Geladen Battery Podcast (engl.)

Battery manufacturers around the world have been announcing solid-state cells for its groundbreaking characteristics. Yes, we see multiple outstanding (almost-) solid-state lab cells (some of which are already on the market!) but the high expectations have never really met reality: Not a single car manufacturer is currently placing all-solid-state cells in their EVs. So, whats taking them so long?

Our podcast guest Prof. Jennifer Rupp researches solid state materials for sustainable energy storage and conversion. Her research on batteries is currently centered on designing novel classes of lithium solid state conductors, inventing cheap battery solid state synthesis routes for new hybrid and solid cell designs and defining cyber-physical battery synthesis and high throughput analytics.

We ask her how solid-state batteries work and what types of ASSBs (All-Solid-State-Batteries) could deliver tomorrow's best performance. Obviously, like in current lithium-ion batteries, the interplay between anode, cathode and electrolyte is mystery but determinant of success at the same time.

So what material approaches for solid state electrolytes batteries are the experts talking about? Solid electrolytes can be divided into organic and inorganic electrolytes. For inorganic electrolytes, the advantages for safety are predominant as they are non-flammable and do not contain toxic materials. Oxide-based electrolytes usually have good chemical stability and are compatible with high-energy cathode materials. However, the ion conductivity is lower than for sulfide-based electrolytes. Sulfide-based electrolytes generally have a higher ionic conductivity, but are more chemically unstable. For more, click in, tune in and stay charged!

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This podcast episode deals with an energy storage technology that is still underestimated in materials science: Hybrid battery supercaps. Supercaps are installed, for example, for regenerative braking (recuperation) in vehicles such as buses, trains, cranes and trains. These powerful energy storage systems are also found in wind turbines. Now, the Estonian company Skeleton Technologies invented a new hybrid form of "battery supercaps".

Dr. Sebastian Pohlmann is Vice President of Business Development at Skeleton Technologies. Skeleton is a developer and manufacturer of energy storage devices for transport, grid and automotive applications.

There is few, but they do already exist today: Hybrid battery supercaps. The Estonian materials researchers are trying to take advantage of the characteristics of both worlds: The power density of supercaps and the energy density of batteries. This is historically not groundbreaking - but seems more promising than ever.

Skeleton's "SuperBattery" achieve up to 50,000 charging cycles with ultra-fast 1-minute charging. The "SuperBattery" - like every supercapacitor - is said to be free of cobalt, copper, nickel, and soon to be used in public transportation vehicles (i.e., buses, trucks) and charging infrastructure. The company is also hoping to soon equip large mining and off-road machines with its battery.

Link: https://www.skeletontech.com/superbattery

As Asian and Western battery manufacturers see India as a super attractive consumer market, India itself is trying to empower its own domestic battery producers. According to Prof. Amreesh Chandra, a growing part of India's young battery industry takes a bet on a specific domestic battery material mix: Sodium-ion batteries.

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These cell innovations rely on sodium carbonate, sodium hydroxide (electrolyte) as well as aluminum (current collectors), iron phosphate (cathode) and hard carbons (anode). "All of these materials can be mined, produced and deployed by companies in India, says Prof. Amreesh Chandra. His research at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) proves the following advantages of sodium-ion batteries for electric bikes:

India's Sodium-Ion Batteries

Prof. Dr. Maitane Berecibar is an expert for self-healing cell properties and battery sensors. She is the head of the Battery Innovation Center in the MOBI research group at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). Her expertise of the Battery Innovation Center includes emerging battery technologies, battery manufacturing, self-healing properties, sensor integration, modeling activities (electrochemical, thermal, electrical, lifetime), cooling system development, second life and safety. And that is what she is talking about.

The advantages of self-healing batteries and sensors are obvious: Very stable, sustainable, long-living, smart and safe batteries that provide valuable data for a secondary life. Sounds wonderful! But, Prof. Berecibar is not afraid of hiding the technology's downsides: Right now, scientists are still developing concept lab cells, that are yet quite expensive, complex to build and difficult to understand.

One of the most significant questions for the battery industry remains unclear, though. Is it possible to scale up self-healing battery production while implementing life-time prolonging properties to each and every cell chemistry, individually? And, why would a battery manufacturer actually consider selling "forever batteries" in the first place (serious question!)?

Our podcast guest for this episode is Prof. David Howey. He is a British Professor of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford and holds a Tutorial Fellow at St Hilda’s College. His research is focused on modelling and managing energy storage systems, for electric vehicles (EVs) as well as grid and off-grid power systems.

Battery state of health (SOH) is a measurement that indicates the level of degradation and remaining capacity of the battery. Expressed in a simple way, it describes the difference between the health of a new battery and the health of a used battery. Typically, this is represented as a percentage of its initial capacity and performance.

According to Prof. Howey's expectations, most EV batteries are projected to last hundreds of charging cycles (most LiBs) without a noticeable loss in SOH. However, EV batteries do age over time even if the battery isn't used at all.

Apparently, there are always minor losses in battery capacity: Especially fast charging does harm the battery in case of a bad thermal battery management. At higher temperatures, one of the effects on lithium-ion batteries' is greater charging performance & lower degradation. That's why many EVs heat their batteries up before charging them at higher speeds. In winter times, when temperatures are low outside, this can get quite important when looking at a high life-expectancy of an EV's battery.

As supply chains of battery materials are fragile, raw materials are getting expensive. At the same time vast amounts of old done (cobalt-rich) batteries are available for a circular economy. That's why battery recycling is getting more and more attention! Plus, the EU Battery Regulation now forces battery makers to strictly follow sustainability rules, anyways. Let's have a look at the recycling plans of Sweden's largest battery maker Northvolt.

