RD O W

C MI E D AN P A

ACCELERATING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE Innovation is the driving force behind new technologies, and at ENTEK, we are leading the way. We are investing in the future of the battery industry, and the world, with products developed for sustainable, renewable energy storage applications. We’re focused. We’re driven. We’re ready.

www.entek.com

US +1 541 259 3901 UK +44 191 268 5054 Singapore +65 6956 6119 India +91 738 883 3999 BCI 2021 Gold Sponsor

CONTENTS COVER STORY:

Lead silicate as a performance additive for lead acid batteries

Hammond Group’s research team have come up with a new way of mitigating the destructive effects of acid stratification within the battery. The implications for the lead battery industry could be huge. EDITORIAL

The confused and confusing economics of the energy transition

PERSPECTIVE: WOOD MACKENZIE

Pain for battery industry as tighter lead availability causes price pinch

PEOPLE NEWS

Digatron appoints new managing director and CEO • Ecobat completes senior management team • DC Battery Technologies appoints new national sales director • Vechy promoted in Critical Power Division at Concentric • Tony Modaferri, EV pioneer and father of GM’s ultimate battery testing lab, steps down • O’Connell and Sylvester join Clarios as directors • Peter Nemec-Losert moves to product and process manager in Exide • East Penn makes two in-house promotions • Doe Run announces new president and other senior management changes • Felicidades Francisco! • Giess wins LABAT award for contributions to lead battery industry • Carl Telford joins CBI as research manager • ABC appoints George Grabow as commercial leader • US Energy Storage Association announces new board

OBITUARY: KATHYRN BULLOCK, 1945-2021

Driesch: new CEO at Digatron

Kathryn Bullock, one of the greats in the electrochemical history of the lead battery, has passed away aged 76.Her contribution to our understanding of battery mechanisms was immense

NEWS

ENTEK closes acquisition of NSG separator division • BCI victory as lead batteries removed from DTSC danger list • US battery firms form research group to improve cycle life • Pilot Battery signs evaluation agreement with Gridtential • Sodium ion batteries to pose threat to lithium and lead industries • Umicore and BASF sign agreement to develop cathodes and precursors • Lithium batteries in Europe to make up entire industrial battery sector by 2030 • Exide saga continues with $291 million general fund to clean up • Gopher Resource taken to court for lead poisoning • Nyrstar accepts responsibility for acid leaks at Port Pirie • Major Indian lead recycler signals intent to recycle lithium batteries • Aqua Metals signs letter of intent with Taiwanese lead refiner • California DTSC threatens $25K a day fine for lead recycler • UK battery recycler to increase capacity by 50% • Li-Cycle signs deal with new JV to recycle battery scrap

HYBRID NEWS

Modaferri: stepping down after a lifetime with GM in batteries 8

RWE to build combined run-of-river battery hybrid in Germany • Gravitricity plans to incorporate hydrogen in gravity storage hybrid • Lead/lithium hybrid to power UK Royal Mint • Lead/lithium hybrid trial completed in Poland

FINANCE NEWS

34 ENTEK closes NPG acquisition, historic link-up with Britishvolt 19

Clarios pulls $1.7 billion IPA at last minute citing market volatility • Leoch snaps up distribution firm to expand into Iberia • Showa Denko announces sale of lead battery business • Monbat signs deal to acquire 60% Tunisian battery maker Nour • Ecobat buys lithium battery recycler Promesa • Johnson Matthey acquires Oxis after lithium sulfur firm goes into administration • Verkor and partners raise €100 million for Grenoble gigafactory• Israeli cold energy firm raises $13.6 million in merger • First steps taken towards commercial lithium refinery in UK • China’s Gangeng Lithium to sell $630 million in new shares

FOCUS: LITHIUM BATTERY TROUBLES, DANGERS RE-EMERGE It’s been another bad summer for lithium batteries with recalls, fires and even explosions

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42 Li-ion battery recalls. This summer has beaten last year’s record 42

Batteries International • Summer 2021 • 1

CONTENTS FEATURES THE MARCH OF THE GIGAFACTORIES

Gigafactories across Europe are being conceived, planned and built at breakneck speed but there are still doubts over their economic viability

LEAD BATTERY RECYCLING

Europe’s gigafactories — far too many, far too late 56

STC has pioneered a revolutionary new process of desulfurization of lead paste called U4LEAD using urea as the reagent of choice

THE GREAT LITHIUM ORE WINDFALL

A huge potential source of lithium has been found in the British Isles — just as plans for the first UK lithium battery gigafactory are being sketched

Hydro metallurgical recycling 64

THE NEW BALANCE OF POWER

The economic modelling for energy storage in decarbonization is predictable, simplistic, and may not even make sense

BATTERY TESTING

The differences between automotive and stationary battery testing continue to diverge

SOLID STATE BATTERIES: RESEARCH

UK’s sudden lithium windfall

A team at Hosei University in Japan has tried to fabricate a prototype solid-state battery with a new concept where only the electrolyte solution is gelatinized

SOLID STATE BATTERIES: THE FUTURE

Advances in solid-state batteries often make promising headlines but the recurring question continues to apply: are they scalable? New futures for battery testing 82

EVENTS

Our definitive guide to the conferences, exhibitions and shows in the months ahead — both actual and virtual

THE LAST WORD

108

The Great Desulfurization Dilemma for conference organizers • Roll over you old lead guys and what’s this 99% nonsense? Surely LMRMEH makes sense! • Forklifts? Sledges? Huskies? No, two legs best

Publisher Karen Hampton karen@batteriesinternational.com +44 7792 852 337 Editor Michael Halls editor@batteriesinternational.com +44 7977 016 918 Advertising director Jade Beevor jade@batteriesinternational.com Deputy editor Debbie Mason debbie@batteriesinternational.com

Contributing editor Frank Millard Researcher, journalist Hillary Christie hillary@batteriesinternational.com

The world of conferences is starting to open up again

Production/design Antony Parselle, aparselledesign@me.com International advertising representation advertising@batteriesinternational.com

Finance administrator Juanita Anderson juanita@batteriesinternational.com

The contents of this publication are protected by copyright. No unauthorized translation or reproduction is permitted. ISSN 1462-6322

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Disclaimer: Although we believe in the accuracy and completeness of the information contained in this magazine, Mustard Seed Publishing makes no warranties or representation about this. Nor should anything contained within it should be construed as constituting an offer to buy or sell securities, or constitute advice in relation to the buying or selling of investments.

2 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

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EDITORIAL Mike Halls • editor@batteriesinternational.com

The traumas ahead in our battery storage future In a previous life as a financial journalist I was lucky enough to be at the forefront of introducing 18th century market wizard Sokyu Honma to the modern world. Honma, in his classic work — The Fountain of Gold: The Three Monkey Record of Money — writing in 1755, formulated the first principles for predicting how buyers and sellers interact. He painstakingly developed a whole graphical system — now popularly called candlestick charts — to predict how a futures market behaves. Key moments that he followed in the life of Japan’s Osaka rice market were its closing and opening, he said. Was the market up or down on the day? What was the expectation for the following day? What was the trading range of the day — broad or tight? On this basis he was able to work out a feel for a market. Was it a good time to invest? To bid high or bid low? Or a time to walk away? It’s a skill that’s as much needed now as it was three centuries ago because the energy storage market and the players within this business sector are equally vulnerable to changes of mood and perception. Certainly, timing is everything. Venture capitalists, for example, thought that clean tech investments were a path to riches between 2006 and 2011. But they were wrong. Of the $25 billion invested in the US, half of that was lost. If anything, the swings in sentiment over the fate of the world — here we should mutter the buzz words over our destiny: climate change, decarbonization, carbon dioxide and fossil fuels — are the widest and sometimes the most hysterical we’ve seen since the dot.com boom during the late 1990s. This year some $60 billion was invested in the energy transition in the US alone and some $500 billion across the world. Overall, the energy storage market is about as bullish as it could be but it lacks the precision that an analyst such as Sokyu Honma — who famously predicted the direction of the rice market accurately for 160 days in a row — would have understood. 4 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

The logic behind investment in the energy transition is complex, sometimes contrarian and strewn with incongruities. Tesla, for example, now has a stock valuation that is worth more than the next nine automakers put together. Yes, the combined worth of Volkswagen, Toyota, Nissan, Hyundai, GM, Ford Honda, Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot is less than Tesla. Then consider that Tesla will probably sell half a million cars worldwide this year — that’s not even 1% of the estimated 70 million car sales for 2021. Go figure! But if Tesla is to become the next Amazon, our present valuation could be wildly conservative. We hear the constant gospel of decarbonization at all costs and yet the disjointedness between policy and reality is alarming. The leading advocate for European ‘greenness’ comes from Germany, which — with a population just slightly larger than the UK — continues to produce more CO2 than the UK and France combined. Likewise in China the talk of commitment to decarbonization is fragmentary — or should that be ‘pragmatically imaginary’? The country’s 14th Five Year Plan, we’re in it, envisages coal capacity to increase by roughly a third over 2020 levels. China has 88.1GW of coal-fired generation under construction, or almost half the global total, and a further 158.7GW in the pipeline, again, half of the rest of the world combined. Carbon Tracker, a financial thinktank, has found that China, India, Indonesia, Japan and Vietnam intend to build 600 new coal-fired power stations in the years ahead. “Build back better, come back greener” may be an attractive rallying call for politicians and environmentalists to make. But the reality is very different. In this July’s G20 meeting of environment ministers, officials from China, India, Russia and Saudi Arabia blocked an agreement to end fossil fuel subsidies and phase out the use of coal! In the US, many an attempt to decarbonize is undermined by the freedom of its financial system. Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency, consumes vast www.batteriesinternational.com

EDITORIAL amounts of electricity. Its annual use — 121 TWh just to keep the computers running with no extra benefit such as providing light, warmth, or powering the home — is larger than the amount of electricity used each year by the whole country of Argentina with its population 45.2 million. (And perversely, that huge amount of power could be accounted for by turning off all stand-by devices in US homes for the year.) Part of the problem with the energy industry’s drive for the energy transition is that we are all entering an unknown land. When the world shifted from leaded petrol to diesel we little knew we were exchanging one pollutant for another that was at least comparably nasty. Simple measures, such as replacing conventional lighting with LEDs for saving electricity and costs, have unexpected consequences. And not necessarily from obvious directions. In the UK, environmentalists are up in arms about LEDs in street lighting and their destructive effect on the moth population. True. Likewise too, is the complete lack of predictability of the future. The biggest spur to the whole energy transition agenda in Europe was due to the 2011 tsunami in Japan some 5,000 miles away.

notoriously fickle friends in any kind of long-term play. Typically they want to get their payback — their exit — within three to five years. But long-term investors are more interested in the fundamentals rather than the perception of fundamentals.

The destruction of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant by the tsunami prompted Germany to accelerate its decision to remove nuclear and go for renewables.

Possibly the most successful investor in the past century is Warren Buffett who, starting from nothing, at one point has achieved a personal net worth of some $74 billion.

In a similar fashion who could have foreseen that the pandemic recovery planning would have given such a boost to the renewables and energy storage industries? So what would Sokyu Honma have thought about today’s markets three centuries later?

Buffett, who reputedly bought a $5 billion stake in Goldman Sachs over a can of cherry coke one lunchtime, has always favoured investment for the long haul. His instinct earned him $2 billion when he sold his Goldman Sachs stake five years later. His ownership in Coca-Cola, which he has held for over a quarter of a century, has become legendary.

Strangely enough he would have approved and been appalled at the same time. Honma was a so-called “the-trend-is-your-friend’ investor. Going with market sentiment generally gives a better return than taking a contrarian view. At the same time, always be aware when the trend is about to change!

In the uncertain world of investment — and particularly investment in the troubled world of noisy energy start-ups shouting lithium fantasies and the oppressive silence of established lead battery players — the market will eventually determine the price and value of today’s participants.

For the battery industry its future is less about buying low and selling high as much as one of timing, seeing the direction of sentiment and running along with it.

But it’s still anyone’s guess as to what way that will go. But one thing is for certain, we need to be in for the long haul.

Venture capital and private equity investors are www.batteriesinternational.com

Mike Halls, Editor Batteries International • Summer 2021 • 5

PERSPECTIVE: WOOD MACKENZIE

Pain for battery industry as tighter lead availability causes price pinch By Farid Ahmed, Wood Mackenzie A panic over availability has propelled lead to a threeyear price high and opened up the largest backwardation in the cash to three-months price spread for over a decade. Let’s look at the key influences triggering this. First, there’s the big one: Eco-Bat’s Berzelius primary smelter in Stolberg declaring force majeure on metal shipments from its plant in North Rhine-Westphalia. Heavy rainfall in July has led to flooding, devastation and loss of life. Sitting on the Vichtbach river, the smelter was able to enact a managed shutdown. It is not yet known how long the smelter will be out of operation, but damage is understood to be significant. At least one month of output could be lost from an already tight European market. From Stolberg’s recent performance, this could be around 8kt-10kt of production. Since the end of March, over 60kt of lead has left London Metal Exchange warehouses, reducing stocks by half. Over 90% of this has come out of European warehouses. Meanwhile, only

1.2kt was delivered into LME sheds while material has left every day at a steady rate. Much of this lead was of a minimal quality to satisfy the undemanding specification of the LME Lead Contract. This is unsuitable for making batteries without being reprocessed at a lead producer. This resulted in a considerable proportion of the stock from European LME warehouses being re-refined at the Weser-Metall plant in Nordenham, North Germany. The majority of this ‘reborn’ lead is being shipped to the US, where demand remains relentlessly white-hot. However, there is now the imperative to fill the gap while Stolberg is out of action. So some, or all, of this lead may, for the moment, remain in Europe after reprocessing at Nordenham. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, lead producers are still flat-out making enough lead to fulfil the remorseless consumption for automotive replacement batteries. The situation has not eased with OEM and motive power demand now starting to pick up. Even though scrap battery supply is plentiful to feed America’s domestic lead recycling plants, not enough lead was available to keep battery makers happy.

If battery makers aren’t getting enough lead and retailers aren’t getting enough batteries — whether US-made or imported — then it could soon descend into a very uncomfortable period for the American market.

6 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

The US needs to import close to onethird of its refined lead requirement. But has had to step up a gear after so many Americans found a dead battery in their car after the easing of lockdown and the world getting back behind the wheel. US lead imports in 2019 ran at an average rate of 40kt per month. Last year this dropped to 30kt, initially from demand stalling as the country shut down, and later with many US lead consumers missing the boat on securing lead supplies later in the year. For the first half of this year, annualized US lead imports are up a massive 60% on 2020 and 21% on pre-pandemic 2019. If the supply of reprocessed LME material from Germany is temporarily choked off, this could produce an uncomfortable squeeze on US refined lead availability, sending premia even higher. It’d be tough on battery makers. A further complication is that with domestic production and imports of lead failing to meet demand, some of this has been supplanted by seaborne imports of finished batteries. The top three countries — Korea, China and Vietnam — typically supply around two-thirds of seaborne battery imports into the US. This is now affected by a serious problem. Together, Los Angeles and the nearby Long Beach ports account for over one-third of these imports. But they are experiencing near-record delays with dozens of ships anchored off the coast waiting for a slot to dock and unload. This crisis has been developing for months and is coming to a head, with some ships waiting offshore for weeks. The main causal factor has been increased post-lockdown US consumer spending, and much of this demand has been satisfied by Chinese exports. Right now, there is little hope of an immediate resolution of this problem. If supplies of imported batteries into LA and refined lead from Germany are constrained for long, then how does the US consumer replace their failed car battery? If battery makers aren’t getting enough lead and retailers aren’t getting enough batteries — whether US-made or imported — then it could soon descend into a very uncomfortable period for the American market. www.batteriesinternational.com

PEOPLE NEWS

Digatron appoints new chief executive and managing director Battery testing and electronics engineering firm Digatron on July 1 appointed Holger Driesch as managing director and CEO, taking over from Kevin Campbell, who has taken on another senior executive position at group level. Driesch joined Digatron last December as chief technical officer, and will work alongside the other managing directors, Stefan Rungen and Dieter Brockel. Driesch has worked for nearly a quarter of a century in development, engi-

neering, R&D and project management, and has an academic background in electrical engineering and micro-electronics. His career has included development management positions at mechanical engineering firm Bertrandt, SOTEC Software and Forschner, the product development company. Digatron founder and chairman Rolf Beckers said Driesch had ‘brought a wave of change’ in Digatron in the seven months he has been with the company. “Looking further ahead

Holger Driesch

to the extensive opportunities in the market, his new role will support steering the company products and

Ecobat completes senior management team Ecobat has completed the formation of a new senior management team with the appointment of Jamie Pierson as chief financial officer, the firm revealed on August 9. Pierson comes from the international transport firm Yellow Corporation (YELL), where he was responsible for operational and financial strategy. He has more than 10 years’ experience in investment banking, financial restructuring, advisory and corporate development experience and strategic

Jamie Pierson

planning, says Ecobat. Five other individuals were placed on the executive team: Jenn Congdon as chief HR officer; Paul Harper as chief sustain-

ability officer; Jamie Lee as chief information officer; Thea Soule as chief commercial officer; and Daniel Terrell as chief legal officer. Craig Clark was also promoted to president of lead operations. “It is an exciting and dynamic time at Ecobat,” said Ecobat president and CEO Jimmy Herring. “With the recent acquisition of lithium-ion recycler Promesa, we are positioning Ecobat for solid growth in the coming years as our industry adapts for the future.”

Steve Vechy promoted to director in Critical Power Division at Concentric Steve Vechy has been promoted to director of engineering and marketing in the Critical Power division at material handling company Concentric. He was promoted from director of marketing in the Reserve division, where he had worked for a year and five months. Vechy is well known in the industry, having

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worked for EnerSys for more than 21 years, initially as a marketing director and moving up through various departments until his final position with the company as senior director for validation and approval. Concentric LLC is an OnPoint Group firm, and in February expanded its business with the purchase

of Southern States — a warehouse equipment supplier.

Steve Vechy

solutions to achieve maximum growth and establish Digatron as a globally dominant company with a range of innovative products,” said Beckers. “We have great capability in the market and Digatron is already an established brand in the battery industry,” said Driesch. “Building further on our success is a challenge I accept with determination and fierce ambition for the firm. I am determined to continue Digatron’s momentum leading to new heights.”

DC Battery Technologies appoints new national sales director

Mark Baker

UK battery distributor DC Battery Technologies said on June 16 it had hired a new national sales director. Mark Baker has 25 years’ experience in the battery, charging and power sectors, with a brief to expand his six-strong team’s sales of batteries across the range of lead-acid AGM, gel and carbon deep cycle batteries as well as lithium-ion products. Baker’s work experience includes positions at Hoppecke, Ecobat and Fiamm. DC Battery Technologies is part of the German group A Müller, which also has outlets in Italy, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands.

Batteries International • Summer 2021 • 7

PEOPLE NEWS

Tony Modaferri, EV pioneer and father of GM’s ultimate battery testing lab steps down spend hours with his father working on the older cars his family could afford. A New Yorker, he earned his degree in engineering at Stony Brook University, on Long Island, before taking a job as structural engineer for a New York company that designed and built nuclear plants. It was then that a friend got him a job in Detroit for Ford Motor Company. “It seemed perfect, because all I really wanted to do was work on cars,” he said. Within seven years he had made it to lead calibration engineer on a truck model at a time when automotive engineering was being transformed after two OPEC oil embargoes had sent fuel prices sky high. Fuel economy was becoming more and more important — and he says that in some ways, today’s transition to electric is similar, a technological evolution.

“Electric vehicles are going to be the future but just not as quickly as we want. Energy density has increased and cost has come down — but there is still a long way to go.” Tony Modafferi, well known throughout the battery industry for being the key figure in setting up GM’s Global Battery Systems Lab in Michigan, retired on July 31. “The decision to retire was a difficult one for me, after working 38 years at GM and seven years at Ford it was time to move on, and pass the leadership on to a new generation of bright engineers,” he told Batteries International. “It’s time to move on to the next step in this journey we call life,” he earlier said in an email to his colleagues and friends. “It’s been an incredible 38 years and I’ve seen the auto industry transform

8 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

from carburettors and distributors to fuel injection and coil on plug, and now to full electric vehicles. When I started at GM, I worked for Buick Motor Division as a calibration engineer. I would never have guessed that 38 years later we would be building electric vehicles (my lack of vision, I guess!).” Modafferi was a key figure in setting up GM’s global battery lab, the largest facility in the US at the time. The lab can test all current battery systems and energy storage technologies for the motor company’s electric, plug-in, hybrid and fuel cell vehicles. Modafferi’s passion for cars stems back to his childhood, when he would

Move to GM Modafferi took his first step in what would be a long and highly successful hike in General Motors in 1986, when he took a job as a calibration engineer for Buick. Within a year, he was running a lab dedicated to traditional power trains and components. In 1995, Modafferi was assigned to work in China — a country with which GM had struck viable partnerships and with whom it wanted to expand. “I was the programme manager for power trains on the China V6 programme, which was our first shot at building a vehicle, engine and transmission in China,” he says. Modafferi actually moved to China in 1999 after travelling back and forth for four years. Soon an entire Buick vehicle and power train plant had been built, and Chinese-made Buicks began rolling off the production line. During part of this time he was responsible for developing a plan to build a new emissions lab to support the rapidly changing regulations in China. Overcoming cultural differences

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PEOPLE NEWS were a slight challenge, but Modafferi had a great respect for the people he worked with and ultimately his team of 85 people ran a 24/7 laboratory, calibrating vehicles and testing durability. “I worked with some of the most creative, innovated, hardworking and dedicated people I have ever met,” he says. “Living and working in China was an amazing experience. But there was really no thought of battery powered vehicles.” That didn’t happen until 2007. Modafferi moved back to the US in 2003, to Detroit. His first assignment was to run another power train laboratory. GM was going through a tough time, haemorrhaging money, closing plants, shedding workers and heading towards bankruptcy. Behind the scenes, however, leaders realized that hybrid and electric programmes just may be the way forward. “They knew they needed to make a shift: either make these cars or give up,” said Modafferi. “There were tense meetings. They asked what we needed in a lab to get the Volt out the door. So we started putting plans together to build a new lab.” And so they did — finishing the build of the Global Battery Testing Systems Lab nine months ahead of schedule, in January 2009, and fully functional in May. Half of the 33,000 sqft (3,000m²) area was dedicated to testing electrochemical battery cells and their modules, which hadn’t been available in GM’s previous battery lab. The rest of the floor space evaluated

“Tony will be much missed in the industry, he was widely respected as a very talented personable man but also a humble and gentle person.” – Laura Schacht completed battery packs. The lab allowed for procedures not previously possible, like a thermal shaker table for battery structural integrity testing, and a battery teardown area for failure analysis and competitor benchmarking. Equipment and test automation systems in the lab was also integrated with labs in Germany and China so they could exchange data seamlessly and share work. “We designed this as a ‘global lab’ with the intent of duplicating the software and equipment in the three locations,” Modafferi said. “This gives us the ability to test products produced in Asia right in the area — and around the globe. The idea was to facilitate a broad portfolio of supplier partners.” In 2010, the size of the Global Battery Systems Lab was doubled, adding capability in another six areas of testing. Fast forward to 2020 and it has increased again, to 100,000 sqft (9,290m²), with 40 battery testing stations and 18 climate chambers along with a host of other modern equipment and testing procedures. “Having the opportunity to design, build, staff and manage the battery lab exceeded all my expectations, far exceeding the China assignment,” said Modafferi, who when his China

assignment had finished, said similar things about that. “Most importantly working on building the battery lab gave me the opportunity to work with, and learn from, an incredible, diverse team that made this lab the best in the world.” “Tony will be much missed in the industry,” says Laura Schacht, who worked closely with him for several years. “He was widely respected as a very talented personable man but also a humble and gentle person.” Modaferri is optimistic about the future of electric vehicles and sees — eventually — that lithium ion batteries will supersede lead ones. But not anytime soon. “For the foreseeable future, lead acid batteries have their place, they are affordable and extremely durable and safe. However, lithium-ion 12 volt batteries will dominate once cost can compete with lead acid. “Electric vehicles are going to be the future but just not as quickly as we want. The development of batteries for electric vehicles still has many challenges and the technology is moving fast, from the Volt battery in 2011 to GM’s Ultium battery for their next generation of electric vehicle the changes in technology are astonishing. Energy density has increased and cost has come down — but there is still a long way to go.”

The farewell party: people flew in from across the US to wish him well

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Batteries International • Summer 2021 • 9

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PEOPLE NEWS

O’Connell, Sylvester join Clarios as two independent directors

Diarmuid O’Connell

Diarmuid O’Connell and Maryrose Sylvester joined the Clarios board as independent directors on July 1. O’Connell became chairman at that time too. Clarios CEO Mark Wallace said: “They both bring tremendous experience and perspectives as business leaders across the automotive and electrification landscape.” Certainly, the pedigree of the two is impressive. O’Connell was previ-

Maryrose Sylvester

ously chief strategy officer at Fair, an automotive leasing fintech company, where he helped the company expand into new markets and deepen partnerships with Softbank and Uber. Before that he spent over a decade at Tesla, where he worked as vice president for corporate and business development. He oversaw a wide range of strategic programs and deals that transformed the company, notably the funding for the

company’s flagship Model S program, Tesla’s first manufacturing plant in Fremont, California, its gigafactory deal in Reno, Nevada, and support for Tesla’s directto-consumer retail business model. O’Connell brings global market experience, having led Tesla’s international expansion to Europe, Japan, China and the Middle East. Sylvester most recently was managing director and president of US Electrification for ABB. She was responsible for ABB’s largest geographical market and the implementation of the new ABB operating system. Previously she spent more than 30 years at GE, as president and CEO of various GE businesses. She was also a member of GE’s Corporate Executive Council and GE’s Commercial Council.

East Penn makes two in-house promotions

Joe Wentling

East Penn Manufacturing made two in-house promotions in June with Joe Wentling becoming vice president of sales and branch operations and Pharon Metzger becoming assistant vice president of sales, wire, cable and battery accessories. Both are newly created positions. For Wentling this involves the oversight of East Penn’s

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Pharon Metzger

automotive sales and operational activity at its branch and subsidiary operations located in the US. The firm said: “Wentling has been an integral part of supporting operational efficiencies and strategic growth. As East Penn continues to grow, this position will further strengthen the cohesiveness of the company’s extensive network in servicing our customer’s

vital and increasing needs across the country. Wentling joined East Penn in 1990 as a sales trainee Metzger’s responsibilities will involve the oversight of the Wire and Cable sales team. East Penn said this will “focus on strategic growth of this division. He is responsible for close collaboration with our Wire and Cable manufacturing team to optimize support of our sales efforts and further strengthen the company’s ability to meet the increasing needs of our valued customers.” Metzger, who joined East Penn in 1987, was most recently director of sales, wire, cable and battery accessories.

Peter Nemec-Losert moves to product and process manager in Exide

Peter Nemec-Losert

Peter Nemec-Losert left Hoppecke, the European battery manufacturing firm, at the start of June and has started work as product and process manager in Germany for Exide Technologies Operations. Nemec-Losert was process engineering manager at Hoppecke, a firm he joined in 2007 as a development manager for gel batteries. He left a farewell to his firm on the internet, which said: “Thank you Hoppecke and to all my colleagues. It was a pleasure working with you. After almost 14 years I am heading back to Exide Technologies. I hope we’ll stay in contact. “Once a [lead] acid head forever an acid head!”

Amara Raja appoints new chairman

Jayadav Galla

Indian lead battery giant Amara Raja on June 14 announced a series of changes including a new chairman to replace the founder, who steps down after 36 years. Ramachandra Galla is to hand over the reins to his son, Jayadav Galla, who is vice chairman of the board and will take over after the company’s annual general meeting in August.

Batteries International • Summer 2021 • 11

PEOPLE NEWS

Doe Run announces new president and other senior management changes Lead mining and recycling firm Doe Run announced a suite of changes in its leadership team on June 30, including the appointment of Matthew Wohl as president with immediate effect. He replaces Jerry Pyatt, who has already retired as president and will retire as CEO on December 31, 2021, when Wohl will also replace him in that post. Wohl started at Doe Run in 2009 as senior corporate attorney and already had lengthy experience in corporate and commercial law. He has led state and federal advocacy work to protect the lead industry in Missouri and guide the firm through what he calls ‘tremendous regulatory change’. “The natural resource industry, and in particular the mining and metals industry, is at a critical juncture,” said Wohl. “The world is in the midst of a global competition for clean energy. As a country, we will need every ounce of lead, copper, zinc, cobalt and many other metals we can get to support the battery technologies required to meet clean and renewable energy goals.” “Matt brings a deep understanding of the issues and regulatory policies that impact our industry, as well as a positive outlook and passion to find common ground with diverse stakeholders,” said Pyatt. “His background with both public and private sector companies in highly regulated industries will enable the company to navigate a course that advances new technologies in both lead battery recycling as well as the extractive industries.” Other changes at the top include promotions for Crystal Saling, Brian Mangogna and expanded work responsibilities for Tony Bogolin as executive president, finance and HR, CFO and treasurer; and Michael Montgomery as vice president, environment, health and safety. Saling is being promoted to the executive team as vice president for law and general counsel. Saling joined in 2012 as a paralegal and advanced through several positions to associate general counsel.

12 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

Matthew Wohl

During her tenure, Saling has provided counsel to the company in various areas of law, including labor and employment, real estate transactions, workers’ compensation, corporate governance, risk mitigation, and directed litigation defense efforts. In her new position, Saling will also oversee the company’s IT department.

Jerry Pyatt

Mangogna has been promoted to the executive team as vice president for mining and milling is. Joining Doe Run in 1998 as a metallurgist, Mangogna advanced through the company’s milling department to become general manager of the Southeast Missouri Mining and Milling Division in 2019.”

¡Felicidades Francisco!

Francisco Trinidad

Francisco Trinidad was named as the 28th member of the Alpha Beta Society during a zoom session at this year’s LABAT conference in early June. Trinidad has an impeccable history in the lead battery industry. After leaving Madrid with a PhD in electrochemistry in 1977 he joined Tudor Group, first as a research engineer, then research manager and finally as a regional director for European industrial development. In 1994, when Tudor Group was swallowed up by Exide, he became director for research and

development for the firm and when he retired in January 2020 he was director for battery technology. The Alpha Beta Society said that membership was recognition of “43 years of experience with lead acid batteries, authorship of 24 articles, more than 65 presentations in battery conferences and 14 international patents. For decades he has engaged in collaborations with universities and research communities. “He is currently working as an independent adviser to promote new technology approaches for automotive and industrial batteries. He is expected to have a very active role in the lead battery community beyond retirement.” The Alpha-Beta Society was cofounded by Ernst Voss (Varta) and David Rand (CSIRO) in 1989 at the first LABAT conference in Bulgaria. Typically the society appoints one new member a year. In recent years Geno Papazov, Boris Monahov, Jun Furukuwa, Eckhard Karden and Allan Cooper have been added to its ranks.

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Batteries International • Summer 2021 • 13

PEOPLE NEWS

Giess wins LABAT award for his many contributions to lead battery industry Herbert Giess, the Italian battery veteran of some 30 years’ experience, was awarded the Gaston Planté Medal at the LABAT annual conference on June 9. The 15-member Gaston Planté Committee holds a ballot to decide the winner of the award each time a conference is held (typically every three years), and this year Giess became the 18th winner. He was awarded in a virtual ceremony at the conference “Herbert Giess has worked for more than 50 years for various research centres and companies in Italy, France, Switzerland, China, etc, and has made numerous contributions to the battery industry,” said LABAT. Giess also won the International Lead Award in 2017 at the 17ABC in Kuala Lumpur for his outstanding contributions to the lead industry. Born in 1945 in Süd Tirol, a small Germanspeaking village in Italy, Giess showed an early interest in chemistry. He said his first taste for

Herbert Giess

electrochemistry came with his work for the European Atomic Energy Commission (Euratom) in Italy and then the Netherlands. At the age of 24 he landed a job at the Battelle Memorial Institute Research Centre in Geneva, Switzerland, where he met his wife MarieHélène. He began working with lead-acid batteries, and hasn’t stopped since — while also investigating other battery chemis-

tries such as nickel-zinc, lithium-sulfur and zincbromine. After a stint in the US, Giess moved back to Switzerland to work for Accumulatoren-Fabrik Oerlikon, one of the oldest lead battery manufacturers in the world. He was instrumental in developing VRLA/AGM batteries and getting them into multiple applications, from 48V radio base stations to 480V 2MW data centre back-ups and 1500V UPS systems in

chip plants in Taiwan. This led to battery standardization work, culminating in his position as chairman of IEC TC21 Secondary Cells and Batteries, and then a move to China in 1995, where industry was taking off and where he was soon appointed chief scientist at Narada, the Chinese battery manufacturer. Giess continues to work as an independent consultant to the battery industry.

