All posts tagged: lithium

GM is betting on battery cells that don’t use lithium

GM is betting on battery cells that don’t use lithium

Published by skeptic

Image: Peak Energy GM has partnered with Peak Energy to develop next-generation sodium-ion battery cells, but they’re not going into EVs – they’re for grid-scale energy storage projects. GM Ventures is making a strategic investment in Peak Energy. Under the partnership, GM will develop the sodium-ion cells in its Michigan battery labs and retain exclusive manufacturing rights. Peak Energy will integrate the cells into its battery storage systems as it ramps up US manufacturing. The companies are targeting a market that’s growing rapidly as utilities add battery storage to support renewable energy, rising electricity demand, and the buildout of data centers and AI infrastructure. Today’s stationary storage market is dominated by lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) batteries. But Peak Energy believes sodium-ion batteries can deliver a lower-cost alternative for grid applications, where energy density is less important than cost, reliability, and safety. Advertisement – scroll for more content A key part of Peak’s pitch is its passively cooled battery storage platform. Conventional LFP battery systems require active cooling equipment to maintain safe operating temperatures, adding cost and complexity. …

New low-temperature process extracts battery-grade lithium with far less waste and energy

New low-temperature process extracts battery-grade lithium with far less waste and energy

Published by Jenni Sidey

Lithium sits at the center of the battery economy. Yet getting it out of rock still looks surprisingly crude. Spodumene, the world’s most common lithium-bearing hard rock, is usually blasted with heat above 1,000 degrees Celsius. After that, acids and other chemicals pull out the metal. What remains is largely waste. That old route has helped China dominate lithium refining. Even though countries like the United States and Australia hold large lithium resources of their own, China still leads the industry. Additionally, it has made hard-rock lithium more expensive than lithium drawn from brines. Yet brine extraction can place environmental strain on water-stressed regions. A team led by researchers from MIT now says it has found a way around one of the industry’s central bottlenecks. Specifically, the challenge is how to crack open hard rock without the punishing heat, heavy waste, and long chain of cleanup steps that define conventional refining. In a paper published in Science, the group describes a low-temperature, closed-loop process that extracts battery-grade lithium salts from spodumene. It also recovers alumina …

The Download: unlocking lithium and controlling Ebola

The Download: unlocking lithium and controlling Ebola

Published by skeptic

This story is from The Spark, our weekly newsletter giving you the inside track on all things biotech. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday. How the Pope’s Magnifica Humanitas offers a template for individuals to meet the AI moment ——Father Séamus Finn, a leader in faith-based and socially responsible investing with the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, and Sister Susan Francois, assistant congregation leader and treasurer of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace Pope Leo XIV’s new encyclical on artificial intelligence includes a statement that warrants serious attention from technologists and policymakers: “Technology is never neutral.”  Magnifica Humanitas is a call to act with courage and solidarity as AI transforms human life, framing the choice ahead as one between the Tower of Babel and the rebuilding of our common humanity. It warns that corporations alone cannot set the direction of such a transformation. With governments slow to regulate AI, institutional investors are stepping into the gap. Here’s how they can build a better future. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to …

The Download: unlocking lithium and controlling Ebola

How a new extraction process could unlock the world’s lithium

Published by skeptic

“At scale, we believe this will be the lowest-cost way of sourcing lithium in the world,” says Yet-Ming Chiang, one of the study authors, who is an MIT professor and a serial entrepreneur behind climate tech companies including Form Energy and Addis Energy. The most economical way to get lithium currently is to extract it from brine, salty water that’s pulled the metal out of rock over the course of millennia. But this technique is geographically limited and currently requires vast tracts of land for massive evaporation pools. The more common tactic is hard-rock mining, where large bodies of ore are blasted apart, cooked at high temperatures, and processed using dangerous chemicals. The researchers’ new method uses a weak acid to dissolve typically nonreactive silicate minerals. That frees not only the lithium but also other useful materials, including alumina and silica. The origin story for this research, and the resulting company, came from another startup founded by Chiang, Sublime Systems, which makes cement using electrochemistry. The team was trying to find a source of highly …

Could sodium replace lithium as the dominant ingredient in batteries?

Could sodium replace lithium as the dominant ingredient in batteries?

