Search is on For Cobalt-Free Batteries As Metal Gets Increasingly Rare and Expensive (technologyreview.com) 153
An anonymous reader writes: Conamix, a little-known startup based in Ithaca, New York, has raised several million dollars to accelerate its development of cobalt-free materials for lithium-ion batteries, the latest sign that companies are eager to find alternatives to the increasingly rare and expensive metal. The problem: The price of cobalt has more than doubled in recent months, as global demand skyrockets for the lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles and smartphones. It's also being driven up by the fact that the metal is mined primarily in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where labor and corruption issues are rife. Earlier this year, the nation decided to raise royalties on cobalt and other metals.
Given the ambitious expansion plans of lithium-ion producers, the world will face cobalt shortages by the early 2020s, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. This is keeping prices of lithium-ion batteries high and preventing major automakers from lining up long-term supply deals on favorable terms. The mounting threat to electric-vehicle growth has prompted a growing number of companies to explore other solutions.
Given the ambitious expansion plans of lithium-ion producers, the world will face cobalt shortages by the early 2020s, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. This is keeping prices of lithium-ion batteries high and preventing major automakers from lining up long-term supply deals on favorable terms. The mounting threat to electric-vehicle growth has prompted a growing number of companies to explore other solutions.
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But here is another thought, US interests end at US boarders.
Re:So (Score:4, Informative)
In the short term, that's the way it is. But the DRC produces under 60% (still too much) of the world's supply, not 100%. Most other producers just make cobalt as a byproduct of copper and nickel.
Cobalt has other uses, pigment, alloying steel, 'superalloys' and matrix for tungsten-carbide. https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
8800 metric tons/year in the USA, 'Batteries' didn't even make the chart for end uses in 2015.
I agree, the DRC haven't started any world wars. We should just continue watching the Europeans, closely.
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How about we pay them what they ask for their raw materials, and leave managing their country up to them?
Certainly, that way we get to keep selling yachts and Manhattan condo penthouses to their elite kleptocrats.
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Or maybe it’s time to stop being racist and actually bring proper jobs housing food and sanitation to African countries if you want their raw materials.
Or maybe that's their own fucking problem.
It isn't like we went there and removed all those things. They are simply backwards, like they've always been.
If there is one thing history can teach you, it is that you can't force someone in another country to adopt your values.
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So it's The King of Belgium's problem?
I don't think the Congolese are going to be happy about that arrangement, but I'd buy the pay per view of the king arriving to take charge.
Re:So (Score:4, Interesting)
Or maybe it’s time to stop being racist and actually bring proper jobs housing food and sanitation to African countries if you want their raw materials.
It's the corruption and dictatorship that keeps people poor. Japan has few resources but is economically free with rule of law to protect investments from robbers and corruption, so people can respond to needs.
In places like this, you need kickback permission to do anything, and if you manage that, have to give a cut to the kleptocrats. Or it's a failed state and you just close up shop because of armed looting robbery. The kleptocrats may keep your competitors out of business, which is the opposite of a free market.
It's difficult and dangerous and low reward to start an enterprise there.
It has nothing to do with quality of government marshalling of a desirable resource. No resources needed to lift a society out of dirt-floor poverty.
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Japan is even worse than America in that whole 'print your way to prosperity'. Their debt levels are astronomical and they government buys stocks and bonds to keep everything afloat (temporarily). You can import a lot of prosperity if other places are willing to take your paper, once that stops though *shrugs shoulders*.
How does Japan's astronomically high savings rate figure into that?
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Racist?
I'm struggling to understand your comment.
Can you please explain how it is the job of western countries to bring such things to African countries, if they can just do it themselves? I'm sure you're also aware of the many efforts that are already doing this and have been doing so for decades.
Or are you arguing that inhabitants of African countries lack the ability to do this themselves?
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Yeah, that worked wonderfully in the middle east two decades ago right? Oh, right...we've been 'fighting terror' in the area ever since.
Now, if the USA turned imperialistic and claimed these places as territories maybe.
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How's that working out for Puerto Rico lately?
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Wow that idea of measuring against other nations in poverty, just so wildly corrupt. Yeah we know, as far as US corporation waiting to ruthlessly exploit Puerto Rico are concerned, why don't the Pureto Ricans just fuck off and die already so we can steal the land for cents on the dollar. Yeah they refused free money and assistance or are you seriously comparing that ludicrous loans with inflated interest rates as assistance.
Rare earth mines are notoriously dirty and that is the reason for Africa not becaus
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There is only one major exploitation going on, which is that all ships must be US flagged (Merchant Marine Act of 1920). Trump waved this.
