Batteries International, Issue 112. Summer 2019

Issue 112

Summer 2019

Separator power The new kingmakers of Asia's battery boom Four US states to watch: renewables in ESS love match Let's engage the brain in talk about lithium recycling

Decarbonization: the myths, opportunities (and bunkum) Amer-Sil’s Guy Dauwe: a sad, sudden demise

Bringing the industry together

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CONTENTS COVER STORY: SEPARATORS

40

The New Kingmakers Why separator firms are fuelling Asia’s battery explosion 40 It’s boom time for separator firms working in Asia where there is a record demand for batteries of all descriptions and in particular a hunt for better quality product.

Conference in print: Next gen separators to drive lead battery success ������� 51 Kevin Whear, CTO at Daramic, highlights some of the firm’s recent developments in separator technology that he delivered at a recent conference in India.

EDITORIAL 4 Decarbonization: costs, opportunities and just a bit of bunkum too OBITUARY 9 Amer-Sil’s Guy Dauwe — A life cut short, 1968- 2019 PEOPLE NEWS

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Sustainability summit hears lead success story • East Penn ranked in top 500 employers in US • Hammond appoints Goodearl as director, global accounts • ABC names Everett as new COO, Enersys to adopt bi-polar technology • 18ABC launches charity initiative ahead of Bali conference • Narada wins energy storage systems integrator award • New CBI technical head Matt Raiford predicts golden age for lead batteries • Laurie Gardiner steps down as chairman of battery equipment maker TBS Engineering • Zoellner takes over as Dempwolff steps down as EUROBAT president • Aqua Metals: Gibson becomes director, Cotton CEO appointment confirmed • Exide Technologies announces appointment of Judd as COO • New ILA communications manager Fareha Lasker

Guy Dauwe: much liked, much missed

9

Goodearl becomes director global accounts for Hammond 10

NEWS 20 Former JCI battery arm re-launches as Clarios • Lead batteries used in first solar DG project in Brazil • Narada and Upside 75MW frequency regulation project advances in Germany • Gravita begins commercial production of lead at two African recycling plants • Mystery ESS explosion sparks fears over lithium safety future • US tariffs on Mexican lead batteries — good news for US battery makers • Remy battery wins $43m contract with FreshStart packaging innovation • Lead batteries in India lose subsidies under new FAME-II regulations • Boost for lead batteries after New York pledge of $280m for energy storage • Exide hits back at California’s DTSC over ‘demonstrably false’ violations • Lead prices soar after Port Pirie outage • Belarus’s IPower lead battery plant rejects polluting claims, ready to open • Decarbonizing the US power grid to cost +$4tr, 900GW of energy storage needed • Huge rise in H1 2019 venture capital funds for battery storage PRODUCT NEWS

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Orion releases extends carbon black product range for greater DCA • Russian scientists find way to retrieve lead and recycle silver-zinc batteries • Exide announces new generation of Carbon Boost 2.0 technology batteries, releases sub-zero battery too • EnerSys completes motive power range of batteries with lead and lithium options

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New CBI head Raiford talks of ‘golden age for batteries’ 12

Narada, Upside in frequency regulation project

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Batteries International • Summer 2019 • 1

CONTENTS FLOW BATTERY NEWS

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VIRTUAL POWER PLANT NEWS

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FEATURES Lithium battery recycling: does the economic stack up 62

LITHIUM RECYCLING

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Making the economics of recycling stack up… they don’t. But if you get the right kind of lithium batteries they can. But trying to make money out of lithium iron phosphate batteries is always going to be an uphill task. There’s not a lot worth selling on.

US ENERGY STORAGE: FOUR STATES TO WATCH Energy storage USA: four states to watch in the year ahead 78

78

The commercial logic in favour of renewables — and with it energy storage — has become unstoppable. California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York are leading the way.

Each has its own flavour, regulations and difficulties.

EVENT REVIEWS

A good conference: unmissable! 92

92

• Battery Council International, New Orleans • EUROBAT annual meeting, Berlin • Pb2019, Madrid EVENTS 102 Our comprehensive guide to energy storage events around the world BATTERY HERO: PAUL RUETSCHI

Ruetschi: electrochemist 108

108

Rüetschi has been a pivotal figure in solving many of the development problems that plagued the advent of VRLA batteries as well as a host of other energy storage chemistries and technologies.

Publisher Karen Hampton, karen@batteriesinternational.com, +44 7792 852 337

Editor: Michael Halls, editor@batteriesinternational.com, +44 7977 016 918

Business development manager June Moultrie june@batteriesinternational.com +44 7775 710 290 Reception Tel: +44 1 243 782 275 Fax: +44 1787 329 730

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Supplements editor: Wyn Jenkins, wyn.jenkins@serenglobalmedia.com, +44 1792 293 222

Asia editor Debbie Mason debbie@batteriesinternational.com

Staff reporters: Philip Moorcroft, Andrew Godfrey Production/design: Antony Parselle, aparselledesign@me.com +44 1727 811 842 International advertising representation: advertising@batteriesinternational.com The contents of this publication are protected by copyright. No unauthorized translation or reproduction is permitted.

ISSN 1462-6322 (c) 2019 Mustard Seed Publishing, UK company no: 5976361.

Printed in the UK via ThisismethodUK

Disclaimer: Although we believe in the accuracy and completeness of the information contained in this magazine, Mustard Seed Publishing makes no warranties or representation about this.

Nor should anything contained within it should be construed as constituting an offer to buy or sell securities, or constitute advice in relation to the buying or selling of investments.

2 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

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EDITORIAL Mike Halls • editor@batteriesinternational.com

Decarbonization: costs, opportunities and just a bit of bunkum too Climate change. This summer it’s been a topic writ large over the whole of the North American and European press. And to a lesser extent there have been mainstream stories in countries as diverse as China, South Africa and India.

It’s also going to be the biggest boon to the energy storage industry — both lead and lithium batteries — since the arrival of the motor car more than a century ago.

The keyword, repeatedly chanted like a mantra from another age, is decarbonization. A shift away from burning fossil fuels to a world where all energy is ‘clean’ and comes from renewable sources.

And, as we all know, battery storage is going to be an integral part of this switch in how we deploy energy. The early numbers — as we examine later on — for the cost of decarbonization are huge, and the turnover (and related profits) for lead and lithium battery firms alike will be huge too.

The fact that decarbonization may be a flawed premise for why the climate is changing — and it now seems very clear the climate is indeed changing — should not let the battery industry hang back from becoming a leading advocate for greater energy storage use.

And in a world that may be cynical about how business governs itself, we don’t need to be hypocritical. This is an industry that can at least remind itself that with the price of solar energy already cheaper than most conventional power sources, there is room for the next energy iteration.

Solar+storage is, according to a recent Wood Mackenzie report, now approaching a price level that makes it cheaper than the old, utility serviced model.