Carl Telford joins CBI as research manager Carl Telford joined the Consortium for Battery Innovation as research and innovation manager in June. He previously worked for more than five years at Ricardo, the engineering services company, most latterly as futures research manager. CBI says he has more than 20 years’ experience in strategic research, consulting and R&D — and is an expert in ‘futures thinking, road mapping and facilita-

tion’. “Carl has helped major public and private organizations across the world develop strategies with particular experience in the automotive, off-highway and infrastructure and chemicals and materials sectors,” the CBI says. “My primary role is to drive further investment in the next generation of lead batteries,” said Telford. “It’s a diverse role that will include functions such as facilitating bids for Horizon

14 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

Europe R&D funding, and leading collaborative projects involving diverse CBI partners. “At a higher level, I want to help shape the future of energy storage: to meet its decarbonization objectives, Europe will need reliable battery technologies operating at scale. Advanced lead batteries have a major role to play in supporting the green growth agenda.” The appointment comes a month after Joana Coimbra was hired as a Brussels-

based communications officer to help with the organization’s European PR work.

Carl Telford

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PEOPLE NEWS

ABC appoints George Grabow as commercial leader For the record, Bipolar firm Advanced Battery Concepts announced on April 30 the appointment of George Grabow as commercial leader to provide support for what the company says is its ‘explosive growth’. Grabow has been behind the introduction of lots of new technology initiatives, including time at Momar Manufacturing, where he led five years of growth, and more than four years at Ashland Hercules Wa-

ter Technologies, where he brought to market a new patent pending platform. His work with technology firm Two Roads Solutions revolved around expanding the client base and space in the chemical and water treatment market. Grabow’s mission at ABC will be to create commercial options for partners and clients, said ABC’s board of directors’ chairman David Barrie. “His experience leading

efforts with several growthfocused organizations will be a great asset as we work with our licensees to commercialize GreenSeal technology.” “George is a really seasoned business development person — we are very happy that we were able to get him,” said Ed Shaffer, ABC founder and CEO. ABC’s GreenSeal technology has been licensed out to seven lead battery companies, the last one an unnamed but Asia headquar-

George Grabow

tered firm that signed up behind Crown Battery, Clarios, EnerSys, Exide Industries, Trojan Battery and Monbat.

US Energy Storage Association announces new board The US Energy Storage Association on May 17 announced its new 2021-2022 board of directors and officers, with Fluence market applications vice president Kiran Kumaraswamy elected chairman. In January 2022 there will be change again. The ESA voted this July that it was to fold into the America Clean Energy Alliance. Kumaraswamy has been on the ESA board since April 2019, and became vice chair a year later. He started at Fluence in January 2018, when he was hired as market applications director, before taking his current position in December that year. Before Fluence, Kumaraswamy was market development director at AES Energy Storage, but his longest tenure was at consulting and technology services company ICF International, where he worked for almost 10 years. Thanking those who voted for him, Kumaraswamy said it was a significant moment for the energy storage sector, and that standalone storage would accelerate the tremendous growth in the industry. “Energy storage is at the tipping point based on market demand and decarbonization goals,” he said. “We’re expecting to see exponential growth in the coming decade or this billion-dollar industry. I’m looking forward to

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continuing to work with the stellar team at ESA to advance policies that support the entire energy storage industry and our country’s long-term economic and environmental success.” Jacquie DeRosa, vice president of battery energy storage with Ameresco,

was elected vice chair; Plus Power head of policy and communications Polly Shaw becomes secretary; and, the co-founder and CEO of Key Capture Energy, Jeff Bishop, will be treasurer. “We are eager to work together on our broadly shared priorities in accelerating the

storage market towards our vision of 100GW of new energy storage by 2030 and educating stakeholders on the benefits of storage in creating a more reliable, efficient, sustainable, and affordable electric grid,” said ESA interim CEO Jason Burwen.

East Penn recognized by Honda in third industry award this year East Penn Manufacturing, the US battery manufacturer, announced on July 27 that it had been recognized by Honda North America with its 2020 Supplier Sustainability Award. This is the third award the battery firm has received this year. In February Forbes and Statista ranked East Penn as one of America’s Best Large Employers for 2021. This was the third time East Penn has been named to the list. In January the firm received the Most Valuable Supplier Award for achievements in 2020. The Award was granted by the industry’s trade association, MHEDA (Material Handling Equipment Distributors Association) to less than

10% of all member companies. This was the sixth consecutive year that East Penn Manufacturing Co. has earned this Award. The Honda award is all the more notable in that Penn received the top honour out of all 743 suppliers evaluated. This was East Penn’s first time being recognized for this award, previously receiving a different sustainability award for Green Excellence in 2015.

studies in Portuguese and UK universities, Coimbra also has experience in the private and public sectors, says CBI. “Lead battery-focused research remains the highest priority for CBI,” the organization said. “However, the membership recognizes that communicating the benefits of lead batteries is vital to meeting our goals. “CBI is therefore expanding its communications activities and in this respect has recruited Joana Coimbra, based in Brussels.”

CBI appoints new comms officer in heart of Europe The Consortium for Battery Innovation on May 17 said it had appointed Joana Coimbra as communications officer based in Brussels to help with the organization’s PR work, especially in Europe. With an academic background in media

Luminous wins gold award for sustainability Indian power company Luminous Technologies on August 1 won the India Green Manufacturing Challenge Gold Award for the first time in the company’s history.

Batteries International • Summer 2021 • 15

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OBITUARY: KATHRYN BULLOCK, 1945-2021 Kathryn Bullock one of the greats in the electrochemical history of the lead battery has passed away aged 76.

Mapping out the landscape for future generations of lead research It is with sadness we record that Kathryn Bullock, one of the giants of the electrochemistry of lead and batteries in general, passed away on May 17. She was widely admired for not just her encyclopaedic knowledge of VRLA batteries but as a sunny, friendly and an engaging person. She was a regular speaker on behalf of the research side of the battery industry. Lead veteran Gene Valeriote recalls: “Kathy was ebullient, generous and an electrochemical genius. She was simultaneously a friend as well as a colleague. I first met her when she was a secretary/ technician at Gates— the pioneer of the VRLA battery — where she got so absorbed into what was going on, she left and returned with a doctorate!” David Rand, also a Gaston Planté award winner, recalls how they both came out of the gala dinner of the Electrochemical Society in New Orleans singing songs from Oklahoma and dancing down a crowded pathway. Her many achievements include becoming the first ever female president of the Electrochemical Society in 1996 and also winner that year of the lead battery industry’s highest accolade, the Gaston Planté Medal Award. The award recognized Bullock’s contribution to the lead battery world for

Kathryn working in the Johnson Controls research laboratory studying cyclic voltammograms of lead in battery acid containing phosphoric acid

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her discoveries of: • the self-discharge processes in VRLA batteries and their impact on shelf life and discharge capacity; • the structure and properties of the corrosion layer on Pb, Pb-Sr and PbSb electrodes; • how the corrosion layer of the positive plate on a solid-state Pb/PbO/ PbO2 element with an emf (electromotive force) of 0.8V can be formed and its effect on the polarization of the positive plate; • the beneficial influence of H3PO4 on the positive plate of lead acid batteries; • the influence of antimony on the negative plate; • how tridimensional E-pH-pS diagrams of Pb/H2SO4/ H2O could show thermodynamic values for open-circuit voltages, acid activities and lead sulfate solubilities; • the recombination efficiency of the oxygen cycle in VRLA batteries; • new conductive materials and processes to enhance lead battery formation; • the possibility of perovskite coating of the lead current collectors in positive plates to reduce corrosion. She was the author and co-author of more than 60 scientific papers, chapters and books and has 11 US patents in battery, fuel cell and capacitor technology. Norma) Kathryn Rice was born in Bartlesville, Oklahoma on September 24. 1945. An early interest in chemistry developed into a degree at Colorado University and in 1967 (freshly married to Kenneth Bullock who later became a minister), she applied to Gates Rubber Company where she was interviewed by John Devitt, the driving force behind the VRLA battery, who was organizing a battery development group. She left to move to Chicago to get her doctorate before returning to Devitt whose team had by then developed the VRLA battery. The push was on to test and refine the design and develop the manufacturing processes. The first application

of the Gates VRLA AGM battery was in power tools. Lead-acid batteries with silica gel added to the acid could be used in some portable applications, but the gel limited the power. Portable power tool companies were interested in the VRLA cells because of lower materials costs and higher voltages and power. Although lead is heavier than nickel and cadmium, they could use three lead-acid cells to replace the voltage of a battery of four nickel-cadmium cells. When lead-acid batteries are discharged, the state of charge decreases as the acid concentration decreases. Many stationary lead-acid battery applications, such as standby backup power, required regular monitoring of the acid specific gravity with a hydrometer to determine the energy left in the battery. A sealed cell was not acceptable for these critical applications. With her background in computer modelling and physical chemistry, Bullock was able to develop a model and numerical tables that would allow customers to convert the open circuit voltage of a VRLA battery to the acid concentration and battery state of charge. She was also able to use thermodynamic data from the literature to correct the state of charge for the internal battery temperature. She later recalled: “To maintain my skills and increase my knowledge of lead acid batteries, I began reading articles in the Journal of Electrochemical Society on corrosion reactions at the lead-acid positive grid by Paul Ruetschi, Jeanne Burbank, Detchko Pavlov, and others. With electrochemists from local universities, I also founded a local chapter of the Electrochemical Society.” In an evening graduate course on corrosion at the Colorado School of Mines, she learned about potential pH (Pourbaix) diagrams. Since positive grid corrosion reactions are dependent on both sulfate (S) and hydrogen (H) ion concentrations at the corrosion interface, she developed a threedimensional potential/pH/pS diagram that could be used to better understand and reduce the corrosion of the positive

Batteries International • Summer 2021 • 17

OBITUARY: KATHRYN BULLOCK, 1945-2021 lead grids. In 1977, she accepted a job at Globe-Union, a large battery company in Milwaukee that was to become part of Johnson Controls. She worked there for nearly 15 years, first as a research scientist and then, beginning in 1980, as manager of the battery research group. “We worked on many different kinds of lead-acid batteries, including flooded, gelled and acid-starved designs for all types of automotive, stationary, and portable applications,” she said later. At Gates, Bullock had worked on a project to determine how much phosphoric acid should be added to the VRLA battery electrolyte and had presented a paper on her results at an Electrochemical Society meeting. Phosphoric acid was added to lead acid gel batteries to increase their cycle life. She used cyclic voltammograms to study the effects of phosphoric acid on lead battery reactions. Based on her cyclic voltammetric data, the amount of phosphoric acid added to the Gates cells was reduced to a very low level. At Johnson Controls, she continued to study phosphoric acid effects on the positive electrode in lead-acid batteries and published additional work on the subject. In 1980 the Electrochemical Society Battery Division presented Kathryn Bullock with its research award for this work. Bullock’s research group was partially funded by the US’ Department of Energy to work on electric vehicle and load levelling batteries. The battery research group also supported development work on nickel-metal hydride and zinc-bromine batteries. She began to file patents at Johnson Controls on her ideas of ways to improve lead-acid battery performance and on ways to decrease battery production times. One of her first projects was to find an alternative way to make a dry charged battery. Johnson Controls had a method of charging an acid filled battery and then dumping out the excess acid and centrifuging the battery to eliminate as much moisture as possible. Unfortunately the shelf life of this battery was not as good as for drycharged batteries due to the residual acid left in the battery. The Johnson Controls battery division had a solid engineering department, along with a technical library, a materials research group and an analytical group that provided very good support for battery research and development. Many of their projects were cosponsored by the US’ Department of Energy.

18 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

Battery luminaries all. Taken at 8ELBC in 2000 Seated is Alfred Meissner of Digatron, Germany. Standing from left to right are Paul Ruetschi, Patrick Moseley, Kathryn, Juergen Garche, and husband Ken

“Kathy was ebullient, generous and an electrochemical genius. She was simultaneously a friend as well as a colleague”. The two built a new R&D laboratory and worked on lead-acid, zinc-bromine, and nickel metal hydride battery development projects for applications A 2009 photo taken with Ken such as load levelling and electric vehicles. design and factory and designing new Bullock and her colleague Bill Tiede- lithium primary batteries for implantmann assembled a top notch R&D able medical equipment. team and soon built a new world-class In 1996, she was awarded the GasR&D laboratory (that later morphed ton Planté medal — perhaps the most into JCI’s Battery Technology Center). prestigious award in the lead acid bat“Back then we were working on many tery business. At the end of 1999, she of the right subjects such as grid corro- accepted a position as executive vice sion, battery thermal management, EV president of technology at C&D Techbatteries, grid design, plate curing and nologies in Philadelphia. In 2003, she even load-levelling,” she recalled. founded a consulting business called “I’ll never forget our work design- Coolohm, Inc where she was at the ing the new lab and purchasing some cutting edge of various new projects. of the first computer controlled battery For example, in some new lead-acid cyclers from Bitrode (and it was all battery designs, higher levels of carbon done without email)! are being added to the negative plate In 1991, AT&T Bell Labs asked her materials. to lead the move of their battery group A committed Christian, her life has from Texas to New Jersey “At AT&T been based on the belief that science I had an opportunity to get more ex- and faith are not incompatible and our perience in systems engineering and duty is to push back the borders of our worked closely with systems engineers understanding as far as we can — and and battery companies to develop new impart that wisdom and knowledge to battery designs. AT&T also agreed to others. let me accept a nomination to run for Her last few years, however, were vice-president and then president of plagued with ill health. Her death the Electrochemical Society.” marks the end of a true battery pioneer They worked in Dallas for five years, and brings to a close not just the life of until Bell Labs became part of Lucent this remarkable woman but a period Technologies. when remarkable advances in lead batAt that time Medtronic, Inc invited tery storage were not eclipsed by the Bullock to lead a group developing threat of the competition from alternaan aluminium electrolytic capacitor tive chemistries.

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NEWS

ENTEK closes acquisition of NSG separator division International battery separator firm ENTEK closed its acquisition of Nippon Sheet Glass’ lead acid battery separator division on September 1. The acquisition means ENTEK will add AGM separators to its portfolio, which so far consists of PE separators and lithium battery separators. It becomes the first firm to manufacture separators in all three primary battery technologies. The new company will own all of NSG’s battery separator facilities in Japan and China for both OE separators and AGM separators, the firm said. The acquisition was announced on May 10. Clint Beutelschies, vice president for global sales & marketing, told Batteries International in May that the firm’s majority stake in the battery separator division of the Japanese firm, which predominantly makes glass for automobiles, will push ENTEK into a leading position in Asia, a region where until now it has had a relatively small footprint. “Among the three major regions of the world, Asia has by far the highest growth rate, and it’s important for us to take our industry leadership and have our local presence in that region,” he said. “In the Americas we are the largest producer of separators for the lead-acid battery separator industry, far ahead of our nearest competitor. In Europe we are the leaders for auto separators as well.” ENTEK began to take more of a presence in Asia with the acquisition of a plant in Indonesia in late 2017, but this was just the start. The company made plans to double the plant’s capacity with another pro-

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duction line, and although the pandemic delayed things, the ultimate goal remains the same. “In Asia we were a relatively small player, with just the investment in our Indonesian plant in 2017,” Beutelschies said. “Before that we didn’t have a manufacturing plant in Asia, so we had some catch-up to do. NSG was our joint venture partner

in the Indonesian plant, so we know them quite well. Their battery separator division is a great fit for ENTEK, and to their credit, from the CEO Shigeki Mori, right on down, they recognized we would be a great partner — so now we’re off to the races.” A full statement by the firm said: “With this strategic acquisition, ENTEK becomes the only separator

manufacturer in the world producing all three primary separator technologies (PE, AGM, and lithium separators) for the global energy storage industry. “Considering ENTEK’s established business foundation and mutual trust, NSG Group has decided that the best option for the BSS business as well as for the customers and the stakeholders is for BSS to be integrated with and managed by ENTEK so that it can develop further and enhance its value for customers.”

“Their battery separator division is a great fit for ENTEK, and to their credit, from the CEO Shigeki Mori, right on down, they recognized we would be a great partner — so now we’re off to the races” — Clint Beutelschies, ENTEK

ENTEK forms innovational relationship with nascent UK Britishvolt gigafacory Britishvolt, the company building the UK’s first lithium-ion battery gigafactory, on June 14 signed a MoU with ENTEK that means separators will eventually be domestically produced in the UK and supplied straight to the production line. Britishvolt held a groundbreaking ceremony on the opening of its plant £2.6 billion ($3.4 billion) in early August. Two other huge lithium battery factories in the UK — see European gigafactories feature in this magazine — may be active shortly. The MoU will look at how ENTEK’s separators can be used in Britishvolt’s batteries and following that, a potential investment in a facility to produce the ceramic coated separator materials. ENTEK already has a plant in Newcastle-uponTyne, in the north of England, and the plans

ENTEK’s Graeme Fraser-Bell breaking ground on the ground-breaking plant at Blyth on July 27

are for another one next to Britishvolt’s gigafactory in Blyth also near to Newcastle-upon-Tyne. “We are delighted to have been selected as Britishvolt’s preferred lithium-ion battery separator partner and eager to align our objectives and investments with their transformational plans to build a 30GWh+ factory in the UK,” said Larry Keith, ENTEK CEO. “Co-location at Britishvolt’s site will allow

access to an abundance of renewable energy, essential for power intensive manufacturing processes,” said Britishvolt. “It will also reduce the length of the supply chain and along with it the carbon footprint of battery production.” Supply of lithium is also a concern, although two firms — British Lithium and Cornish Lithium — are exploring known deposits of the element in the UK.

Batteries International • Summer 2021 • 19

BCI Convention + Power Mart Expo September 22-25, 2021 • Hilton San Diego Bayfront • San Diego, CA

NEWS

BCI victory as lead batteries removed from DTSC danger list Lead-acid batteries have been removed from the California Department of Toxic Substances Controls’ danger list of potential ‘Priority Products’, Battery Council International announced on May 10. The action is a major victory for the industry as a whole and BCI, which has been campaigning for years to make sure lead batteries are not included on this list. ‘Priority Products’, listed under the DTSC’s Safer Consumer Products Programme, have to undergo an Alternatives Analysis process whereby manufacturers have to seek other options to find less toxic chemicals to use in their products. Lead-acid batteries were added to the DTSC 20152017 Work Plan for consideration as a potential Priority Product because they contain three ‘Candidate Chemicals’ lead, arsenic and sulfuric acid. “Lead exposures to workers and neighbouring areas may occur during recycling and manufacturing operations,” the Work Plan said. “Lead exposures are

Roger Miksad

The action is a major victory for the industry as a whole and BCI, which has been campaigning for years to make sure lead batteries are not included on this list. known to cause neurological as well as other effects, and arsenic is a carcinogen. Lead exposure to children is especially of concern since there is no known threshold concentration for neurological effects.” But among other argu-

ments against the potential move, put forward by the industry, is that the sector is already extremely tightly regulated and poses no harm to consumers. After a rigorous evaluation of potential life-cycle impacts, current regulations and product innovation, the DTSC has now agreed to exclude lead batteries. BCI has been working for years for this outcome, saying inclusion on the list would be ‘inappropriate and unlawful’. In a nine-page letter to the DTSC in March 2018, the council said: “Prematurely mandating that California consumers and businesses switch from a proven safe, economical and proven battery technology to new and unproven battery technologies with known significant environmental and public safety risks, and unknown long-term impacts, would not meet the agency’s statutory mandate. “DTSC action on lead batteries may also have the unintended consequence of reducing the value of recycling for lead batteries, upending the current closed-

loop life cycle. “This could perversely cause more lead batteries to wind up in landfills or with less responsible processors, a result nobody wants to see.” In its final Priority Product Work Plan for 20212023, the DTSC concluded that ‘listing lead-acid batteries as a Priority Product is not likely to further enhance protection to human health’. “This outcome is the right one and recognizes that lead batteries are critical to meeting America’s energy storage needs and are already well regulated,” said BCI executive vice president Roger Miksad. “The industry’s highly successful closed-loop recycling system and investment in new technologies and innovations also means that lead batteries hold the promise of delivering safe, sustainable energy storage in the future.” Miksad thanked DTSC staff on behalf of the industry for the ‘dedication and care’ they had put into their review of lead batteries over the past five years.

US battery firms form research group to improve cycle life Five US lead battery firms have formed a research group with the Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Toledo to improve battery cycling efficiency, Battery Council International said on July 29. Clarios, Crown Battery, EnerSys, East Penn Manufacturing and Ecobat are joining up to improve the efficiency and lead to longer-life batteries ‘as new applications emerge in an increasingly decarbonized market’, BCI says. “This new research is unique because it is focused on improving the perfor-

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mance of advanced lead batteries, which are fully recyclable, and for which recycling capacity already exists in the US,” the BCI says. Cora Lind-Kovacs, professor in the UToledo Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, will work with Argonne’s Material Science division, which will lead the research over the next two years. It will conduct an atomiclevel examination of the organic materials used in expanders to extend battery life by improving their cycling efficiency. Specifically, the pro-

gramme will study the atomic structure of lignosulfonate molecules to improve or replace them with other naturally derived elements. Understanding the interactions between lead, lead sulfate and lignosulfonates, according to the research, is key to guiding the design of additive molecules that can aid with fast charging and thus prolonging the life of the battery. In turn this has benefits for long-duration storage — a vital attribute for lead batteries if they are to remain competitive as demand grows in more and more ap-

plications. “This partnership can help industry meet society’s demanding requirements in vital industries like transportation and electric power,” said US representative Marcy Kaptur, chair of the US House Appropriations Energy and Water Development Subcomittee and instrumental in bringing the parties together. “UToledo’s chemistry department will bring their expertise to help meet the growing need for more efficient and sustainable rechargeable batteries to support a changing economy.”

Batteries International • Summer 2021 • 21

NEWS

Pilot Battery signs evaluation agreement with Gridtential A formal agreement to evaluate a combination of 6V and 24V silicon joule batteries was signed on June 15 between Taiwanese battery firm Pilot and the silicon joule wafer creator Gridtential. The agreement has been hailed by the firms as one that ‘could kickstart a new era of Taiwanese and Asian Pacific battery production for the energy storage systems market’. Using development kits by Gridtential, Pilot will produce prototype batteries to prepare for future production. “Pilot will integrate its own active material in the battery to validate impact on cycle life, energy density, battery efficiency, charging rates and manufacturability,” say the firms. Pilot Battery makes lead carbon and VRLA batteries for applications from UPS to SLI. The Taiwanese government has set a target of 27GW of renewable energy installation capacity by 2025, which will need energy storage alongside. “The AGM market will be examined closely as a good solution for that increased demand,” it says. Gridtential says its silicon joule wafer technology increases the power density of a battery by five times and the discharge rate by two, with a 75% lower levelized cost of electricity than conventional lead-acid batteries. “The superior treatment for the silicon wafer we’ve developed from many decades in the solar industry could make a great match with the silicon joule bipolar design,” said Pilot president Chunyi Hong. Gridtential has 12 licensing agreements with battery makers for its silicon joule design. The evaluation agreement comes on the back of a

launch a series of AGM reference batteries produced on East Penn Manufacturing’s prototype line. “These are not just samplers but also batteries that are ready to be sold to the market,” John Barton, Gridtential CEO, told Batteries International. The first commercial product is a single-block 24V lead battery optimized for deep-cycle applications. A 12V power version will follow late spring, with 48V versions of each appearing in the second half of the year. Gridtential says its Silicon Joule AGM battery delivers up to five times the power density, four times the cycle life and twice the discharge rate at a 75% lower levelized cost of electricity than conventional lead batteries. “We’re offering highperformance batteries as an attractive alternative to lithium-ion,” says Barton. “Customers don’t need to wait for multibillion dollar factories to be built — manufacturers

can move directly from prototype to mass production, with 90% of the required equipment already in use -in their factories.” Gridtential battery technology substitutes treated silicon wafers for conventional lead grids and combines them using as what it describes as a patented stack-and-seal architecture. This, the firm says, provides uniform current distribution and efficient thermal management, minimizing failure modes such as sulfation, corrosion and grid growth. Gridtential says it will offer a range of products for a variety of energy storage applications, from personal mobility to home energy storage to hybrid automotive: • 24V deep-cycle (available now): electric sweepers, scooters, wheelchairs, riding lawn mowers, e-bikes • 12V power (available Q2 2021): power-sports SLI, automotive start-stop and

EV auxiliary • 48V deep-cycle (available 2H 2021): golf carts, etuk-tuks, renewable energy storage, telecoms, data center backup, micro-grids • 48V power: (available 2H 2021): mild-hybrids, EV auxiliary, ADAS, startstop, infotainment and regenerative braking. Separately, Gridtential announced on April 27 that it had closed a further $12 million funding round. Gridtential has raised $28 million to date. Participants were Silicon Valley Bank, August Capital cofounder David Marquardt, ReneSola CEO Yumin Liu and existing investors that include East Penn Manufacturing, Crown Battery and the Roda Group. Gridtential’s business model works on a licensing basis. East Penn, Crown and Leoch are fully licensed to mass produce Silicon Joule batteries, and nine additional manufacturing partners — mostly international — are piloting the technology. “Several have already produced batteries off testing lines in their factories,” says Barton.

India ups the ante with a raft of opportunities for battery storage Indian government is putting up billions of dollars of cash, offering tenders and incentives to battery firms to put in place more than 50GWh of storage over the next few years. Policies in line with the country’s aims to Aatma Nirbar Bharat — Make in India — include a $2.5 billion ‘Production Linked Incentive’ scheme to achieve manufacturing capacity of 50GWh of advanced chemistry cell (ACC) battery storage and 5GWh of Niche ACC; floating tenders for 4,000MWh of battery storage; and a 2,000MWh standalone energy system. “All the demand of the ACCs is currently being met

22 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

through imports into India. The National Programme on ACC Battery Storage will reduce import dependence. It will also support the Aatma Nirbar Bharat initiative.” ACC battery storage manufacturers will be selected through a transparent competitive bidding process, and the manufacturing facility will have to be commissioned within a period of two years. “With the approval of the PLI scheme many global companies are looking at entering the Indian market,” says a spokesperson with the India Energy Storage Alliance. “Companies such as Amara Raja and Nexcharge have acquired the land for

setting up the gigafactories. Both companies are leading India’s energy storage market. “Some of the major companies planning to set up cell manufacturing plants in India include Exicom TeleSystems, Samsung SDI, Panasonic Corporation, Tata Chemicals, and TDSG. “Under Niche ACC, alternative technologies such as sodium-based, zinc air and aluminium batteries will get a boost, having better battery density, cycle life and safety. So the market looks quite promising for domestic and international players.” The IESA says most of the tenders are technology agnostic.

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NEWS

Sodium ion batteries to pose threat to lithium and lead industries Chinese news reports at the end of May have said that lithium-ion battery giant CATL has plans to start making sodium-ion batteries in what some say could be a direct challenge to leadacid. According to the website www.equalocean.com, CATL chairman Robin (Yuqun) Zeng said the firm would start marketing sodium-ion batteries almost immediately. The decision to add the chemistry to its portfolio has been made to reduce its reliance on

lithium imports, the report says. “Currently, over 70% of China’s demand for lithium is fulfilled by foreign providers,” the report says. “Amid the Sino-American standoff, both nations’ finest hightech corporations have been investing lavishly in import substitution strategies.” It also says that shares of Sacred Sun and Lanta industrial have soared because they are key providers of materials for sodium-ion batteries. “Sodium-ion cells have

a lower energy density, ~100-150Wh/kg, in comparison to lithium-ion cells’, 330Wh/kg,” says James Frith, head of energy storage at BloombergNEF. “So expect them to be used to replace lead-acid initially, in applications such as backup power and two and three-wheelers. “In the long run, stationary storage markets could be suitable for sodium-ion deployments.” The UK Faraday Institution says: “Sodium-ion batteries are an emerging

Umicore and BASF sign agreement to develop cathodes and precursors Umicore, the metals and battery recycler, and multinational chemicals company BASF on May 4 said they had signed a cross-licence agreement to develop cathode materials and precursors in a wide range of battery chemistries based on nickel and manganese. Precursors are cellular components from which another component is formed — and with the cathode materials are an essential part of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, said Marjolein Scheers, media relations manager with Umicore. “The focus here is to increase the ability to customize cathode materials to the increasingly diversified and complex customer requirements at battery cell and application level and to increase product development speed,” she said. The collaboration is a natural fit, with both companies for many years ‘investing intensively in product innovation for low, medium and high nickel precursors and cathode materials resulting in each company

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owning sizeable and largely complementary patent portfolios’, a statement said. The chemistries named as in line for development are nickel manganese cobalt, nickel cobalt aluminium, nickel manganese cobalt aluminium and high manganese. The work will look at the best chemical composition,

powder morphology and chemical stability for each application ‘to meet the increasingly diversified and complex customer requirements’, as well as examine energy density, safety and cost issues. “This agreement with BASF is an important step in promoting cathode material innovation,” said Umi-

battery technology with promising cost, safety, sustainability and performance advantages over current commercialized lithium-ion batteries. “Key advantages include the use of widely available and inexpensive raw materials and a rapidly scalable technology based around existing lithium-ion production methods. These properties make sodium-ion batteries especially important in meeting global demand for carbon-neutral energy storage solutions.” core CEO Marc Grynberg. “It strengthens our technology positioning and further increases our ability to develop bespoke solutions which meet the most stringent performance and quality standards of our battery and automotive customers.” “The continuous development of battery materials will accelerate the transformation towards full electrification,” said Peter Schumacher, president of BASF Catalysts.

Lithium batteries in Europe to make up entire industrial battery sector by 2030 Lithium-based batteries will make up almost the entire sector of industrial batteries by 2030, according to EUROBAT’s analysis of a market report by Avicenne Energy on May 17, with lead-based batteries only remaining dominant in UPS and telecoms applications. The key conclusions in Avicenne’s EU Battery Demand and Supply (204192030) in a Global Context report include the prediction that the preferred technology in the industrial battery sector — which includes energy storage systems, motive batteries,

UPS and telecoms — will see a major shift to lithium, with ESS almost exclusively lithium-ion. In motive power, where lead batteries are dominant today with a 90% share, the preference will shift dramatically in lithium’s favour until it is the majority technology. Lead will hold its own in UPS and telecoms. However, the lead battery sector will remain dominant across all levels of e-mobility, the report says, and continue to be dominant in the 12V market for SLI and auxiliary

functions. The report also predicts massive growth in lithiumion battery production in Europe, with a 10-fold future growth potential. “Europe is ready to meet demand, although currently heavily reliant on imports,” it says, with emobility being the driver for growth. With lead-based batteries, “Europe will retain its strong position in 2030 and remain very competitive, but ongoing investment is needed to maintain/improve production and for R&D,” it says.

Batteries International • Summer 2021 • 23

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NEWS

Exide saga continues with $291 million general fund to clean up Vernon environs The governor of the state of California in his May Revision Budget for 20212022 has earmarked a further $291 million to clean up more properties in the city of Vernon around the controversial lead battery recycling plant owned by the former Exide Technologies. Gavin Newsom’s May Revision proposes that the money should be spent over three years and focus on properties with specified lead contamination levels near the former Exide site. “To date, the state has provided over $251 million General Fund for residential clean-up and other costs associated with Ex-

Covernor Newsom’s May Revision proposes that the money should be spent over three years and focus on properties with specified lead contamination levels near the former Exide site.

ide,” says the Revision. “The bankruptcy settlement allowed Exide to walk away from its obligations to complete the closure of the facility; however, the administration remains committed to pursuing cost recovery from responsible parties for Exide.” Separately according to a law report, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control lost its appeal against the Chapter 11 plan of battery recycler Exide Holdings. on July 26 when a US District Court judge said it would be a ‘moot exercise to unwind the company’s confirmed bankruptcy plan’. The reason being that Ex-

ide’s plan that transferred its 10 facilities into an environmental remediation trust to maintain and clean up the locations had been largely consummated and the agency wasn’t facing any risk that the debtor’s site in California would be abandoned. In December 2020, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control filed a suit against a number of companies, including Clarios, Quemetco, Trojan Battery and Ramcar Batteries, claiming they were also responsible for the contamination around the site by transporting hazardous waste to it. The outcome of the case is not known yet.