Published by skeptic

The world we live in today runs on batteries. But the lithium ion batteries that dominate the market are expensive and environmentally demanding to extract. The raw materials for lithium ion batteries are scarce and concentrated in a few geographical regions. This places continued pressure on supply chains. Sodium-ion batteries are a promising alternative because they use abundant materials. But sodium has shortcomings that have blocked it from being used as a replacement for lithium. In work carried out at the University of Limerick’s Bernal Institute, my team has now produced a battery that combines the strengths of sodium and lithium. This could lead to more sustainable batteries that reduce the supply chain pressures associated with lithium. The results have been published in the journal Nano Energy. Sodium-ion batteries lag behind lithium ones in their energy density. Energy density is the amount of energy stored in a battery relative to its weight or size. Lower battery energy densities have an impact on the devices and machines they power. If electric vehicles used battery modules with …

President Macron inaugurates lithium mine as France, EU seek energy sovereignty

President Macron inaugurates lithium mine as France, EU seek energy sovereignty

Published by Sam Flores

France is going back to the mines. President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday visited a facility in central France run by Imerys, the leading French producer of industrial minerals and which is spearheading a major lithium mining project for battery production. The project promises to create hundreds of jobs and comes as France seeks to ensure its own energy sovereignty. Source link

Tesla lithium refinery discharge contains toxic metals, drainage district demands halt

Tesla lithium refinery discharge contains toxic metals, drainage district demands halt

Published by skeptic

Independent lab testing has found traces of hexavalent chromium — a known carcinogen — along with arsenic and elevated levels of lithium in wastewater discharged from Tesla’s nearly $1 billion lithium refinery in Robstown, Texas. The Nueces County Drainage District No. 2, which manages the ditch receiving Tesla’s 231,000-gallon daily discharge, has issued a cease-and-desist letter demanding the company halt its wastewater flow pending further discussion. The findings are particularly notable because when Tesla unveiled the Robstown refinery earlier this year, it touted the facility’s “acid-free” process as a cleaner alternative to traditional lithium refining. The company claimed its alkaline leach method produces benign byproducts — sand and limestone materials suitable for concrete — rather than the hazardous sodium sulfate waste typical of conventional acid-roasting operations. What the testing found The lab results, generated by accredited environmental testing firm Eurofins Environment Testing on April 10, paint a detailed picture of the refinery’s wastewater composition. A 24-hour composite sample collected on April 7 revealed: Advertisement – scroll for more content Hexavalent chromium measured at 0.0104 mg/L …

North America just got its first new kind of lithium refinery

North America just got its first new kind of lithium refinery

Published by skeptic

Photo: Mangrove Lithium Mangrove Lithium has opened what it says is North America’s first commercial electrochemical lithium refinery, a 1,000-tonne-per-year plant in Delta, British Columbia, aimed at strengthening the continent’s EV battery supply chain. The new site – known as the Single Stack Plant (SSP) – is Mangrove’s first commercial lithium-refining facility and its new headquarters. The company marked the opening with a ribbon-cutting in Delta. Most of the world’s lithium is still refined overseas, which creates bottlenecks and price volatility. As EV adoption ramps up, North America has been racing to bring more of that supply chain closer to home. Mangrove’s approach is different from traditional lithium refining. The company uses a proprietary electrochemical process to convert extracted lithium into battery-grade material, which it says is more economical, flexible, and sustainable than conventional chemical methods. Advertisement – scroll for more content At full capacity, the Delta plant can produce enough battery-grade lithium to support around 25,000 EVs per year. The facility is also a first step toward a larger goal of building a fully …

New PFAS-based method could transform lithium extraction

New PFAS-based method could transform lithium extraction

Published by skeptic

US researchers have demonstrated a technique that converts waste PFAS captured by granular activated carbon into a resource for lithium recovery, offering potential environmental and efficiency advantages. Scientists have developed a new approach to lithium extraction that repurposes problematic chemical pollutants known as PFAS to recover lithium from high-salinity brines. The technique, reported in the journal Nature Water, could provide an alternative pathway for producing lithium used in batteries while simultaneously addressing a persistent waste challenge. The research was conducted by a team at Rice University led by postdoctoral researcher Yi Cheng under the direction of James Tour. James Tour and Yi Cheng, the corresponding and first authors on this manuscript. Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University Instead of focusing solely on removing PFAS – short for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances – from the environment, the scientists explored whether these fluorine-rich compounds could be used productively in industrial processes. Their findings suggest that PFAS captured during environmental cleanup could help drive lithium recovery from brine resources, potentially reducing both waste and the environmental footprint associated with lithium …

Low doses of lithium may slow verbal memory decline from Alzheimer’s

Low doses of lithium may slow verbal memory decline from Alzheimer’s

Published by Jenni Sidey

A once-daily dose of a medication, which averaged 195 mg, produced blood levels significantly lower than those typically pursued by psychiatrists. However, it succeeded in generating a weak signal concerning the potential influence on memory performance. This is the essence of a two-year placebo-controlled clinical trial studying the effects of low-dose lithium therapy on memory performance in older adults who have mild cognitive impairment. The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine conducted the study, which utilized repeated cognitive assessments, neuroimaging data, and blood-based biomarkers to monitor participants over time. The results were published in JAMA Neurology. Lithium has been used for many years as a medication for patients with bipolar disorder. This study examined a different question. It asked how effective long-term therapy with low doses of lithium might be in slowing the decline of memory and cognitive function in individuals diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment, which is often identified before the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. An Existing Medication But with an Alternate Purpose Ariel Gildengers, PhD, was the principal investigator of this clinical trial. …