Climate change, despite a certain hysteria in the mainstream media, isn’t something that can or should be ignored. But whether this is happening because of greater levels of CO2 in the 4 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

atmosphere or something else is still a moot point.

There are a lot of unanswered questions, mostly because a lot of the science still doesn’t stack up.

Or not fully. Issues such as global temperatures being higher when CO2 levels were lower are now having to be explained in other ways.

Oddly enough, as a science undergraduate in the mid-1970s, we all knew — and knew as a fact because that was the informed expert opinion of the time — that we were at the start of a mini ice age.

The threat to our planet was going to be a cold spell with disastrous consequences. We may have fretted (just a little) about our great-grandchildren living in igloos in the Sahara but we didn’t fuss unduly.

We wouldn’t be alive then and most likely it’d be a problem for those distant descendants that we’d never meet or know.

If this starts to sound familiar, it should be. The difference is that this generation of climatologists obsessed with that nasty CO2 — or fantasists have it as you will — say it will be a problem our children see.

But retuning to batteries. If we understood the need for renewable energy — deep down for most of us the subtext was never about replacing fossil fuels with energy from the sun or the wind — it was mostly about how we could benefit from it.

At the same time over the last two years there has been a growing awareness that renewables without battery storage is going to be a waste of time.

So there are huge sums of money at stake for the battery industry.

Nevertheless, it’s worth looking at how we handle a situation where the energy storage industry is not just swimming in billions of dollars of sales, but saving the planet.

At the base of this all are two questions: if www.batteriesinternational.com

EDITORIAL climate change is really happening because of increased levels of CO2, how much will it cost for us to adapt completely to decarbonization? And, how much will the price tag be if we don’t adopt it?

The first question opens a price tag in the trillions of dollars and will totally transform our traditional world of energy.

A recent stab by Wood Mackenzie, the global analytics firm, to estimate the cost of decarbonization reckoned that, for the US alone, it would cost well over $4 trillion — and would mean the creation of 1,600GW of new wind and solar installations.

But for the battery business, it would need the installation of some 900GW of energy storage in the next 10 to 20 years.

If this situation were to be emulated across the planet the numbers get even more ridiculous — we are talking terawatts of storage. Is there enough lead, lithium or nickel on the planet that could be mined and processed in such a short time span?

And in five years’ time, we’d still be sticking our fingers into the wind and pulling out numbers from the air.

The fact of the matter is that there’s a lot of bunkum about.

A quick trawl on Google suggests that the Wood Mackenzie figure could be adjusted — upwards — by a factor of 10 and still make sense of a kind.

Another recent study estimated that decarbonizing California alone would be $3 trillion and it’d by $25 trillion for the whole of the US. And then multiplying that number by a probable factor of five in terms of expected demand for the whole planet?

It could also be downsized by a similar factor: the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) estimated from 2016 figures that “the world needs 150GW of battery storage to meet its desired target of 45% of power generated from renewable sources by 2030”.

And if we don’t decarbonize? www.batteriesinternational.com

Depending on where you are on each side of the reasons for climate change, we’ll all be doomed or else it may just be business as normal.

Part of the problem with this no-man’s land is that global warming has moved into the political realm without enough peer-reviewed research to fully validate and exclude other, more natural, causes of climate change.

For example, there is an absence of any physical evidence that CO2 causes global warming. The argument for CO2 as the cause of warming rests almost entirely on computer modelling.

This prompts the question, how accurate are the computer models in predicting climate? What other variables could be missing from the models?

The bottom line is where are we in terms of finding the right figure? We really haven’t a clue.

But one thing is clear. Apart from ‘saving the planet’ — if that’s possible — the boost for the energy storage business is not going to be a oneoff. It looks set to be a surge that will ride the fortunes of the industry for decades to come.

The International Lead Association is almost certainly right in its belief that the huge amounts of energy storage needed offer a boon to lead, lithium and other chemistries.

The issue for this industry is whether many of its players can move away from their traditional product range and focus on deeper cycle products.

And instead get ready to deal with manufacturing energy storage in a unheard of scale for the homes and utilities of the future.

Batteries International • Summer 2019 • 5

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OBITUARY – GUY JOZEF DAUWE

Guy Jozef Dauwe June 1, 1968-July 25, 2019

It is with sadness that Batteries International has to report the death of Guy Dauwe, the dynamic and much liked managing director of Amer-Sil, the separator and gauntlet manufacturing company with headquarters based in Luxembourg. He died of cancer in a Luxembourg hospital on July 25.

His family posted a simple message. “He loved life.

We have the deepest pain to inform you of the death of our dear father, son, brother and spouse.” He leaves behind a nine-year-old son.

Amer-Sil said they extended their deepest sympathy and condolences to his family and his close ones. “He will be deeply missed at many levels,” said Gérard Chaix, a retired managing director of the firm who has remained a consultant and adviser to the business.

“His approach to everyone could probably be called paternalist, He was keen to get the best out of people for their benefit as much as for the company. He was a great guy to work with.”

Chaix, who interviewed Guy for his initial senior marketing position and then named him as successor on his own retirement, said: “Intellectually he was brilliant, he stood head and shoulders above the rest.

He was a very high level person — a man full of ideas.

And good ideas too.”

Claudia Lorenzini, vice president of sales and marketing at rival firm Microporous said: “I’m shocked to hear about the loss of Guy. Although we were technically competitors, we were always able to chat comfortably with each other. He was a clever, warm and intelligent man — and not somebody, as some are, who create barriers because of rivalry.”

Jan Peynsaert, who was interviewed by Guy before his

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death, has been appointed the new managing director.

He was formerly executive vice president of JSR Micro, the European arm of the Japanese giant. Peynsaert starts on September 1.

In the broader industry Guy was a popular figure seen most often at conferences where his talent for languages — including a strong sense of humour — and open and easy manner made him an approachable ambassador for his company and the industry.

He was a firm supporter of the International Lead Association, a keen member of Battery Council International in the US, EUROBAT in Europe and in part because of Amer-Sil’s manufacturing plant in Shanghai a member of the Asia Battery Association. He, with his firm, was a regular attendee at the Asia Battery Conference and LABAT. He was outspoken too on what he regarded as the hysteria surrounding the advent of electric vehicles.

Speaking to Batteries International last December he said: “I don’t see electric cars making a big impact anytime soon. The speed of introduction of EVs is totally overhyped.

“The cars are too expensive, the range too small and the charging infrastructure not in place (no standards, and it’ll take decades to roll it out).”

Guy joined Luxembourg-based Amer-Sil, in April 2005 as an executive vice president in charge of sales and marketing. In July the following year, he took over from Chaix on his retirement. One of his early initiatives was to move the firm into lean management and continue Chaix’s concerns about investment in R&D. In 2009 Guy spearheaded the setting up of a manufacturing plant in Shanghai.