Gopher Resource taken to court for lead poisoning Gopher Resource, the lead battery recycling firm in Florida undergoing an inspection by the local Occupational Health and Safety Administration, was taken to court on June 2 by the family of a former worker who claim their son’s disabilities are a result of his father’s exposure to lead dust. Ko Brown, who worked at the plant, alleges that Gopher failed to prevent him from carrying toxic dust home and exposing his son, Colin, to the poison when he was an infant and had lead recorded in his blood. The lawsuit maintains that Colin has suffered disability and emotional distress. Gopher denies claims made by local media that damning levels of harmful lead contamination has been found in the blood of its workers. When the OSHA inspection was begun in April, Gopher was fully supportive, saying it had spent more than $230 million on mak-

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ing the facility safe. Average blood lead levels among staff, it said, were actually half what they were when Gopher bought the plant in 2006. “Protecting our Tampa employees and the sur-

rounding community is a core value of Gopher Resources and its workforce,” the company said. “Since 2006, we have invested more than $230 million to modernize the Tampa facility, which included

installation of state-of-theart pollution control, and health and safety measures including filtration and ventilation. The standards we hold ourselves to are more stringent than regulatory standards.”

Nyrstar accepts responsibility for acid leaks at Port Pirie Global metals company Nyrstar on May 24 told a court it had accepted responsibility for a sulfuric acid leak at its Port Pirie lead smelter in 2019, according to Australian news outlets. The Environment, Resources and Development Court heard that the smelter, north of Adelaide in South Australia, had leaked an estimated 700 litres of the acid into waterways near the site at the end of January 2019, according to court reports. Nyrstar could face a fine of up to $250,000, to be decided at the next court hearing in July.

How much harm was caused to the area was not quantifiable, the court was told, but the leak was not stopped for at least eight hours. News agencies quoted Nyrstar lawyer James Levinson saying that a spillage prevention mechanism had failed and the wrong type of valve had been installed in the conveyance pipe. “There certainly was the best of intentions and the respondent fully accepts that it operates on this site subject to it complying with the law,” Levinson is quoted as saying.

In June 2019, Port Pirie suffered an unplanned outage that caused lead prices to soar by around $250 per tonne. In November that year the sinter plant had to be closed down to restart the top submerged lance furnace and peripherals before full production could restart after a few weeks’ closure. In June 2020 the smelter owners were told by the Australian Environmental Protection Agency to cap emissions by 20%. Port Pirie has been in almost continuous operation for 129 years.

Batteries International • Summer 2021 • 25

NEWS

Major Indian lead recycler signals plans to process lithium batteries Indian business news website Money Control said on June 29 that the largest lead battery recycling company in the country, Gravita, had decided to enter the lithium battery recycling sector. Quoting Gravita India’s CEO Yogesh Malhotra, the site said ‘talks are at an advanced stage’ with a European firm that could provide the technology for recycling lithium batteries. “Demand for recycling lithium batteries is expected to become viable in six

to seven years, by when Gravita India will be ready for the market,” the site said. With the Indian government, as with many others across the world, mandating that only new electric cars will be sold after 2030, the need for lithium battery recycling is bound to surge. At the moment, Gravita smelts lead ore, concentrate and battery scrap, as well as aluminium scrap, to produce lead and aluminium ingots.

California DTSC threatens $25K a day fine for lead recycler California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control in June threatened a local car breaker with fines of $25,000 a day if it fails to stop releasing hazardous waste, including lead, into the environment. The DTSC has filed a request to Los Angeles County Superior Court to impose the penalties on Dick’s Auto Wreckers for each violation of the hazardous waste law. The company has been ordered to investigate any spread of contamina-

tion into the surrounding neighbourhood and clean it up. “DTSC has a profound responsibility to protect all Californians from the effects of hazardous chemicals,” said DTSC director Meredith Williams. “We remain steadfastly committed to robust enforcement of hazardous waste laws, especially in our vulnerable communities where residents for far too long have disproportionally suffered from pollution.”

UK battery recycler to increase capacity by 50% UK lead battery recycler Enva will increase its capacity by 50%, the firm announced on July 1. The firm says it has invested in new material handling and processing lines and has upgraded its facility licences with the country’s environment agency to increase annual output and also allow other types of battery chemistries to be handled. “Recycling batteries ensures valuable resources can

be reused in more sustainable products and aren’t lost forever via landfill or incineration,” said battery business general manager Arvydas Pocevicius. “This expansion of our operations represents a significant increase in the UK’s lead acid battery recycling capacity. It will result in fewer batteries needing to be exported for treatment, driving additional CO2 savings.”

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Aqua Metals signs letter of intent with Taiwanese lead refiner Aqua Metals, the lead battery recycling company, on July 29 said it had signed a definitive agreement with Taiwanese lead refining company ACME Metal Enterprise to use Aqua Metals’ equipment at a facility in Keelung. “The agreement also defines a phased deployment of AquaRefining technology and provisions for ACME to work with Aqua Metals and one or more large battery manufacturers to develop a second methodology to produce oxide directly from AquaRefined material,” said an announcement. “This can significantly improve economic costs, safety, environmental impact and streamline the link between battery recycling and new battery manufacturing.” Effectively the two companies intend to develop a process to convert the briquettes formed with the AquaRefining technique directly into battery-grade lead oxide with the use of a

ball mill. Aqua Metals has already, it says, converted briquettes into lead oxide using the Barton pot method. Aqua Metals intends to begin shipping its ‘aqualyzers’ and supporting equipment to ACME during the next few months for phase one of the deployment, which is expected to begin operating by the fourth quarter of 2021. The specific financial terms of the agreement will remain proprietary for commercial and competitive reasons, according to the two firms. ACME Metal Enterprise is headed by Linus Lu, who took over in 1984. “This partnership allows ACME to expand its business relationships with large battery manufacturers and establish itself as the first green tech lead recycler in Asia,” he said. The company’s main products are lead calcium and lead antimony alloys, which it began to market in 1993.

Li-Cycle signs deal with new JV to recycle battery scrap Canadian lithium battery recycling firm Li-Cycle signed an agreement on May 11 with a General Motors joint venture to recycle scrap materials from battery cells. GM and LEG Energy Solution have formed the JV ‘Ultium Cells LLC’, which will use a hydrometallurgical process to extract cobalt, nickel, lithium, graphite, copper, manganese and aluminium from dead batteries and process the materials to use in the production of new cells. Having spent $2.3 billion on the new company, based in Ohio, US, GM says its facility will have an annual battery production capacity of 30GW. The firm has already posted dozens of

jobs on its new website. Re-iterating its company’s recycling technology as a more sustainable alternative to mining, Li-Cycle president and CEO Ajay Kochhar said the combined efforts of all companies involved would ‘be instrumental in redirecting battery manufacturing scrap from landfills and returning a substantial amount of valuable battery-grade materials back into the battery supply chain’. “GM’s zero-waste initiative aims to divert more than 90% of its manufacturing waste from landfills and incineration globally by 2025,” said GM president of electric and autonomous vehicles Ken Morris.

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NEWS IN BRIEF Monbat joins European Battery Alliance Bulgarian lead and lithium battery maker Monbat has joined the European Battery Alliance, it said on July 20. Its accession to the alliance will enable it to open lines of cooperation for the development of leadacid battery technology with the application of nanotechnologies ‘improving exploitation characteristics and prolonging battery life-cycle, as well as creating an optimal environment for competitive manufacturing of lithium-ion battery systems for various transportation and industry purposes’, it says. Monbat joins another 600 industrial and academic stakeholders in an alliance that seeks to build a pan-European battery industry to help the continent capture a booming global market that is estimated to be worth €250 billion ($296 billion) a year by 2025. The EBA was set up in 2017 and is managed by EIT InnoEnergy, an EU-funded agency that was set up to accelerate the energy transition, and which focuses on three areas: battery storage, green hydrogen and solar power. Monbat is the fourth largest producer of lead-acid batteries in Europe. It also owns the Germanybased EAS Batteries, which makes lithium-ion battery systems. Ending lockdowns causes surge of demand for replacement car batteries A leap in demand for replacement auto batteries that have died while cars have sat on people’s drives during national lockdowns has led to a surge for replacement batteries as restrictions have lifted — and an ensuing hike in lead price rises, reported Reuters on July 6. Commodity analyst firm Wood Mackenzie predicted the demand for lead needed in replacement car batteries would rise by almost 6% on 2020 levels to 6.5 million tonnes in 2021, similar to pre-pandemic levels. Lead hit its highest price since July 2018 at $2,344 a tonne on July 12, according to the LME, although it had dropped to around $2,300 on July 13 (see analyis on page 6). According to Reuters, stocks of lead in warehouses registered with the London Metal Exchange were down 11,000 tonnes in the first four months of 2021 compared with

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2020, when they held 30,000 tonnes. Shortages were felt most acutely in the US automotive sector, which in turn drove up global prices. Quoting Asia Metals, the agency said part of the reason behind shortages was tight concentrates — which ‘can be seen in treatment charges paid by miners to process concentrate into refined metal, dropping to their lowers since September 2019 at $50 a tonne’. Stryten Manufacturing joins BCI and CBI associations US lead-acid battery maker Stryten Manufacturing joined two leading lead battery associations — Battery Council International and the Consortium for Battery Innovation — in June. Announcing it had joined Battery Council International on June 24, the firm said membership would ‘help advance critical issues in the lead battery industry, including the role of lead-acid batteries in energy storage,

industry collaboration, technology innovation, lithium battery safety and sustainability’. “Our industry is at the forefront of some of the biggest technology innovations that will change how the world operates,” said Stryten CEO Tim Vargo. “BCI and its members do important work in shaping the future of energy storage and we’re ready to roll up out sleeves together to tackle new challenges.” On June 29 Stryten said it had joined the Consortium for Battery Innovation and Vargo said that the partnership would help ‘not only provide innovative solutions to meet our customers’ evolving needs, but also set new standards for safety, sustainability and performance that will help meet the ever-increasing needs of the entire energy sector’. The lead battery manufacturer, which also owns the motive power arm GNB Industrial Power, was formally formed in August 2020.

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NEWS IN BRIEF CBI and BCI produce ‘call to arms’ report for battery industry Battery Council International and the Consortium for Battery Innovation in a report released on July 14 have called on the battery industry to work on key areas of research to cement lead batteries’ place in the future of energy storage. The Lead Battery Grand Challenge Executive Summary is a roadmap that identifies 13 ‘work areas’ under three specific headings: Lead Battery Science Research; Supply Chain Issues; and Energy Storage System Demonstrations. The paper, which focuses on the US industry, calls on lead-acid battery makers, the US Department of Energy and national laboratories ‘to partner on collaborative research that takes science from the laboratory to the marketplace’, BCI executive vice president Roger Miksad said. “The lead battery industry believes that by using its experience in combination with the scientific skill and expertise of the DOE’s national lab system it can yield significant performance gains that could double, or provide even greater advances to, cycle life and energy density,” he said. “This would further cement lead batteries as the only energy storage solution with intrinsic safety measures, that is highly sustainable, manufactured domestically, and meets the techno-economic needs of the US utility sector for decarbonization and distribution of the US grid.” The report was released on the same day that DOE secretary Jennifer Granholm announced the department’s goal of reducing the cost of grid-scale, long-duration energy storage by 90% within a decade. The ‘Long Duration Storage Shot’ was one of the targets set in the DOE’s Energy Earthshots Initiative, which also includes $52.5 million spending on hydrogen technology. “We’re going to bring hundreds of gigawatts of clean energy on to the grid over the next few years and we need to be able to use that energy wherever and whenever it’s needed,” Granholm said. “Cheaper and more efficient storage will make it easier to capture and store clean energy for use when energy generation is unavailable or lower than demand.” BCI said: “The nation’s electric power industry depends on a wide

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spectrum of technologies — including lead batteries — for functions ranging from back-up power supply during system disruptions (such as those seen in Texas last winter, when power was out for days, and the wildfire season in California, which is currently threatening to knock out critical power lines across southern Oregon) to facilitating the integration of power from variable resources such as wind and solar to the electric grid. “A resilient infrastructure needs to have a diverse range of energy sources and given its unique features, lead batteries must be a key part of that mix.” Lead battery makers face shortage of lead supply Lead prices and stock shortages have become a cause of concern for battery makers as demand picks up following a year and a half of lockdowns, Reuters reported on August 9. In London after reaching a threemonth high of $2,412.50/tonne on August 4, lead prices dropped to $2,275 before rising slightly to around $2,325 on August 10, but LME stocks are ‘super low’ with the physical supply chain ‘super stressed’, according to Reuters. “All the world’s lead seems to be in China, where warehouses are full to bursting,” said the news agency. “Some of that surplus should be seeping out through the arbitrage window but so far there has been little sign of movement.” LME stocks total 58,500 tonnes, Reuters says, down by almost 75,000 tonnes on the start of 2021. In Europe, supplies have been hit by flooding at Germany’s Stolberg primary lead smelter, which has declared force majeure after devastating floods, causing it to halt shipments by at least a month. And in North America, reduced operations at Canada’s Teck Resources’ Trail smelter, due to poor air quality caused by wildfires, are adding to supply issues. “China is swimming in excess lead and the high SHFE price encourages smelters to keep making it and dumping it into warehouses to trouser the cash,” said Wood Mackenzie principal analyst, lead markets Farid Ahmed. “The options are that China starts exporting refined lead to the West where it’s needed, but this depends on the arbitrage window.”

Because the cost of local lead is usually far lower than refined lead imports, which are priced at its LME value plus premium, with import duty and VAT on top, it does not usually make sense for China to export it to the US, Ahmed said. North America also has an issue with importing the batteries themselves because of congestion at the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, as well as rail and truck networks further on, media reports say. “Together, the two ports account for over one third of these imports,” says Ahmed. “But they are experiencing near-record delays, with dozens of ships anchored off the coast waiting for a slot to dock and unload. Some ships have been waiting offshore for weeks.” Remy Battery completes first article testing of military batteries Remy Battery has completed the first article testing of a $43 million US Department of Defense contract to supply 83,000 batteries a year for three years. There are also two one-year option years to provide the 6TL batteries, which were partly chosen because they come in Remy’s FreshStart packaging, a finalist entry in the 2018 BCI Innovation Awards. The packaging is specifically for dry-charged batteries, which means no excess chemicals need to be stored, reducing hazmat shipping costs and allowing battery activation by a single person. Along with the dry-charged battery, FreshStart contains individually packaged portions of the electrolyte required for each cell. Passing the testing means Remy can begin shipping the batteries to the government, which should begin imminently. “We’re excited!” said Remy’s government sales manager Kevin Fleischman. “The US military has certain specifications that varied from any 6TL offered in the commercial market and we understood this. “We’ve worked very hard with the battery plant and the DLA to see that our battery meets the expectations of the US government’s requirements and after two years, passing the first article testing was the last hurdle before we begin shipping. “At three to four truckloads a week, now the real work begins!”

Batteries International • Summer 2021 • 29

NEWS IN BRIEF Eurobat endorses EU climate policy European battery organization EUROBAT said it welcomed a climate and environmental policy launched by EU policymakers on July 14 as ‘an important milestone on the path to net-zero emissions’. The EU’s package — coined ‘Fit for 55’ to express the aim of reducing car CO2 emissions by 55% by 2030 — is part of the bloc’s European Green Deal, in which all 27 member states will work with industry to achieve the reduction. “Overall, the package strengthens eight existing pieces of legislation and presents five new initiatives, across a range of policy areas and economic sectors: climate, energy and fuels, transport, buildings, land use and forestry,” the summary says. “Energy use accounts for 75% of the EU’s emissions, so the transformation of our energy system is central to our climate ambitions. Saving more energy and using more renewables in the energy we do use is a key driver for jobs, growth and emission reduction.” The package comes seven months after the EU published its draft Battery Regulation, which was broadly welcomed by EUROBAT and the lead battery industry, despite concerns that it was too complicated and would be over-regulatory. “All battery technologies have a critical role to play if the EU is going to meet its 2030 and 2050 emissions reduction targets and deliver decarbonization across the economy,” said Rene Schröder, EUROBAT executive director. “We look forward as an industry to working together with policymakers to ensure that this package of legislation, alongside the new Batteries Regulation, provides the European battery industry with the strong legislative foundations it needs to help the EU deliver on its promise of a carbon neutral society by 2050.” EC partners battery association to strengthen value chain BEPA, the Batteries European Partnership Association, on June 23 signed a memorandum of understanding with the European Commission to launch a €925 million ($1.1 billion) programme aiming to develop a ‘competitive and sustainable industrial battery value chain’. BATT4EU will be run under Horizon Europe, a research and innova-

30 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

tion framework that comes under the European Union. This will provide the funding that will go towards ‘research and innovation to develop a variety of differentiated technologies that will result in a competitive, sustainable and circular European battery value chain’. The EU recognizes it has fallen behind Asia in the global battery race. Some analysts say Europe is around a decade behind the top Asian players. “The demand for batteries is continuously growing, however, the production of batteries is still highly concentrated in Asia: for instance, less than 1% of global lithium-ion battery cells are currently manufactured in Europe, compared to over 90% in Asia,” the announcement says. “Europe needs to catch up in this important area and it will do so by putting environmental sustainability and circularity at the heart of its battery production to address the ambitions of the green energy transition. “By mobilizing €925 million, the partnership will boost research and innovation to develop a variety of differentiated technologies that will result in a competitive, sustainable and circular European battery value chain.” ILA signs up New Chunxing as first Chinese member The International Lead Association on May 4 announced it had signed up its first Chinese company, the Jiangsu New Chunxing Resource Recycling Company, which is based in Pizhou, midway between Shanghai and Beijing. The company was founded more than 40 years ago, it says, with ISO 14001 and 45001 certification achieved in 2013, according to chairman Yang Chunming. “We are delighted to welcome New Chunxing as our first Chinese member and look forward to collaborating in our work to promote the responsible management of lead worldwide,” said Andy Bush, managing director of ILA. New Chunxing was the target of protests in Victoria, Australia last year, when locals opposed the company’s proposed lead battery recycling plant in Latrobe Valley, where 50,000 tonnes of used batteries a year are to be processed. The company rejected the fears, saying emissions would be far lower than EPA standards — and in September, the state approved the construction of the plant. In 2008, Chinese newspaper reports

said a facility owned by the company, then named the Chunxing Alloy Group, was responsible for the poisoning of several children in the village of Xinsanhe, in Pizhou. The plant was forced to relocate to a nearby industrial park. Speaking to the ILA, Yang Chunming said the company was committed to contributing to China’s circular economy and was looking forward ‘to working together with ILA to positively impact the sustainability credentials of the lead battery industry in China’. Exide unveils new-look carbon cutting batteries Exide Technologies, the Europe-based lead-acid battery maker, unveiled a new design of its Premium battery on May 4, which it says will cut carbon emissions and water use, as well as speed up recharging. The new design will also be introduced across the rest of Exide’s conventional batteries, the company says. One of the key selling points of the new batteries is that their boxes and lids are made from recycled plastic as opposed to virgin plastic, which is where the emissions and water are saved. Using data from the plastic manufacturing industry and various independent university studies, Exide has calculated that this will lead to savings of 2,700 tons of CO2, eight million litres of water and 1.2 million litres of crude oil in Exide’s manufacturing each year. Another feature of the new Premium batteries is its Carbon Boost formula, which Guido Scanagatta – Senior Product Manager EMEA, describes as “a proprietary recipe for the optimal mix and application of different types and proportions of carbon additives to the negative active mass to provide the best possible result for the performance of our batteries”. “We have been working with these carbon additives and validated their effects through testing (cycling, charge acceptance, chargeability, etc) for 10+ years and have vast R&D experience in this field,” Scanagatta says. Production of the new design began in April, and the first deliveries have already reached customers, he says, adding that it will take time for old stock to be fully replaced throughout the supply chain. Exide has two R&D facilities, nine production locations and three recycling plants in Europe.

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HYBRID BATTERY NEWS

RWE to build combined run-ofriver battery hybrid in Germany RWE is building one of the largest battery storage systems in Germany — a 117MW facility that is being installed at the company’s power plants in Lingen in Lower Saxony and Werne North Rhine-Westphalia, the German utility announced on July 22. The two systems will cost around €50 million ($59 million). “What is special about this project is that the batteries will be virtually coupled with RWE’s run-of-

river power stations along the river Mosel. By raising or decreasing the flowthrough at these power stations, RWE can make additional capacity available, also as balancing energy,” says a company official. “This coupling process raises the total capacity of the batteries by another 15%. The battery and the hydropower stations work hand in hand to help keep the frequency in the power grid stable.” The system is scheduled

to start operations at the end of 2022. The planned system comprises 420 lithium-ion battery racks, housed in 47 overseas shipping containers spread across the two power stations. The system at Gersteinwerk in Werne will have a capacity of 72MW while the one at the Emsland station in Lingen will have 45MW. “Battery storage systems are essential to the success of the energy transition. They help balance out fluc-

tuations in the power grid, which are increasing as the share of renewable energies grows. Our project is setting new standards and shows how we can offer the market even more flexibility by intelligently linking up battery capacity with run-of-river power stations,” said Roger Miesen, CEO of RWE Generation. RWE is also working on projects with new technologies such as redox-flow storage systems and second-life batteries.

Gravitricity plans to incorporate hydrogen and head in gravity storage system Scottish power generator firm Gravitricity said on May 19 that it was planning to incorporate hydrogen and heat into its underground energy system. The Edinburgh-based firm signed an agreement to build a 250kW demo at Port Leith, in Scotland, in May 2020. This involves using excess electricity from the grid to winch 12,000-tonne steel weights, filled with iron ore, up a 15m-high rig before releasing them down shafts to generate and send electricity to the grid when required. Testing is halfway through and the technology is operating successfully, says managing director and cofounder Charlie Blair. Now the firm says it will turn the shafts into pressurised stores for hydrogen, capable of safely accumulating vast quantities of the gas, and capable of storing it as well as dropping the weights. Blair says a pressure cap will be placed over the top of the shaft to contain the gas, which could be hydrogen or compressed air — “the point is it’s safe underground, con-

tained by the geology of the earth,” he says. Storing huge amounts of energy storage underground could solve the problem of seasonal storage, of which batteries are not yet capable. “Seasonal fluctuation are huge,” he says, “and we have to find a way to absorb it and pull it out in the winter. Our technology uses the same space, the same infrastructure, as the weights, and is somewhere between geological storage of hydrogen and above-ground hydrogen, which is expensive.” “The future hydrogen

32 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

economy will need to find economic and safe ways to store hydrogen where it’s needed,” said Gravitricity co-founder Martin Wright. “At present our domestic gas network has vast amounts of storage built in — under the North Sea. “The gas grid of the future will be powered by intermittent renewables — and that means we need to find ways to store green hydrogen when energy is plentiful, close to where it’s required. “Our idea is to make each Gravitricity shaft serve as a

very large, sealed pressure vessel, and to use the shaft itself to hold significant quantities of gas. “We believe this will be far more economic and safer than above-ground storage pressure vessels — and will massively increase the storage capacity of the system.” He said he envisaged building multiple shafts colocated with a hydrogen electrolysis plant to form a dual function — store excess electricity for the electrolysers to use and the plant’s output as a buffer into the gas grid.

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HYBRID BATTERY NEWS

Lead/lithium battery to power UK Royal Mint A lead/lithium battery hybrid is to be installed at the British Royal Mint as part of a multi-technology energy centre in Wales after a tender for the project was won by renewable energy company Infinite on August 10. The energy centre will comprise a 2MW solar farm, wind turbine, hydrogenready combined heat and power unit, and the hybrid battery. Controlling the containerized energy storage system will be the ADEPT battery management system developed by battery firm GS Yuasa, the University of Sheffield, and Infinite, a renewable energy developer set up in 2010 to build wind power schemes and now working in solar energy as well. Infinite says the concept of an energy centre with all

components on one site, supplying industrial estates with local renewable energy, is a UK first. “As a large manufacturing site, the Royal Mint is the perfect candidate site for an integrated energy centre,” said Infinite director Andrew Crossman. “The generation from low carbon and renewable technologies, distributed via a smart microgrid, will provide a huge boost to the Royal Mint’s carbon reduction strategy.” The energy centre will generate around 18,000MWh a year, which means that with annual demand around

Lead/lithium trial completed in Poland A hybrid storage system of lead and lithium batteries storing wind-generated power has been completed in Poland to form the largest battery storage system in the country, the parties involved announced on July 8. The smart grid project was a joint effort by stakeholders in Poland and Japan, including the Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Hitachi, Denko Showa Materials, Polish firms Polskie Sieci Elektroenergetyczne (PSE), Energa Operator SA (EOP) and Energa OZE SA (EOZE), the Polish Ministry of Climate and Environment and the Japanese government agency New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO). The project started last

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up power generated by a 1MWh rooftop solar array at GS Yuasa’s battery factory, and in a second stage a wind turbine will be installed to supply electricity directly 25GWh, it will provide to the site. around 72% of the Mint’s The solar panels supply electricity. around 5% of the factory’s “The battery size will be needs, and excess energy will 800kW but the final design be stored in the hybrid batspecification, including the tery system, which will be lithium/lead split, will be housed in a battery containsubject to future analysis of er to complete the microgrid. the Mint’s current demand “The project brings a numprofile,” says Infinite. ber of benefits to our Ebbw This centre is one of up to Vale factory and the wider seven being planned by Infi- Rassau Industrial Estate,” nite as part of a ‘Generation said Shaun Gardner, manStorage Consumption Sup- aging director of GS Yuasa ply’ project grant funded by Manufacturing UK. the European Regional De“The unique combination velopment Fund. of our lithium and lead-acid In July, solar panels were batteries, the latter of which installed in a similar system are produced on site in South at GS Yuasa’s battery fac- Wales, allows for the storage tory in Wales. This consists of greener energy, generated Final Ad.pdf 1 9/17/2019 3:13:17 by PM either solar or wind, to be of a combination of lead and lithium batteries to back used at a later date.”

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September, when five 1MW lead batteries and one 1MW lithium-ion battery providing a total storage capacity of just over 27MWh — the largest battery storage system in Poland, the project leaders say — was installed at the Bystra wind farm in Gdansk. “Along with the introduction of large amounts of wind power generation in Poland, the risk of the grid destabilization and the shortage of load balancing capabilities become an issue, generating a need for a system that will stabilize the power grid while at the same time suppressing economic burden and enabling the introduction of large amounts of wind power generation and other renewable energies,” the project leaders say. C

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FINANCE NEWS

Clarios pulls $1.7 billion IPA at last minute citing market volatility Clarios International, the world’s largest manufacturer of automotive batteries, announced on July 29 that it had pulled its longawaited initial public offering that had been predicted in the market to raise some $1.7 billion. In a public statement issued that morning, Clarios said market volatility had provoked this move. The cancellation coincides with a fall in momentum of this year’s record spree of IPOs in the US. Since the end of January this year, 690 companies have raised more than $229 billion in IPO listings, according to Bloomberg, the news agency. In an email sent to Batteries International by Clarios, the firm said: “While we are looking forward to taking Clarios public and providing investors with exposure to our market-leading advanced energy storage solutions platform, we have elected to defer the IPO given current market conditions. “We received positive feedback through the marketing process and are committed to keeping the market informed as we reassess the environment over the coming months. “As the largest low-voltage battery manufacturer in the world, Clarios is well positioned to satisfy the evolving needs of the vehicles of the future and we are confident in our longterm growth prospects and the market opportunity ahead.” Clarios had said it intended to use the proceeds received from the IPO to pay down debt. The last two financial years have not been positive for the battery giant. The company recorded a net loss of $399 million on net sales of $7.6 billion

for the year ended September 30, 2020. The previous year it recorded net income of $25 million on sales of $8.53 billion. Some 509.1 million shares were likely to be outstanding after the IPO. The control of the shares would still be owned by Brookfield Business Partners and Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and others that acquired Clarios in May 2019 for $13.2 billion. The pulling of the IPO came as a surprise to investors and the market alike. Just the week before, Clarios had announced the launch of its marketing exercise known as the roadshow for its initial public offering of 88,080,495 shares of its common stock and 10,000,000 shares of its series ‘A’ mandatory convertible preferred stock. Just over two years ago, on May 1, 2019, Johnson Controls Power Solutions was reborn as Clarios after JCI sold it to Brookfield Business Partners for $13

billion. Brookfield is an affiliate of Canadian firm Brookfield Asset Management, which manages assets of more than $600 billion, it says. With Joe Walicki still at the helm, new logos, signs and even ID cards were produced and put in place overnight, with staff previously unaware of the deal until they arrived for work at the new-look offices the next day. Just over three months later, in September 2019, Walicki stepped down as president of the new Clarios. He also retired as president of the BCI board. Mark Wallace was appointed president and CEO

the following May with the comment that he ‘had a demonstrated history of driving revenue growth and improving profit margins’ and that in his hands, the company’s strategy would be to continue to advance globally. In a report in May, Bloomberg, said Brookfield was looking for a valuation of around $20 billion in an IPO. “The decision to press ahead with the listing comes in spite of turbulence in equity markets in recent weeks that has seen other firms postpone listings of portfolio companies or subsidiaries,” the news agency reported.

Clarios said market volatility had provoked the delay. The cancellation coincides with a fall in momentum of this year’s record spree of IPOs in the US. Since the end of January this year, 690 companies have raised more than $229 billion in IPO listings

Leoch snaps up distribution firm to expand into Iberia Leoch Battery, the Chinese lead-acid and lithium battery maker, announced on May 4 it was expanding into Spain and Portugal with the purchase of Madrid-based distribution business Meibat. The purchase means Leoch will create a new business — Leoch Iberia — that will set up, it says, a dedicated warehouse facility in the Spanish capital ‘to ensure fast delivery of its industrial battery products to customers across Spain and Portugal’. Meibat already concentrates on the telecommunications, UPS, data cen-

34 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

tre, renewables and energy storage sectors as well as motive market segments, so its business, with major accounts in the region, complements Leoch. Leoch Iberia will then use the Spanish operations as a base from which to extend into Latin America, it says, ‘using a network of local representatives in different Latin American countries, supported by Leoch Iberia and Leoch EMEA headquarters in Athens, Greece’. “Leoch previously had a representative in Spain but this major acquisition will enable us to establish

a permanent footprint with all original equipment customers in Iberia, as it was the only major European country on our target list where we didn’t have our own entity, adding to successful facilities in France, Germany, Italy and the UK,” said Stathis Babalis, general manager of EMEA at Leoch. “From this new base in Madrid, we will focus on driving the growth of our leading industrial batteries with all major key accounts in the network power market as well as the motive power one in Spain and Portugal.”

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FINANCE NEWS Showa Denko announces sale of lead battery business

Monbat signs deal to acquire 60% Tunisian battery maker Nour

Japanese materials producer Showa Denko is to sell its lead-acid battery operations to investment fund Advantage Partners and financial services company Tokyo Century, it said on July 8. Calling the transaction a ‘company split’, Showa Denko said the company’s battery business would first be separated from its material production arm, then all shares would be transferred to a firm called Sustainable Battery Solutions, whose largest shareholder is Advantage Partners. Advantage Partners said the business was expected to achieve profit growth and stable cash flows ‘by strengthening the automotive and industrial storage battery businesses, where steady demand is expected to continue’. The transaction would be completed with a consortium of itself and Tokyo Century. “Expansion of e-commerce, cloud services and next-generation telecommunications networks will also lead to increased energy storage demand from data centres and telecoms. “Growth opportunities also like in the basic elements supporting clean energy, including an expansion of renewable energy markets and

Bulgarian lead-acid and lithium battery maker Monbat on May 12 agreed a deal to buy 60% of the Tunisian battery firm Nour for €10.3 million ($12.6 million). The transaction is to be financed from issuing bonds and the firm’s own funds. “The transaction is in line with the strategic objectives of Monbat AD for the establishment of its own production base and expansion of the market positions in North Africa and the Middle East, including but not limited to Tunisia, Algeria and Libya,” the company said.

the launch of lead battery products optimized for environment friendly vehicles.” According to Nikkei Asia, which broke the story before Showa Denko could announce it later the same day, Showa Denko Materials bought Italian and Thai manufacturers of lead batteries in 2017, looking to tap into a growing awareness of disaster-related risks after the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan in 2011. “But with rising lead prices eating into profitability, and fewer synergies emerging from the acquisition than originally anticipated, Showa Denko began weighing a sale of the battery business,” it said. Nikkei Asia said Denko’s global market share of leadacid batteries in 2019 was 4% — giving it an eighth place ranking behind leader Clarios, with 16%, and GS Yuasa in second, with 8%. “The likely goal of this deal is to turn the battery business around before selling it on to another manufacturer looking to expand,” said Nikkei Asia. Showa Denko said the decision had been made to focus on the company’s chemical manufacturing, specifically ‘electronics, mobility, and life science.