Our podcast guest on this episode is Prof. Emma Nehrenheim. She is a Professor for Environmental Engineering at Mälardalen University. As an academic researcher and industry innovator she wants to deliver the world's greenest battery for her employer. She summarizes her innovation efforts as follows: “It’s clear to me that batteries are the enabler to so much of [my] vision for electrification, but there are better and worse ways to build a battery from an environmental perspective."

The "better way" of "building a battery" includes a functioning recycling strategy. Fortunately, scienists optimized two very sophisticated paths of how to recycle a useless, done battery: They are based on either (1) pyrometallurgic recycling and/or (2) hydrometallurgic recycling technologies. Pyrometallurgic techniques are already frequently used to get back common battery materials. But this comes with an enormous energy input. Northvolt‘s hydrometallurgical recycling technology on the other side retrieves lithium, nickel, cobalt, and other metals from its black mass. The process produces these metals at a rather high grade so they can be used to create new batteries afterwards. The hydromet technology works with all formats and chemistries of lithium-ion batteries and can recover almost all batteries’ materials. The following high-performing metal products produced from this black mass come with battery-grade purity levels: (1) Lithium carbonate, (2) Cobalt sulfate, (3) Nickel sulfate, (4) Manganese carbonate.

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Today we are talking to James Eaton. He is the CEO of a British tier one battery pack company, named Ionetic. His company manufactures packs, modules and designs custom-made solutions for minor automotive OEMs. James Eaton spent four years working in battery pack research at Imperial College London. Ionetic‘s goal is to „help automotive companies make the electrification transition with great engineering solutions at a price point they can afford."

Ionetic uses its ARC battery pack design platform in order to file their customer's needs and requirements. The plattform then delivers suggestions of electronic architectures, number of cells, chemistries and all other characteristics in terms of height, width and length. With this approach, Ionetic reaches a plus in performance and a decrease in volume.

Many existing commercially available battery packs have energy densities of around 150 Wh/kg. A Tesla Model 3 for example has a module energy density of 197Wh/kg and a pack energy density of 156Wh/kg. That is considered high-price battery technology. With its efforts to decrease unused volume waste Ionetic states to have constructed a battery module with "an energy density of 226Wh/kg." And a "pack energy density of at least 180Wh/kg is targeted.“

"Cell to Pack" vs. "Cell to Vehicle"

Ionetic's business of "Cell to Pack Design“ is based on not wasting packaging matrial and using as much space as possible within the battery module/pack. "Cell to Vehicle (so, filling up every inch of the vehicle‘s body with cells) requires much more communication between engineers", says James Eaton, "and is more expensive and potentially more difficult for maintenance and safety."

New battery materials must indisputably improve sustainability standards with respect to mining, transport, processing and recycling. This is where "multivalent batteries" come into play!

Multivalent batteries are electrochemical storage technologies that employ "multivalent ions", e.g., Mg2+, Ca2+, Zn2+, Al3+ as the active charge carrier in the battery electrolytes as well as in the battery anodes & cathodes. Materials such as magnesium, calcium, zinc or aluminum are much more abundant compared to materials inside a traditional lithium-ion battery.

Our podcast guest is emphasizing another aspect: Multivalent batteries theoretically even provide greater energy density and storage capacity! This is due to their greater valency. Our guest expert, Prof. Dr. M. Rosa Palacín Peiro is a Spanish battery researcher at the "Institute of Materials Science" of Barcelona. She is a member of the "Alistore ERI" Network of Excellence, the President of the "International Battery Association" (IBA) and a member of the Governing Board for "Batteries Europe" (European Commission). She explains why multivalent batteries will be driven by the speed of research, sustainability, supply chains and price!

Multivalent Charge Carriers - Download a chapter on multivalent batteries for the Encyclopedia of Electrochemistry: https://hiu-batteries.de/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Encyclopedia_Electrochemistry.pdf

Headlines on multivalent battery cell chemistries:

1) https://www.engineering.com/story/amid-record-lithium-prices-battery-researchers-turn-to-calcium

2) https://www.newscientist.com/article/2336296-battery-made-of-crab-shell-and-zinc-is-rechargeable-and-biodegradable/

3) https://www.deccanherald.com/science-and-environment/revving-up-energy-storage-systems-1137548.html

4) https://www.intelligentliving.co/battery-made-of-salt-sulfur-and-aluminum/

Fastned is a Dutch company that operates a network of over 100 EV charging stations in the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Switzerland. A large majority of its stations are located at Dutch highway rest areas.

Roland van der Put is Fastned's Head of Charging Technology. In this podcast he explains why Scandinavia, the Netherlands, the UK, Germany and France are making such great process - and why other countries are not.

The interview was recorded in July 2022. All information given in the podcast relates to this point in time.

This is a follow-up podcast of Prof. Passerini's previous talk on Sodium Ion Batteries: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuZ9CrTnYLA

Momentum is on the side of Sodium Ion Batteries! As prices are rising for lithium ion battery materials, such as Nickel, Cobalt and Lithium among a few others, demand for alternative materials is getting louder. The first manufacturers (CATL, Tiamat, Faradion, Natron Energy) all claim to have found a unique way of substituting lithium ion batteries with SIB cell chemistry. In fact, these batteries dont show any great downsides at all: Lifespan, Performance, Capacity are comparable to LIB technology. So, the major driving factors are safety and costs. Plus, sustainability issues such as material sourcing, abundance and mining are supposedly much less problematic compared to lithium-based batteries. Production expenses are as well pretty similar to those ones existing. Only drop of bitterness: Some cathode materials could be toxic in some forms. And: The less valuable electrode materials are designed, battery recycling doesnt really pay off.