In December 2014, Guy led the successful management buy out of Amer-Sil from the US parent The Moore Company. Since then the firm has set up a manufacturing plant in Brazil and thanks to a successful joint venture with Indian gauntlet market leader Ketex managed by Sukumar Roy, Amer-sil Ketex is now heading four factories in India and one in Bangladesh.

“At the time of his death Guy, as a true entrepreneur and long term oriented individual was preparing to set up a new company to further develop the business,” said Chaix.

From 120 people in 2009, the Amer-sil Group has grown to a workforce of 650 people as of today.

Before Amer-Sil he worked for almost six years at Delphi Automotive Systems, initially as a value stream manager based in France and later as customer manager thermal & interior in Luxembourg. Previously he spent five years working across the US for TRW. He gained the equivalent of an MBA (a DESS) in 1992 after studying at IAE FRANCE — Écoles Universitaires de Management. Before then he had gained a masters in mechanical engineering Mechatronics.

He was just 51 when he died.

Batteries International • Summer 2019 • 9

PEOPLE NEWS

Sustainability summit hears lead success story The US Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Fifth Annual Sustainability and Circular Economy Summit convened on August 15 with a strong representation by the lead battery manufacturing and recycling industry Held in Washington DC, the twoday conference unites a cross-section of sustainability and circular economy professionals to educate one another on replicable, successful initiatives and benchmark strategies for impact through 2030 and beyond.

In the afternoon’s “Data for Good” session was discussion on the success of the lead battery industry’s circularity and commercial viability. Its closed-loop infrastructure results in a 99.3% recycling rate, use of 80% recycled materials, and “Most Recycled Consumer Product” recognition by the EPA. During the session, Carole Mars, director of technical development and innovation for The Sustainability Consortium spoke on making the lead battery industry a circular economy model for other sectors.

“Lead batteries close the loop more effectively than any other product in the consumer goods space,” Mars said. “We’d like to leverage the lessons of this industry to help others reach the same type of performance for their end-of-life products.” The

circularity of a lead battery has global impact, as the demand grows for sustainable energy storage in the renewable energy, automotive and digital technology sectors.

Wood Mackenzie’s Power & Renewables latest report projects that energy storage deployments will grow 13-fold over the next six years, concentrated in the US and China. One goal of the lead battery industry is to ensure that environmental criteria of batteries be equal to, or greater than, performance and cost criteria when evaluating battery options.

Also participating in the “Data for Good” session were executives from

East Penn ranked in top 500 employers in US Business magazine Forbes has included lead battery manufacturer East Penn Manufacturing in the top 500 Best Large Employers in the US for 2019.

Market research firm Statista helped in asking up to 50,000 staff at companies with at least 1,000 employees about their employers and how they would rank them — and out of the top 500 companies, East Penn came in at number 300.

Given that there are at least 7,000

Hammond appoints Goodearl as director, global accounts Hammond Group, Inc, the international battery additives and specialist chemical company, has appointed Ray Goodearl as global sales director, the company announced on July 1.

Goodearl has more than 30 years’ experience in the battery industry, having worked as vice president of sales and marketing at Superior Battery, the US company that makes a range of lead batteries and other products such as cables and terminals.

He joined NorthStar Battery as director of national accounts in December 2014 and worked briefly as director of aftermarket, transportation, before going to Hammond.

“Hammond is a partner of the largest battery manufacturers around the world,” he said. “We are able to provide performance additives and

10 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

East Penn Manufacturing and RSR Technologies.

“Lead batteries are designed from the outset to ensure recyclability,” said East Penn Manufacturing CEO Chris Pruitt. “At our Berks County Pennsylvania facility, we recycle nearly 30,000 lead batteries every day, and the materials are reused to make new batteries over and over again.”

In the true spirit of a circular economy, new products are also created from the recycled materials.

From the recovered sulfuric acid, East Penn annually sells 25,000 tons of liquid fertilizer solution as raw material to fertilizer manufacturers.

premium components that enable them to increase battery cycle life and maybe even lower the cost of production.”

The firm says that its products are moving ever closer to being able

Ray Goodearl

companies in the US that have more than 1,000 employees, this would place East Penn in the top 5% for the country.

It was the only battery company in the ‘automotive (automotive and suppliers)’ category in which it appeared.

Staff were asked about working conditions and if they would recommend their firm to anyone else.

Top of the rankings was Trader Joe’s, a fresh food grocery store. to compete directly with lithium batteries in terms of performance.

“I will be getting the word out and continuing to support our key partners as well as talk to a large portion of battery manufacturers in China,” says Goodearl. “My focus is on working with Hammond to leverage my experience and relationships with many people globally to take our solutions forward.”

In recent years Hammond has been at the cutting edge of developing additives such as expanders, which greatly enhance the cycle life, charge acceptance and partial state of charge cycling of lead batteries.

“Even with the adoption of electric vehicles increasing I still see strong growth for lead and the markets continuing to flourish,” Goodearl said. “Adoption to electric is going to be a lot slower than you read about.

For example in the US, statistics say that even if we opt for EVs by 2030 we are still going to see 70% of all vehicles being ICE.”

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PEOPLE NEWS

ABC names Everett as new COO, Enersys to adopt bi-polar technology Bi-polar battery firm Advanced Battery Concepts appointed Michael Everett as chief operating officer, the firm announced on June 18. Everett is an industry veteran, most recently working as senior vice president of Trojan Battery and formerly CTO at Maxwell Technologies.

The appointment came as EnerSys announced it was moving further towards commercializing the GreenSeal technology that it licensed from ABC two years ago. The firm also said it planned to expand its thin plate pure lead capacity over the next three years by more than $500 million a year. “GreenSeal technology and next generation TPPL offers great promise for the continued relevance and viability for lead acid batteries,� said Joern Tinnemeyer, chief technology officer at EnerSys. “No other technology combines superior lead acid battery performance

along with manufacturability as we have seen in GreenSeal batteries. The technology will leverage many parts of our existing TPPL expertise, supply chain, plant and equipment.�

Speaking to Batteries International on the sidelines of the ILA lead conference in Madrid, ABC CEO Ed Shaffer said the focus of the company was to industrialize its technology so that it could be used in the mass manufacture of batteries. “We’re not interested in extending the cycle life any further – it’s good enough, and wouldn’t make business sense,� he said. “With our technology we are taking 40% of the lead out, and that’s why our batteries are cheaper and lighter. I can see them one day competing for life cycle with lithium, although that’s going to take a while. “The faster we can get our licensees up to scale production, the faster our investors will get their money back.�

Shaffer said his team had set up a Green Seal Alliance in March, which enabled suppliers to work directly with ABC and better understand the technological transition to bi-polar batteries. “Some 95% of innovation comes from suppliers, so if they understand bi-polar batteries and how to make them better, that’s good for us and our customers,� he said.

Michael Everett

18ABC launches charity initiative ahead of Bali conference As Batteries International goes to press this August, it’s just a few days to go until the great and the good of the lead battery industry head to Bali and what will be the 18th Asia Battery Conference. And this year, the conference organizers have teamed up with Sorfin Yoshimura in an initiative called the ‘One Minute Giveback�.