Ecobat buys German lithium battery recycler Promesa Battery recycler Ecobat has expanded its recycling operations with the purchase of the Germany-based lithium-ion battery recycler Promesa, the company announced on July 26. With its central location of Hettstedt, a dominant car manufacturing and lithium battery area, Promesa ‘provides Ecobat a crucial entry point in one of the most critical markets for battery access and OEM factory scrap’, Ecobat says.

“Additionally, Promesa represents a critical part of the battery recycling process and value chain and will provide Ecobat with access to business-critical permits for 3,200 tonnes of chemical compounds,” Ecobat says. “These contracts cover a broad range of waste materials associated with a variety of battery chemistries from household to electric vehicles, positioning Ecobat for expansive growth opportunities.”

36 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

The share purchase agreement provides Monbat with 720,000 voting shares, the company says, and will take place in two stages that will be complete by the end of the year. Nour was founded in 1956 and claims to be the first Tunisian company to specialize in the production of batteries. It distributes widely across North Africa and in 2015 opened a second production facility in the district of Zaghouan. In 2018, Monbat shelved plans to buy another Tunisian battery maker, Tunisien Assad.

ESS gets public listing pos- merger with ACON S2 Acquisition Corp ESS Tech, a manufacturer of long-duration iron flow batteries for commercial and utility-scale energy storage applications, and ACON S2 Acquisition Corp, a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company, announced on May 7 they ‘had entered into a definitive agreement for a business combination that will result in ESS becoming a publicly listed company’. The business combination values the combined company at a $1.072 billion pro forma enterprise value. The transaction will provide approximately $465 million of pro forma net cash to the combined company, assuming no redemptions by ACON S2 shareholders. Assuming no public shareholders of ACON S2 exer-

cise their redemption rights, ESS’ existing shareholders, including its founders, will own approximately 64% of the combined company. As part of the transaction, ACON S2 raised a $250 million fully committed PIPE [private investment in public equity] from institutional investors including Fidelity Management & Research, SB Energy Global Holdings, a wholly-owned subsidiary of SoftBank Group, Breakthrough Energy Ventures and BASF Venture Capital. In total, investors in the PIPE will own approximately 16% of the issued and outstanding shares of common stock of the combined company at closing. The firms expect the transaction to close in the third quarter.

CE Energy acquired by private equity firms CS Energy, a project management firm for the solar, storage, and emerging energy industries, announced that on May 4 that it had been acquired by affiliates of American Securities, a US private equity firm. American Securities acquired the equity interests in CS Energy from a fund

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FINANCE NEWS

Johnson Matthey acquires Oxis after lithium sulfur firm goes into administration The sale to Johnson Matthey of Oxis Energy, the lithium sulfur battery developer, was finalized on July 28 — just over two months after the company was placed in administration on May 19. Most of the 60 staff had already been made redundant when accountancy and business advisory firm BDO LLP was appointed as an administrator to dissolve the company. “The company was unable to secure the investment required to continue its product development,” said BDO business restructuring partner Simon Girling. “However, we are hopeful of obtaining a sale of the company’s specialist testing equipment, together with approximately 200 patents held by the company, and the opportunity remains for an acquirer to purchase

Monash University, Australia, and has studied lithiumsulfur for about eight years. She said the chemistry needed a few more years of research before it could be developed. “The progress on the lithium metal anode protection has been incremental and without a breakthrough on that component, there will be no mass adoption of the Li-S system,” she said. Shaibani says Li-S is still a valid chemistry, and that the theoretical metrics are too rewarding to let go and the progress over the last few years has been ‘unexpected’. The lithium anode breakthrough may be right around the corner and then the cheaper, greener, lighter goals will soon become a reality, she says. Arizona, US-based Sion Power backed away from

the chemistry after working on it for several years and being at the forefront of the technology. “We pulled everything we knew from working with Li-S all those years and looked at the traditional system that was out there, and the big shortfall was the energy level you were able to achieve,” said Sion’s CEO Tracy Kelley. “Although it has the potential for very high specific energy and very high density, once you’d distilled the chemistry down to something that was a commercial product, and pushed what you needed to push from performance parameters, we found that we were able to get the high gravimetric energy from the system, but from a volumetric standpoint it was low compared to say lithium-ion.”

Verkor and partners raise €100 million for Grenoble gigafactory

Market commentators are less rosy-eyed about the prospects of creating gigafactories across Europe. “The European Commission came to the game very late in the day,” says one commentator. “Asia has over a decade’s worth of manufacturing experience that will take new gigafactories time to learn. They have mature supply chains in place and some manufacturers in China have mineral rights agreements for years to come.”

French industrial company Verkor on July 6 said it had raised €100 million ($110 million) with nine partners to build a lithium battery gigafactory with a manufacturing capacity of 50GWh by 2030. A centre will also be built in Grenoble for the design of advanced battery cells and modules. The other partners are EIT InnoEnergy, Groupe IDEC, Schneider Electric, Capgemini, Arkema, Tokai COBEX, Renault, EQT Ventures and the Fund for Ecologic Modernisation of Transport, managed by Demeter. All have invested funds apart from InnoEnergy, ‘who is supporting in many other ways, and is one of the founding investors’, says Verkor, adding that of the €100 million, around two thirds is equity.

these assets in situ at an internationally acclaimed testing centre, and separate R&D facility. The result was that Johnson Matthey would take over the premises in Oxfordshire and Wales, as well as the assets and intellectual property. Oxis was at the forefront of research into lithiumsulfur batteries, with its own plant in Brazil that was touted as having the capacity to produce five million cells a year. But a lack of investment spelt the end for the firm, and claims that it would be able to make all-solid state configurations with a delivery potential of 1,000Wh/l are not going to be realized. Mahdokht Shaibani is a research fellow in the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at

Verkor said the European Battery Alliance was also an important partner. The partners bring different things to the table. Tokai COBEX, for instance, is a speciality manufacturer of low-carbon, efficient battery anode materials, and Schneider Electric specializes in using digital tools to integrate technologies and services.

Arkema is a materials science specialist. “In three years, Europe has become a global hotspot for battery investment, showing that we can achieve open strategic autonomy in this key industrial sector,” claims Maroš Šefcovic, EU Commission vice president for Inter-institutional Relations and Foresight.

Taiwan Cement moves into energy storage with 60% stake in Engie EPS Taiwan Cement Corporation on July 20 confirmed it had completed the acquisition of a 60.48% stake in ENGIE EPS, the stationary storage and e-mobility arm of the Italian electric utility ENGIE. ENGIE EPS has been renamed ‘NHOA’ — short for ‘New HOrizons Ahead’ —

38 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

and ENGIE EPS CEO Carlalberto Guglielminotti has been appointed CEO of the new company. Taiwan Cement paid a total of €132 million ($156.6 million) in cash for what is now NHOA. “Through the transaction, the TCC group will be able to expand its international

energy and energy storage footprint and to diversify its product offerings, as well as strengthen its technical capabilities in the energy storage field,” said TCC. ENGIE EPS was conceived in 2005 as Electro Power Systems and in 2013 Guglielminotti took over as its CEO.

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FINANCE NEWS Zenobe secures more funding for Europe’s biggest battery Zenobe, the UK battery storage firm, said on June 23 it was ready to begin building a 100MW/107MWh battery in the UK after receiving more than £60 million ($84 million) in a non-recourse debt facility from the investment arm of high street bank Santander. The firm says this will be Europe’s biggest battery and the world’s first to absorb reactive power directly from the transmission grid. It is the second funding round from Santander — the first was £25 million ($33 million) raised in January 2020. The latest funding follows the successful £150 million ($209 million) of equity Zenobe raised from Infracapital, the infrastruc-

ture equity investment arm of M&G Plc, in 2020. With the additional funding Zenobe will begin construction on its flagship 100MW/107MWh battery near Chester in the north of England. The project should be completed by April 2022, and Zenobe says it will be capable of supplying enough electricity to meet the needs of more than 100,000 homes for an hour at peak demand. Zenobe says it is a UK market leader in battery storage, with 75MW of operational grid-scale batteries, which provide a range of services including balancing, dynamic containment, and reactive power services in the UK to National Grid.

First steps taken towards commercial lithium refinery in UK Mineral processing company Green Lithium has secured £1.6 million ($2.2 million) in seed round funding to help pay for a lithium refinery in the UK, the company said on June 28. According to the firm the funding round attracted more than five times the target, and comes on top of a £0.6 million ($820,000) government grant given via the Automotive Transformation Fund in April. “The capital will take the project to the next stage of development, including raw material laboratory test work analysis, planning and environmental scoping and baseline surveys, ground investigation and other activities relating to the early development phase of the project,” says the firm. Refining the element is a crucial step in the move towards creating what Benchmark Mineral Intelligence

calls ‘a lithium economy’. With sizeable deposits of lithium under exploration in the UK, and a number of battery gigafactories in the planning stages, a refinery would cross off a vital requirement in the list. Green Lithium says it should be able to deliver its project by 2025, ‘and meet the growing demand for locally manufactured batterygrade lithium chemicals to support the UK and European battery and automotive industries’. While Green Lithium says its refinery will be the first and only in the UK, Leverton Lithium, near Basingstoke, already refines and converts around 3,000 tonnes of basic lithium raw materials a year. However, Leverton CEO David Hicks says his company’s refining starts higher up the value chain with basic lithium carbonate, whereas Green Lithium will refine spodumene.

40 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

Israeli cold energy firm raises $13.6 million in merger Nostromo, the Tel Avivbased cold energy storage company, on June 21 finished a merger with Tel Aviv stock exchange-listed firm Somoto to raise $13.6 million for commercializing its energy storage ice cells for commercial and industrial buildings. The company has already signed a 20-year agreement with the Hilton Beverly Hills hotel in Los Angeles, US for a 1.5MWh system to serve the Hilton and Waldorf Astoria hotels. The technology is an ‘IceBrick’ modular system that can be installed in places such as roofs and basements and is charged during hours when electricity demand is low or there is a renewable energy supply surplus.

The stored energy is released during peak consumption hours, ‘relieving the grid from the high air conditioning electricity demands’, and the system can be scaled up to a multi-MWh capacity, the firm says. “Our technology provides a solution to the energy requirements of air conditioning systems, which are the largest consumer on the grid,” said CEO Yoram Ashery. “Over the last few years, we’ve witnessed the rapid growth and deployment of lithium-ion-based energy storage systems. This has sparked growing concern about the serious environmental consequences and safety issues these batteries pose.”

The company has already signed a 20-year agreement with the Hilton Beverly Hills hotel in Los Angeles

China’s Gangeng Lithium to sell $630 million in new shares Ganfeng Lithium, one of the world’s top lithium producers, has decided to sell $630 million in new shares to boost capacity and make further investments, Reuters news agency reported on June 11. The Hong Kong (H) shares on offer equate to around 20% of the firm’s existing ‘H’ shares, numbering 48 million. The Reuters report was released three days after another one announced the company was to build a plant that would produce 50,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent a year, in line with its plans to raise annual capacity fivefold to 600,000 tonnes.

The plant will convert spodumene into lithium battery materials, said a filing to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. However the firm primarily wants to expand overseas, and intends to use 80% of net proceeds for this purpose. Ganfeng Lithium already has locations in Mexico, Argentina, Ireland and Australia, as well as several in China. In addition to refining and producing batterygrade lithium, the company makes lithium batteries for applications from energy storage systems through to consumer electronics.

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                   ® 

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LITHIUM BATTERY DANGERS If 2020 were a disastrous year for lithium battery recalls, the summer of 2021 is not shaping up any better. Michael Halls reports.

The Great Lithium Battery Summer Recall August and July have been disastrous months for public perceptions of electric vehicles and lithium batteries. The months have been scarred by two giant lithium battery fires, two huge recalls and a report that suggested that roughly a fifth of EV fires happened when the engine was parked and there was no explanation for the destruction. The latest bombshell came on August 20 when GM announced that: “out of an abundance of caution GM was to replace defective battery modules in Chevrolet Bolt EVs and EUVs with new modules with an expected additional cost of approximately $1 billion.” GM identified the problem as coming from defects in LG’s manufacturing processes in Korea. The move was

another blow for LG which was struggling with another recall away from the world of EVs. Around 10,000 residential storage system lithium batteries by LG Chem subsidiary LG Energy Solutions have been recalled because of a fire hazard, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission announced on August 4. The RESU 10 (Type-R) batteries were recalled after warnings were issued that they ‘can overheat, posing a risk of fire and emission of harmful smoke’. Five reports were received of the wall-mounted batteries, which store energy generated by solar panels, causing property damage and one injury, the CPSC said. The batteries this time had been

made in LG Chem’s factory in Nanjing, China, between 2017 and 2018, according to Korean media. In December 2020, around 1,815 units of the same model were recalled for the same reason, the CPSC having received five reports of fires resulting in minor property damage, but no injuries.

Fires in Australia, US

The latest recall came just two days after a four-day lithium battery fire was put out at a utility-scale Tesla battery site in the Australian state of Victoria. International media reported that a 13-tonne lithium battery caught fire inside a shipping container and could easily have spread to other battery containers, but was kept under control and then finally put out.

ONE-IN-THREE EV FIRES OCCUR IN PARKED VEHICLES WITH One in three electric vehicles fires has occurred with ‘no obvious cause’ while the car was parked, according to the latest report issued in August by research consultancy IdTechEx. The startling figures show that 17% of EV fires occur in regular driving and a quarter occur when charging. More predictably, 20% of fires occur in a crash situation or 4% when immersed in water when the reactive lithium is exposed to the air or water. IdTechEx’s report —Thermal Management for Electric Vehicles 2021-2031 — also points out that the cost of recalls to solve problems continues to be hugely expensive and sometimes intractable to solve. GM’s first recall of the Bolt in 2020, for example, entailed a call back of 69,000 cars produced between 2017-2019 for potential battery fires.

42 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

“The ‘solution’ was a software update limiting the battery capacity to 90% and an inspection of the battery,” says the report. “In 2021, two more Bolts have caught fire, both of which had the recall. “Continued investigation between GM and LG Chem has determined the cause is the ‘presence of two rare manufacturing defects in the same cell’. This has prompted another recall by GM to replace the battery modules. “This recall is said to have cost GM around $11,000 per vehicle, totalling nearly $800 million.” Other carmakers have faced similar bills. Hyundai, for example, recalled 82,000 EVs due to battery fire risk at an estimated $900 million. Much of this was paid for by LG Chem, the report says. “Ford’s Kuga plug-in hybrid also faced issues with cells supplied by Samsung, resulting in a recall of 33,000 cars costing Ford approximately $400 million,” it says.

The effects of EV fires tend to be far more severe than fires in conventional ICE vehicles. One Hyundai Kona fire in 2020, for example, blew the roof off the garage in which it was stored. And, as with the recent lithium explosions and blazes in Chicago in the US and in late July in Victoria, Australia, these fires are a lot harder to contain and put out. A Tesla Model S fire in April required nearly 30,000 gallons of water to extinguish it because “it kept reigniting, burning continuously for over four hours,” says one media report. By comparison, a typical car fire involving a ICE can be extinguished with about 300 gallons. One effect of these highprofile fires and their severity is their press coverage, which runs contrary to the desire of governments and OEMs that have recently been setting out bold

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LITHIUM BATTERY DANGERS The ‘Victoria Big Battery’ was installed by French energy firm Neoen in 2017, when it was the largest gridconnected energy storage system in the world at 100MW/129MWh. The Victoria Big Battery fire, however, difficult it was to extinguish was still small in comparison with the mass evacuation required in one part of the US at the end of June. Up to 4,000 people had to leave their homes on June 30 after up to 100 tonnes of lithium batteries exploded at a former paper mill in Morris in the state of Illinois, local and international media reported. The paper mill was owned by a firm called Superior Battery, according to CBSN Chicago. (Note there is no connection with the well known US lead battery firm called Superior Battery Manufacturing Co Inc based in Kentucky.)

Explosions

According to news agency AP, between 80 to 100 tonnes of batteries exploded with a noise that could be heard across the city on Tuesday night, having been stored at the unused paper mill without the knowledge of the fire department or other city agencies.

They ranged in size from cellphone batteries to large car batteries, the agency said. “Firefighters stopped using water on the blaze minutes after they arrived when they discovered the batteries because water and firefighting foam can cause batteries to explode,” the report said. “Crews will not be sent to battle the fire because of the unknowns about what’s inside.” Residents from some 950 homes were told to stay away for two days. “Many types of lithium — lithium ion phosphate being the most obvious one given its lack of metals of value — are uncommercial to recycle,” says one commentator. “We’re hearing a lot of anecdotal evidence that many in the industry are simply stockpiling them until an efficient economical solution to their disposal can be found. “If they are not warehousing them properly they are a very real and present danger to everyone.” Lithium battery fires are notoriously difficult to extinguish safely because they react with water, even when they are not alight. “Statistically it’s not if they fail, but

when,” says George Brilmyer, CTO at HighWater Innovations and formerly R&D manager of separator firm Microporous. “It’s a several million to one chance that a cell will fail but if you have tens of thousands of them in a cargo of containers, the statistics are against you that one is going to fail. With thermal runaway it’s then a cascading process as one by one ignites, and that’s why it takes days to put them out.”

“Crews will not be sent to battle the fire because of the unknowns about what’s inside.” The batteries have to be soaked in water for long enough to make sure that the water gets right into the cells, otherwise they can reignite. Brilmyer believes the economic case for deploying lithium in containers is flawed. “You’re not moving them around, they are staying in a container on the ground, there’s no reason why you should be using lead at a fifth of the cost.”

‘NO OBVIOUS CAUSE’ decarbonization targets based on energy storage for fossil-free renewables. But with every cloud there comes a silver lining. The IdTechEx report concludes: “We expect EVs to continually improve in safety, there will always be the risk of a battery fire due to many potential causes. This presents an opportunity for those material suppliers making thermal interface materials, flame-retardant materials, or fire protection materials. These materials can help with the thermal management of EV batteries making it less likely they will overheat. “Fire-retardant construction materials and fire protection materials are beneficial to enclose a fire or prolong the time between a thermal runaway event and the fire exiting the battery pack.” Regulations are also evolving in the UK. China implemented new EV fire safety regulations at the

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start of the year, which include a five-minute warning between a thermal event and fire or smoke exiting the battery pack. The EU also has various draft regulations with a similar focus. IDTechEx expects regulations in this field to become more stringent, presenting greater opportunities for material suppliers.

Batteries International • Summer 2021 • 43

COVER STORY: FIGHTING ACID STRATIFICATION

Hammond Group's research team led by (left to right) Marvin Ho Maureen Sherrick, Jason Trgovich, Gordon Beckley and Thomas Wojcinski, have come up with a new way of mitigating the destructive effects of acid stratification within the battery.

Lead silicate as a performance additive for lead acid batteries PUTTING THE BENEFITS ALL TOGETHER Through experimentation with novel lead compounds, Hammond Group has developed a new lead acid battery additive for both the positive and negative electrode active materials. This lead silicate additive has been shown to react with acidic compounds such as the sulfuric acid battery electrolyte to form both gel-like domains of Si-OH (silane) as well as lead sulfate. Additionally, the additive modifies the crystal morphology of both the positive and negative active material during curing, reducing the amount of tetrabasic lead sulfate produced in the positive and slightly increasing the amount of tribasic lead sulfate produced in the negative. These changes also effect the BET surface

area of the dry cured electrodes. Cells constructed with the additive demonstrate electrical performance similar to controls, except for an increase in the overall cell voltage during formation and cycling, a decrease in capacity at increased additive loading, and a slight increase in CCA seconds to 1V per cell. Most importantly, results from full-scale battery testing show that an increase in the additive loading level impacts the degree of acid stratification observed during duty life. It is hoped that further optimization of the additive will achieve greater benefit in the ability to control or reduce acid stratification.

The additive modifies the crystal morphology of both the positive and negative active material during curing, reducing the amount of tetrabasic lead sulfate produced in the positive and slightly increasing the amount of tribasic lead sulfate produced in the negative. These changes also effect the BET surface area of the dry cured electrodes. 44 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

A common issue affecting battery life, especially for batteries under heavy cycling duty is electrolyte stratification. Acid stratification is caused by dwelling at a low state of charge (< 80%), insufficient recharge or if the electrolyte cannot be remixed by various methods. These conditions cause an unequal distribution of the acid concentration between the positive and negative plates. This disparity in concentration worsens as the heavier acid begins to concentrate at the bottom of the cell during periods of extended inactivity. The increased concentration of sulfuric acid at the lower portions of the battery active material plates promotes the formation of a surface layer of passive lead sulfate. Conversely, the lower concentration of acid present at the upper portion of the cell induces accelerated corrosion to the grid structure and reduces plate activation. Stratification produces inflated open circuit voltage measurements, reduced CCA performance and unequal charge across the plates, each of which can lead to reduced battery performance. To reduce acid stratification, Hammond Group has developed a metal silicate glass additive which can be used in the positive and/or negative paste to improve the retention and distribution of H+ ions within the active material. This paper presents the data collected

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COVER STORY: FIGHTING ACID STRATIFICATION from the analysis and characterization of this additive material as well as cured and formed plates in controlled, laboratory-scale electrochemical experiments. Modern battery applications demand robust performance under adverse external conditions and rigorous duty cycles. One factor affecting performance and service life is stratification of the battery cell electrolyte. Ideally, the electrolyte should be a homogenous mixture of water and sulfuric acid. Due to the exchange reactions of the charge/discharge cycle, a flow of sulfate (SO -) and hydrogen (H+) ions occurs between the active material surface reaction layer and the bulk of the electrolyte. During the charge/discharge cycle of the battery, acid is absorbed and released by the active material. The mobility of the H+ ion can cause an increase or decrease in acid concentration (specific gravity). Under ideal recharge conditions, evolved gasses will properly mix the electrolyte on a frequent basis. During insufficient recharge or extended periods of inactivity, the denser acid will settle to the bottom of the cell creating a density gradient. This ultimately leads to reduced battery performance through unequal charge across the plate, increased corrosion, sulphation, and active material loss at the bottom of the plates. Currently accepted methods to combat acid stratification include the addition of “equalization” charges where the battery is charged at a voltage above the gassing limit (2.43V) to induce the electrolytic formation of hydrogen/oxygen gas bubbles. Similarly, air can be mechanically bubbled through the cell to mix the electrolyte. Alternate VRLA battery architectures such as AGM or gel batteries seek to prevent stratification through immobilization of the electrolyte. In both architectures, the normally free electrolyte is trapped in either a porous glass fiber matte or transformed into a silica-sol gel by the addition of silica to the sulfuric acid. The silica reacts with the hydrogen ions of the acid to produce a gel network of O-Si-O bonds. Compared to flooded batteries, VRLA architectures have some disadvantages including increased vulnerability to thermal runaway during abusive charging and the inability to diagnose life-reducing improper charging via electrolyte hydrometer testing. Overcharging a VRLA battery leads to premature failure and a much shorter

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service life compared to a properly maintained wet-cell battery. Additionally, AGM and gel batteries are typically twice the cost of flooded batteries. In search of an innovative solution to the problems of acid stratification, the Hammond R&D team has recently patented the use of novel Lead Silicate additive compounds in the active material. These additives provide numerous benefits through the following mechanisms: • A network of silica gel (structure) in created inside PAM or NAM • Mass transfer of acid from the active material to the electrolyte is reduced during charging

Additives — lead silicate A Pb-Si glass frit is formed by melting silicon rich quartz glass (sand) and incorporating lead oxide molecules in the form of low metallic yellow litharge (PbO) into the structural lattice. Pure silica has a tetrahedral structure, and in its crystalline form, silica molecules directly bond to each other via oxygen atoms located at the corners of each tetrahedral pyramid. Introducing PbO to molten silica causes the partial breakage of the original direct silica interconnections. The resulting lead silicate combines the properties of the two materials and allows the battery’s active material to

Results from full-scale battery testing show that an increase in the additive loading level impacts the degree of acid stratification observed during duty life

Figure 1. Illustration of the formation of lead silicate

Figure 2. Chemical reaction and SEM images of lead silicate before and after reaction with sulfuric acid

Batteries International • Summer 2021 • 45

COVER STORY: FIGHTING ACID STRATIFICATION

Figure 3. Thermogravimetric analysis of lead silicate before and after treatment with sulfuric acid

Figure 4. SEM-EDS elemental analysis of acid treated lead silicate

Figure 5. XRD patterns of lead silicate before and after reaction with sulfuric acid

46 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

exhibit the acid-absorbing properties of Si. The lead silicate frit material is further refined by a milling step producing a dry white to light yellow powdered material with a nominal particle size distribution of 13µm (D50). Key material characteristics include a high composition of PbO relative to SiO2, similar material density to lead oxide, and low levels of harmful impurities. These properties make the material suitable for use as an additive to lead acid batteries. The key attribute of lead silicate is that in acidic aqueous solutions such as battery electrolyte, the previously mentioned “chain disruption” of the tetrahedral silica molecules by Pb ions deteriorates the chemical durability of the material. This allows the H+ ions to replace the modiﬁer cations (Pb+) in the glass network, forming Si-OH (silanol) groups which behave like fumed silica and also lead sulfate. The additive therefore binds with acid protons in the active material creating pockets of silica-acid gel and combating stratification. The byproducts of this reaction are harmless, common chemical species typically found in the battery’s active material. During development of this additive, Hammond’s research team characterized the interaction between lead silicate and the acidic electrolyte solution. Examination of the material’s ability to react with and retain sulfuric acid were carried out in the laboratory. Methods employed to determine the degree of retention included: gravimetric and thermogravimetric analysis, Xray diffraction, SEM (scanning electron microscopy), and energy dispersive detection. Analysis of the additive material before and after reaction with sulfuric acid clearly shows the retention of acid as well as the formation of both Si-OH and lead sulfate structures. Lead silicate was tested for solubility in both deionized water and 1.4 s.g. sulfuric acid. Test results showed lead silicate is negligibly soluble in H2O, however a considerable amount of weight gain was observed after reaction with acid. A lead silicate sample was reacted with a solution of 1.4 s.g. sulfuric acid for five minutes, then it was washed and dried. The sample weight was measured to have increased by approximately 22%. This weight gain was theorized to be caused by the retention of acid in a silica- gel structure and the formation

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COVER STORY: FIGHTING ACID STRATIFICATION of lead sulfate. Both the lead silicate and the acidreacted material were analyzed by thermogravimetric analysis using a TA Instruments SDT-600 unit. The results in Figure 3 show a clear difference in weight loss characteristics between the raw material and the acid-reacted product. The reacted lead silicate exhibits excess weight loss at temperatures corresponding to water vaporization and sulfuric acid evaporation. The amount of weight loss in the sample corresponds to approximately 8% water and 15% sulfuric acid for a total weight loss of 23%. This value closely matches the amount of weight uptake measured in the material after it was reacted with the sulfuric acid solution. Examination of the additive before and after acid treatment by SEM-EDS using a Phenom Pro benchtop instrument identified a change in the overall morphology of the starting material as shown in Figure 2. In Figure 4, the formation of fine granular lead sulfate crystals and smooth greyish regions of exposed silica occurs after the material reacts with sulfuric acid. EDS probing of these new morphological formations confirms the presence and absence of silicon in each formation. Further analysis of the acid-reacted lead silicate via X-ray diffraction confirms the presence of these suspected products. Figure 5 shows the change in the XRD pattern of the starting lead silicate material from a mainly amorphous structure into a well-ordered crystalline structure following the reaction with the sulfuric acid. The X-ray pattern of the product matches literature examples of the pattern for lead sulfate. Finally, the reacted and unreacted lead silicate was analyzed via BET surface area measurement using a Micromeritics Tristar II Plus. Figure 6 compares the measured surface area of raw lead silicate to the acid-reacted product. As can be seen, the surface area of the acid-treated product is substantially higher than the starting material. This large increase is likely attributable to the formation of many fine lead sulfate crystals after the PbO surface of the silicate reacts with the sulfuric acid. This process also causes exposure of the silicon underlayer leading to a further increase in the overall surface area of the material. SEM images help to illustrate this theory as well (see Figure 2).

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The surface area of the acid-treated product is substantially higher than the starting material. This large increase is likely attributable to the formation of many fine lead sulfate crystals after the PbO surface of the silicate reacts with the sulfuric acid.

Figure 6. BET Surface area measurements of untreated and acid treated lead silicate

Figure 7. Effect of lead silicate on paste density

Figure 8. Surface area measurements of dry cured battery paste by BET method

Batteries International • Summer 2021 • 47

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COVER STORY: FIGHTING ACID STRATIFICATION

Figure 9. X-ray diffraction analysis of dry cured material employing Rietveld refinement

Figure 10. Scanning electron microscopy of cured positive material showing crystal structure changes with addition of lead silicate additive

Figure 11. Scanning electron microscopy of cured negative material showing crystal structure changes with addition of lead silicate additive

Figure 12. SEM – Particles of Lead Silicate Incorporated into the Dry Cured Positive Material. Composition Confirmed by EDS

50 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

Both the positive and negative control images show classic examples of tetrabasic and tribasic crystal structures, respectively. As the amount of lead silicate additive increases, these structures exhibit morphological changes

Effect on phase composition during curing Once the reactions of lead silicate with the electrolyte were more clearly understood, the material was incorporated into several battery-paste mixes to determine its influence on the cured active materials. Different loadings of the material were explored along with its effects on both positive, tetrabasic lead sulfate type curing incorporating SureCure™ seed crystals, and negative, tribasic lead sulfate type curing incorporating expander. Figures 7 thru 12, illustrate the effects of the additive when incorporated into the paste at a loading of between 0.5-15 wt%. The characteristics examined include paste density, cured material surface area, phase composition, and crystal morphology of the final dried and cured active material. Measurements of the battery paste density after mixing both with and without lead silicate are shown in Figure 7. Aside from minor variations in the measured density, no significant influence on the paste density was observed for additive loading below 15 wt.% versus leady oxide. All density measurements for both negative and positive paste mixes were within +/0.1 g/cc of each other even with the addition of the additive in the amounts noted above. After curing the paste under standard industry conditions, (wet phase at temperature ≥ 55˚C / relative humidity ≥ 95% followed by drying phase) the cured active material was examined to determine the surface area, phase composition, and crystal morphology using the same methods as described prior. Figure 8 shows the comparative surface area measurements for both positive and negative dry cured material containing lead silicate additive. In both positive and negative material, the addition of lead silicate increases surface area due to an increased quantity of smaller lead sulfate crystals. The effect is more pronounced in positive material where lead silicate promotes the formation of tetrabasic lead sulfate during curing. In the negative material, the change in morphology and composition is less pronounced with regards to surface area since no tetrabasic lead sulfate is being formed. Phase composition analysis of the dry cured materials was conducted using X-ray diffraction with a Mini- Flex 600 instrument. The cured materials were removed from the grids, ground

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COVER STORY: FIGHTING ACID STRATIFICATION Under SEM examination, particles of lead silicate are incorporated into the active mass in both the positive and negative cured electrode pastes. Analysis by EDS confirms the presence of silicon in these particles. with a mortar and pestle into a powder and prepared on to analysis slides for examination. The diffraction patterns obtained from the scan were interpreted using Rietveld refinement and pattern matching techniques. These methods yield a calculated relative weight percent of the phases as observed in the scan pattern. The results of these calculations are shown in Figure 9. As supported by the BET surface area results, the additive has a stronger effect on the composition of the positive material. By increasing the loading of lead silicate in the positive paste, the resulting tetrabasic lead sulfate content of the cured materials is reduced, instead forming tribasic lead sulfate. No tetrabasic lead sulfate is detected in the positive material at additive loading levels above 3%. In the negative material a slight increase in the amount of tribasic lead sulfate is observed as the additive content is increased with most of the composition being divided between α-PbO and tribasic lead sulfate. Unlike the positive material, the additive seems to have less of an effect on the composition of a standard tribasic cure. SEM imaging of the dry cured materials shows changes in the crystal structure of the positive and negative active mass. This is supported by both the XRD & BET analysis results. Figures 10 through 12 show examples of these morphological changes in the PAM and NAM driven by the addition of lead silicate. Both the positive and negative control images show classic examples of tetrabasic and tribasic crystal structures, respectively. As the amount of lead silicate additive increases, these structures exhibit morphological changes. In the case of the positive material, the tetrabasic structures disappear entirely and are replaced by tribasic crystal shapes with a broadened aspect ratio.

