The Elements of Innovation Discovered
The Elements of Innovation Discovered
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The sourcing of the cobalt, graphite, lithium, nickel and other materials that go into lithium-ion batteries, and what happens to these rechargeable cells when they are spent has many worried that electric vehicles may not be any better for the environment than their internal combustion counterparts. To address these concerns before they become a problem, the U.S. Department of Energy, Ford Motor Company and Everledger have teamed up on pilot programs to ensure EV and...
Being supported by a $200 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy's Battey Materials Processing and Battery Manufacturing initiative, General Motors has partnered with battery manufacturer Microvast to develop specialized electric vehicle battery separator technology along with a coinciding plant. Separators are safety-critical EV battery components that serve to separate the anode from the cathode, allowing ion transfer. Contributing its cutting-edge separator and...
A team of researchers at Pennsylvania State University has developed a technology that enables electric vehicle batteries to obtain a full charge in just 10 minutes. The breakthrough in EV battery design, reported in the Oct. 12 edition of the journal Nature, produced a record-breaking combination of a shorter charge time and more energy acquired for a longer travel range. "The need for smaller, faster-charging batteries is greater than ever," said Chao-Yang Wang, the William...
Branching into the edge field of quantum computing, Volkswagen Group has partnered with Canadian quantum technology company Xanadu to answer a single question: can quantum computers help design batteries? As the known world and its elemental makeup have been thoroughly dissected, humanity has reached the point where it is slightly cumbersome to discover new ways to utilize the elements on the periodic table. Existing classical methods have been the cornerstone of...
Ask anyone, "who invented the lightbulb?" and most would be able to answer Thomas Edison. Ask anyone, "who invented the telephone?" and some would be able to answer Alexander Graham Bell. Ask anyone, "who invented the lithium-ion battery powering your smartphone and laptop?" and perhaps scant few would be able to answer John Goodenough. Along with his colleagues Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino, Goodenough was jointly bestowed the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the...
Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed something many of the most extreme temperate locations in the world have long been waiting for, batteries that perform well in freezing cold and scorching hot weather while maintaining high capacity. Described in a paper published in "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences," UC San Diego researchers were able to accomplish the feat of weatherized batteries by developing an electrolyte that is not only...
Powering its ambition to become a fully electric automaker by 2030, Volvo Cars has teamed up with Northvolt to build a 50-gigawatt-hour-per-year battery gigafactory in Gothenburg, Sweden. "Our battery cell partnership with Northvolt is key to our strategic ambitions in electrification," said Volvo Cars Chief Executive Håkan Samuelsson. "We are committed to becoming a leader in the premium electric car segment and selling only pure electric vehicles by 2030." Toward this commit...
Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineers have developed a rechargeable lithium-ion battery in the form of an ultra-long fiber that can be woven into fabrics and even washed. This latest innovation could enable a wide variety of wearable electronic devices and might even be used to make 3D-printed batteries in virtually any shape. The team envisions new possibilities for self-powered communications, sensing, and computational devices that could be worn like ordinary...
Hyundai Motor Company and Kia Corp. have partnered with Factorial Energy Inc., a solid-state battery manufacturer, to test the Massachusetts-based battery maker's novel technology in Hyundai electric vehicles. Factorial Energy has developed a breakthrough in solid-state battery technology that offers 20 to 50% longer range per charge than conventional lithium-ion batteries. Under a joint development agreement, which includes a strategic investment, Hyundai and Kia will...
Research and technology firm IDTechEx has recently released a detailed report projecting the future of solid-state batteries and its potential to reach a market size of over $8 billion by 2031. Commercialized in 1991, the lithium-ion battery quickly became the mainstay for portable energy needs, and as electronics have continued to shrink, the need for mobility has only managed to grow. However, their worldwide success and diffusion in consumer electronics and now electric veh...
Adding an extra layer of tomato on a metaphoric BLT could be the solution to a decades-long problem that has prevented scientists from developing the solid-state lithium batteries that would significantly increase the range and lessen the charging time of electric vehicles. For roughly 40 years, researchers have tried to harness the potential of solid-state, lithium-metal batteries, which hold substantially more energy in the same volume and charge in a fraction of the time...
American Manganese Inc. and Voltabox of Texas Inc. are in talks to utilize American Manganese's patented process to recycle the cathode materials in lithium-ion batteries produced by Voltabox. Voltabox manufactures lithium-ion battery systems for industrial applications such as electric buses, mining and construction equipment, agricultural machinery forklifts, and other warehouse equipment. Looking beyond the service life of the industrial batteries it produces, Voltabox has...
Zinc8 Energy Solutions, formerly MGX Renewables Inc, March 11 announced it has signed an agreement to install a 100-kilowatt (kw), 1.5-megawatt-hour (MWh) zinc-air energy storage system in Brooklyn, New York. Zinc-air energy storage is a three-part system that stores energy from renewable and other sources and then delivers electricity to the grid as needed. Basically, energy is stored in the form of zinc particles that are roughly the size to grains of sand. • When the s...
Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) and the Samsung R&D Institute Japan (SRJ) are working on high-performance, long-lasting all-solid-state batteries that are expected to significantly increase the range of electric vehicles. A prototype pouch cell developed by the SAIT and SRJ teams would enable an EV to travel up to 500 miles (800 kilometers) on a single charge and features a cycle life of over 1,000 charges. Compared to widely used lithium-ion batteries, which...
Glencore plc March 6 announced it has joined the Global Battery Alliance, a World Economic Forum initiative to help establish and collaborate on a sustainable battery value chain. GBA is a partnership of 70 members that includes businesses across the entire battery value train, from mining companies providing the metals going into the batteries to manufacturers that use those batteries in their products, as well as governmental and non-governmental organization. The alliance...
American Manganese Inc. Feb. 20 announced that its patented RecycLiCo process recovered up to 99.72% pure nickel-cobalt-manganese products generated from disassembled electric vehicle battery packs provided by a member of the U.S. Department of Energy Critical Materials Institute. The idea behind RecycLiCo emerged as an evolution of American Manganese's research into an efficient means of recovering manganese metals from relatively low-grade mineralization at its Artillery...
Graphene Manufacturing Group Ltd. Dec. 9 announced that the pilot production and testing plant for its graphene aluminum-ion batteries is now operational and the first coin cells of these potential lithium-ion battery competitors have been manufactured. "The commissioning of our battery pilot plant is an important milestone for GMG," said Managing Director and CEO of Graphene Manufacturing Group Craig Nicol. "Not only will it allow us to develop, manufacture and test our own...