Its aim — and a first in the lead battery industry — is to raise money

and resources for local people, who often exist in miserable poverty.

Some of the nation’s poor are only a few miles from the five-star hotels and exotic resorts that dot the seeming paradise of Bali, almost like another country. “We intend to give something back to Bali through cash donations and delegate participation work onsite,� says Mark Richardson, the head of organizers Conference Works. “Tourism dollars often miss much of Bali’s rural population, for them

life is very different from the luxury beach-front hotels, spas and cool beach clubs that dot the island. “With help from our Giveback partner Sorfin Yoshimura and the care of our three charities, Bali Children’s Project, Yaysan Solemen Indonesia and The East Bali Poverty Project, we aim to make a difference and help those in need in Bali.�

This kind of initiative could well become a regular feature of the conference, which is held every two years.

Narada wins energy storage systems integrator award Narada Battery, the Chinese lead battery firm, was one of three winners of the Energy Storage System Integrator award at the fifth Global Solar + Energy Storage Congress & Expo in South Korea on June 24.

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The Chinese firm, a member of the International Lead Association, says its leading products are VRLA batteries and lithium ion cells for telecoms, reserve power, motive power and renewable energy storage.

The other two winners were General Electric and Fluence.

Last year’s award was called ‘Energy Storage Solutions Provider of the Year’, and went to Greensmith Energy, NEC and S&C Electric.

Batteries International • Summer 2019 • 11

PEOPLE NEWS

New CBI technical head Matt Raiford predicts golden age for lead batteries Bi-polar battery firm Advanced Matt Raiford has been appointed technical head of the Consortium for Battery Innovation. Speaking to Batteries International on April 24, he said lead batteries stood ready to enter a golden age of growth and entry into multiple markets.

Raiford moves into the position at the North Carolina, US-based CBI from RSR Technologies, where he was senior process engineer.

“Lead batteries are on a precipice of intense growth, with energy storage demand growing in multiple markets,” he said. “Energy storage systems will be key in providing stable utility, commercial, and consumer level energy demands.

“Also, energy storage is increasing in automotive and industrial sectors. As part of CBI, I will aim to support lead batteries entering into these new markets by fostering world-class research programmes for these applications and also increasing awareness and supporting the industry’s increasing ESS efforts.

“These new applications provide promising pathways for the lead battery industry to provide high performing, sustainable and cost effective solutions. This demand, in my eyes, forecasts an upcoming golden age for lead batteries.

“Much of my work will be based around supporting and helping develop standards for the design and requirements for additional batteries in automotive vehicles and in other applications, managing our new research programme and supporting the ESS effort through multiple platforms.”

Raiford was instrumental in groundbreaking work by RSR using the Advanced Photon Source synchrotron, housed at the Argonne National Laboratory, which resulted in the development of its patented Supersoft-Hycyle soft lead alloy. Testing by South African battery firm Auto-X, the maker of the Willard brand of battery, showed that the alloy doubled the active material of its lead acid batteries and greatly reduced water loss.

Matt Raiford

CBI changed its name from ALABC — the Advanced Lead Acid Battery Consortium — last year, and has launched a series of events and projects to push innovation in the industry.

It aims to bring together research institutes, universities, lead battery companies, suppliers and lead producers and keep its members updated with technological advances and developments. These include the aid of an interactive roadmap which will be showcased at BCI next week.

Laurie Gardiner steps down as chairman of battery equipment maker TBS Engineering UK-based lead battery equipment maker TBS Engineering said its chairman, Laurie Gardiner, stepped down on April 30 after 46 years with the company. Gardiner is a much liked and respected industry figure.

“For the past five years Laurie Gardiner has led the TBS Engineering Group as chairman on a steady path of growth and development. Before that he served as managing director

for 35 years guiding the company through organic growth, ownership changes, acquisitions and innovative developments,” the company said.

“The board would like to express its sincere thanks for his wise counsel, invaluable insights and important contributions to the board on which he has so diligently served.”

The company did not say whether a replacement had been appointed.

In October 2017, the company expanded its operations with a purposebuilt facility in Gloucestershire.

TBS Engineering, which specializes in plate manufacturing equipment such as rotary expander lines, multi alloy casters and continuous pastemixing systems, is part of Berkshire Hathaway, the US conglomerate headed up by billionaire Warren Buffett.

New metallurgical thermodynamic course offered at 6ISLC in September One for the diary: A short course discussing the basic tools of metallurgical thermodynamics and their application, with a special focus on lead recycling will be held at the 6th International Secondary Lead Conference, on September 2 between1.30pm and 3.00pm.

6ISLC, which runs between September 2-3, is held in the run-up to the largest lead conference of the year, the Asian Battery Conference September 3-6. Both conferences are

12 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

set in Bali, Indonesia.

The course will start with interpreting phase diagrams and then discuss the thermodynamics of lead production and how recycling processes make use of these principles.

Secondary smelters face different challenges than primary smelters typically dealing with different processes and starting from battery fractions containing Pb, PbSO4, and PbO2. Dealing with sulfur is a different process.

Secondary lead smelting has its own multicomponent slag system, which is robust, but because of its robustness, not always fully understood nor optimally applied.

“As Fe and Na2CO3 are added to generate sulfides and sulfates, this requires the understanding of more than the Pb-O-S system. Moreover, the different phases (slag, matte, lead) are not strictly oxidic, sulfidic, or metallic,” says the course instructor.

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PEOPLE NEWS

Zoellner takes over as Dempwolff steps down as EUROBAT president Johann-Friedrich Dempwolff and has stepped down as president of EUROBAT. This year’s annual forum in Berlin thanked him for his six years of service and welcomed his successor Marc Zoellner, CEO of battery firm Hoppecke.

“Dempwolff is a much admired and well liked industry figure,” said one delegate. “It’s sad to see him go and we wish him well in the future but we are expecting even greater things from Zoellner.”

Dempwolff told : “We have seen strong development across the world in technologies the need energy storage.

“The importance of batteries has increased and also their visibility, although unfortunately there was a lack of focus from a technology agnostic view.

“Lead batteries are still seen as ‘not the most modern’ solution, but we have been able to change the mindset in the right direction.

“We have had a lot of discussions

with politicians, we aligned our industry organizations much better, increased the efficiency and developed a number of advocacy, political and communication campaigns to improve the situation.

“In the last six years we have seen, not just in Europe but in the rest of the world, a lot of regulatory changes that will affect the use of batteries.

Dempwolff said EUROBAT had changed its defensive approach to become more active in talking to politicians, regulators and trade associations.

He says his tenure at EUROBAT has allowed him to establish a broad network of interesting industry figures.

“I think this year’s annual forum was very good,” he said. “The engagement, the quality of the presentations and speeches, the personal contacts and side conversations were outstanding. I travelled back from Berlin with a very positive feeling.”