52 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

Figure 13. Reserve capacity of experimental 2V cells with lead silicate additive

Figure 14. Twenty hour capacity results of experimental 2V cells with lead silicate present in positive or negative electrodes

Figure 15. Cold cranking time to 1V per cell, experimental cell results with lead silicate

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COVER STORY: FIGHTING ACID STRATIFICATION Working with an industry partner, Hammond Group developed an experimental test plan to evaluate the lead silicate additive in both positive and negative electrodes in full-sized Group 27 flooded batteries. The goal of the evaluation was to determine the degree to which acid stratification is mitigated and to improve rechargeability of these experimental batteries. In the negative, the typically fine tribasic crystals are also seen to broaden in their aspect ratio, while hexahedral Sibearing crystal structures are noticed at the highest additive loading levels. Under SEM examination, particles of lead silicate are incorporated into the active mass in both the positive and negative cured electrode pastes. Analysis by EDS confirms the presence of silicon in these particles. Electrical performance After the dry cured positive and negative materials containing lead silicate were characterized, several 2V test cells were constructed from these experimental cured materials. Cells were built with a 3/2 positive/negative element ratio with automotive-style separators following standard Hammond R&D procedures. The average positive active mass was ~30.1g, and the average negative mass was ~20.3g. Formation employed a two-shot method using electrolyte of 1.1s.g. initially with a target electrolyte weight of ~110 g. Four replicate cells of each variable were constructed and tested with the results of the electrical testing comprised of an average these four cells.

The following electrical testing regime was employed to examine the additive: • Reserve capacity & 20 hour capacity • Cold crank (-18 ˚C) Results of the reserve capacity and 20-hour capacity tests show that at higher loadings of the additive in either electrode there will be a slight decrease in initial capacity at both high and low rates. However, at lower additive loadings the results of the capacity tests at both high and low rate are comparable to the control. Cold cranking measurements were performed on experimental cells with additive loadings at or below 3 wt.% The results of these tests show a slight improvement (+10%) in the “Seconds to 1V/Cell” in both positive and negative electrode variables containing lead silicate. Effect on stratification Working with an industry partner, Hammond Group developed an experimental test plan to evaluate the lead silicate additive in both positive and negative electrodes in full-sized Group 27 flooded batteries. The goal of the evaluation was to determine the degree to which acid stratification is mitigated

and to improve rechargeability of these experimental batteries. Table 1 presents a summary of the stratification evaluation results conducted on these Group 27 batteries. Note that stratification was considered to have occurred in the batteries if the difference in specific gravity between top and bottom of the cell was greater than 0.015 (15 points). The control battery shows acid stratification after the C20 and C100 discharges. The recharging profile of 115% charge returned + 15Ah boost charge is not sufficient to mix the acid well enough in these two cases. As can be seen, the impact on the acid stratification reduction is as follows: Additive in both PAM and NAM > NAM only > PAM only > Control. Based on the discharge data, lower capacity was observed if lead silicate was added to PAM only, which agrees with prior cell testing data presented above. The height of the plate in the Group 27 batteries is 5”(12.7cm). Tall industrial sized battery types will typically see more serious acid stratification and potentially greater benefits from use of the lead silicate additive to reduce this issue.

Table 1. Results of acid stratification measurements during cycle life of Group 27 batteries Group 27 Flooded Battery (w/ plate height: 5”)

Control

PAM w/ 1% PbSiO3

NAM w/ 1% PbSiO3

Both PAM and NAM w/ 1% PbSiO3

Battery #

D3 A10

B2 C6

Acid stratification after C5* discharge and recharge** (∆ S.G. between top and bottom)***

0.012 0.005

0.006 0.001

Acid stratification after C10* discharge and recharge** (∆ S.G. between top and bottom)***

0.014 0.010

0.007 0.004

Acid stratification after C20* discharge and recharge** (∆ S.G. between top and bottom)***

0.022 0.013

0.008 0.002

Acid stratification after C100* discharge and recharge** (∆ S.G. between top and bottom)***

0.035 0.024

0.017 0.007

* Before discharge, more charging steps were applied to ensure no acid stratification. Specific gravities (top & bottom) were measured before discharge. ** Recharge profile: 115% of discharge energy + 15 Ah (boost charge step) *** Specific gravity (SG) was measured by digital hydrometer in two cells. The results reported are the averaged value.

54 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

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INNOVATION. PERFORMANCE. RELIABILITY.

LEAD BATTERY RECYCLING

The booming demand for batteries is going to have to be met somehow — and gigafactories are being conceived, planned and built at breakneck speed. Frank Millard reports on Europe’s moves.

The march of the Insatiable. That’s the only word to describe Europe’s frantic demand for energy storage in the years ahead. In the rush to decarbonization the continent is setting ever tougher CO2 emission targets. Fossil fuels — be they for powering industry, the home or transport — are going to be phased out. Instead renewables will become a vital part of the new energy mix. And with renewables comes this insatiable demand for energy storage. To meet this growing demand, gigafactories are being conceived, planned and built. Although the buzz word here is lithium — it’s not just factories for lithium-ion batteries that will be needed: next generation batteries emerging from other chemistries are also going to need a manufacturing home as countries increasingly adopt intermittent energy sources such as wind and solar. Caspar Rawles, head of price assessments with Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, says his firm is tracking 211 supersized (greater than 1GWh capacity) lithium-ion battery plants

globally, either in operation, construction or in a planning phase, totalling more than 3.8TWh of planned capacity by 2030. In Europe he predicts that by 2030 there could be 22 gigafactories, at whatever stage of readiness, with a total annual capacity of 621GWh. “This is more than enough pipeline capacity but not all of these plants will make the quality of cells required,” says Rawles. “It isn’t guaranteed that they will make it to production, and we are starting to see smaller operators face financial difficulties as competition grows within the space.” The Spanish research centre for electrochemical and thermal energy storage, CIC energiGUNE, does not agree that the proposed capacity for Europe will be enough. It claims that even if all 22 factory projects come to fruition and produce an annual total of 600GWh, it will only meet half of the expected base demand in the continent. And this is just batteries for electric vehicles — stationary storage applications are not even factored in.

By 2030 Europe will have 22 gigafactories at some stage of readiness and a total annual capacity of 621GWh. 56 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

Just one company, Tesvolt, has confirmed it is focusing on batteries for stationary storage: in Germany, it was the first company to build a gigafactory in Europe dedicated to stationary ESSs, and began production in April 2020. The facility at Lutherstadt Wittenberg has a production area of 12,000m², where it makes battery storage systems of various sizes with storage capacities ranging from 9.6kWh into the multiMWs. Italvolt to build largest factory in Europe Italvolt is one example of the new size of factory being planned and built in Europe. Taking over an abandoned Olivetti di Scarmagno plant, the 300,000m² gigafactory near Turin in Italy has a capacity of 45GWh, with the first construction phase due to be completed in spring 2024. The facility will employ 4,000 workers, and the wider ecosystem will provide up to 10,000 new jobs. As well as the main facility, a research and technology centre is being developed in collaboration with the Politechnico University in Torino. Raw materials will arrive on site and enter the production line, emerging as complete battery units of varying sizes

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LEAD BATTERY RECYCLING

gigafactory and capacity. These will be transported to a EV manufacturing site and installed directly into the vehicles. Lars Carlstrom, CEO and founder of Italvolt and a car enthusiast, is particularly keen on the gigafactory being sited in Italy. “Having worked within the sector (at Saab and others) for a number of years before starting Italvolt, I’m acutely aware of the importance of Italy to the automotive ecosystem — we cannot let that fade away, like it has done in Detroit,” he says.

The EU also sees battery manufacture as a green path to the future and is keen to help with financing. It has already provided cash through institutions such as the European Investment Bank, but more avenues have recently opened up. Sara Ortíz, economic-financial director with CIC energiGUNE, says that several projects have announced

they will apply for funding to build battery factories under the €672.5 billion ($815 billion) Recovery and Resilience Facility announced by the EU this February. The funding is meant as a postpandemic stimulus package for members of the bloc, and grants and loans will be available ‘to finance national measures designed to alleviate the

Financing mammoth projects Carlstrom says Italvolt has not yet entered into any public funding to pay for its mammoth factory, although he said there would be a discussion ‘at some point’. At the moment, companies outside China are financing expansions from their own balance sheets, says Benchmark’s Rawles, but there is a growing interest from the financial industry in the sector. “Typically, new operators, such as, are raising capital through traditional debt facilities,” he says. “We have also seen some capital raised for cell production via SPACs (special-purpose acquisition companies), which is something relatively new to the industry.”

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Batteries International • Summer 2021 • 57

LEAD BATTERY RECYCLING economic and social consequences of the pandemic’. To be eligible, projects must focus on the key EU policy areas described as ‘the green transition including biodiversity, digital transformation (where Ortíz suggests battery factories fit in), economic cohesion and competitiveness, and social and territorial cohesion’. “Many of the projects announced in recent months have already announced their intention to apply for

these funds in collaboration with the different national governments, intending to accelerate their launch and development process,” says Ortíz. “Some of these executives have already informed the European Union of their specific plans to develop and invest in gigafactories located in their territories.” Sustainability Peter Harrop, chairman of electronics market research firm IDTechEx, be-

lieves the next 10 years will be fairly predictable in that the decade will include a mass movement towards building new gigafactories. But he says there will be a time when the music stops. “Then people who have been investing in gigafactories (‘because you can’t go wrong, can you?’) will probably find some stranded assets, but not until 15 years from now,” he says. Although lithium batteries will still be in high demand for at least the next

UK TO NEED SEVEN GIGAFACTORIES In a sector where China leads the world and the US and Europe are racing to catch up, recent UK government funding for gigafactories is all about levelling the playing field, says Stephen Gifford, head of economics and market insights at the UK Faraday Institution. The Faraday Institution believes that one gigafactory will be needed in the UK by 2022, two by 2025 and seven by 2040. Employment in the automotive industry and battery supply chain could grow from 170,000 to 220,000 by 2040. The UK government says it is dedicated to building gigafactories, and as part of prime minister Boris Johnson’s Ten Point Plan, announced in November 2020, the government said it would make £500 million ($710 million) available as part of a wider commitment of up to £1 billion ($1.4 billion) to support the electrification of vehicles and their supply chains, including developing gigafactories. Moves were already in place to support the move towards developing a battery industry: in 2018 the UK Battery Industrialization Centre, created under the Faraday Institution, opened its doors to researchers, manufacturers and companies. All kinds of support is offered there ‘to enable large-scale battery production opportunities’, such as providing equipment, advice, training and manufacturing knowhow, as well as taking the steps towards commercialization.

The UK’s SMMT (the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders) estimates that the UK will be manufacturing up to two million PHEVs a year by 2040, requiring a battery production capacity of 120GWh a year. With capacity currently 2.5GWh and just 13GWh planned there is a way to go, but the Faraday Report — March 2020 Annual Gigafactory Study UK: Electric Vehicle and Battery Production Potential to 2040 does predict there will be 140GWh a year by 2040. Faraday suggests that EV production at the levels that will be required will almost certainly depend on the establishment of a secure domestic EV battery supply, meaning UKbased gigafactories. Rumours of Tesla and Tesla-type gigafactories being built in the UK and elsewhere in Europe have proliferated but hopes were dashed when one was instead announced for Germany — the Tesla Berlin-Brandeburg Gigafactory is due to open this July, with a planned capacity of more than 100GWh a year. That doesn’t mean the UK has been left out of Tesla’s plans — in March, business minister Kwasi Kwarteng hinted the carmaker had shown interest in Somerset, believed to be the Gravity site near Bridgewater. Market speculation was that Brexit — the UK’s retreat from the European Union — advanced the case for Berlin but delayed Tesla’s plans. But with or without Tesla, moves to build gigafactories in the UK are

Market speculation was that Brexit — the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union — advanced the case for Berlin but delayed Tesla’s plans.

58 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

being drawn up, with some further ahead in the planning stages than others. Britishvolt, ‘operational by 2023’ Isobel Sheldon, Britishvolt’s chief strategy officer, says total spending on Britishvolt’s state-of-the-art gigafactory at Blyth in the north of England is £2.6 billion ($3.7 billion), making it one of the largest industrial investments ever made in the UK. “By the final phase of the project in 2027, it will be employing up to 3,000 highly skilled people producing more than 300,000 lithium-ion batteries for the UK automotive industry. It will further provide up to 5,000 jobs in the wider supply chain,” says Sheldon. “Production will begin at the end of 2023 with the first phase seeing 10GWh of capacity installed, before ramping up to a total capacity of 30GWh by 2027.” Plans to break ground this summer before beginning production at the end of 2023 remain on track. Sheldon says that despite the pandemic, construction has continued for both industrial and domestic projects with no impact on deadlines. The company is planning a flexible manufacturing approach, allowing it to move into different sectors rather than being limited to a single technology, or cell chemistry. “ESG (environmental, social and governance) is at the core of our business and sustainability is paramount to the project,” says Sheldon. “We are establishing a full digital twin (a complete replica of physical assets built with artificial algorithms that can help provide a real-world model for the actual processes) that Continued on page 60 >

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LEAD BATTERY RECYCLING 10 years, we are probably heading for severe battery shortages as a result of a lack of materials rather than a lack of the factories in which to process them, he says. It takes a long time to bring a mine onstream and there are usually geopolitical considerations and obstructions. There is a big push for cell plants to reduce emissions and in Europe particularly a number of plants use renewable power supplies to achieve

carbon neutrality at their operations. The EV supply chain is under scrutiny from an ESG perspective to ensure that the next generation of vehicles not only cut emissions at the tailpipe but also during production. “Not only are we seeing the push to reduce emissions during cell production but also throughout the entire value chain from the mine,” says Rawles. There must also be a greater push for getting recycled materials into battery

UK TO NEED SEVEN GIGAFACTORIES > Continued from page 58

will be fully running in quarter two of this year, giving us the opportunity to simulate production processes and flows ahead of construction completion. This enables us to optimize design and efficiencies ahead of completed construction and fitment.” AMTE to build next year Meanwhile, AMTE intends to build a facility in 2022, with a team analyzing detailed design and process engineering plans for three possible sites. Output will start at 2GWh-3GWh, with a view to increasing to 10GWh using a modular plant design. “The AMTE Power gigafactory will be sustainable and aligned with our ESG goals for the business, staff, and local groups,” says CEO Kevin Brundish. Brundish says AMTE’s plant at Thurso, Scotland has successfully demonstrated the manufacturing process for all current lithium-ion blends, as well as lithium iron phosphate and the newest sodium-ion chemistry. “Our new gigafactory facility will build on our development work, and bring product for the car battery and energy storage industries to market,” he says. “Our differentiated product for the ESS cell market is ‘Ultra Safe’. It’s a safe and cost-effective rechargeable pouch format battery cell to address key applications in ESS, whether that’s microgrids or larger systems.” AMTE plans to build a smart plant that has been drawn up with the help of HSSMi, a sustainable manufacturing innovation consultancy.

60 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

“We worked through the challenges of building a gigafactory using practical, problem-solving methodologies focused on three key areas: the scale-up of products and processes, productivity enhancing opportunities, and supporting the transition to a circular economy,” Brundish says. And Coventry Airport has been selected as the preferred site for a West Midlands gigafactory. Coventry looks to future Coventry Airport Ltd and Coventry City Council have formed a joint venture to bring forward a planning application for a battery plant before an investor is even identified. This is to make the site more attractive to prospective manufacturers and drastically speed up steps to operation. Jim O’Boyle, cabinet member for jobs and regeneration at Coventry City Council, says a bid will be submitted for a share of the £500 million ($708 million) government fund for gigafactories in the UK. “Plans are at a relatively early stage but discussions are ongoing with car and battery manufacturers to understand their requirements as we develop our planning application and our wider offer, including access to our world-leading supply chain and automotive eco-system,” he says. The location of the site is ideal for the UK’s automotive industry, being close to major car makers such as Jaguar Land Rover and Aston Martin, as well as the London EV Company. Coventry is also home to the new UK Battery Industrialization Centre, which is part of the government’s ‘Faraday Battery Challenge’ programme to speed up the development of battery technology.

manufacturing, and Italvolt is taking this on board, with plans to integrate a recycling plant with its gigafactory. The company has already signed a memorandum of understanding with American Manganese, whose technology, Carlstrom says, will make it possible to recover 99.8% of all minerals in the battery.

AND IN NEW YORK… Imperium3 New York — iM3NY — announced on April 19 that it had secured $85 million in funding from investment firms Riverstone Credit Partners, Riverstone Holdings and Magnis Energy Technologies to back construction of a gigafactory at Endicott in New York State. iM3BY’s gigafactory is now fully funded and will be able to manufacture an initial capacity of 1GWh of battery cells a year. The build-out of the gigafactory has begun with production scheduled for early 2022, and Paul Stratton, senior vice president of sales and marketing, said their first market would be the commercial and residential sectors. “Although electric vehicles are a very attractive market where we believe our first product offers many competitive attributes, our first markets will focus on energy storage for solar and other sources, both commercial and residential,” he said. “Our product will achieve extended life cycles over others, up to 4,500 at present and possibly many more as we gain more test data.” The batteries will be those designed by Charge CCCV (C4V), an R&D company founded by Shailesh Upreti, who has worked with and continues to be mentored by Nobel laureate Stanley Whittingham. C4V and iM3NY have worked together for 10 years and the batteries produced in the new gigafactory will use their patented ‘bio mineralization’ technology, which the company says creates higher capacity, safer and longer cycling batteries at a lower cost. “The company’s substantial growth plans include building out 32GWh of capacity over eight years, which will create direct employment opportunities for approximately 2,500 people,” iM3NY says.

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LEAD BATTERY RECYCLING Supply chains Italvolt believes batteries must be produced locally to avoid long transport costs and more pollution going into the environment. “Which, as we all know, is one of the key reasons behind electric vehicles in the first place,” says Carlstrom. “Many batteries on the market today are considered ‘dirty batteries’ if they’re made in a factory powered by fossil fuels. Central governments

across Europe must address this issue urgently, otherwise we’ll miss our zero emissions targets.” In March, Italvolt signed a letter of intent with certification firm TÜV SÜV for technical advisory services such as sustainability, risk assessment and battery testing. AMTE Power also aims for its facility to be as sustainable as possible. Landscaping will be designed to improve the habitats for biodiversity and

mitigate the visual impact of the facility, and every detail is being considered in how to keep facilities ‘green’. “Where possible, off-site module construction will be used to reduce waste and CO2 in construction,” says Kevin Brundish, CEO of AMTE Power. “The manufacturing system will require sustainable power 24/7 — a modular energy centre will be used to harvest energy from solar arrays on the roof and landscaping.

SUPPLY CHAIN THREATS MULTIPLY No battery manufacturing plant of any kind is viable without a guaranteed supply of raw materials. There is no shortage of raw materials, but the more that are needed, the less secure the supply chain becomes. In 2019 Richard Herrington, head of the Earth Sciences Department at the Natural History Museum in London wrote to the Committee on Climate Change warning that to meet electric car targets for 2050 the UK would need just under two times the world’s annual production of cobalt, nearly the entire world’s production of the rare earth neodymium, three quarters of the world’s lithium and at least half of the world’s copper. Herrington, whose research looks into the behaviour of metals critical for the modern economy in earth systems, particularly cobalt and rare earth metals vital for battery manufacturing, says around 70% of cobalt comes from the DRC, ‘which has seen its share of uncertainties, politically and socially’.

Richard Herrington

“The added issue here is that 20% of the DRC supply comes from artisanal small miners, where there is evidence for practices such as child labour which is not something that should be supported,” he says. “Cobalt has a further issue as a by-product metal, largely from copper mining, and this means that its supply can be erratic as mining practices change. Most of the cobalt is then refined in China and so that country effectively controls 70% of world supply. “In the case of graphite, China has a similar monopoly since it produces around 62% of the world’s mined production of graphite. There are supply options such as Brazil, Mozambique and Norway which should hopefully guarantee a secure supply chain in an expanding market. “Also, graphite can be produced as a byproduct of hydrocarbon processing but the future of that source could be uncertain.” Lithium is roughly 50% produced in Australia from hard rock sources and 50% from Chile and Argentina from salar brines, however Herrington says expanding production in these areas is tricky as the Australian deposits are difficult to scale up and there are social issues with South America’s lithium supplies. “The good news is that close-tomarket deposits of lithium are found in Serbia and more latterly potentially in Portugal, Germany, and Cornwall in the UK. Cornwall has the potential to supply around half of what the UK will need if the company reports are

For stationary storage, Herrington says redox flow battery systems using multivalent metals such as vanadium will be challengers to lithium

62 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

to be believed,” he says. For stationary storage, Herrington says redox flow battery systems using multivalent metals such as vanadium will be challengers to lithium, although vanadium supply is also quite tight, with China controlling around 50% of the world’s available resources. “There are alternative producers, but a key question will be whether the industry can double production to cope with the World Bank estimate of a 200% increase in demand needed before 2050. This is not as extreme as the 500% increases predicted for cobalt, graphite and lithium but still challenging to deliver in the time pledged.” The development of gigafactories linked to car production plants makes sense as this can secure the main parts of the manufacturing supply chain, but it does not solve the issue of supply. In theory, by about 2035 there will be enough end-of-life batteries around to provide up to 40% of the metals needed for new batteries, so recycling strategies will be essential and gigafactories linked to manufacturers could aid efficiency, Herrington says. Circumventing the chain Supply agreements are a clear way to get around the issues of transparency in the supply chain and for manufacturers it makes sense to make a deal with a miner directly so they know for sure where the metal comes from, says Herrington. However, such agreements can lead to shortages for the open market, which in the worst case could drive manufacturers to source their metals on the open spot market, where information about their

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LEAD BATTERY RECYCLING “Battery energy storage systems will allow solar energy to be used overnight. Ground source heat pumps will provide background process energy. The design intent is to allow the system to export to the grid, giving instant energy for frequency stabilizers to keep the lights on.” The march of the gigafactory is certainly on — but it will largely depend on whether the materials can be got through the front door.

source may be absent. “Blockchain technologies to monitor material flows is also something being touted as a way to ensure that metals are tracked throughout the supply chain. Currently knowing where metals come from is difficult since for most metals, all the supplies become homogenized at a refinery (say in China), where it then becomes difficult to provenance specific supply.” Diversity of supply is essential to ensure there is no total reliance on one source, he says. A range of sources means each can be objectively assessed for its pros and cons, be it the kind of labour used to produce it or environmental considerations such as the ability to minimize energy and water use and work towards a zero waste scenario. The main concern for cell plants will be a secure supply of sustainable battery minerals, says Caspar Rawles, head of price assessments with Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. “At the moment we are seeing key players in the battery supply chain lock up raw materials in long-term supply contracts, and as more and more of these contracts are signed it leaves little for companies that are yet to act,” he says. “At Benchmark we are predicting deficits in critical battery mineral markets including lithium, cobalt, nickel and graphite at various stages between now and 2030. In the case of lithium and cobalt we expect these markets to fall into deficit before 2025 — cell and automakers will need to act now to secure the battery minerals they will need.”

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EUROPE’S FIRST GIGAFACTORY GOES LIVE … VERY SOON

The first European home-grown gigafactory is set to come into operation by the end of 2021. Built by Northvolt, a Swedish company founded by two ex-Tesla executives in 2015 and initially called SGF Energy, the factory is located in Skelleftea, in the far north of Sweden some 125 miles south of the Arctic Circle. The plans for the gigafactory are ambitious to say the least. It hopes to provide a quarter of the lithium batteries that will power Europe’s EVs in the future. Part of its business plan is predicated on the enormous surge in demand for EVs expected to happen once sales of ICE powered vehicles stops The car firms themselves say they are leading the charge. Honda for example, says that it will only sell electrified vehicles — ie they will be pure electric or hybrid — by 2022. Ford and Volvo, for example, says their entire range of passenger vehicles will be fully electric in Europe by 2030. BMW reckons around half will be by that date. Some brands such as Jaguar will be pure electric by 2025, Opel by 2028. UBS, the international investment bank, recently predicted that some 40% of all new cars sold in 2030 will be battery electric. “Many automotive companies, for example, think that our forecast that electric vehicles will have a 40% share of global new car sales by 2030 is too high,” says the authors of a recent report. “If anything, we think it could be too low. And the financial community is starting to realize what is happening. Pure play electric car companies are valued much higher than any of the legacy car companies, despite producing only a small fraction of their

volumes.” As evidence of this, it’s worth looking at the market capitalization of Tesla which has as stock valuation larger than the next 10 car manufacturers combined. “If you look at the agenda for all the automotive manufacturers to make those electric cars, the amount of cells that you’ll need to access, is going to be huge,” says a Northvolt official. In its first phase of development Northvolt aims to make enough batteries to power almost 300,000 electric vehicles a year, but with the potential to raise that figure to 1 million. The company has already a $14bn order from Volkswagen to produce its batteries for the next decade. VW also has a 20% stake in Northvolt. BMW has signed a deal for €2 billion ($2.3 billion) to receive batteries from 2024. Talk about a joint venture between Northvolt and Voltswagen based near VW’s pant in Salzgitter in Germany appears to have stalled with a Chinese firm called Gotion High-Tech taking Northvolt’s place. Some media sources say Northvolt is now seeking its own site in Germany. Northvolt has secured huge sums of investment over the years from large investment funds, automobile companies and European Union institutions. It most recently attracted $2.75 billion in a private placement. Including this new funding, Northvolt has raised over $6.5 billion to expand up to 150GWh of annual production capacity in Europe by 2030. BNEF research says electric vehicles represent a possible $7 trillion global market by 2030. Lithiumion battery demand from EVs is set to rise from today’s 269GWh to 2.6TWh per year by 2030 and 4.5TWh by 2035.

Batteries International • Summer 2021 • 63

LEAD BATTERY RECYCLING Italian firm STC has pioneered a revolutionary new process of desulfurization of lead paste called U4LEAD using urea as the reagent of choice.

The joys of hydrometallurgy Hydrometallurgical processes are an alternative to pyrometallurgical ways to desulfurize of lead paste. They are based on a chemical reaction through an alkali compound. Here lead sulfate is converted into lead carbonate thus reducing the environmental impact of the smelters and the waste generated by the smelting process. This also increases the productivity and competitivity of secondary lead producers and leads to an important decrease of energy consumption and consequently operational costs. At present, the most commonly used alkali reagents for the lead paste desulfurization is sodium carbonate or sodium hydroxide. Sodium sulfate is obtained as reaction by-product which can still be sold as main filler component in the washing powder, glass, textile and paper industry. The chemistry of the traditional sodium carbonate-based desulfurization is simple and beneficial: among the main advantages, it is possible to highlight the easy availability of the reagent, the well known and studied mechanisms of reaction the process is based on, the possibility to use the obtained by-product (sodium sulfate) as an intermediate in the chemical industry and the stability of the reagent and its product. However, it has some drawbacks: with the advent of liquid detergent, the demand for sodium sulfate, and consequently its price, has decreased especially in some areas of the world although still presenting positive revenues. Additionally it is necessary to accurately keep the reaction pH under control to avoid the formation of lead/sodium mixed salts and other soluble lead compounds. Especially when using sodium carbonate with chloride content, there is also a risk of equipment corrosion and this imposes the use of special and more expensive

64 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

Traditional desulfurization process via sodium carbonate

To overcome some of these problems, ammonium carbonate was identified as the best alternative reagent to sodium carbonate… construction materials such as AISI 904L or DUPLEX for heat exchangers and crystallizers. To overcome some of these problems, ammonium carbonate was identified as the best alternative reagent to sodium carbonate. The reasons for this are numerous. It leads to higher degree of conversion of lead sulfate and lower residual sulfur. It also guarantees the further re-

duction of iron addition in the smelting furnace and the consequent reduction of slag production and natural gas/oxygen consumption. In this case, there is no risk of lead paste contamination after treatment because double ammonium lead salts do not exist. Furthermore, the by-product obtained is the ammonium sulfate, a well-known and valuable fertilizer also obtainable as aqueous solution for fertigation and can be sold at a higher price than sodium sulfate. However, if it is so beneficial, why there are no existing desulfurization plants on industrial scale employing this magical reagent? This was the question that arose in STC a few years ago when the company wanted to propose the most efficient desulfurization process to one of its clients.

… however, if it is so beneficial, why there are no existing desulfurization plants on industrial scale employing this magical reagent? This was the question that STC asked itself a few years ago and sought a solution www.batteriesinternational.com

LEAD BATTERY RECYCLING The answer is found in the higher price and the environmental consequences, pollution and safety issues related to production, transport, storage and handling of this compound. Additionally, due to the ammonium carbonate’s high volatility and subsequent ammonia released toxicity, procurement and transportation may become difficult specially because the production of ammonium carbonate is only concentrated in a few countries (mainly China and India). The STC R&D team and support and wide knowledge of Renato Guerriero, president of the company at that time, discovered that it was posParameter

Lead paste

Lead sulfate particles max dimension

200 μm

6,27 % ± 0,0585

0,001%

0,006%

0,001%

0,005%

0,0001%

0,0003%

0,003%

0,154%

Table 1: Chemical-physical characterization of the lead paste sample

sible to make the most recent desulfurization process even more efficient by overcoming the problems of the chemical cost/quality ratio and of its environmental consequences. The revolutionary process proposed by STC, now protected by National and International (PCT) patent, is called U4Lead and is based on the use of urea as the chemical for the desulfurization of paste and electrolyte neutralization. The first laboratory investigations started in 2016 with a series of preliminary tests aiming at identifying the optimal parameters of urea reaction with lead paste to be used as desulfurizing agent. Technical grade urea with 46% of nitrogen-guaranteed content, normally used as fertilizer, was involved in this study together with raw spent lead paste provided by one of STC’s clients, Team Italia in Apulia, Italy. The raw material was washed, dried, crushed and then separated through a 0.200 mm sieve. The under-size particles were used in this study. The sulfur analyses were performed in STC’s laboratory, using LECO CS744 elemental analyzer calibrated with LECO certified reference material N° 502-693. A lead paste standard with a content of sulfur comparable to lead paste, 2.26% ± 0.08 has been chosen. No

S/L ratio

After the instrument calibration, the lead paste sample was analyzed and then subject to chemical-physical characterization, whose results are reported in table 1 on the left. ICP-OES analysis and SEM (scanning electron microscopy) picture were provided by CNR-IENI, Padua, Italy. From the SEM picture, it is possible to notice that the maximum dimension of particles is below 0.200mm, as expected after the sieving process. The actual conversion process starts by charging both the material containing lead sulfate and the urea suspension into the reactor. The amount of the amino compound should cover at least the stoichiometric molar ratio with the lead sulfate contained in the lead paste. It is possible, if necessary, to use a slight excess of urea, as contemplated in all other desulfurization processes described in the literature. The heat system provides a rapid increase in temperature which when it reaches the set-point, the time of reaction and the mixing start. The chemistry of the reaction leads to the formation of two main products: lead carbonate (insoluble) and ammonium sulfate (soluble). To study the lead paste desulfurization with urea, several scheduled tests were carried out.

Urea excess

Reaction time [min]

V total [ml]

1 1:1

10%

2 1:1

20%

3 1:1.5

10%

4 1:1.5

20%

Table 2: List of scheduled tests to study the desulfurization of lead paste with urea

SEM picture of fine lead paste.

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Batteries International • Summer 2021 • 65

LEAD BATTERY RECYCLING Sample

Conversion Yield

Raw fine lead paste

6.¬¬270% ± 0.0585

0.416% ± 0.0242

0.351% ± 0.0068

3.030% ± 0.1030

94.4%

0.320% ± 0.0152

2.990% ± 0.1590

94.9%

0.254% ± 0.0187

2.910% ± 0.0514

95.9%

0.180% ± 0.0110

2.990% ± 0.0147

97.1%

Table 3: Elemental analysis results and conversion yield of desulfurization calculated as difference of the content of sulfur into lead paste before and after reaction [onversion yield = (‘initial sulfur’-‘final sulfur’)/’initial sulfur’*100].