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The price gouging via government surcharge there is to line the pockets of the kleptocrats, either via direct corruption or indirect (bribes) or most likely both. This is why dictatorships form.
The free market, stuffed by this government-controlled monopoly, is looking for "substitutes" in the economic sense [juliansimon.com], which is why the price of commodities drops decade after decade sans "intervention", which screws this process up.
This has a granularity of years though, to bring prices back down, if not a decade or
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General consensus seems to be that that paper is bunk and shouldn't have been published.
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So it wasn't "'Goodenough"?
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"General consensus seems to be that that paper is bunk and shouldn't have been published."
Those of us that actually tested it for shits and giggles (most jewelers that do metal work happen to have things for plating various materials) found it to be rather correct. Need to tweak plated layer thickness, otherwise you don't get shit for voltage, but it works.
You can take your 'general consensus' and tell them to fuck off unless they've actually constructed their own in-house prototypes.
not enough resources on the planet to meet demand (Score:5, Insightful)
i've mentioned this before, on other articles that mention lithium batteries and electric vehicles. cobalt is not the only element involved that's in short supply: there isn't enough copper, there isn't enough neodymium, and lithium is a material that explodes when brought into contact with air and water. copper piping and wiring is already stolen from buildings and from church roofs.
neodymium, i don't know if you've ever investigated how it's refined, but it's a radioactive-decay byproduct, meaning that it's only found in amongst *radioactive* deposits (where do you think those are dumped?) and the actual refining itself requires a THOUSAND LITRES of boiling sulphuric acid per 1kg of neodymium. the black market factory photos from remote places in china are shocking... chimney stacks just dumping sulphuric acid fumes directly into the air, and the waste dumped in the nearest river, poisoning the local environment for hundreds of miles downstream.
and we have western governments, whose populations of course do not live anywhere near these mines and factories in Congo or China, banning diesel cars on the basis that they "create pollution", i mean.. .i'm really shocked by the total lack of understanding and appreciation of the true consequences of tthese "environmentally-friendly" decisions.
i've been trying for many years now, but i honestly have absolutely no idea how to get this across to people that we need to trim down the *amount* of materials needed in vehicles. Category L7e "Heavy Quadricycles" such as Riversimple's design concept, the Renault Twizzy and so on, these are perfect: tuned up these small sub-350kg vehicles can go nearly110km/h (70mph), just like some quad-bikes, and that's with only 25HP!
the concept is called "Mass Decompounding", you don't need power-assisted brakes, you don't need power-steering, you can use cross-radial hard silicon compound tires which will last 80,000 miles and have a rolling resistance coeffficient three times less than a standard tire... *all because of the dramatically-reduced weight*. and that reduced weight means a smaller engine, and if it's hybrid or electric it means a smaller battery.
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Aluminum can be substituted for copper.
Neodymium is used in NiMH batteries, which are on the way out. Lithium batteries don't use it.
Lithium in lithium ion batteries doesn't explode. That's usually the electrolyte, although if you overcharge them you can get reactive lithium to plate out.
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Sure, but if you claim batteries are the demand you look like you're ignorant. Also, if the neodymium gets too expensive you can always switch back to older technologies.
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Can't switch back to brush driven motors like have been used for hundreds of years and are still used in lots of places eh?
The only reason they use Neodymium brushless motors is because the neodymium is so cheap, the second it gets expensive they'll be back to standard motors in no time at all. The rise of brushless motors was directly tied to Chinese subsidies in the rare earth production that cratered the price of rare earth material and made the neodymium so cheap they couldn't justify using brushes that
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"Rare earth elements" are not rare. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
And particularly Neodymium is extremely common.
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Posted in every thread about batteries ever. Thanks for the insight!
Of course, the density of the material, location, and difficulty seperating it is where the cost comes in.
Like gold, for instance. Les than 0.003 parts per million in the earth's crust. Enough in the earth's core to plate the planet with a 13 foot blanket. It's not "rare", it's just hard to find in easily accesible form.
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Can't switch back to brush driven motors like have been used for hundreds of years and are still used in lots of places eh?
There is no need for that. With electronic commutation being relatively cheap and already used for permanent magnet motors, brushless reluctance and induction motors are a better choice.
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http://business.financialpost.... [financialpost.com]
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Permanent magnet motors - which Tesla and many others either use or are moving to - use gobs of neodymium and dysprosium. Typically 2-3 kg of neo magnets per motor.
Add to that a big hunk of neodymium in every wind turbine.
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And every new natural gas or coal plant
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Thanks - didn't know that.