Marc Zoellner

Johann-Friedrich Dempwolff

Aqua Metals: Gibson becomes director, Cotton CEO appointment confirmed Lead battery recycling company Aqua Metals has appointed Gayle Gibson, a former DuPont Engineering executive, as an independent director, the company said on January 31. She replaced Mark Slade, who stepped down after four years.

Gibson, who began work at DuPont in 1983 and worked as a director of engineering there for four years, has extensive experience as a process engineer, working on developing new products and scaling up manufacturing processes — “which is most pertinent to Aqua Metals,” she told Batteries International.

“The technology has already been proven and today the management team at Aqua Metals is working diligently on making the process reliable and cost effective to allow for scaling into an on-going commercial facility.

I expect to bring my experience to that process as needed.”

Gibson’s experience as an executive taught her the importance of balancing the needs of various stakeholders, she said. “Generally, sharehold-

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ers want growth in value, customers want products that help them grow, employees want opportunities and the community wants a safe, sustainable environment.”

Steve Cotton was officially made CEO of Aqua Metals, the lead battery recycler, on January 9 after months as de facto president and CEO. He has also been appointed to the board of directors, bringing the total number of directors on the board to seven.

Board chairman Shariq Yosufzai said Cotton had “built an entirely new management team and strengthened existing partnerships while seeking new partnerships and building on relationships with investors, analysts and the industry as a whole”.

Separately, Aqua Metals closed a public offering of 11 million shares on May 14. The deal, which was fully underwritten, was priced on May 19 at $2 a share, raising $20.2 million after deductions.

Cotton said that although there had been impressive advances made in production — in particular four modules were operating virtually full time — the board had decided to seek funds earlier rather than later.

Batteries International • Summer 2019 • 13

Spine-Grid Casting Center Automatic lead bar feeder / Pre-melting kettle 1,4 to / Two complete spine-grid casting machines type PA-V6/8 / Two state of the art “Torque” lead pumps / Two spraying units for mould release agent HADILIN K95/II / Automatic grid removal system AGE-8 / Automatic cropping and gauntlet-insertion unit RST 4 (dead-head punching, cutting required length and putting spine-grid into gauntlet) / Automatic transport of punching-waste back to the lead-kettle / Switch-cabinet with safety-control PLC from Siemens, Simatic S7-300-T / Siemens Operation panel TP 1200 12” / Protection cover with windows made of safety-glass …

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PEOPLE NEWS

Exide Technologies announces appointment of Judd as COO Exide Technologies has announced the latest in a number of senior changes at the lead battery manufacturer and recycler, naming Michael Judd as executive vice president and chief operations officer on June 17.

Judd, who will lead the global manufacturing operations from the company’s head office in Milton, Georgia, has held senior positions in the auto industry, most notably with Johnson Controls Power Solutions (now Clarios), where he worked for 12 years. This includes two as vice

Eos Energy makes three top-level appointments Eos Energy Storage, the US zinc hybrid cathode battery maker, has restructured its management team with three new senior appointments, the company announced on July 23.

Joe Mastrangelo steps in as CEO, having been board adviser since August 2018. Before joining Eos, Mastrangelo was president and CEO of Gas Power Systems, for GE Power.

Most recently managing director and head of US Renewable Energy at GE Energy Financial Services, Kevin Walsh has been appointed senior commercial adviser.

Former COO and CFO of Virdity Energy Solutions Mack Treece has become Eon’s chief financial officer.

president of operations for the US and Canada and before that in Shanghai, China, as director of operations for Asia for two years.

Judd had a break from the battery industry for two years, where as vice president of operations for Dover Food Retail he was responsible for manufacturing, supply chain, purchasing and sourcing from June 2017.

He is now back in the sector with Exide.

“It is great to be back in the battery manufacturing business as part of the Exide Technologies team,” he told Batteries International.

“From an industry perspective, motive power, network power and transportation lead-acid batteries aren’t going away, and companies like Exide with a strong core competency and expertise in lead acid battery technology are still very relevant and will be around for a long time.

“Specifically for Exide, we have invested in developing new technologies, like EFB, and see the automotive battery aftermarket shifting away from AGM batteries to EFB. “My role at Exide will centre around driving operational performance by leveraging our current investments in equipment and processes configured to manufacture EFB and standard lead acid batteries. We will be doing all of this with a sharp focus on operating in an environmentally responsible way, ensuring the safety

16 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

of our employees and maintaining the highest quality in the products we deliver to our customers.”

“Mike is a talented, results-driven manufacturing leader and his extensive battery manufacturing expertise brings us the capabilities we need to execute our growth strategy,” said Tim Vargo, president and CEO of Exide Technologies.

Judd is the latest of four senior appointments made since Vargo became CEO last November.

In April, John Gasparovic was appointed executive vice president, chief legal officer and secretary. In January, Stefan Stübing was made executive vice president and president of the EMEA region, while Brian Woodworth was appointed senior vice president and chief information officer.

ILA hires communications manager Fareha Lasker

Fareha Lasker

Mack Treece

Michael Judd

For the record, Fareha Lasker was appointed communications manager for the International Lead Association in May. “We know that the next 10 years will see unprecedented growth in

demand for battery energy storage to support a clean energy future and that advanced lead batteries have a key role to play in applications which will enable rapid electrification of our economy and society,” she says.

“But do the right movers and shakers know and appreciate this?”

Lasker has worked in public relations for the past seven years. For the last four years she worked for AprilSix proof, a technology, science and engineering consultancy.

She has a BSc in BioMedical Science and MA in Science Journalism.

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PEOPLE NEWS

Varta hires Stahlschmidt as GM energy storage systems Bengt Stahlschmidt, former business development manager at vanadium battery firm RedT, has been appointed general manager energy storage systems within the Power & Energy division, the firm announced on June 26.

Stahlschmidt will be responsible for the development, production and sales of private home storage systems and commercial large-scale storage systems.

Clements said the position had been created to form a direct link between development and sales for the first time, which would allow the company to react more efficiently to changes in the market.

Bengt Stahlschmidt

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PEOPLE NEWS IN BRIEF GYLP promotes Aldrich to president GS Yuasa Lithium Power, a US subsidiary of GS Yuasa Corporation, announced on May 7 it had promoted Curtis Aldrich to president.

He takes over from William Moll — who becomes president of GS Yuasa Energy Solutions and remains chairman of the board for GYLP. Thomas Pusateri was promoted to director of business development to fill Aldrich’s former position.

Innolith names senior executives to lead US and China expansion

Speak to us!

Energy Storage Journal is always eager to hear market comment.

So much so, we’ve dedicated two areas of the magazine just for you to tell it as it is.

The first is our section called COMMENT — which rather says it all. Here give us your views about what our industry is doing well (or badly) or just needs to open a discussion, this is where to air your views.

The second is called CONFERENCE IN PRINT. Here we’re looking for scholarly articles looking at the nuts and bolts of what we do. We’re looking for technical papers that can explain advances in chemistry or technology.

