Analysts warn {that a} lithium provide chain crunch may come as quickly as 2023 — and put a possible damper on U.S. car electrification objectives.
5- to tenfold development is anticipated within the international lithium battery market over the subsequent decade as folks shift to electrical autos (EVs), however already lithium provides are tight.
“Massive firms most likely really feel like there’s a whole lot of lithium on the earth proper now, and I’ll get entry to it,” Venkat Srinivasan, director of the Argonne Collaborative Heart for Power Storage Science and deputy director of the Joint Heart for Power Storage Analysis, informed GreenBiz. “However for everyone else, if you do not have that long-term contract, what do you do?”
Corporations that use lithium exterior of the EV market are particularly feeling the ache, he informed GreenBiz. Some can’t get anybody to reply their calls.
President Joe Biden invoked the Protection Manufacturing Act in March to encourage home manufacturing of minerals for lithium batteries. However with China, Australia and Chile producing a lot of the world’s lithium, and China manufacturing roughly 70 % of the world’s EV batteries, the U.S. has a whole lot of catching as much as do.
Nonetheless, Srinivasan is optimistic that the U.S. will clear up its provide chain crunch. Lots of people are “throwing concepts on the wall,” he stated, and meaning one thing has to stay. Plus, he’s excited that many firms lastly have market funding within the $100 million vary. “Folks like me who’re feeding the R&D pipeline have firms that at the moment are these options very rigorously as a result of they’ve the funding to scale,” he stated.
This is what seems to be promising within the near-to-medium time period:
A closed loop lithium-ion battery economic system
A handful of firms have cracked the challenges of lithium battery recycling and are commercializing a promising new expertise for recovering lithium, cobalt and nickel from spent batteries. Buyers are pouring in a whole bunch of thousands and thousands to the trade, whereas the Biden administration earmarked $3.16 billion towards it.
A lithium battery recycling trade may present a brand new supply of lithium throughout the subsequent few years, and with out the environmental and neighborhood impacts from mining new supplies.
Ascend Parts of Westborough, Massachusetts, is a pioneer of this expertise. It shreds batteries, extracts the impurities and leaves behind invaluable lithium, cobalt and nickel in a “black mass.” It then converts the black mass into battery cathodes in a closed loop system that produces minimal waste. The expertise is an enormous enchancment over smelting or burning batteries, a easy however inefficient course of that produces waste and poisonous air emissions.
A fascinating interview with Ascend Parts CEO Mike O’Kronley and Disruptive Investing explains the method and its potential.
Ascend Parts prefers to name the method “upcycling,” as a result of it converts recovered supplies into a brand new, totally recycled battery cathode that performs in addition to or higher than cathodes constructed from newly mined minerals. The corporate has attracted $90 million from buyers and is constructing a producing facility in Covington, Georgia, that can open later this yr, with a capability for processing 30,000 metric tons of discarded lithium-ion batteries and scrap per yr.
Toronto-based Li-Cycle is equally deploying a closed loop method and is setting up services in Arizona, Alabama and New York. It expects to have a complete of 65,000 metric tons of lithium-ion battery processing capability yearly throughout its “Spokes” in North America and Europe, and not too long ago raised $200 million from metals producer and commodity dealer Glencore.
Whereas there are usually not but sufficient spent EV batteries to scale up the nascent recycling (or upcycling) trade, specialists anticipate that starting in 2025, 398,000 tons of batteries will start to age out of EV functions within the U.S. within the close to time period, Srinivasan stated that scrap from battery manufacturing is a possible supply of lithium.
Minerals restoration may also help however gained’t clear up the lithium provide crunch, specialists stated. And one longer-range problem, warned Srinivasan, is the transfer to create EV batteries with out cobalt and nickel due to these minerals’ provide chain points. Restoration of cobalt and nickel are what make lithium battery upcycling cost-competitive, and with out these minerals, upcycling could also be much less enticing, he stated.
Mining new geothermal sources of lithium
Mining new sources of lithium have to be a part of the answer, and geothermal sources supply a probably extra sustainable provide than conventional strategies of extraction from open pits or salt flats. Efforts to extract lithium from geothermal sources underlying the huge Salton Sea in California’s Imperial Valley seem significantly promising and will grow to be operational inside a couple of years.
Geothermal crops function by pumping from deep underground a fancy saline resolution that absorbs the earth’s warmth and is enriched with lithium and different minerals. Geothermal crops convert that warmth into electrical energy.
A number of firms within the Imperial Valley working 11 geothermal power crops are creating applied sciences to extract and course of lithium from the geothermal brine to promote into the EV battery market.
The well being drawback must be solved in parallel with creating this lithium trade since you want a wholesome setting to work.
“All three firms are in numerous phases of nearing the end line, but it surely’s actually taking place,” stated Michael McKibben, analysis professor at College of California, Riverside, co-leading a $1.2 million Division of Power analysis grant to evaluate the long-term sustainability of lithium sources beneath the Salton Sea.
McKibben stated preliminary estimates present the huge lithium reserves may provide 85 % of present world manufacturing, and final for no less than 75 years.
EnergySource Minerals of San Diego is the furthest alongside. It owns one plant and is scaling up for business operation throughout the subsequent yr and a half. Berkshire Hathaway Power Co., which owns 10 of the 11 geothermal crops, is piloting lithium extraction over the subsequent 18 months at considered one of its geothermal websites. It expects to achieve business manufacturing of lithium by 2026.
“To me, the large challenge is can Berkshire Hathaway do it on the remaining 10 crops,” McKibben stated.
The state’s Lithium Valley Fee, chaired by environmental justice advocate Silvia Paz, envisions a full battery manufacturing and recycling provide chain within the Imperial Valley that might present good paying jobs in considered one of California’s poorest areas.
Geothermal sources are nonetheless a couple of years off, nonetheless, and one stumbling block is the poisonous mud launched by the drying Salton Sea that’s linked to bronchial asthma and different illnesses in neighboring communities. “The well being drawback must be solved in parallel with creating this lithium trade since you want a wholesome setting to work,” McKibben stated.
Moreover, the Lithium Valley Fee is exploring a particular tax for native communities or some mechanism to make sure revenues circulation again to residents, he stated.
“There’s a whole lot of hope [the Salton Sea] goes to alter issues,” stated Srinivasan, “but it surely has to return on board, and it needs to be cost-effective.”