Still I don't think it's reasonable to say that the pollution caused in mongolia in refining neodymium is a function of "green energy". It's much more a function of the Chinese lacking sensible environmental regulations. If we wanted to start a useful trade war we could put tariffs on stuff that's made in ways that are needlessly damaging to the environment.
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Fully agree! Unfortunately, many assign "external" costs for bad power use in China and such against power generation industries and consumers here. Reliable power is one of the best ways to increase the standard of living of any country.
And, unsurprisingly, when standards of living increase, people start to worry much more about their environment, their food, the work conditions of their friends and families, etc. I've spent about half of the last 20 years living in 2nd and 3rd world countries, working
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I think they have bigger problems, maybe alien invaders put a dome over their whole country.
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This should be fun (Score:2)
You can both argue with each other to see who is right.
Everyone else can laugh at you both, safe in the knowledge China is actually building solar and wind.
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They are actually focusing on both, putting large nuclear plants near big cities, and coal plants near up-and-coming smaller cities. Shanghai is essentially all nuclear powered, but go to Xi'an or even Shengzhou and it's mainly coal. China has a really poor power grid, and so distributing reliable power plants is common. China's building out the rest [world-nuclear-news.org] of it's new 23 GW of capacity planned to deploy in 2020, and will have another 30 GW in production at that point (probably completed by 2022 or so).
Now, for
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In the 'Mass Decompounding' line but even better. The Ariel atom.
You do want to cut weight, but you want to ADD power. Also sticky tires, not slippery ones.
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Rare earths are mined and processed in California (Score:3)
Perhaps not as cheaply as the Chinese process, but my understanding of what MolyCorp are doing suggests that you can indeed refine Neodymium without dumping sulfuric acid into rivers.
https://cen.acs.org/articles/9... [acs.org]
This isn't so much an issue with Neodymium but with the fact that we tend to buy materials from wherever they are cheapest and without a second thought for the externalized costs that went into producing them.
Radioactivity certainly is an issue if it winds up in wastewater, but if the radioactiv
Re:not enough resources on the planet to meet dema (Score:4, Informative)
"Although neodymium is classed as a rare earth, it is a fairly common element, no rarer than cobalt, nickel, or copper, and is widely distributed in the Earth's crust."
There does seem to be illegal mining going on in China, but that's not a problem with the element, per se.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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The other often used way is fractioned fluorid cristallization, which uses hydrofluoric acid, not sulphuric acid.
And Neodymium like all Lanthanoids can be found in Rare Earth deposits, together with other Rare Earths like Praseodymium or Samarium. Maybe you are confusing Neodymium (atomic number 60) with Promethium (atomic number 61), which indeed was discovered as a f
Economies of scales does not ALWAYS work... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Economies of scales does not ALWAYS work... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because battery prices weren't close to their raw material costs. Even today they're well above their raw material costs.
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Because battery prices weren't close to their raw material costs. Even today they're well above their raw material costs.
Hey, come on now, stop that. We can't go having sane rational explanations littering up the place...
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Strange, why do we recycle them then?
Wow: it is even cheaper to recycle one than to mine it, refine it, transport it and then use it.
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Not for long, evidently.
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Yes, you can build higher, but the cost of building skyscrapers hasn't improved at all. The Empire State Building, built in 1931, costs about $400 million in today's dollars. One World Trade Center costs $3.9 billion.
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Spoken like someone that does no jewelry work. Well done!
Some pieces can take literal DAYS to make as you have to cast each piece, carefully solder or fuse it together, make sure everything is polished and structurally-sound, then the stones need to be well-cut and also mounted.
Faceting a single tiny stone to perfection can take hours.
And those of us that do it all by HAND, not even using a rolling mill?
You're only paying that insane markup at most chain jewelers because you aren't smart enough to notice th
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"Jewelry is meaningless drivel"
But it gets me laid far more than you.
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Because most major innovations recently have been in tech that have economies of scale, network effects, or negligible marginal costs. I mean, software and the various benefits of it scale really well, and that's what's been driving the economy forward for 30-odd years.
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The thought is that as demand increases, production lines will be developed and drop the price.
The upside is now that cobalt is becoming more expensive it is driving innovation to develop better batteries.
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This is why I always wondered why electric car enthusiasts just automatically assumed that battery prices would just keep dropping and dropping.
Because electric car producers understand the economics and actively work around them. Do you know *why* battery prices keep dropping? Mainly because of how each successive battery generation seems to have less cobalt than the last.