Contact: editor@energystoragejournal.com Disclaimer: Our editorial board necessarily vets every article that we print and will impartially approve pieces that it believes will be interesting and supportive of the energy storage industry and related products. Articles submitted should not be marketing pieces.

18 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

Innolith announced on May 14 it had appointed two senior executives to lead expansion into the US and China markets.

Stephen Wiley, the former senior director for origination at battery company Younicos, was named as the company’s vice president for business development in the US. Carrie Lin, former national executive for General Electric’s Grid Solution, will lead expansion in China, becoming Innolith’s new chief representative for China.

Sila Nano appoints former General Electric CEO as independent director Sila Nanotechnologies, an engineered materials company in energy storage announced that Jeff Immelt, former CEO of General Electric, would join the firm’s board as an independent director, on April 16.

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NEWS

Former JCI battery arm re-launches as Clarios Johnson Controls Power Solutions — the former battery arm of tech giant Johnson Controls that was bought by Brookfield Business Partners for $13 billion — launched itself on May 1 with the name Clarios and a new logo and website.

Staff arriving for work at the Milwaukee-based company that day had no idea they would find new logos, signs and even ID cards had all been put in place overnight.

Joe Walicki, president of the Power Solutions business and now president of Clarios, said the future for automotive batteries held ‘tremendous opportunity’ for growth.

“All vehicle types — conventional, start-stop, plug-in hybrids, all the way up to battery electric, like Teslas — all of them have a lead acid battery in them. As you move up the continuum to more electrified, the basis is towards these advanced batteries,” he told journalists on a conference call.

“If we stay centred on executing the strategy we put in motion a couple of years ago, which is all about these advanced batteries, we have more capacity than all of our competitors in the world combined.

“We’re well positioned.

We have spent significant capital on raising our advanced battery capacity around EFB and AGM. Some of the growth is going to happen in China, where we’re in the process of opening our third plant.

Because of their regulatory push around CO2 reduction and consumers who also value comfort and connectivity, they are already close to 50% of new vehicles having these advanced batteries in them. Seventy per cent of the batteries we

Joe Walicki, president of Clarios, said the future for automotive batteries held ‘tremendous opportunity’ for growth.

sell to OEMs are already these advanced batteries.”

Walicki said Clarios would be looking at geographical expansion, firstly into Indonesia, and into other types of batteries for applications like marine and trucks, where AGM technology was rapidly being adopted. There would also be an expansion in lithium technology, he said.

“But we really feel we need to stay centred and not dilute down,” he said.

“We will stay being good at what the world wants us to be good at.”

The firm would remain at its Milwaukee base, where the employees were crucial, Walicki said.

“JCI was founded here and our roots are here. We have a lot of very talented

lead acid experts, they’re not easy to come by and they love Milwaukee so we’re not going to move them.

“Brookfield admires not only the facilities we have here but also the talent base we employ — the world’s best battery experts. You wouldn’t be able to just transport those people around the world.”

Walicki said the firm’s $10.3 billion debt burden would be paid in time, and the firm had confidence that it would be able to continue investing.

The word ‘Clarios’ means ‘clear’ or ‘clarity’ in a number of languages, said director of external communications Kari Pfisterer.

“This is how we view the road ahead,” she said. “The logo captures the idea of dynamic energy and expresses the ideas that drive us — power and progress.

It expresses a natural sense of motion and progression from left to right, reinforcing our brand promise of ‘powering today, into tomorrow’.”

Lead batteries used in first solar DG project in Brazil For the record, lead batteries have been used in a solar plus storage project in Brazil for the first time according to Alsol, a distributed generation firm. The work, which will cost around $10 million, has already begun and should be commissioned by December 2019.

The aim of the trial — much of the news of which was released in June — is to deploy the batteries to utilities so they can improve the quality of power supply with services such as peak shaving and time shifting, as well as cutting pollution by replacing diesel back-up.

Alsol, which was recently taken over by electric services firm Energisa, is building two solar distributed gener-

20 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

ation systems in Minas Gerais, the first with a total of 175kW/1,046kWh of lead batteries made byBrazilian firm Moura Battery.

The second installation will use 1.2MVA/1.36MWh lithium batteries by the Chinese battery giant BYD. “The aim of this project is to research the advantages and disadvantages of each technology, like cost of the acquisition, round-trip efficiency, load density, and the like,” said Jose Vieira Neto, head of strategy and innovation for Alsol.

“We are part of the economic group Algar, which has data centres using lead acid batteries, which are discarded prematurely due

to contractual issues with its customers. One of our intentions is to reuse these batteries and identify the potential of second life. We already have some results that second life batteries last about one more year.”

Neto said the full results of the project would be available in the middle of 2020.

Officially Alsol is not yet introducing itself as Energisa, although it is already 87% owned by the firm, with 10% still owned by the Algar Group.

“The solar + storage project is an important step for the distributed generation industry and the vision that Energisa has,” said Neto.

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NEWS

Narada and Upside 75MW frequency regulation project advances in Germany Narada has partnered energy storage operator Upside Group in an innovative frequency regulation project, which represents the first large-scale application of lead-carbon batteries in grid-level frequency regulation energy storage systems.

The project was for the German power grid and the installation, at Langenreichenbach, has a planned construction capacity of 75MW. The installed capacity of the first phase of the project is 16.4MW, and the peak energy storage capacity can reach 25MWh. Upside Group fired up the project — one of the biggest lead carbon energy storage systems in Europe — on May 3, expanding its own battery portfolio to 40MW, the firm announced.

This project consists of 18 containers, and the battery consists of 10,584 units of 1200Ah lead-carbon valve regulated cells. It is powered by nine inverters, each of which can provide 1.8 MVA. Narada was one of the pioneers in terms of developing lead-carbon battery systems in energy storage. The company says this project is the first investment and operation model project in the overseas market.

Narada chose Germany as a test location because its utilization of renewable energy is one of the most advanced in the world. Its power grid frequency regulation market is thus a mature power market auxiliary service trading market.

Narada’s project development team was responsible for the finance and development of the entire project.

Narada will work with Upside to finish building the project, with a total investment of around €42 million ($47 million).

Upside, based in Dülmen,

Germany said the storage had a capacity of 25MWh and would stabilize the grid 24/7 in an energy climate that was seeing more and more grid fluctuation, with frequency being adjusted several hundred thousand times a year.

“In an optimal case, grid frequency would have 50Hz all over Germany at all times,” said Upside managing director Marc Reimer.

“However, since this is not possible due to volatile generation and consumption (if there is too little electricity in the grid, it is below 50 Hz and vice versa), it must always be readjusted externally.

“Batteries can do this much better than other technologies. As well as unbeatably fast response times, it is also much easier for the battery to provide control power, because there is no need to generate electricity first, but excess electricity is stored temporarily if the frequency is too high.