Sodium carbonate

Urea

Reagent/sulfur molar ratio

1.2 – 1.5

1.1 – 1.2

Solid/liquid ratio

1:0.5 – 1:10

1:0.5 – 1:1.5

Reaction time

60’ – 120’

60’

Temperature of desulfurization

≥ 60°C

140°C-180°C

Yield of desulfurization

75% – 94%

94% – 98%

Mixed lead salts

Yes No

Dissolved Pb

Yes, if pH ≥ 9

Table 4: Comparison among main carbonate reagents

Trace

The sulfur/carbon amount, respectively contained in lead paste and the urea solution, leads to the dosage of the reagents. In this case, 10% and 20% molar excess of the amino compound compared to sulfur content were tested. The solid/liquid ratio varied from 1:1 and 1:1.5. To match each parameter, distilled water was added to the mixture. Each reaction was conducted in duplicate and during the reaction, pH was monitored and values were always below 9.5. When the reaction time was over, the suspensions were separated on fine paper filter and washed several times with distilled water to eliminate any trace of soluble sulfate salts, mainly ammonium sulfate. After that, the desulfurized samples were dried in an oven at about 105°C overnight before performing elemental analysis. The amount of sulfur contained in the raw lead paste before the reaction (6.270%) is drastically reduced after the treatment. Especially in sample n.4 where the S/L ratio is 1:1.5 and the added urea excess is 20%, a conversion yield higher than 97% is achieved, meaning that the higher the dilution is, the higher the reaction rate will be. As illustrated in table 4, compared to

ADVANTAGES OF U4LEAD Compared to traditional processes, U4Lead by STC ensures several important advantages. • Convenience of the desulfurizing agent: urea is a cheap amino compound, easy to find, to treat, chemically stable and not subject to sublimation and odour-free • The reaction by-product is ammonium sulfate, which is a precious compound with a low affinity with lead, nickel, arsenic and other heavy metals. It is therefore easily recovered, crystallized to produce pure crystals and sold as fertilizer at a higher price compared to sodium sulfate • Lower residual sulfur in the treated lead paste and higher desulfurization yield (>97%). This leads to a decrease of the batch time of the lead paste smelting process and a consequent reduction of energy, fuel and oxygen consumption costs as well as a decrease of environmental impact due to the abatement of SO2 and CO2 emissions • Lower residual sulfur content leads to lower iron addition and consequently lower slags production • Absence of sodium in the paste which leads to an additional reduction of slags generated and Pb losses with slags There might be a concern about the possible smell of ammonia in the treated paste. However, STC has found a solution for this potential issue. It is enough to proceed

66 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

with a paste washing and a subsequent residual NH3 stripping by increasing the solution pH through an alkali chemical addition. Chart caption NH3 stripping Moreover, all U4Lead plants are equipped with sulfuric acid wet scrubber systems for the complete abatement of possible released ammonia gases.

Effects of pH and temperature on the distribution of ammonia and ammonium ion in water.

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LEAD BATTERY RECYCLING the other reagent usually used to carry out the desulfurization, there are some crucial differences to be highlighted. Even if the U4Lead desulfurization requires a higher temperature, all the other analyzed data (reagent/sulfur molar ratio, solid/liquid ratio, reaction time and the yield) are generally improved. After analyzing all the obtained tests results, the R&D team of STC was satisfied for two main reasons: first of all, for being the first ones verifying the efficiency of urea as desulfurization reagent in the world and second, because it was evident that a higher conversion degree (more than 97%) of lead sulfate into lead carbonate was finally achieved. The conversion of traditional desulfurization processes into U4Lead ones is simple: this technology can be easily included into any plant around the world by keeping the same existing equipment and integrating it with the STC technology. Urea conversion technology is only a subproject of a larger project for a new complete battery recycling plant entirely supplied by STC. It also includes some other innovative solutions like the metallic lead desulfurization with urea, the paste palletization and premixing with fluxants, the use of a special tilting rotary furnace operating at low temperature for the melting of desulfurized metallics, with direct discharge of the lead in the refining kettles.

Urea conversion technology is only a subproject of a larger project for a new complete battery recycling plant entirely supplied by STC. TURNING THEORY INTO PRACTICE The possibility to desulfurize the lead paste via urea was verified on an industrial scale last year through the application of the urea conversion system: after the first initial tuning at the industrial plant of STC’s Nigerian client Green Recycling Industries Ltd, U4Lead process confirmed the results already obtained in the lab scale testing. The conversion of traditional desulfurization processes into U4Lead ones is simple: this technology can be easily included into any plant around the world by keeping the same existing equipment and integrating it with the STC technology.

ULAB recycling plant in Nigeria

Urea conversion system

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Batteries International • Summer 2021 • 67

LITHIUM DISCOVERY IN THE UK A huge potential source of lithium has been found in the British Isles just as plans for the first UK lithium battery gigafactory are being sketched. If the two firms exploring the area are right, it may not be long before the UK battery industry can cross lithium off its shopping list.

The great lithium ore windfall It didn’t seem to matter so much then. But it does hugely now. Some 34 years ago the UK National Environment Research Council revealed that there was just over three million tonnes of accessible lithium sitting in Cornwall

in the far south-west of England. Put another way there are only two other countries in the world with reserves larger than the UK — Chile with 9.2 million tonnes and Australia with 4.7 million.

Lithium mine production (2020), reserves and resources in tonnes according to USGS Country

Production Reserves Resources

Argentina

6,200 1,900,000 19,300,000

Australia

40,000 4,700,000 6,400,000

Austria

- 50,000

Bolivia

- 21,000,000

Brazil

1,900 95,000 470,000

Canada

0 530,000 2,900,000

Chile

18,000 9,200,000 9,600,000

Czech Republic

1,300,000

DR Congo

3,000,000

Finland

- 50,000

Germany

- 2,700,000

Ghana

- 90,000

Kazakhstan

- 50,000

Mali

- 700,000

Mexico

- 1,700,000

Namibia

- 50,000

People’s Republic of China Peru Portugal

14,000

1,500,000

5,100,000

- 880,000

900 60,000 270,000

Serbia

- 1,200,000

Spain

- 300,000

United States Zimbabwe World total

870

750,000

7,900,000

1,200 220,000 500,000 82,000

21,000,000

86,000,000+

There are now only two other countries in the world with reserves larger than the UK — Chile with 9.2 million tonnes and Australia with 4.7 million. 70 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

It suddenly puts the UK firmly at the top table of lithium resources. The US Geological Survey estimates worldwide reserves to be around 21 million tonnes but not all of this is commercially viable. Moreover, Cornwall’s three million tonnes is located with 100 metres of the surface. Benchmark Mineral Intelligence believe there is enough to support what it told the G7 summit in Cornwall in June could be a ‘lithium-ion economy’ in the UK. Back in 1987 at the time of the survey lithium batteries had just been invented. Based on John Goodenough and Stanley Whittingham’s research, Akira Yoshiro had developed a lithium battery two years earlier, but the survey did not rank batteries among the top uses of the element, although its properties for energy storage were recognized. The information about Cornwall’s potential riches was largely ignored — about a third of its use was then in aluminium reduction and about 40% by applications in glass, ceramics and lithium-based lubricants. British Lithium Two companies are licensed to explore Cornwall’s lithium resources in different ways. British Lithium is looking to mine the former clay pit on the St Austell granite that was the subject of the 1987 BGS report. The firm claims the pit has an identified resource of more than 100 million tonnes of lithium, and it would be possible to produce 20,000 tonnes a year — enough to supply a third of Britain’s demand by 2030, when the true EV era will be ushered in. British Lithium chairman Roderick Smith says the Cornish resource is contained in mica as opposed to spodumene, which is exploited in Australia.

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LITHIUM DISCOVERY IN THE UK “This type of lithium as a mineral is the only type that’s been found in the world — it’s in a mica and we’ve developed a process for extracting it then separating it,” he says. “It’s a completely different process and because it’s never been done commercially, we had to develop the technology and that’s a big part of what we’ve done. It involves physical separation, no heat — it’s sophisticated mechanical separation, and there’s no equipment doing this in the UK so we had to build a lab and ship the equipment over here to do it. “Granite contains three minerals: quartz, feldspar and mica. First you have to separate the mica from the granite, then you have to get the lithium out of the mica. We have a way of doing it without using chemicals and very little energy. “We are doing the fourth drilling programme right now. We have produced battery-grade lithium carbonate at laboratory scale and are perfecting that technology and applying for patents. Next is a pilot plant. That will produce big enough samples for battery makers to test the process within about 18 months.” Commercial production could happen in three to five years, he says, although they are working on a 20year plan with the ultimate aim of producing 21,000 tonnes of batterygrade lithium carbonate a year. “Our production wouldn’t be a big tonnage, but it’s worth a lot of money,” says Smith. “With some minerals you need a huge fleet, railways, ports, massive infrastructure — you don’t need that here, it would be about three shipping containers a day, so the impact on the local area wouldn’t be noticeable. “We need the whole battery value chain in the UK. And it’s not just for EVs — grid storage gets less attention because it’s easy to do the numbers on cars, but power generation is probably the biggest industry in the world and it’s transforming very rapidly.” Cornish Lithium Cornish Lithium is the other firm looking at lithium in Cornwall, and if CEO Jeremy Wrathall is right, the UK could join the world rankings of

lithium producers with the amount of the reserves he believes the country is sitting on. He believes a massive granite complex underneath much of the 860,000-acre southwestern county of Cornwall could be one of five giant lithium-enriched complexes in the world. While it may not be quite up there with the Lithium Triangle producers and Australia, the potential for his company’s production of 20,000 tonnes of lithium a year could mean that the UK would be far less reliant on imports. “We can’t make any claims as to how big it is — we don’t know yet — but we do know that granite underneath Cornwall extends from one end to the other,” says Wrathall. “We’ve mapped the fractures, we know that. “We also know that the water is very unusual, if not unique, for the low total dissolved solids-to-lithium ratio. Most brines are very salty, some hyper saline, but we’ve got much lower salinity than sea water. “In terms of needles in haystacks, there’s less hay and more needles.” Whatever the quantity, Cornish Lithium has already made lithium carbonate from the brine extracted from these deep fractures — and Wrathall says he is almost spoilt for choice as to which technology to use to extract it. It is likely more than one will be chosen, because the depth of the brines can affect their salinity and lithium grade, therefore could need a different approach. “We are assessing well over 20 lithium extraction technologies from around the world and we are assessing which ones work best,” he says. “We’ve looked at resins, cartridges, membranes, beads, fibres, organic fluids –this space is rapidly filling, with people approaching us from universities asking us if they can take our brine and test their technology. “It’s like a Great Awakening — and we are so encouraged by what we’re seeing so far that we think there’s a good chance we won’t need to even send it to a refinery.” Words of caution Kathryn Goodenough, principal geologist with the British Geological

“It’s not just battery capacity, we need an ecosystem to go with it to gain dominance in EVs and energy storage as that new industry emerges” www.batteriesinternational.com

WORLD BATTERY ARMS RACE Presenting to world leaders at the G7 summit in the UK on June 11-13, Benchmark Mineral Intelligence managing director Simon Moores (pictured) said the world was in the midst of a global battery arms race, with supply chains key to being able to stay on the front line. If the UK wanted to stay in the race, it had to build a lithiumion economy from the top, he said, from the highest levels of government and down. “It’s not just battery capacity, we need an ecosystem to go with it to gain dominance in EVs and energy storage as that new industry emerges,” he said. “This is not just a China phenomenon like it was four years ago — this is a global phenomenon now. The Biden administration is promising more to come — at least 10, if not 20, gigafactories in the US. But for these it’s not just capacity, it’s quality. “Lithium-ion batteries are speciality products and the chemicals that go into them are not chemicals, they are speciality chemicals.” There is a fear that China has control of these chemicals, but in fact, he says, the country has just 23% of the basket of chemicals (lithium, cobalt, manganese, lithium, graphite) needed, although it does refine 80% of them. The UK will need 140,000 tonnes a year of lithium, which is 100,000 tonnes more than both Cornish and British Lithium say they will produce in total, as well as 315,000 tonnes of cathodes and 210,000 tonnes of anodes from top tier companies such as CATL, Panasonic and LG Chem, Moores estimates. The numbers can only go higher: Moores believes that at least four gigafactories will have to be up and running by 2035 if the UK is to stand a chance of competing. The race is on.

Batteries International • Summer 2021 • 71

LITHIUM DISCOVERY IN THE UK LITHIUM: WHO’S GOT WHAT, WHERE Unlike lead batteries, which use large quantities of recycled lead from ULABs, there won’t be anywhere near enough lithium from recycled batteries to make any kind of dent in demand for years to come. “Stocks of used batteries that could be recycled right now are very low compared to anticipated demand. This means that understanding the geology and natural resources of lithium is vital, as this will underpin exploration and mining for this critical raw material,” says the British Geological Survey. Today, China has a stranglehold on lithium resources – not only because they produce it, but because they refine at least 80% of it, possibly even more, the BGS says. In 2019, China came fifth in the world with an annual lithium production of 7,500 tonnes after the three South American countries making up the so-called ‘Lithium Triangle’ — Chile, Bolivia and Argentina — and Australia, says the US Geological Survey in its January 2020 report Mineral Commodity Summaries. “Six mineral operations in Australia, two brine operations each in Argentina and Chile, and one brine and one mineral operation in China accounted for the majority of world lithium production,” it says. “Lithium supply security has become a top priority for technology companies in the US and Asia. Strategic alliances and joint ventures among technology companies and exploration companies continued to be established to ensure a reliable, diversified supply of lithium for battery suppliers and vehicle manufacturers. “Brine-based lithium sources were in various stages of development in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, China and the United States; mineral-based lithium sources were in various stages of development in Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, China, Congo, Czechia, Finland, Germany, Mali, Namibia, Portugal, Serbia, Spain and Zimbabwe.” British Lithium and Cornish Lithium are making efforts to get the UK added to the list.

72 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

Survey, is far more cautious. The brines in Cornwall, she says, are certainly lithium rich — but there isn’t any data to quantify exactly how much there is. “There’s a rabbit warren of tunnels that are filled with water, which will be rich in lithium,” she says. “If you go deeper, there are natural fractures in which the brines are circulating, enriched with lithium because it has been leached in from the surrounding rocks for many millions of years. “We know that but we don’t know how much there is because we don’t have a defined resource estimate. There very likely is, but we don’t have that data. “One of the first steps in exploration is to have a good resource estimate so that you understand what’s there based on quite a lot of data, then you step to the next stage, which is understanding what we call the reserve,” she says. “The reserve is not just what’s there but also what could

be extracted feasibly in the current socio-economic and commercial climate. “Until they have what we call a code compliant resource estimate, compliant with the mining code, either of Australia or Canada or wherever — there are various different mining codes around the world — there is no basis for saying how much there is.” Goodenough believes lithium imports will be necessary for at least 10, if not 20, years. “It’s also the lithium supply chain, which you can summarize as involving exploration, then mining, then refining, then manufacturing, and then use. At the minute, the UK is firmly in the exploration stage. We are unlikely to have mining before the next decade. Even if we have mining, we’re then going to have production of most likely a lepidolite concentrate which would probably have to go overseas for refining.”

ENVIRONMENTAL COMPLIANCE AMID UNSAVOURY ALTERNATIVES “The whole environmental platform is changing things. Governments all over the world are forcing the very destructive transformation of petrol and diesel and ICE for electric cars, for example, for environmental reasons,” says Roderick Smith, CEO of British Lithium. “But the solutions for that have to be environmentally sustainable as well. It wouldn’t be acceptable for the government to ban combustion engines and then come up with a dirty alternative. “So with technology it has to be the most sustainable carbonnegative way of producing these things without creating waste and so on.” The so-called Lithium Triangle of Chile, Argentina and Bolivia is a worrying case, he says. “It’s environmentally awful,” he says. “It’s such a fragile environment — what water there is in the ground they are pumping out and evaporating, and depleting what small amount of water there is. “The salt lakes are 12,000 feet up in the Andes, there’s barely any rainfall, and they’re pumping this super-saturated brine containing lithium into gigantic evaporation pots to produce lithium.

“It is an important producer but it hasn’t grown as fast as hard rock lithium because it’s so environmentally awful.” Smith says British Lithium’s method — for which there is a patent pending with the UK Intellectual Property Office — uses no chemicals and very little energy, and their licensed area is an abandoned clay pit which is already dug. “Because of the environmental sensitivity we have sourced it in order of priority,” he says, “and eliminated anything that’s in an area of outstanding natural beauty, or near a village or farmland — any difficulty, we avoided it.” Cornish Lithium is equally cognisant of environmental damage, and Wrathall says the brines will be exploited from areas that have already been disturbed, like the clay pits. “It’s a huge area of disturbed ground that we’d be repurposing to extract lithium from the same place,” he says. “Deposits in Europe are challenged because of the infrastructure — national parks, cities, and so on — but in Cornwall it’s not intrusive because the land has already been mined.”

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LITHIUM DISCOVERY IN THE UK Yet refining is one step already being made in the UK. Leverton Lithium is one of two companies in Europe that convert, refine and produce lithium chemicals: and it is based in Basingstoke, about 200 miles (330km) away from the St Austell clay pit. “Our main output is to other industrial markets with only 5%-10% going into lithium batteries, but this is growing,” says CEO David Hicks. “So we are already producing the right products at the right quality. The European demand is quite low but set to grow rapidly.” He warns there will be no demand in the UK for lithium refining until there are cathode material plants as well as cell factories — which is unlikely for a few years yet. “The technology is there for Cornish Lithium but it is new and unproven on an industrial scale and they also have to decide if they want to go from miner to battery-grade producer, which is a big step, or to stop short of that and pass on an intermediate material to companies like ours to refine/purify to the final high-quality levels.”

British Lithium’s Andrew Smith, CEO (left), and metallurgical manager Klaas Peter Van Der Wielen.

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Batteries International • Summer 2021 • 73

FEATURE: THE NEW BALANCE OF POWER

The grid, the grid and nothing but the grid Our brave new carbon-free world will necessarily include a lot of energy storage in the form of batteries, but how much and how quickly will this happen? And are our projections of our needs for batteries misplaced? Frank Millard reports.

It’s that D word again. Decarbonization. It’s a word that’s been doing the rounds — in our modern understanding of how it relates to climate change — for over 20 years. But its implications of how it will happen are only now starting to come together. If we’re to deal with climate change, the world’s pundits say, limiting CO2 levels in the atmosphere is a must. That means, at its simplest, three things — stopping burning fossil fuels for energy, advancing the use of renewables as a substitute and using energy storage at the grid level to bal-

The present way of thinking naively assumes that rising levels of renewable generation will be matched by rising levels of energy storage and eventually replace fossil fuel usage and climate change will be no more. 74 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

ance this new system. The standard line goes rather like this. “We have seen significant cost decreases across the board — in solar photovoltaics, wind turbines and increasingly in lithium batteries,” says Paul Denholm, principal energy analyst at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the US. “That makes it easier to decarbonize the power system and particularly with the decline in the cost of batteries and the promise of additional storage technologies and making it a lot easier to understand cost-competitive carbon-free power systems.” As a generality this is a fair opinion but what is at stake is more complex. A future based on renewables replacing traditional fossil fuel power sources requires a different mindset. The present way of thinking naïvely assumes that rising levels of renewable generation will be matched by rising levels of energy storage and eventually fossil fuels will no longer be used and climate change will be no more. The problems with this is that it’s over-simplistic and lacks nuance. It ignores the looming supply chain issues over the provision of essential metals for lithium batteries; it disre-

gards the role of other battery chemistries and the economics of scale for long-duration storage; and it particularly neglects the number crunching that is needed to make a move away from fossil fuels attractive to poorer and developing nations. Technically, too, it ignores the way that all this is going to have to be integrated into the grids of the future. The solution has to fit the grid, not just as it is but as it will be. For the energy and energy storage industries, this is not an afterthought, but of urgent concern. RethinkX One of the most controversial takes on the way ahead comes from RethinkX, a US energy consultancy, in its recent report called Rethinking Energy 2020-2030. The authors, Adam Dorr and Tony Seba, suggest that we are looking at the wrong mix of storage and renewables. Briefly, the idea is that the difference between the cost of renewables and the cost of the battery is such that an over-supply of renewables — which will be cheaper than the energy storage — will match the needs of the grid with power to spare.

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FEATURE: THE NEW BALANCE OF POWER

“Conventional models fail to recognize that future solar and wind generating capacity will greatly exceed the total electricity generating capacity installed today” — Adam Dorr, RethinkX www.batteriesinternational.com

If a cloud goes in front of the sun, say, and the panel output drops to 50% from 100%, rather than use the more expensive battery storage, it would be more effective to have two panels to make up the shortfall. The report speaks of the “false impression” that it is impossible for solar photovoltaics and wind power to supply 100% of the electricity in the US without weeks worth of battery energy storage. Conventional models fail to recognize that future solar and wind generating capacity will greatly exceed the total electricity generating capacity installed today, it says. So, it says, a 100% solar wind battery system will produce a surprisingly large amount of ‘super power’. In the example above, where two panels are used to provide the energy required when the sun is behind the clouds, as soon as the clouds are gone the panels are generating an extra 100% for free (more or less). “The resulting superabundance of clean energy will open the door to extraordinary new possibilities for society, the economy, and the environment,” the report says. Certainly, the thinking behind the report follows a lot of modern business thinking. Disruptive new technologies do not simply replace old ones on a one-to-one basis — the rise and fall of the record business has been replaced by music streaming, and the smart phone has put telephony and the internet into the hands of most people on the planet. “Instead, disruptions tend to disproportionately replace the old system with a new system,” says Dorr. Also, what Dorr and Seba identify as a ‘Clean Energy U-Curve’ captures the trade-off relationship between electricity generation and energy storage and shows how over building solar and wind is the cheapest way to pair electricity generation with energy storage, when the mix of generation and storage is optimized correctly. Although the authors believe the amount of battery energy storage required to support a 100% solar-windbattery system is much lower than is widely believed, expansion is still inevitable. Plus, analysis assumes that battery energy storage capacity costs “will continue to decline over the course of the 2020s at an average annual rate of 15%”. Co-author Adam Dorr says: “We will use vastly more batteries in the future than we do today. We expect a buildout of several orders of

“We have a fairly clear pathway to deep decarbonization, we just haven’t figured out the last little bit yet.” THE CLEAN ENERGY U-CURVE Dorr says systems will differ largely in terms of the balance of energy generating capacity (solar PV and wind) with energy storage capacity (batteries). “Geography, policy, geopolitics, and other factors will determine what the cost-optimal mix of the three technologies is for any given region. “But in general, the Clean Energy U-Curve shows that cost-optimal mixes will have solar PV and wind power capacity of roughly three to five times the current total installed nameplate capacity will be paired with between 20 and 100 hours of battery energy storage.”

“Geography, policy, geopolitics, and other factors will determine what the cost-optimal mix of the three technologies is for any given region.”

Batteries International • Summer 2021 • 75

FEATURE: THE NEW BALANCE OF POWER

“Further innovation and technology is needed to displace these unabated gas plants into the future. These will likely be CCS equipped units and hydrogen will begin to play a more important role in power systems as fuel costs come down.” — Rory McCarthy, WoodMac

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magnitude before the stock of battery energy storage capacity peaks. “Chemical batteries in general, and lithium-ion chemistries, in particular, are the clear leader at the moment for driving the clean disruption of the energy sector (along with solar PV and wind power) and the clean disruption of the transport sector (along with battery EVs). “Although other chemistries are promising, our approach to modelling and analysis always excludes ‘breakthrough’ technologies. We only analyze and forecast technologies that are already deployed and scaling up, and that therefore have clear cost and adoption trajectories that can be extrapolated.” Denholm at the NREL says this isn’t necessarily a universal solution. Like other commentators he reckons that the recent winter storms in Texas mean the RethinkX solution is probably impractical. “If you have difficulty building transmission these problems become

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76 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

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FEATURE: THE NEW BALANCE OF POWER a lot more difficult and Texas [studied in the review] is a unique case because, unlike the rest of the USA, it is its own grid,” he says. “My biggest concern is what happens during winter peaks. We have seen that in Texas earlier this year and in other places in the US. So, given the fact that these cold spells are producing relatively low solar that will increase the challenge. “It is a well-known phenomenon that as solar and wind get cheaper, they get more cost-effective to not use some of it occasionally, particularly in the spring. Ultimately, we are going to have more electricity that we can use, but it is premature to say we have figured out 100% of power systems. We have a long way to go to really understand what the optimum mix of resources is to get 100% decarbonization. “We are arguing about a 5-20% difference here. There is pretty much universal agreement that wind, solar and batteries will definitely get us 70-90% of the way there, but not all the way.” Denholm says that if about 90% of energy is coming from renewable systems, 10% fossil fuels will be needed for now. “You don’t let the system get less reliable just because you’ve put renewables in. You want renewables to only enhance reliability and that’s very do-able,2 he says. “Some 10% of that energy would be coming from fossil fuels but the first 90% would be renewable.” Gas, the great balancer John Petersen, energy commentator and attorney at law, argues (in the wake of the Great Texas Blackout of 2021) that more wind and solar power will never contribute to electric reliability in Texas. “In most cases, the investment redundancies and operating inefficiencies of wind and solar power increase electricity costs for all power consumers.” Furthermore, he does not think it technically feasible or economically sensible to transition away from gas-fired power plants. “A reliable grid that integrates nuclear, coal, wind, and solar power is impossible without plentiful natural gas to fill supply and demand gaps and keep everything balanced,” he says. But for the moment it is probably too early to talk meaningfully about this. “We don’t have enough renewables and batteries, so we have to rely heavily on existing fossil resources. We are only providing a small fraction of the US grid with renewables,” says Denholm. “We can’t turn off fossil fuel plants now without massive blackouts — we haven’t built enough renewables and storage. So, we need to continue building, wind, solar and storage until we get to a point we can completely turn off or

“We can’t turn off fossil fuel plants now without massive blackouts — we haven’t built enough renewables and storage. So, we need to continue building wind, solar and storage until we get to a point we can completely turn off or rarely use those fossil plants”

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— Paul Denholm, NREL www.batteriesinternational.com

Batteries International • Summer 2021 • 77

FEATURE: THE NEW BALANCE OF POWER CLIMATE CHANGE: THE KNOWNS AND THE UNKNOWNS

Donald Rumsfeld’s famous quote — “There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know” — is actually a project management term frequently used in NASA. The idea stems from the so-called Johari window psychological profile created in the 1950s. The Johari window is a matrix of a square divided into four boxes where people are tested based on a set of adjectives they describe themselves and how others do the same — known to self, not known to self, not known to others and not known to either. Listening to market opinions on energy storage futures, commentators invariably describe their pitch as known to self, known to others (perhaps) and not known to others — not known to self doesn’t seem to feature at all! And the only unknown, unknowns invariably seems to be speculation on future leaps in energy storage technology — a persistent theme that has changed little since the 1990s. Known to self

Not known to self

Known to others Arena

Blind Spot

Facade

Unknown

Not known to others

78 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

rarely use those fossil plants.” That will change over time, but there remains that last 10% or so that needs filling as long as is necessary. On average days it should not be too difficult to get 100% energy from renewables, he says, but on days of extreme weather relatively low-cost fossil plants are needed. Not large-scale plants with staff sitting around and maintaining them, but small plants that only get fired up for extreme periods. “We have a fairly clear pathway to deep decarbonization, we just haven’t figured out the last little bit yet,” says Denholm. Predictions and solutions Stability of the grid is key, so what are the options? Rory McCarthy, Wood Mackenzie senior research manager, predicts that as we move to a variable wind and solar powered system, increasing system flexibility from interconnectors, energy storage and demand response will be critical in providing clean and reliable power. “Gas plants, large and small, will also be essential in balancing the system but they go against a net zero system aim, so further innovation and technology is needed to displace these unabated gas plants into the future,” he says. “These will likely be CCS equipped units and hydrogen will begin to play a more important role in power systems as fuel costs come down.” Jacobson believes the best way to keep the grid stable is to electrify all energy sectors (transport, buildings, industry): “This create more flexible loads (that can be shifted in time through demand response — where utilities have different prices of electricity at different times of day) and opportunities for heat, cold and hydrogen storage, which are relatively inexpensive. “We would also use more stationary electricity storage; oversize clean, renewable electricity generators, and increase transmission/distribution to interconnect renewables from far away,” he says. “In these ways, we have found in numerous studies it is possible to keep the grid stable worldwide with 100% clean, renewable wind-water-solar electricity and heat.” He sees a large role for batteries and other electricity storage in the future, such as CSP, pumped hydro, flywheels, compressed air storage, gravitational mass storage, and heat

storage (underground boreholes, water pits, aquifers; water tanks), cold storage (water tanks; ice); and hydrogen storage. James Klausner, chair of the department of mechanical engineering at Michigan State University, thinks that deep decarbonization of the grid will require significant addition of renewable generation capabilities, primarily solar and wind. “However,” he says, “solar and wind generation is highly variable depending on geographical location. “It is recognized that storage capabilities are necessary to reliably meet the demand on the grid in order to smooth out variabilities. Thus, the grid will continue to grow with new technologies plugging into it. The grid system will benefit from smart grid control strategies, improved weather prediction at the local level, and optimization for resiliency. Storage technologies are key to enabling the robustness of system level control.” Electrochemical batteries will continue to dominate grid storage for the short storage duration. For longer-duration storage, a lower cost technology is necessary, he says. “There are many different types of new storage technologies coming to the forefront and being scaled up from lab scale to commercial scale. Some of these include electrochemical flow cells, thermochemical batteries, thermal storage, green hydrogen, and compressed air. “We are likely to see more batteries in the future as renewable penetration into the grid accelerates, primarily for the short to four-hour duration. For longer duration there is a race to market for a variety of technologies. “Whichever provides a significant cost benefit over batteries and gets to market first is likely the winner. We can expect significant growth in energy storage technologies as predicted by decarbonization modelling. “Grid storage is an enabler for deep decarbonization and is certain to grow. The technology that emerges as dominant is quite uncertain and depends on many different factors beyond just technical ones.” Certainly, the cost picture is a complicated one. Lead batteries, for example, are still a clear winner in terms of price for longer duration storage even though as a whole ESS providers plump for lithium. The recent costly spate of fires, recalls and even explosions of lithium batteries also suggest their

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FEATURE: THE NEW BALANCE OF POWER “There simply won’t be enough batteries and related materials available. All battery chemistries will be important in the future. I’m expecting there to be a huge demand for lead batteries as part of this.”

THE TEXAN VIEW FROM RICE UNIVERSITY

— Andy Bush, head of the International Lead Association performance advantages have been exaggerated in the field environment. Andy Bush, head of the International Lead Association, believes that we have yet to completely understand the huge demand for energy storage that is facing the world in the coming years. “There simply won’t be enough batteries and related materials available,” he says. “All battery chemistries will be important in the future. I’m expecting there to be a huge demand for lead batteries as part of this.” James Klausner, chair of the department of mechanical engineering at Michigan State University, also reckons storage and renewable deployment will differ across regions. An obvious contrast would be Arizona and Alaska. Arizona is likely to be able to get away with daily storage and green hydrogen as a standby in case longer duration storage is needed. In contrast, Alaska needs seasonal storage. “Systems will differ worldwide,” says Jacobson, and refers to a paper he co-authored, Impacts of Green New Deal Energy Plans on Grid Stability, Costs, Jobs, Health, and Climate in 143 Countries as an example. “Some places are dominated by wind, others by hydropower, others by solar, some by geothermal. All locations, though, should have a mix of the above where possible to help keep the grid stable, along with electricity, heat, cold, and hydrogen storage.” “There are tremendous growth opportunities for storage,” says Denholm. “We are close to the point where storage is cost-competitive with the latest new gas turbine for peaking operations. We will get to a point when it becomes a no-brainer to just install storage instead of old standard fossil combustion turbines. So, it is only going to get better for storage.”

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Another Texan perspective comes from academics at Rice University. In 2018, Rice student Joanna Slusarewicz and Daniel Cohan, associate professor, civil and environmental engineering, at the University, compiled a paper, Assessing solar and wind complementarity in Texas, which modelled solar and wind power output. It is now being followed up by a new paper, Can wind and solar replace coal in Texas? which is undergoing final review. In the latter paper the output of all the proposed wind and solar farms in ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) and their potential to replace remaining coal plants is simulated, says Cohan. “We find that if solar and wind are balanced well (that is, wind from multiple parts of state and solar anywhere) then they can well match output that we had been getting from coal, and in fact may provide better coverage during summer peaks because solar and coastal wind perform well then,” says the professor. “Of course, they don’t tend to be as prone to sudden, unexpected, large-scale outages like some thermal plants, apart from extreme conditions like when the wind turbines froze. So, there isn’t an inherent reason that more renewables has to mean more grid storage, but more storage will be needed if renewables additions aren’t well balanced. “That’s not to say that there wasn’t

already a pre-existing need for more storage, or that individual wind or solar developers won’t find it profitable to build their own storage to capitalize on price swings that can reach 100x. “The more balanced solar and wind are, the less storage we’ll need. But there will still be times when winds are slow state-wide, sometimes when it’s hot and demand is high, so on a grid with little interconnections to the rest of the country we will benefit greatly from storage. “We’re also suffering from transmission congestion within ERCOT, so I’d expect better transmission could help ease storage needs. “Demand will continue to grow due to growing population and industry, and eventually more electrified transport. Making demand more efficient and flexible would help, but Texas isn’t doing much in that direction. “New firm and flexible sources of power (next generation nuclear; geothermal; Allam cycle natural gas) would help but are unlikely to be deployed much for at least another decade. Ditto for new forms of storage. But I expect we’ll see a lot more deployment of lithium-ion batteries and solar farms. “Connecting ERCOT to other grids would make a big difference. Changing requirements could make thermal plants better winterized, but there’s still the challenge that nearly a third of firm capacity is >40 years old.”