Panasonic announced last month their aim to have cobalt free batteries very soon. As it is they have around 3% in their cathodes which is phenomenally low compared to the 20% in 2014.
Hey cobalt cant. But tin can (Score:3)
What does Uranium, Nickel, Cobalt, and Radon spell? UNiCoRn!
What's the best formula for breakfast? Barium, Cobalt, and Nitrogen (BaCoN)
Cobalt is a NONE ISSUE (Score:3)
BUT, The Phillipines, along with Canada and Australia, all have plenty of Cobalt to last another decade for all batteries. IOW, if they took over 100% of all cobalt mining, they would still have an easy 10+ years. [statista.com] So, even with China trying to control this, they really can not. What is HAPPENING is that China is manipulating the stock prices and only idiots will buy into this garbage.
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Tesla, or rather Panasonic, is leading the way in using low cobalt cathodes. I don't see this as a long term problem.
Re:Tesla (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed, their cathodes tested in at only 3% cobalt by weight, which is mind-bogglingly little. They've stated that they're quickly en route to using no or nearly-no cobalt. Based on the test results so far, I believe it.
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To correct the parent, Telsa claims at least part of the effort in Cobalt reduction is their own innovations as they have their own staff assigned to Battery technology working in Tandem with Panasonic. Musk has specifically claimed the next generation battery will be entirely cobalt free and the 3% figure comes from an independent teardown by Volkwagen's technologies group.
This gives Tesla a MASSIVE advantage in battery production by eliminating one of the most expensive components (which is seeing huge pr
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"Musk has specifically claimed the next generation battery will be entirely cobalt free"
Easy to promise; hard to achieve.
It's always takes longer and cost more than Elon thinks as he's proven time & again
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Little tubes that produce power through a chemical process. Usually used to power portable devices and machines.
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This is all due to the "shorts" though, not the Tesla management.
Makes sense.... I remember reading a week ago or so about Elon alleging sabotage against the company and possible conspiracies being investigated.
Who knew the shorts were willing to go to such extreme measures to try and recoup their bet.
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Awe, is there some sand stuck up in your vag there cartman?
You're skewed view and desperate need to bash tesla is adorable though. Maybe you've got a card or two in the short game as well?
Re:Tesla (Score:5, Informative)
Just so people know:
1) The "whistleblower" he refers to is the confessed sabateur.
2) The 9% was a mix of middle management and the being-phased-out Solar City sales division (Tesla's solar division is switching to an exclusive focus on solar roofing products). Tesla has long been criticized for spending too much on SG&A. But of course, expect the shorts to make a fuss when they make SG&A cuts too.
3) The "fire" was something suspicious smouldering in a vent. No impact to production. BTW, I love how you guys focus on every incident, no matter how minor, at Tesla, and completely ignore every issue at every other place, no matter how major. For example, at BMW's SC plant, a worker died from having his head crunched up by a lift. Did you even hear about it?
4) The "tent" is a Sprung building. Cheap, fast, and can last for decades. They're popular for athletic buildings, warehouses, hangars, military applications, mining, etc. There was even one at "Ground Zero" in New York after the terrorist attacks. Reno Tahoe Airport used one for ticketing / checkin / baggage for years.
Re, #2 and #4: please decide on whether you think Tesla is spending too much money or too little so that your arguments can be consistent. Thanks!
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They are spending too much money on the wrong things. It is a pyramid scheme.
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Why do you fap so much over the thought of Tesla's downfall? There should be a lot for you to be happy about. You have a binary username. Tesla is taking the "computer nerd" approach to building cars. That should be interesting to you. They're electric! This company had a major hand in forcing other companies to rethink their stance on electric cars! Electric cars are cool! As a computer nerd, the thought of building your own car like you used to build your own PC is a really neat idea. Musk opened
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Apparently the truth is
Whose truth?
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2) And even with the 9% layoff they still have increased their payroll since January 1st.
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Or, to put it in context, these "tents" are more substantial than the tents that the Trump administration has been using to house children in Texas, where the weather is much more extreme.
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I strongly recommend people go to Sprung's website and read about these things, they're really impressive. They can be heavily insulated; some are used in the high arctic. And one in Vanuatu survived a Cat 5 hurricane with only minor exterior damage.
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Are you on the Model3OwnersClub forums?
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Yep. :)
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KarenRei?
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Tesla's batteries also use 1/3 the cobalt of the industry average. Other than Musk's Distortion Field, it seems to be their main advantage.
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I thought it was a Tesla/Panasonic joint. Is the tech/IP/factory Panasonic's? Cause I thought that was their future business plan (supplying batteries to other EV companies) .