“If the frequency is too low, this electricity is returned to the grid. The battery is always half charged and reacts in the required direction, fully automati-

22 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

cally, 365 days a year.”

Reimer said most of the power in the grid was generated by wind and solar power.

Lead carbon technology was a market leader when it came to stationary cells, he said.

“It has been in use worldwide for decades, just like lead acid cells,” he said. “It combines the advantages of both worlds, the economy and safety of lead acid technology with the low maintenance requirements of lithium cells.

“The lower energy density compared to lithium cells is not a disadvantage in stationary storage systems.

Most lead carbon battery cells are dry accumulators, and the electrolyte is bound in a glass fibre fleece and there are no internal liquids.

“Although these cells must also be equipped with a one-way valve for possible outgassing (in the event of over charging), they can be tilted or even flooded without any problems, without the possibility of substances such as sulfuric acid escaping.

“The production processes are standardized so that the quality is considered to be assured. In addition, a very high proportion of the batteries can be recycled.”

Upside Group partnered Narada in September 2018 in another lead carbon energy storage system in Leipzig, Germany.

The 16MW/25MWh system, one of five planned, was installed to deliver primary control reserve grid services, balancing frequency and capacity changes automatically.

Generac takes over lead/lithium battery maker Pika Energy US power solutions designer and manufacturer Generac Holdings has taken over lead acid and lithium battery maker Pika Energy, the firm announced on April 29.

Generac designs and makes residential, commercial and industrial power products including portable and home back-up generators, and Pika’s energy storage products would appear to complement its product portfolio.

Pika’s Coral storage device is a deep-cycle AGM battery, and its Harbor device contains lithium batteries made

by Panasonic. Both are specifically designed for back-up power.

“Pika’s integrated battery storage solutions are a crucial component in developing a comprehensive system to store and consume clean energy,” said Aaron Jagdfeld, Generac president and CEO.

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NEWS

Heritage site sticks with lead to supply off-grid electricity The first heritage site in the UK to operate 100% offgrid, using lead-acid batteries to store electricity generated by hydro and solar technologies, has replaced the system with more lead batteries, the National Trust announced on June 5.

The original 48-volt battery bank, which was installed 14 years ago, was a Sonnenschein gel battery bank of 24 cells.

The new system, also 48 volts and 24 cells, is a VRLA gel cell system from BAE with 30% more energy density.

“The existing lead acid system has worked effectively

for 14 years without issue,” said Chris White, technical consultant at Dulas, a renewable energy installer and consultancy.

“We chose lead acid because of its lower cost relative to lithium ion. It’s also simpler to connect lead acid to the existing battery charge controllers and battery inverters. There are some incompatibility problems with certain lithium ion batteries and charge controllers/inverters that we have experienced in the past.

“There is no space constraint on this site, and with the damp environment within the mill we considered

lead batteries would be better. We also have greater field experience of using them relative to lithium ion.”

Work is due to be completed within a couple of weeks.

Gibson Mill is a visitor centre at the Hardcastle Crags beauty spot in Yorkshire, at the edge of Hebden Bridge.

Built in around 1800 as one of the first cotton mills in the industrial revolution

Gravita begins commercial production of lead at two African recycling plants Gravita, the Indian lead producer and recycler, has begun commercial production of lead in two African countries — Tanzania and Ghana — with the aim of supplying European markets, company secretary Nitin Gupta told Batteries International on June 5.

Gravita Ghana has just begun commercial production at its new plant in West Africa, in which it will ultimately invest Rs21 crore ($3 million) and produce 12,000 tonnes a year. At the moment it has a production capacity of 6,000 tonnes, for which all the material comes from local market scrap.

The company said it expected to make Rs110 crore ($16 million) from the Ghana plant in the 2019-2020 financial year.

In April, the company announced its Tanzanian recycling plant had begun commercial operations with a projected annual capacity of 3,000 tonnes of lead and a cost of Rs9.5 crore ($1.4 million).

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The Tanzanian plant will also produce 6,000 tonnes of recycled aluminium a year.

“The production from the plant will cater to the needs of diversified lead dealers and industries globally and will also create an impactful presence of the company in the global lead market, as

well as prove to be beneficial to local industries in Tanzania,” the company said.

It predicted an annual revenue of Rs30 crore ($4.3 million) from the plant.

“Right now we will export to European markets, as in India we already have recycling plants,” said Gupta.

“We expect demand to rise

era in Britain, after a century the building was converted to a place of entertainment, containing a dance hall, skating rink and refreshments.

It fell into disuse and was bought by the National Trust, a charity for environmental and heritage conservation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, in 1950.

In 2005 Dulas was brought in to help make the site entirely energy sufficient.

This meant restoring the original Francis hydro turbine and installing a smaller Crossflow hydro turbine along with a solar photovoltaic system and battery system. in the lead battery industry and are expanding our global footprint accordingly.”

Gravita’s African sites are also in Mali, Senegal, Mozambique and Mauritania.

Elsewhere it operates in the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Peru and Sri Lanka. It is the largest lead producer in India.

In August 2018, Gravita became the first Indian company to join the International Lead Association.

US environmental protection agency proposes $72m plan for superfund clean-up The US Environmental Protection Agency on July 3 announced a $72 million plan to clean up a Superfund site in New Jersey, where car batteries and other waste have been illegally put into landfill or incinerated.

Superfund is a US federal government program designed to fund the clean up of sites contaminated with hazardous substances and pollutants.

Sites managed under this program are referred to as

Superfund sites.

The 82.5-acre site was operated by the Matteo family as an unregistered landfill, junkyard, metals recycling facility and unauthorized lead smelter, according to the EPA. It said a ‘lead-sweating operation’ that had been carried out between 1968 and 1984 for lead recycling had caused serious pollution to the soil and water.

Subsequent investigations resulted in the site

being listed on the EPA National Priorities List in 2006, when a Removal Action was issued and 425 US tons (385 tonnes) of contaminated soil were excavated for removal.

It wasn’t until 2016 that another EPA evaluation was carried out, and it discovered buried crushed battery casings and contaminated soil in several residential yards.

Work should begin in the autumn and will take about three years.

Batteries International • Summer 2019 • 23

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NEWS

Report says children’s teeth near Exide recycling plant contain lead Lead has been found in the baby teeth of children living near Exide Technologies’ battery recycling plant in Vernon, California, a report by the University of California published on May 6 has shown.

Dubbed the ‘Truth Fairy’, the report, officially called Lead and Arsenic in Deciduous Teeth of Children Living Near a Lead-Acid Battery Smelter, was published in Environmental Science and Technology.

The study said a ‘positive significant relationship between prenatal teeth Pb per 100 ppm and increase in soil Pb’ had been observed.

“Measuring Pb and As in shed deciduous teeth is a promising technique to assess prenatal and early life exposure,” the report says.

“In this pilot study, 50 shed deciduous teeth from 43 children living their entire lives within two miles of the smelter were analyzed to understand retrospective exposure to toxic metals using a community-driven research approach,” the report said.