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BATTERY TESTING Battery testing is one of the basic building blocks about bringing all types of batteries to market. But getting it wrong is expensive. The growing number of lithium battery fires in warehouses, grid support systems and EV underlines the necessity for making sure of the health, safety and reliability of the battery, reports Frank Millard.

Testing under the spotlight Safety tests ensure the safety of the product even under extreme conditions. Performance tests provide information about lifecycle, behaviour under load conditions and best usage strategies. IEC62133 regulates batteries in mobile devices, IEC62619 is for industrial applications like fork lifts, trains, and IEC 63056 is for stationary energy storage. “Specific tests depend on the application,” says TÜV SÜD. “The UN38.3 transportations test is necessary to get permission to transport batteries in quantity, for example. An EV battery has to fulfil the UNECE Regulation 100 for electrical safety before it gets its type approval. “But OEMs do a lot of additional performance testing to guarantee the

correct behaviour during use. For other segments there are no tests required by law but there are some IEC standards defining the state of the art, which should always be fulfilled when bringing a product to the market.” Testing processes tend to be similar across static and mobile energy storage, addressing the same priorities and concerns. Reliable leak testing is essential throughout the production process. “Damage to battery cells while in transit to an OEM’s assembly plant also needs to be considered,” says Thomas Parker, leak test sales manager at Inficon. “The thermal runaway of a single battery cell can cause burning electrolyte to reach temperatures up to 1,100°C. “Exposure of water to the inside of an individual battery cell or battery pack is an issue for safety (reaction to water creates an acid that can rupture the cell, sometimes causing overheating and exploding) as well as performance. Leakage of electrolyte from the cell is a safety issue (hazardous to humans) as well as a performance and warranty issue.” Specific tests include tracer gas testing of rigid battery (prismatic and cylindrical) cells via helium before electrolyte filling, says Parker. “After filling, a final test of the electrolyte itself specifically traces electrolyte leakage through extremely small openings/holes. When the cells are installed in the battery pack and the lid is sealed, the completed pack is pressurized with a tracer gas (helium or safe Robot sniffing battery pack by Inficon hydrogen/nitrogen mix) and tested in

82 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

compliance to IP67).” For batteries that have a liquid cooling system, testing can demonstrate that no leak is present and any overpressure events are safe. Changing technology Although battery testing is well understood, the underlying chemistries are still evolving so there are still new things being learned. “A more major change in chemistry could require different testing depending on its strengths and weaknesses and how these differ from other types of cells,” says Peter Miller, chief engineer for batteries, at UTAC CERAM Millbrook. Some regulations only apply to lithium-based chemistries, so a sodium-ion or flow battery would not require testing to that section of the regulations, and potentially may not need any testing for transport purposes. Miller says that with long-duration tests, such as life tests, automation enables testing to take place 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Engineers can also secure remote access, enabling them to monitor tests without actually having to be physically present on site. “For safety tests the worst outcome needs to be accurately assessed and suitable risk management put in place, which requires staff with a very good knowledge and experience. Our test site near Bedford in the UK is 2.8 million square meters so dedicated areas can be used for higher risk tests,” says Miller. Most test standards specify accuracy

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BATTERY TESTING measures, which must be met, but effort also goes into ensuring that tests are conducted in a way that gives accurate and repeatable results, says Miller. “There are occasional situations where a test that appeared sensible when written down gives unexpected results, but those are opportunities for learning and improving our understanding. These can result in improvements to test capabilities that then benefit future customers, or even fed back into national or international standards.” Where much research is going into getting more precise results and better integrated benches, with additional sensors collecting chemical and mechanical data in addition to the classic electrical and temperature values, another trend is towards simulation supported testing, says TÜV SÜD. “The idea is that datapoints and trends are collected by physical testing but the result of test cases in between are interpolated by simulation,” the firm says. “This simulation is based on models influenced by the actual inputs of the physical testing. This leads to a more precise prediction of the battery behaviour since not all combined test cases can be covered with testing.”

UTAC CERAM MILLBROOK UTAC CERAM Millbrook conducts battery testing to assess the life of battery cells, modules and packs; determine battery safety in a wide range of situations including crash events; and validate the performance of batteries under a range of environmental conditions. “For lithium-ion batteries the majority of the testing is for safety, but on a test time basis, life testing takes most of the time,” says Peter Miller, chief engineer for batteries, at the company. “Many tests have dedicated equipment for them, for example the first 38.3 test checks survival in a low pressure (equivalent to flying at 15,000m) and that requires a specialized altitude chamber.” Shock, stress and temperature testing are part of the 38.3 transport requirements, but as these only cover safety they do not require that the device functions to specification afterwards, says Miller. “Normally a large part of the testing would be related to the device in normal operation. For example, with a Li-ion bat-

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FARADAY INSTITUTION The UK’s Faraday Institution uses many physical test techniques and facilities to develop scientific understanding, including collaboration with NPL, The National Physical Laboratory (the UK’s National Metrology Institute) and Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron science facility at Harwell, Oxfordshire. The data from physical tests are also used to help populate and validate battery digital twins: offering battery designers modelling tools to accelerate battery pack design and deliver improvements to commercial battery performance, lifetime and safety. James Gaade, head of programme management at the Faraday Institution, says operando nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy of current generation NMC811/graphite lithiumion batteries is used by the University of Cambridge to understand the structure, dynamics, and lithium deposition during the battery aging process. “The technique enables the detailed investigation of lithium deposition on graphite, which is an important degradation mechanism and key potential safety hazard. Insights gained will aid in developing future charging protocols to manage this effect more robustly,” he says. Another example is 3D imaging

of lithium protrusions in solid-state lithium batteries using X-ray computed tomography by University College London. Using X-ray computed tomography with nanoscale resolution, Gaade says the technique has enabled the study for the first time of the 3D morphology of dendrites inside shortcircuited solid electrolytes. “The crack/lithium-protrusion behaviour qualitatively supports a model of propagation combining electrochemical and mechanical effects, with the knowledge gained being used to develop alternative solutions and/or controls,” Gaade says. “In the UK, with the support of the Faraday Battery Challenge, the British Standards Institute has developed three codes of practice to provide guidance and recommendations at cell, module/pack and vehicle level and bring together key relevant information on standards and legislation in the UK and globally.” Gaade says battery pack gateway testing protocols have been developed within Faraday Institution research by Newcastle University as part of the ReLiB project to understand the condition of battery modules and packs at the end of a vehicle’s life to aid the ability to make decisions on reuse, repurposing or recycling.

tery, temperature has a major impact on its life and performance.” The temperature for stationary batteries is normally controlled with an air conditioning system, while a water glycol liquid cooling system is typically used for automotive. “In either case it’s important to check the simulations done at the design stage are accurate by checking the batteries over a wide range of temperatures,” says Miller. The testing may also need to include the impacts of solar loading (the sun can add around 1kW per m2 of heat to local areas, potentially causing a very uneven internal temperature distribution within the battery, which can reduce its life, says Miller). “Safety testing is also conducted to understand what would happen should a leak develop in the field and to check any built-in leak detection

systems,” he says. Leak test processes are influenced by part characteristics, cycle time, leak limit, cavity under test, and budget. These can involve standard air pressure decay, differential decay and mass flow, as well as tracer gas solutions based on sniffing and accumulation. “Battery pack enclosures are generally tested with the mass flow method because of the large total volume,” says Miller. “The leak rate can be assessed by measuring the air flow that crosses a flow-rate sensor to overcome the pressure difference between a reference volume and the test piece. The advantage is lower testing times for large objects. “Battery packs, battery modules and occasionally cooling circuits can apply the pressure decay method, where the pressure decay to the atmosphere or a tight reference is measured.”

Batteries International • Summer 2021 • 83

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BATTERY TESTING The whys and wherefores of testing are dependent on how the battery or energy storage system will be deployed.

Fine-tuning tests for different applications Stationary energy storage systems and automotive batteries all have to be tested, but there are differences in how and why. Automotive batteries, for example, need to withstand conditions such as vibration that might not be relevant for stationary applications. Energy storage systems can be large, requiring careful assessment of their inherent safety as well as how they can be safely integrated into the built environment, says Ken Boyce, senior director of principal engineering at global safety certification company UL. “The size of energy storage systems, and the possibility of propagation leading to a much larger event, can present challenges for the testing environment that must be addressed.” Many of the tests applied to stationary energy storage systems typically

involve different charge and discharge rates and different ambient temperatures depending on the use case, and demand profiles can therefore be very different from automotive applications, says Martin Plass, business development leader at the Battery & Energy Storage Technology Test Center, DNV Energy. “EVs’ high energy density to reduce weight, and high c-rates for fast charging and peak power delivery are very important, but for stationary systems a common application is shifting solar peak power generation from daytime to evenings to flatten the duck curve and reduce peak demand,” says Plass. “This means that when we test stationary BESSs, we often look at systems designed to store and release energy over one to six hours, with crates of 0.167 to 1.0.”

“Energy storage system safety testing requires unique laboratory facilities, and continually enhancing the way the tests are safely and appropriately conducted is a focus for the technical community” — Ken Boyce, senior director, Principal Engineering at UL

Testing at global safety certification firm UL

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Utility companies that deploy these systems have a different time-planning horizon from car companies, he says. “They look at investments for 20-30 years versus (for example) eight-year warranties for automotive batteries. So, longevity of the BESS and augmentation plans become very important in these long-range scenarios. “Instead of 30-100kWh in a typical EV, you might have 100MWh BESS in containers, made up of multiple modules and racks, so the safety considerations with that much stored energy become very important to avoid dangers to operators and property in the proximity to the systems.” The most widely recognized safety test protocols for energy storage systems is the US and Canadian national standard for safety, UL 9540, the world’s first safety standard published for ESSs. It contains rigorous requirements to demonstrate the suitability of the design under normal conditions as well as abnormal ones and failure modes. “For battery energy storage systems, UL 9540 requires the batteries integrated into an energy storage system also comply with requirements including the US and Canadian standard for safety for stationary batteries, UL 1973,” says Boyce. “Energy storage system requirements also address a stringent evaluation of the functional safety of battery management systems.” BMSs should demonstrate that the software, firmware and hardware are appropriately coordinated to keep the batteries in a safe operating mode and are immune from inherent failures or external influences that can impair the ability to perform critical safety functionality. Requirements of UL 9540A are used to determine the capability of the battery technology to withstand thermal runaway, and evaluate the fire and explosion hazard characteristics of battery energy storage systems that have demonstrated they can do so. “This approach provides critical

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BATTERY TESTING safety information about the system and how it can be safely integrated into the built environment,” says Boyce. Plass says DNV has developed a Battery Performance Scorecard program that cycles 30 to 40 battery cells at different conditions for six to 12 months to fully characterize degradation of specific types of cells under various stress conditions. “The resulting test data is then fed into a data analytics program, called Battery AI, to build a model for this type of battery cell and predict how the battery will perform under different scenarios, for example solar power peak shifting on a daily basis by four hours for 20 years,” he says. “Characterization of battery cells can facilitate quality assurance practices, to assess products being shipped to project sites.” DNV also uses a relatively new standard, ANSI/UL9540A, which forces battery cells into thermal runaway and then measures the heat and gases that are released and the propensity of the battery to develop a chain reaction of cells. A small instigating event in a battery can cascade to neighbouring cells, which then creates additional heat as they go into thermal runaway, cascading successively through the whole battery. “The latest revision of the NFPA 855 fire protection code requires UL9540A testing along with a number of other certification requirements for battery cells and systems, such as UL1642, UL1973 and UL9540,” says Plass. Similar safety test standards are being developed in Europe under the IEC standards scheme. Research into the failure mechanisms of batteries and how these failure modes can be duplicated in accelerated test set-ups is ongoing. “We know that most batteries degrade faster at higher or lower temperatures or cycle at faster charge and discharge rates. But the failure mechanism that causes this degradation might be different from what causes a battery to degrade when operated at room temperature or slower c-rates for many years,” says Plass. He says the change in coulombic efficiency during first charge and discharge cycles in testing can be representative of a battery’s long-term degradation behaviour. “Additionally, machine learning techniques are being developed to extrapolate this limited characteriza-

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“DNV has developed a Battery Performance Scorecard program that cycles 30 to 40 battery cells at different conditions for six to 12 months to fully characterize degradation of specific types of cells under various stress conditions.” — Martin Plass, business development leader, Battery & Energy Storage Technology Test Center, DNV Energy tion data into long-term performance expectations. If these methods can be reliably established and validated, it would shorten the time required for degradation testing.” Fire fighting The current ANSI/UL9540A thermal runaway test method only evaluates dangers caused by internal battery failures. It does not properly account for fire safety from anti-propagation systems that can prevent or slow down cascading thermal runaway events. “Many test labs, especially in Asia, use a fairly loose interpretation of the standard to test battery systems that can result in an underestimation of the risks,” says Plass. “The UL9540A standard therefore requires further improvement to eliminate the room for varied interpretations.” DNV operates fire test centres in Rochester, New York, where the BEST Test & Commercialization Center conducts testing to determine the pre-

cise propensity of cells to enter thermal runaway, and what type of gases are released and in what quantities during these events. For battery module and rack fire testing, Plass says DNV has a unique test site in the UK, where mega fires can be investigated by setting a whole battery container on fire. Plass says another area that is quickly developing is the use of simulation to evaluate risks, such as computerized fire and explosion modelling to evaluate battery safety in stationary battery deployments of various designs and scales. Testing is evolving as additional experience is acquired in assessing battery vulnerabilities and additional insights from field incidents. “Energy storage system safety testing requires unique laboratory facilities, and continually enhancing the way the tests are safely and appropriately conducted is a focus for the technical community,” says Boyce.

PROFILE: INTERNATIONAL TESTING FIRM, DIGATRON Digatron, headquartered in Aachen, Germany with manufacturing facilities in the US, China, India & Italy, offers battery testing, formation, aging and assembly equipment, and provides testing equipment for cells, modules and packs for any battery chemistry, fuel cell or supercapacitor system. “Our systems are used around the world to develop electric vehicles, energy storage systems, and simulation systems for well-known OEMs in mobility, energy storage, battery manufacturers. They work with any battery chemistry, fuel cells, and supercapacitor systems and are used in R&D and EOL globally,” says Marcus Peng, director of sales at Digatron Power Electronics. “The company offers a regenerative version of these systems even

for cells and module testers, where the discharge energy from one cell can be used to charge another. “The real-world advantage is that the round trip energy usage for battery testing is greatly reduced.” Digatron also has pilot scale pouch and cylindrical assembly, formation and ageing systems for lithium-ion cells, which universities and research groups are using to produce cells for speciality applications. “These systems enable our customers to provide high-quality cells to customers who are not able to procure cells from automotive suppliers,” Peng says. Peng says the firm’s lead-acid formation systems are used by manufacturers of SLI, start-stop and motive batteries.

Batteries International • Summer 2021 • 87

RESEARCH, SOLID STATE BATTERIES A team at Hosei University in Japan has tried to fabricate a prototype solid-state battery with a new concept where only the electrolyte solution is gelatinized, utilizing existing manufacturing know-how and equipment. Shouji Usuda, a senior member of IEEE and professor at the university reports on the process. He was assisted by Shunji Hasuo and Moh Moh Win Shwe.

Development of new solidstate battery with gelatinized electrolyte solution containing lithium salt A lithium-ion battery consists of positive and negative electrode sheets and an organic electrolyte solution. The positive electrode uses LiCoO2 as the active material and the negative electrode uses graphite as the active material. The electrolyte solution is a mixed organic liquid of EC (ethylene carbonate) and DEC (diethyl carbonate) in a volume ratio of 1:1 or 3:7, with one mole of electrolyte as LiTFSI (lithium bis (trifluoromethane) sulfonimide), LiFSI (lithium bis (fluorosulfonyl) imide), LiPF6 (lithium hexafluorophosphate), etc. dissolved in an organic liquid. These lithium salts with excellent solution (dissociability) and ionic conductivity are used as the electrolyte. It is known that 1 mol/liter (1 mol/dm³) is the concentration of electrolyte salt at which the ionic conductivity of the electrolyte solution reaches its maximum. As typical organic electrolyte solutions that have been used in practical applications, 1 mol LiTFSI in EC/ DEC (1:1 vol%), 1 mol LiPF6 in EC/ DEC (1:1 vol%) and 1 mol LiPF6 in EC/DEC (3:7 vol%), etc. are used in lithium-ion batteries. EC is a high dielectric constant solvent with high dissociability and high lithium ion (Li+) production, while DEC is used as a low

Radical initiator

viscosity solvent. In particular, EC/DEC (3:7vol%) is designed to increase the mixing ratio of DEC to reduce the viscosity and improve the ionic conductivity of the entire mixed solution. Considering the dielectric constant of the electrolyte solution, as the viscosity of the solution decreases, the viscous resistance to the migration of ions in the solution also decreases. One of the key issues in lithium-ion batteries is the control of electrolyte solution leakage. Most of the leakage is caused by misuse of the battery, such as reverse loading, short-circuit, overcharge or over-discharge. There is a need for a battery structure that prevents leakage due to such misuse. Currently, sulfide solid-state batteries and oxide solid-state batteries are being developed as all-solid-state batteries for the purpose of leakage control. The former has higher ionic conductivity than the current electrolyte, but requires pressurized molding technology at room temperature in inert gas in the manufacturing process, while the latter has the same ionic conductivity as the current electrolyte solution, but requires sintering technology at high temperature in air. The latter requires sintering technology at high temperature in the air while

maintaining the same level of ionic conductivity as the current electrolyte solution. Both of these require significant development costs and a long development span. The authors attempted to fabricate a prototype solid-state battery with a new concept in which only the electrolyte solution is gelatinized, utilizing the manufacturing know-how, electrode materials, and equipment that have been cultivated in the research process of lithium-ion batteries. If activated ions are contained in the gelatinized medium made with polymer gel, which has lost its fluidity, the battery can be configured as a battery cell without worrying about leakage from the cell, which contributes to improved safety.

Gelation test of organic electrolyte solution

The gelation of the organic electrolyte solution requires a gel electrolyte polymer (hereafter referred to as GEP), which has high solubility of Li salt and can be cross-linked by heating, and a radical initiator as a cross-linking accelerator. The GEP used in this study can be dissolved in many organic solvents and has relatively high heat resistance

One hour half-life temperature (˚C)

10 hour half-life temperature (˚C)

Benzoyl peroxide (BPA)

Nyper BMT-K40

80 8~12

Curing condition Temperature (˚C)

Perkadox 16*2 64 48 *1

http://www.nof.co.jp

Time (hour) 8~12

60 1 80 0.5

http://www.nouryon.com

Table1: Half-life of radical initiators and curing conditions

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Batteries International • Summer 2021 • 89

RESEARCH, SOLID STATE BATTERIES PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: CREATION OF A GELLED SOLID STATE BATTERY

(thermal decomposition temperature is 200°C to 250°C in air). In addition, the water content can be reduced to the 1000 ppm level by vacuum drying at 40°C for 12 hours. There are several variations of radical initiators depending on their half-life temperature (Table 1). Depending on the half-life temperature of the radical initiator, the curing conditions for gelation will be different. By selecting the curing conditions (temperature and time) in Table 1, sufficient radicals are supplied to the polymer from the radical initiator, and gelation of the electrolyte solution can be expected. In this study, Perkadox 16 was selected as the radical initiator, and the curing conditions were set at a temperature of 60°C and a curing time of one hour. The electrolyte solution prepared for the gelation test is 1 mol LiTFSI in PC (propylene carbonate). The mixing ratio of this electrolyte solution, GEP, and

Utilizing the knowledge and know-how gained through experience in the production of existing lithium-ion batteries, we attempted to fabricate a prototype of a new concept solid-state battery in which only the electrolyte is gelatinized. The results of this research are summarized as follows. • Using the gel electrolyte polymer (GEP) specially provided by Japanese chemical manufacturer in Japan and the radical initiator obtained through our own research, the mixing ratio and crosslinking conditions of these gelation agents were studied by trial and error to obtain the optimum mixing conditions for the gelation of the electrolyte. • As a gelation test of the electrolyte solution, containing 1 mole of electrolytes LiTFSI and LiFSI dissolved in PC (propylene carbonate) was prepared and gelatinized using the gelation mentioned above. As a result of measuring the electrical conductivity before and after gelation, no significant difference in conductivity was observed. • Gelation of two typical electrolyte solutions used in lithium-ion batteries, 1 mol LiPF6 in EC/DEC (1:1 vol%) and 1 mol LiPF6 in EC/DEC (3:7 vol%), was achieved. The conductivity before and after gelation decreased by about 10%, but no significant difference was observed. It is believed that this is within the range of acceptable conductivity. As a result of measuring the kinematic viscosity of the gelation electrolyte solution, it was confirmed that the viscosity increased significantly when the GEP was dissolved in the electrolyte. Therefore, in consideration of the penetration of the gelation electrolyte solution into the positive and negative electrode materials at the time of injection of the solution, gelation was started in a constant temperature drying equipment after standing for about half a day. • The lithium-ion battery with a gelation electrolyte solution was called a “gelled solidstate battery”. The charge-discharge evaluation of the gelled solid-state battery was carried out. In the charge characteristics, there was a characteristic difference in the current injection over time, which was thought to be due to the difference in bulk resistance between the gelled battery and the non-gelled battery. The battery capacity (mAh) of the gelled solid-state battery estimated from the discharge characteristics was reduced by about half compared to the non-gelled case in both the mixed solution EC/DEC (1:1 vol%) and EC/DEC (3:7 vol%). Specifically, the decrease in battery capacity in the case of EC/DEC (3:7vol%) was from about 280mA to 150mAh, and in the case of EC/DEC (1:1vol%), the decrease was from about 160mAh to 75mAh. • The process of gas generation in the gelled solid-state battery was observed by using the transparent storage case that was formed. It was confirmed that the amount of gas generation was highest within two to three hours after the start of initial charging. • Based on the research results obtained so far, the gelation experiment will be continued to investigate the optimal electrolyte solution for gelation by selecting variations in the combination of the electrolyte solutions and mixing ratio with gelation agents. In addition, we would like to investigate the battery shape and the possibility of implementation of small to large-capacity gelled solid-state batteries in electric motorcycles, electric vehicles, and power coordination systems.

Figure 1: Gelation of electrolyte solution (1 mol LiTFSI in PC)

(a) Combination ratio Electrolytic solution

Propylene carbonate (PC)

20g

Electrolyte

LiTFSI

Polymer

Polymers for gel electrolyte

1.355g

Radical initiator

Perkadox 16

0.136g

(b) Calculation example of mixing ratio of PC and LiTFSI PC

LiTFSI

1.334 Specific gravity (g/mL)

B=1000-P 785 mL

287 g/mol

215 mL/mol

R=Q/P

A 1.204 Specific gravity (g/mL) C=A*B 945 g

LiTFSI:PC=

287

945

(Weight ratio)

Table 2: Gelation mixing ratio of electrolyte solution PC

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RESEARCH, SOLID STATE BATTERIES radical initiator is shown in Table 2. The preparation procedure for gelation of electrolyte solution is shown below. Step 1: Using a precision gravimeter, 20g of electrolyte solution is weighed into a beaker (the amount of electrolyte solution to be weighed is an example). Step 2: 6g (1 mole) of electrolyte LiTFSI is weighed into 20 g of electrolyte solution, the solution is stirred with a stirrer until LiTFSI is completely dissolved. Step 3: 1.355g (5%) of GEP is weighed into the PC solution (26 g) in which LiTFSI is dissolved, and the solution is stirred with a stirrer until the GEP is fully dissolved. Step 4: To the above solution, 0.136g of the radical initiator Perkadox 16 (about 1/10 of GEP) is weighed and thoroughly stirred in a stirrer. Step 5: The above solution is placed in a constant temperature drying equipment set at 60°C for 1 hour. Steps 1 through 4 were performed in a glove box purged with argon gas. An example of successful gelation of electrolyte solution 1 mol LiTFSI in PC is shown in Figure 1. The conductivity of the gel solution

was measured before gelation (Table 3). For comparison, the conductivity of the gel solution with electrolyte LiFSI was also measured. The conductivity meter used for the measurement was an EC meter PAL-EC (conductivity 0.00-19.9 mS/cm, resolution 0.01S/cm, measurement accuracy ±0.04 mS/cm) manufactured by ATAGO, a Japanese specialized manufacturer. From the conductivity value of the gel solution, it is presumed that sufficient ionic conductivity is maintained even with the addition of gelation agents (GEP and radical initiator) to the electrolyte solution.

Gelation of electrolyte solution for lithium-ion battery

Gelation was attempted for two electrolytes, 1 mol LiPF6 in EC/DEC (1:1 vol%) and 1 mol LiPF6 in EC/DEC (3:7 vol%), which were used in the assembly of lithium-ion battery cells that have been conducted in our laboratory. The mixing ratios of the gelation agents (GEP and radical initiator) for gelation of the two electrolytes are shown in Table 4. The dissolution amount of electrolyte LiPF6 is 1 mole for both electrolyte solutions. The procedure for making the

electrolyte solution for gelation is the same as in the case of the electrolyte solution PC gelation test The gelation of the electrolyte solution of 1 mol LiPF6 in EC/DEC (1:1 vol%) is shown in Figure 2, and the gelation of the electrolyte solution of 1 mol LiPF6 in EC/DEC (3:7 vol%) was confirmed by the same gelation procedure. Table 5 shows an example of the measurement of conductivity of the two mixed solutions, and Table 6 shows an example of the measurement of kinematic viscosity measured with the Cannon-Fenske viscometer. As a comparison, an example of viscosity measurement of PC solution with dissolved LiFSI, which was tested for gelation, is shown. There is no significant difference in the conductivity of the electrolyte solution before and after gelation (non-gelation electrolyte solution, which is the electrolyte without dissolving the gelation agents, and the gelation electrolyte solution before gelatinized). On the other hand, for the kinematic viscosity of the gelation solution, it can be confirmed that the viscosity of the gelation electrolyte solution increases significantly when GEP is dissolved in

(a) The case of LiTFSI Item

Contents

Electrolytic solution

Electrolyte

LiTFSI dissolved

Gelatinized solution

Perkadox 16 injected

Conductivity (mS/cm)

Rate of decline (%)

Temperature (˚C)

13.0

4.0

14.4

3.8

5.0

16.8

Conductivity (mS/cm)

Rate of decline (%)

Temperature (˚C)

(b) The case of LiFSI Item

Contents

Electrolytic solution

17.0

Electrolyte

LiFSI dissolved

5.7

17.9

Gelatinized solution

Perkadox 16 injected

5.5

3.5

18.9

Table 3: Measurement of conductivity of gel solution

Electrolyte solution

EC/DEC (1:1vol%) or EC/DEC 3:7vol%)

20g

Electrolyte LiPF6

1 mol

Polymer Polymers for gel electrolyte

1.052g

Radical initiator

0.105g

Perkadox 16

Table 4: Gelation mixing ratio of EC/DEC (1:1 vol%) or (3:7 vol%) dissolved with 1 mole LiPF6 Figure 2: Gelation of electrolyte 1 mol LiPF6 in EC/DEC (1:1 vol%)

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RESEARCH, SOLID STATE BATTERIES the original electrolyte, which is the non-gelation electrolyte solution. The viscosity of the gelation electrolyte solution is considered to affect the penetration of the gelation electrolyte solution into the positive and negative electrode materials when the gelation solution is injected during the process of assembling the battery cell. The mobility of free ions during charging and discharging in the electrolyte solution, which is a normal non-gelation electrolyte solution, is closely related to the viscosity of the electrolyte solution.

Fabrication and charge/ discharge evaluation of cells with gel electrolyte

After assembling the battery cell using the electrode materials of the cobaltbased lithium-ion battery, the electrode body fabricated in the winding process, and the aluminum laminate pouch cell, we attempted to gelatinize the electrolyte solution using the gelation procedure with gelation agents (GEP and radical initiator) as explained above. We call this cell battery the “gelled solid-state battery”. The positive and negative electrode sheets and separators used in the fabrication of the electrode body are shown in Table 6.

The gelation electrolyte solution prepared according to the formula in Table 4 is injected from the bottom of the pouch cell. The injection volume is measured and is roughly 10 milliliters. After the gelation electrolyte solution was injected, the inlet is sealed with a thermos-compression jig. Then, the sealed pouch cell is left in the air for about half a day to accelerate the penetration of the gelation electrolyte solution into the electrode sheet. After the sealed pouch cell is subjected to static treatment, the pouch cell filled with the gelation electrolyte solution is set in a constant temperature drying equipment and heated under the default gelation conditions (curing temperature: 60°C, curing time: one hour). At this time, to visually monitor the gelation of electrolyte solution, the gelation electrolyte solution is divided into a beaker and set in the constant temperature drying equipment at the same time as the pouch cell. In addition, a gelation experiment using a block heater designed and fabricated so that two types of pouch cells of different sizes could be set was tested in anticipation of the future production of gelled solid-state batteries using a pilot line. When Perkadox 16 was used

as the radical initiator, the electrolyte solution can be gelled in a relatively short time, and the workability of the battery fabrication including gelation by the block heater that can be easily introduced into the flow operation was investigated. In the case of the gelation experiment using the block heater, an open pouch cell was prepared after the gelation electrolyte solution was injected as a gelation monitor. After the gelation electrolyte solution was injected, the sealed pouch cells were set individually in a constant temperature drying equipment and a block heater, and the gelation process was carried out under the same curing conditions. The gelation of the electrolyte solution can be confirmed even when the block heater is used. The gelled solid-state battery cells were fabricated in this way for two types of electrolytes (1 mol LiPF6 in EC/DEC (1:1 vol%) and 1 mol LiPF6 in EC/DEC (3:7 vol%)), and chargedischarge evaluations were conducted. For comparison, charge-discharge evaluation was also carried out for a conventional type of battery cell using the original electrolyte (non-gelation electrolyte solution). The measurement results during

(a) The case of EC/DEC (1:1 vol%) Item

Contents

Conductivity (mS/cm)

Rate of decline (%)

Temperature (˚C)

Electrolytic solution

1M LiPF6 in EC/DEC (1:1 vol%)

5.8

16.7

Gelatinized solution

With GEP & Perkadox 16

4.9

15.5

16.8

Conductivity (mS/cm)

Rate of decline (%)

Temperature (˚C)

(b) The case of EC/DEC (3:7 vol%) Item

Contents

Electrolytic solution

1M LiPF6 in EC/DEC (3:7 vol%)

5.8

24.7

Gelatinized solution

With GEP & Perkadox 16

4.3

25.9

25.8

Table 5: Measurement of conductivity of gelation electrolyte solution of EC/DEC

(a) The case of 1mol LiPF6 in EC/DEC (1:1 vol%) Solution

Kinematic viscosity (mm2/s) or (cSt)

Temperature (˚C)

Electrolytic solution

3.6

24.0

Gelatinized solution

63.6

23.5

Kinematic viscosity (mm2/s) or (cSt)

Temperature (˚C)

Electrolytic solution (PC)

2.3

17.5

Electrolytic solution with LiTFSI

6.5

18.0

158.5

18.0

(a) The case of 1mol LiTFSI in PC Solution

Gelatinized solution

Table 6: Example of kinematic viscosity measurement of 1 mol LiPF6 in EC/DEC (1:1vol%) and 1 mol LiTFSI in PC as a reference

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Batteries International • Summer 2021 • 93

RESEARCH, SOLID STATE BATTERIES Material Active material

Active layer thickness* (µm) Electrode (Double sided coating) density (g/cm3)

Electrode Current collector Length Width capacity (mAh/cm2) (mm) (mm)

Positive electrode sheet Lithium cobaltate

140

190

2.7

Aluminium (16µm)

335

Negative electrode sheet

Graphite

130

420

2.7

Copper (9µm)

355

Separator

Polyolefin

840

Microporous: 0.1 µm less

* Total thickness

Table 7: Battery materials used for winding process

charging and discharging are shown in Fig. 3 and Fig. 4. The charge characteristics were measured using the CCCV method (set voltage 4.2V, set current 50mA), and the discharge characteristics were measured using the constant current method (set current 100mA, discharge end voltage 2.7V). In the charge characteristics, the charge current injected into the cell was suppressed in both gelation of solution EC/DEC (1:1 vol%) and EC/DEC (3:7 vol%) compared to non-gelation, and the charge voltage tended to reach the set value (4.2V) apparently earlier. This can be attributed to the fact that the bulk resistance due to gelation is larger than that of the non-gelation solution. This can also be assumed from the conductivity measurement results in Table 5. A decrease in conductivity of 15% to 30% can be confirmed due to gelation. In terms of the discharge characteristics, it can be confirmed that the battery capacity of the gelled solid-state battery is about 1/2 lower than that of the non-gelation case for both the solution EC/DEC (1:1 vol%) and EC/DEC (3:7 vol%). In both cases of non-gelation and gelation, the battery capacity of solution EC/DEC (3:7vol%) is about twice as large as that of EC/DEC (1:1vol%). During the initial charging of the gelled solid-state battery cell, internal gas generation was observed as in conventional non-gelation battery cells. Therefore, a gas pot was installed in the pouch cell to mitigate the swelling of the entire cell. After the initial charging, the gas was removed using a jig such as a needle . The gas generation during the initial recharging was observed over time using a transparent storage case formed by a 3D printer. The amount of gas generation was observed to be the largest within two to three hours after the start of charging, and almost no gas generation was observed after the second or subsequent recharging.

94 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

Figure 3-1: Charge characteristics: (a) Voltage

Figure 3-2: Charge characteristics: (b) Current

Figure 4: Discharge characteristics

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SOLID STATE LITHIUM BATTERIES Advances in solid-state batteries often make promising headlines but the recurring question usually applies: are they scalable? Hillary Christie reports.

Are solid-state batteries a viable chemistry? When Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Science researchers announced their design for a long-lasting, stable, solid-state lithium battery on May 12, it was hailed by many as a solution to a 40-year problem in battery chemistry. Solid-state lithium batteries hold much more energy in the same volume and charge in a fraction of the time needed by traditional lithium-ion batteries; but poor stability due to dendrite growth has prevented them from achieving commercial success. The team at Harvard said they had designed a lithium SSB that can be charged and discharged at least 10,000 times at a high density, potentially solving longstanding issues with performance and stability that have curbed their potential. The trouble, of course, will be taking this through to a commercial product The fact is most companies are stuck in the pre-production phase while engineers work out how to take single-cell technology and apply it to large-scale production. Lithium batteries that use a solid electrolyte instead of liquid or polymer gel are particularly valuable to the EV industry because as well as safety, the liquid metal anode has higher gravimetric energy density than the lower capacity graphite alternative. In the 1990s, Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the US developed a new solid-state electrolyte that was used

96 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

in a thin-film lithium-ion battery and by 2012 both Toyota and Volkswagen began conducting research into solidstate’s applications in the auto industry. The ultimate dream “Solid state lithium batteries which use a solid electrolyte instead of a liquid or polymer gel electrolyte is the ultimate dream of the energy world, particularly for the EV industry,” says Mahdokht Shaibani, a researcher in materials synthesis, engineering and scale-up for next-generation energy storage systems at Monash University in Australia. “Eradicating the use of the highly flammable liquid electrolyte, it promises ultimate safety. It allows the safe use of a lithium metal anode (the ultimate anode material) instead of the poor capacity graphite, so it promises high gravimetric energy density.” This doesn’t require sophisticated packaging to hold the liquid electrolyte so it removes some additional materials that do not contribute to the cell performance, improving both the volumetric and gravimetric energy densities. “Recycling should be considerably easier, and cost is potentially less, given that the liquid electrolyte salt is expensive,” she says. “Progress over the past few years has been unexpectedly outstanding, even at the R&F level, and yet much needs to be discovered and scaled. “The main challenges are maintaining a compatible and intimate inter-

face between the solid electrolyte and the electrodes over long-term cycling, as well as having high ion mobility throughout the cell at room temperature (and of course scale up).” In September 2020, former Tesla engineer Gene Berdichevsky, now head of Sila Nanotechnologies, released a white paper dismissing SSBs as a ‘false hope’. The paper outlined multiple technical difficulties facing the technology, including reasons for dendrite formation, issues with investment and the cost of scaling up manufacturing processes. It also mentioned temperature and pressure sensitivity issues. SSBs with ceramic electrolytes, for example, require high pressure to maintain contact with electrodes, and those with ceramic separators are prone to break from mechanical stress. Some critics question claims that SSBs may prevent dendrite growth, a big problem for lithium-ion batteries. Scalability remains, as always with new technology, a challenge. All current factories manufacturing lithiumion batteries may require different machinery, speciality equipment and operational procedures, meaning the cost could become prohibitive in large scale consumer-based applications. In 2013, researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder announced they had developed a solid-state lithium battery with a solid composite cathode based on iron-sulfur chemistry. The research team was eventu-

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SOLID STATE LITHIUM BATTERIES EV MANUFACTURERS TACKLE SOLID-STATE The EV market could be the first step in the chemistry’s transition to other sectors, but manufacturers are under pressure to push past the initial stages of research and present technology that can be applied commercially. Several big names including Toyota, BMW, Honda and Nissan all hold SSBrelated patents, and Volkwagen’s $100 million investment in 2018 made it the largest stakeholder alongside investor Bill Gates. Toyota plans to unveil a prototype ally spun off to create Solid Power, a company now receiving millions in investment: in May, BMW and Source announced that, along with Volta Technologies, they were investing $130 million in Solid Power’s bid to create the first commercially successful solidstate battery. The company’s chemistry is exclusively sulfide solid electrolytes which, says head of marketing Will McKenna, should be as recyclable as today’s Liion batteries. Greater energy density “Solid Power has shown stable cycling near room temperature with both our high-content silicon all-solid-state cells and our lithium metal all-solid-state cells. Our silicon cells have demonstrated functionality down to -10°C.” Although its primary focus is on batteries for electric vehicles, the company says it is exploring the ESS market. Solid Power claims that by combining its cathode with a lithium metal anode, its SSBs can deliver more than 50% more energy density compared to the best available rechargeable batteries. “Solid Power has two vehicle integration programmes with BMW and Ford,” says McKenna. “We anticipate entering the formal automotive qualification phase in 2022 with a 100Ah all-solid-state cell. “We anticipate a cell start of production in 2025, with a vehicle start of production in 2026.” On June 15 this year, materials technology company Umicore announced an equity investment following Solid Power’s move to become a publicly listed company. The listing was enabled by Solid Power’s merger with Decarbonization Plus Acquisition Corporation III, and brings the company’s pro forma implied enterprise value to an estimated $1.2 billion.

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EV in 2021 powered by SSBs. It leads global patents in SSBs with more than 1,000, and plans to be the first company to have sold an SSB-powered EV in the early 2020s. The company has already revealed a production version of the world’s first fuel cell sports sedan and plans to adapt its e-TNGA platform to produce a prototype SUV with an SSB. Former Ford CEO and president Mark Fields is an investor and part of the advisory board of Massachusetts“We believe that the battery of the future will be enabled by sulfide-based solid electrolyte materials and cell designs enabled by these electrolyte materials,” says Mckenna. “We expect solid-state batteries to initially start displacing conventional Li-ion in applications where mass and volume reduction are paramount, but the cost and safety advantages will also be attractive in market such as large-scale storage longer term.” In 2018, Volkswagen invested $100 million in San Jose-based QuantumScape, a company producing data showing a battery that can charge to 80% capacity in 15 minutes, with nearly double the energy density of top commercial li-ion cells. The company claims the battery could retain more than 80% of capacity after 800 cycles, and, crucially, won’t catch fire. QuantumScape’s results are based on a single cell and would need an engineering breakthrough to integrate multiple cells: however investors appear to

based start-up Factorial Energy. The company claims to be at the manufacturing stage, but offers little else in terms of information on their technology other than to say their 40Ah cell allows for a 20-50% improvement on regular batteries. Not all are continuing with the technology. American EV automaker Fisker claimed its SSB technology would be ready for production in 2023, but announced this February it was completely dropping the endeavour. be confident in the company’s potential, with Volkswagen announcing the second and final closing of investment, bringing the total to $200 million. One of QuantumScape’s breakthroughs was finding a flexible ceramic separator that can act as a solid electrolyte. The lithium ions travel from the cathode and form a flat layer on the separator creating a temporary lithium anode, flowing back again as the battery discharges. This means all the lithium is contributing to storing energy and boosting density. In a joint venture with Volkswagen Group of America, QuantumScape has planned an SSB pilot-line facility. Dubbed QS-1, the initial 1GWh of battery cell production is planned to expand by 20GWh. Solid Power anticipates entering a formal automotive qualification process by early 2022, and QuantumScape has scheduled mass production to begin in the second half of 2024.

SNAPSHOT — TWO LEADING PLAYERS • Hitachi Zosen Boasting one of the highest capacities in the industry at 1,000 mAh, and claiming the ability to operate under a larger range of temperatures, Japan’s Hitachi Zosen unveiled its battery tech at an exhibition in March 2021. It says it has already begun production of a prototype and plans to double the cell’s capacity by 2025. In February 2021, the company announced an agreement with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to test the SSBs in powering camera equipment aboard the International Space Station.

• Samsung SDI In joint development projects with Samsung Advanced Institute of Tech and Samsung R&D Institute Japan, among others, South Korea’s Samsung SDI has been presenting SSB technology at exhibitions since 2013. Research in March 2021 showed data supporting an SSB that can be charged and discharged more than 1,000 times with 800km of mileage on a single charge. The company acknowledges the obstacles in scaling up their results and says it is still at an early stage of development.

Batteries International • Summer 2021 • 97

FORTHCOMING EVENTS

Disruption to the events programme As we move further into the 2021 events season for the battery and energy storage industry, hosts and organizers are still struggling to decide whether to go ahead with events that have been in the diary for months, if not years. When this issue was released, and with the situation still changing on an hourly basis, a variety of energy conferences and meetings have been postponed or hosted online. While we have taken every effort to ensure these details are correct, please contact the conference organisers with any queries, or check websites below and throughout the listings. 7th International Secondary Lead Conference — ISLC

The Battery Show North America

September 2-3

September 14–16 Novi, Michigan. US

V Virtual Event

The 7ISLC will bring together all aspects of secondary lead smelting; discussing plant design, smelting regimes, refractories, burner design, slag formation and structures, and pollution and environmental control among other presentations. It is a further aim of the conference to open up for discussion all aspects of plant operations and control as to give not only operators, but people interested in secondary smelting a better understanding of the processes involved in the industry. Contact Conference Works Maddie Robson Email: maddie@conferenceworks.com.au www.secondaryleadconference.com

The Battery Show connects you with more than 8,000 engineers and executives, and more than 600 leading suppliers across the advanced battery supply chain. A powerful, end-to-end showcase, this leading global industry event covers today’s emerging advanced battery technology for the automotive, portable electronics, medical technology, military and telecommunications, and utility and renewable energy support sectors. Explore the full spectrum of cuttingedge solutions you need to make faster, smarter, and more cost-effective products at the most comprehensive industry event in North America. Contact Informa Markets Tel: +1 833 202 3467 Email: registration.battery@informa.com www.thebatteryshow.com

Energy Storage Masterclass Singapore 2021 September 15-16 Singapore

Intersolar Mexico September 7–9 Mexico City, Mexico Intersolar Mexico serves as the industry’s go-to source for invaluable technology trends and premier B2B contacts in the promising Mexican solar market. Intersolar Mexico sit at the cross-section of photovoltaics, solar heating & cooling technologies, and energy storage. Together, the two events will be the largest gathering of professionals in Mexico for international manufacturers and distributors looking to meet regional buyers in the fields of solar, renewable energy and cleantech. Contact Solar Promotion www.intersolar.mx

98 • Batteries International • Summer 2021

This 2-day Masterclass, will be led by Robert De Groot (Mott Macdonald) and feature 9 other experts in the energy storage field. Key learnings from this session will enable the audience to examine and implement storage from an economic and technical perspective. The sessions have been designed to evaluate different energy storage technologies, identify profitable niches for deploying storage around Asia, and learn how to set up a business case for storage based on past experiences. Contact Dufresne Tel: +44 203 097 1833 www.energystorageforum.com/register

World Energy Storage Day September 22 V Virtual Event World Energy Storage Day will be held on the web across 7 regions. It will be the first time that marathon online event dedicated to energy storage and EV industry has been organized on this scale. The event will bring together 75+ global thought leaders and policy makers together to share insights on the policy, technology and business landscape in each of the 7 global regions. Contact IESA-India Energy Storage Alliance www.energystorageday.org

International Congress for Battery Recycling — ICBR 2021 September 22–24 Onsite (Geneva, Switzerland) + V Virtual ICBR is the international platform for presenting the latest developments and discussing the challenges faced by the battery recycling industry. The 26th edition of ICBR will bring together many experts and decision-makers of the battery recycling value chain such as battery manufacturers, battery recyclers, OEMs from the electronic and e-mobility industry, collection schemes operators, service and transport companies, policy-makers and many more. Contact ICM AG Tel: +41 62 785 10 00 Email: info@icm.ch www.icm.ch/en/icbr-2021

Geneva + Virtual

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19th Asian Battery

ABC

Conference & Exhibition

19th Asian Battery Conference & Exhibition

450+ 3 DAYS

Of analysis and debate from experts and leaders!

The brightest insights, straight to your screen

Attendees

40+

Presentations

Virtual Conference Wednesday 3 - Friday 5 November 2021 asianbatteryconference.com.au

Take a deep dive into this immersive online experience as we present international experts to report on the most recent developments and research achievements in the design, manufacture and application of lead–acid batteries. Speak @ 19ABC Call for Papers is open. If you are an expert in your field, we want to hear from you!

Platinum

Gold

Registration Early Bird Registration: USD390.00 Virtual Exhibition Stay connected and ahead of the competition @ Asia’s #1 lead-acid battery event. Visit the website to view the Agenda and Registration information. Media Partners

Silver CW3 Events Phone: +61 3 9870 2611 • Email: events@conferenceworks.com.au

FORTHCOMING EVENTS BCI Convention + Power Mart Expo September 22–25 San Diego, California, US Battery Council International (BCI) is a not-for-profit trade association established to promote the interests of the lead battery manufacturing and recycling industry. As the industry’s principal association, BCI’s member services have a global impact. BCI brings together the leading lead battery manufacturers and recyclers in North America and around the world, and establishes technical standards for battery manufacturing and actively promotes workable environmental, health and safety standards for the industry. Contact Battery Council International Tel: +1 312 245 1074 Email: info@batterycouncil.org www.convention.batterycouncil.org

Batteries Event 2021 September 29-October 1 Lyon, France The Batteries Event will cover all aspects of the battery circular economy, beginning from the production of the battery through raw materials, battery manufacturing, battery use and safety, management and applications, going through market trends, research and development, new technologies and finally closing the loop with a focus on recycling, second life and regulations. International battery industry key players such as OEM, battery manufacturers, end users, experts, researchers and recyclers will come together to discuss and exchange on new chemistries, manufacturing process, battery components, battery second life, recycling, producer regulatory obligations in Europe, future expectations and innovations. Contact Claude Foubert Tel: +33 247 2733 30 Email: registration@batteriesevent.com www.batteriesevent.com

Automotive Supplier Summit October 4 Wolfsburg, Germany Meet the key players of the automotive industry at the kick-off Summit of Europe’s leading exhibition for the supply chain industry (IZB 2021) in Wolfsburg — the home of the world’s biggest Automotive OEM. Discuss the current challenges of the automotive industry and the future of the automotive supply chain industry. Take the chance to connect with experts and executives at B2B meetings, and in the exclusive tradeshow that accompanies the summit. Contact IPM AG www.automotivesuppliersummit.com

Plugvolt 2021 Battery Seminar October 5-7 Plymouth, MI. USA

ees Europe + Power2drive October 6-8 Munich, Germany

PlugVolt will be hosting its next Battery Seminar in Plymouth, MI (USA) featuring an entire day of in-depth technical tutorials on fundamental materials’ challenges for electrochemical energy storage, opportunities and challenges with solid-state batteries, best design practices for cell engineering, battery modeling and health monitoring, second life design considerations for energy storage, etc. Next two days will include complementary industry updates provided by subject matter experts from Automotive and Grid Storage OEMs, major battery manufacturers and global Tier 1 system developers and suppliers. Attendees will also get an exclusive opportunity to tour INTERTEK Battery Testing Center of Excellence in Plymouth, MI (USA), ask questions to resident experts, and enjoy some light appetizers and beverages while networking with industry peers.

Discover future-ready solutions for renewable energy storage and advanced battery technology at ees Europe! Europe’s largest, most international and most visited exhibition for batteries and energy storage systems is the industry hotspot for suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and users of stationary electrical energy storage solutions as well as battery systems. In 2021, more than 450 suppliers of products for energy storage technology and systems will be present at ees Europe and the parallel exhibitions of The Smarter-E Europe taking place in Munich. The exhibition will be accompanied by a two-day energy storage conference where leading experts delve into current questions of this industry.

Contact JC Soman Email: juratesoman@plugvolt.com www.batteryseminars.com

Battery Tech Expo

Contact Solar Promotion www.ees-europe.com/en/home

October 12 Silverstone, UK. The Battery industry is on the cusp of a power revolution with big technology companies investing heavily in the next generation of battery development and energy storage. The event will provide a unique opportunity to showcase the latest products, technologies and services covering the Battery Management Systems, EV Battery, Battery Storage, Battery Development/ Discovery, Commercial and Mobile Power Device sectors.

Lyon, France: Hosts Batteries Event 2021 in September

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Contact 10 Four Media David Reeks Email: david.reeks@10fourmedia.co.uk www.batterytechexpo.com

www.batteriesinternational.com

September 14-16, 2021 Suburban Collection Showplace | Novi, MI

150+

72+

Speakers

Hours of Education

This is the keystone EV and Battery event for North America. If you are selling, buying, or just assessing trends, this is the conference and expo you have to be at. - Michael Muzzin Commercial Director, Dukosi, Ltd.

Get your pass at www.thebatteryshow.com

FORTHCOMING EVENTS name a few. The event will welcome senior decision makers and users from across the power industry who share a professional interest in the technology and science of battery technology. Held in Gothenburg, the hub of battery technology industry of Sweden, the event will provide a unique opportunity to showcase the latest technological products and services from within the industry. Contact 10 Four Media David Reeks Email: david.reeks@10fourmedia.co.uk www.batterytechexpo.com

The Battery Technology Show Brazil: Hosts ees South America in October and the rescheduled FENIBAT in May 2022.

FENIBAT 2021 October 17–19 Londrina, Brazil Rescheduled for May 22-24, 2022 The 5th FENIBAT will gather in Londrina, Paraná, Brazil, from May 22-24, 2022, the Brazilian and Latin American battery and lead recycling industry and its suppliers. Its objective is to disseminate new products, services and technologies from all countries of the world to the South American market, as well as the exchange of information and knowledge. FENIBAT will bring information of interest to entrepreneurs, administrators and investors; managers, supervisors and technicians of administration, purchasing, production, maintenance, projects and product development, quality control, laboratories, metrology, work health and safety, environment and the like. Exhibitors talk here with the people who use their products. It´s a biannual event and its last issue, in 2019, registered close to 800 attendees from 27 countries. Its conference included 20 speeches and its Expo, 121 exhibitors.

Covering the entire value chain of innovative battery and energy storage technologies–from components and production to specific user applicationit is the ideal platform for all stakeholders in the rapidly growing energy storage market. The focus at ees is on energy storage solutions suited to energy systems with increasing amounts of renewable energy sources attracting investors, utilities, installers, manufacturers and project developers from all over the world Contact Solar Promotion www.ees-southamerica.com

Battery Tech Expo — Nordic October 20 Gothenburg, Sweden The Battery Tech Expo Nordic 2021 will bring together the latest technologies and services involved in battery technology. Covering battery storage, battery management systems, fuel cell technology, lithium-ion batteries to

October 26–27 Coventry, UK The Battery Technology Show will showcase the incredible developments happening across the battery and energy storage markets. If you are looking to keep up with the latest news in breakthrough technologies, gain invaluable insight from Key Players in the market, and discover the emerging technologies which are at the frontier of the energy revolution, this is the event for you. This show will feature a select lineup of world-leading manufacturers in the battery and energy storage space on our Expo floor, alongside a first-class conference programme featuring three thought-leading symposiums: The Future of Battery Technology, The Future of Hybrid & Electric Vehicles, and The Global Battery Market. Come and experience the Power of the Future. Contact Evolve Media Group Tel: +44 1179 323 586 Email: info@edpltd.co.uk www.batterytechnologyshow.com

Contact Jayme Gusmão Tel: +55 43 99937 4911 Email: gusmao@fenibat.com www.fenibat.com

ees South America October 18–20 São Paulo, Brazil The special exhibition ees South America is the industry hotspot for suppliers, manufacturers, distributors and users of stationary and mobile electrical energy storage solutions. It will be hosted for the second time at Intersolar South America, taking place at the Expo Center Norte in São Paulo.

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Gothenburg, Sweden: Hosts Battery Tech Expo — Nordic in October.

www.batteriesinternational.com

2021 Event Calendar

Stay connected with the global advanced battery and H/EV technology community

Sept. 14-16, 2021 North America Novi, MI

Nov. 17-18, 2021 Virtual Exhibition and Conference

Nov. 30–Dec.2, 2021 Germany Stuttgart

Join engineers, R&D leads, and executives from across the industry who attend our in-person and virtual events to: Source the latest technology and industry solutions Network with peers at the industry’s largest trade events Learn from thought leaders at expert-led educational sessions

This event gives me real access to see some of the challenges that are met at an end-user level and with companies that are really working with the end-user in mind.

The Battery Show really is a great opportunity to meet people from a very high quality level in terms of industry, in terms of companies, in terms of technology.

Dr. Limhi Somerville., Advanced Battery Research, Jaguar/Land Rover

Bruno Samaniego, Engineering Integration, Airbus Defence and Space

For more info, visit thebatteryshow.eu | thebatteryshow.com

FORTHCOMING EVENTS 19th Asian Battery Conference — 19ABC Virtual November 3-5 Virtual Event Virtual 19ABC will be a new and exciting interactive experience. We will bring you the great content, speakers and networking you have come to expect, but in new ways, all while still providing technical knowledge, celebrating industry success, announcing new products and services and building and supporting our unique 19ABC family. Contact Conference Works Email: events@conferenceworks.com.au www.asianbatteryconference.com

Faraday Annual Conference November 17-18 Hollywood, Florida, US

Battcon November 2-5 Hollywood, Florida, US Battcon is a high-energy mix of industry specific presentations, panels, seminars and workshops, plus a trade show. More than 600 stationary battery users meet at Battcon for three days of professional development and networking with industry experts and peers. It’s a forum focusing on design, selection, application and maintenance for those in the data center, telecom and utility industries can learn from and network with industry experts. Contact Vertiv Group Email: Events@Battcon.com www.battcon.com

49th Power Sources Conference Rescheduled for June 20–23, 2022 Jacksonville, Florida, US The Power Sources Conference is the oldest continually held biennial conference devoted to research and development of power source, energy conversion, power distribution and management technologies for military use. The conference goal is to bring Government, industry and academic researchers and developers together to discuss advances in power and energy technologies to support the growing power demands of military platforms and electronic systems. Contact Samantha Tola Email: stola@pcm411.com www.powersourcesconference.com/index. html

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V Virtual Event We invite any UK-based academic, anybody working in industry, government or policy in the UK battery space, and selected overseas industry and academic partners to SAVE THE DATE for this year’s Faraday Institution Conference. The theme of this year’s conference is Battery Research & Innovation for a Sustainable Future. Registrations will open in September 2021. Contact The Faraday Institution Tel: +44 1235 425 300 www.faraday.ac.uk

The Energy Management Exhibition — EMEX November 24-25 London, UK EMEX is the UK’s must-attend energy event for everyone wanting to increase their organisation’s energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. EMEX connects all commercial energy consumers with leading experts, policy makers and suppliers. EMEX is more than just an event. It’s a platform where practitioners and experts from various backgrounds and sectors are

coming together to share their knowledge and experiences from successful implementations of energy efficiency strategies. Whatever the size of your business there is an opportunity to find more efficiency in your energy use. Contact EMEX Tel: +44 208 505 7073 Email: rr@emexlondon.com www.emexlondon.com

The Battery Show Europe November 30-December 2 Messe Stuttgart, Germany Join the Advanced Battery Community. Meet manufacturers, suppliers, engineers, thought leaders and purchasers for a conference and trade fair focused on the latest developments in the advanced battery and automotive industries. This free trade fair is an opportunity to source the latest energy storage solutions to reduce costs and improve the performance of battery applications. Contact Informa Markets Robin Shelton Tel: +44 779 6941 621 Email: robin.shelton@informa.com www.thebatteryshow.eu

Advanced Automotive Battery Conference USA — AABC USA December 7-9 San Diego, USA + V Virtual Connect in-person and virtually with a global audience of battery technologists from leading automotive OEMs and their key suppliers for a must-attend, three days exploring development trends and breakthrough technologies. Contact Cambridge Enertech Tel: +1 781 972 5400 Email: ce@cambridgeenertech.com www.advancedautobat.com/us

London: Hosts The Energy Management Exhibition — EMEX in November

www.batteriesinternational.com

The Leading Exhibition Series for Batteries and Energy Storage Systems

2021–2022

OCTOBER 6–8, 2021, MUNICH, GERMANY EUROPE’S LARGEST EXHIBITION FOR BATTERIES AND ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEMS www.ees-europe.com

OCTOBER 18–20, 2021, SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL SOUTH AMERICA’S HOT SPOT FOR BATTERIES AND ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEMS www.ees-southamerica.com

DECEMBER 2–4, 2021, GUJARAT, INDIA INDIA‘S LEADING ELECTRICAL ENERGY STORAGE EXHIBITION www.ees-india.in

MARCH 7–9, 2022, DUBAI, UAE EES@MIDDLE EAST ENERGY: MENA‘S MOST COMPREHENSIVE ENERGY STORAGE EVENT www.ees-mena.com

MAY 11–13, 2022, MUNICH, GERMANY EUROPE’S LARGEST EXHIBITION FOR BATTERIES AND ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEMS www.ees-europe.com

FORTHCOMING EVENTS

India: Gujarat hosts The Smarter E India — ees India in December 2021…

The Smarter E India — ees India

India Energy Storage Week — IESW

World Future Energy Summit — WFES 2022

December 2-3 Gujarat, India

January 17-21 Delhi, India

January 17-19, 2022 Abu Dhabi, UAE

The market potential for electrical energy storage in India is expected to be tremendous in the future-especially driven by incoming policies for the emobility industry. With the great success and support of ees Europe, Europe’s largest exhibition for batteries and energy storage, ees India becomes the most powerful energy storage exhibition in India. The exhibition is the industry hotspot for suppliers, manufacturers, distributors and users of stationary electrical energy storage solutions. Covering the entire value chain of innovative battery and energy storage technologies —from components and production to specific user application.

IESW is a flagship international conference & expo by India Energy Storage Alliance (IESA) incorporated in 2019, which was earlier Energy Storage India (ESI). It is India’s premier B2B networking & business event focussed on renewable energy, advanced batteries, alternate energy storage solutions, electric vehicles, charging infrastructure and microgrids ecosystem creation. The annual conference and expo includes following tracks and parallel events The forthcoming edition of IESW is expected to attract global participation with an intent to facilitate bi-lateral trade, which will invite 20+ countries, 50+ regulators & policy makers, 200+ industry leaders, 100+ partners & exhibitors and 1000+ delegates.

WFES (World Future Energy Summit) is a global industry platform connecting business and innovation in energy, clean technology and efficiency for a sustainable future. WFES Expo hosts over 850 exhibiting companies from more than 40 countries; The Future Summit; the unique WFES Forums, covering everything from disruptive technologies to future cities; a set of ground-breaking WFES Initiatives; and WFES Hosted Events, where individual growth markets come under the spotlight.

Contact Solar Promotion www.intersolar.in/en/for-visitors/about-intersolar-india/focus-energy-storage.html

Intersolar North America January 13-15, 2022 Long Beach, CA. USA

Contact Reed Exhibitions Global www.worldfutureenergysummit.com

Contact India Energy Storage Alliance — IESA Email: contact@indiaesa.info www.indiaesa.info/events/india-energy-storage-week-iesw-international-conferenceexpo

As the first major solar + storage event of the year in North America, Intersolar North America highlights the latest energy technologies, services, companies, and organizations striving to create positive impact on climate change and support our planet’s transition into a more sustainable energy future. Attendees get in-depth technical training, hands-on product workshops, trends, and education from top experts. Experience the solar industry’s best practices for the design, installation, and maintenance of code-compliant PV and storage systems. Tour the expo floor to review the best-in-class companies and the top solutions, services, and products for the year ahead. Contact Diversified Communications Email: ISNAInfo@divcom.com www.intersolar.us

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… and Delhi host India Energy Storage Week — IESW in January 2022

www.batteriesinternational.com

LIST OF ADVERTISERS

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Page number

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Accurate Products

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Advanced Battery Concepts

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Cellusuede 24 Continuus Properzi

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Inside front cover

Farmer Mold & Machine Works

Inside back cover

Froetek 28 Hadi Offermann Hammond Group, Inc

84-85 79

Inbatec 48-49 NanoBase 31 MAC Engineering & Equipment

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MACCOR 3 O.M.Impianti 68-69 Penox Group Informa / The Battery Show

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Sasha’s International

Separator Technology

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Sovema Group

Solar Promotion / ees

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Contact Karen Hampton: karen@batteriesinternational.com or call +44 7792 852337

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Batteries International • Summer 2021 • 107

d r o w t s a The l

The Great Desulfurization Dilemma As every visitor to Australia knows, the country’s border force makes even New York’s finest immigration officials look like wimps. When even government traffic wardens say jump, you only ask ‘how high?’. But with the army enforcing the fifth week of a lockdown curfew in the darkened streets of Melbourne, it put secondary lead conference organizer Mark Stevenson in a communications dilemma. Just 5km separates Stevenson from his flat in downtown Melbourne and the recording studio where the virtual conference will be held — but how could he get there? The problem? He required explicit and difficult-to-obtain official authorization to travel those three miles. “A secondary lead conference is absolutely vital even during a pandemic lockdown,” he said. “But the authorities just won’t understand.” Breaking the law isn’t an option. “The police rarely shoot on sight,” he said. “But they’re quite likely to give you an on-thespot $200 fine — which is worse in these cash-strapped times — and then frog-march you back to where you come from. “Don’t they understand that the world needs to know about the latest desulfurization techniques in battery recycling? And the saddest thing? They just don’t care.” Postscript. For the record the secondary lead conference proved a success and its organizer negotiated the lockdown access without apparently begging for his life or meeting traffic wardens. “Strewth, I needed a tinnie to wet the whistle after escaping those drongos,” he later confided.

Forklifts? Sledges? Huskies? No, two legs best Hammond’s Steve Barnes is off on another mercy mission We last left him on Christmas Eve beating off the Polar Bears in the Arctic Wastes of Northern England on his mercy mission to brighten the lives of igloo residents in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Now, with the Land of the Midnight Sun turning darker by the day, Barnes has focused on other charitable good deeds. Despite having earned his Forklift Driver of The Year Award (intermediary class) in 2020 our Steve has returned to the old fashioned way of getting around — running. “Forget my old huskies and sledges, I’m planning on running 1,000 miles this year for Tommy’s the baby charity,” he says. “That includes 12 half-marathons. I’m up to 500 miles so far, so I’m on target.” Would you like to help children across the world? If so go to Steve’s Just Giving page to find out more.

BTW LMRMEH LOL! LMRMEH is the new 99%. For the last 10 years every conference speaker has begun their presentation with the magic 99% number. “Yes, my name is …… and does this conference know that 99% of lead batteries are recyclable?” Claps and audible sighs of pretend surprise and relief from lead battery delegates on hearing this news for another time. But a quiet revolution has begun in the shadow of today’s zoom conferences. A splinter group of young lead aficionados are saying it’s better just to say LMRMEH (Lead is Most Recycled Metal Ever, Honest.) “There’s a fresh wind blowing across the industry as we dispel these old cliches and jargon,” says one young blood. “The older generation never knew how to communicate to those outside the industry. LMRMEH says it all in just six letters. No need to say more.”

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/ stephen-barnes26?utm_source=Sharethis&utm_ medium=fundraising&utm_content=stephenbarnes26&utm_campaign=pfp-email&utm_term=3bbd82f4 078e4c5690880b413fc0a531

108 • Batteries International • Summer2021

Batteries International Issue 120, Summer 2021

Articles inside

THE GREAT LITHIUM ORE WINDFALL

THE MARCH OF THE GIGAFACTORIES

FOCUS: LITHIUM BATTERY TROUBLES, DANGERS RE-EMERGE

NEWS

OBITUARY: KATHYRN BULLOCK, 1945-2021

EDITORIAL