“We found the higher the level of lead in the soil, the higher the amount of lead in baby teeth,” said first author Jill Johnston, assistant professor of preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of California. “There’s no safe level of lead; it’s a potent neurotoxin.”

Using laser ablation — removing materials by layer with a laser beam — the researchers were able to look at each layer of the teeth and give timings down to which trimester of pregnancy the teeth were contaminated.

“The teeth findings were matched with soil contamination data from the California Department of Toxic Substances Control, which collected 117,256 samples from the upper layers of soil

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on nearly 8,000 properties,” a separate report written by Leigh Hopper, of the USC, said.

“Researchers found the median concentration of lead in soil was 190 parts per million, well above the state of California threshold of 80 parts per million. Fourteen per cent of soil samples exceeded 400 ppm.”

The Vernon plant was closed down in 2015 and a clean-up operation launched, which continues.

Some 2,500 properties in a 1.7-mile radius will be cleaned up over a two-year period — the largest cleanup of its kind in California, according to the Department of Toxic Substances Control director, Barbara Lee. Exide gave the following statement to Batteries International: Exide just learned of the USC study and is currently evaluating it.

As we have previously stated, we will continue to be a constructive participant in evaluating and addressing the need for clean-up of industrial and residential properties to the extent they were impacted by the facility’s former operations.

However, there are many significant historical sources for contaminants in urban soils in Southeast Los Angeles County communities, including lead-based paint chips from the predominantly older homes, decades of concentrated vehicle leaded gasoline exhaust from numerous freeways and thoroughfares, and many other industrial sources in the area.

In a previous study conducted by the California Department of Public Health (April 2016), the most important predictor of elevated blood lead levels in the area was age of housing.

There has only been one scientific study released to

date examining lead levels in residential soils in the communities closest to Vernon. That study determined that the area of impact from the Vernon Facility above urban background levels is confined to the industrial areas surrounding the facility and does not reach residential areas.

The study, which was provided by Exide to the DTSC in August of 2015, and was posted on the DTSC’s website, entitled Statistical Analysis of Soil Lead Concentrations in Vernon CA was prepared by Mitchell Small and Stephen Rose of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Exide remains fully committed to working with the State and the DTSC on continued review of this matter, as well as our continued implementation of the Vernon facility closure along with funding of ongoing blood testing in the area.

Mystery ESS explosion sparks fears over future of lithium safety The explosion of a lithium ion energy storage system in Arizona on April 19 has the potential, according to energy professionals to partly derail the rapid deployment of lithium batteries in ESS across the US. The fire, at a substation of power utility Arizona Public Service, injured eight fire fighters, four of whom were hospitalized for evaluation, one of them in critical condition.

“There are too many lithium fires that are going unreported,” said George Brilmyer, a much respected battery expert. “We understand that there have been several fires in electric buses already in China

but these aren’t hitting the headlines. There have been various fires related to Tesla vehicles, including the mystery fire of a car in Shanghai.

At least 21 fires have already occurred at lithium battery projects in South Korea this year.

“This technology is not as safe as many so-called lithium battery experts are saying it is,” said Brilmyer, who is the developer of a commercial device that isolates thermal runaway situations for laptops or phones on aircraft flights.

Arizona Public Service’s McMicken Energy Storage facility houses 2MW/2MWh batteries for

the storage and distribution of solar energy and grid services such as voltage regulation and power quality. The system was integrated by Fluence.

APS said the cause of the fire was unknown. On April 26 the utility said: “An investigation with APS, first-responder representatives and third-party engineering and safety experts is under way. What we know at this point is that we had an equipment failure. A thorough investigation will help us determine what exactly failed and why.”

Two other substations for APS were closed while the investigation continues.

Batteries International • Summer 2019 • 25

NEWS

US tariffs on Mexican lead batteries — good news for US battery makers US tariffs on Mexican lead batteries coming into the country could ultimately be good news for US battery makers — if they can source enough refined lead, says principal analyst on lead for Wood Mackenzie, Farid Ahmed.

The US administration put 5% on Mexican goods, including lead batteries, on June 10. The tariffs will increase to 25% by October 1 unless Mexico halts the flow of illegal immigrants to the US, president Donald Trump has said.

“The preliminary 5% rate will probably not have too much effect — although it will be the American consumer that ends up paying it,” Ahmed said. “However, as the rates get ratcheted up with each successive month, Mexican batteries will lose their price advantage and export volumes will drop.

“It should follow that the US domestic scrap market will ease somewhat if Mexican plants are throttled back and need less scrap. However, these effects may not take hold until the latter part of summer — traditionally when battery factories ramp up production to build stock for the winter peak demand season.”

Ahmed says the US imported almost 20 million lead batteries from Mexico last year, many of which were made by recycling American scrap batteries in large facilities in the north of Mexico. However, in the past few days the price of lead has spiked, he said, due to supply fears from low stocks and news of an outage at a major lead smelter, halting operations.

“If the lead price spike becomes a sustained rally, it could quickly lead to a tight supply of refined lead and increased activity from overseas buyers exporting US

scrap to Asia. These elements could easily combine to restrict lead supply and, consequently, battery production in the US,” he said.

North America’s auto agencies have criticized the 5% tariffs.

In November 2018, the US, Mexico and Canada agreed — but did not ratify — a free-trade agreement to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement, and ‘create more balanced, reciprocal trade that supports high-paying jobs for Americans and grows the North American economy’.

The new tariffs appear to fly in the face of any new agreement.

The US is the second largest car manufacturer in the world and home to most

major vehicle manufacturers, the country produces an average of 11 million passenger cars a year.

Total battery imports from Mexico were over $900 million last year.

Car companies contacted

by Batteries International claimed they could not comment on the specific issue of batteries for ‘competitive reasons’, however Han Tjan, head of corporate communications at Daimler, said: “Being a globally active company, Daimler welcomes trade agreements that reduce trade batteries and promote free and fair trade. “Free trade and investments are key factors for innovation, employment, growth and prosperity.

“In this context, companies

depend on reliable framework conditions, transparency and predictability to make long-term investments.

Trade disputes always entail uncertainties, both for companies and for customers.”

The Alliance of Auto Manufacturers, an advocacy group for the US auto industry, said: “Unfortunately the US Department of Commerce is considering placing tariffs on imported autos and auto parts.

“While the officials considering this move have America’s best interest at heart, we are afraid that these proposed tariffs could result in a de facto tax for American consumers who will be forced to pay more when they purchase new vehicles or visit their mechanics.

“The preliminary 5% rate will probably not have too much effect — although it will be the American consumer that ends up paying it” – Farid Ahmed, analyst on lead for Wood Mackenzie

... but hurt for China exports Donald Trump’s administration slapped a tariff of 25% on $200 million of Chinese goods, including lead acid batteries, in May. The US hike will hurt China’s battery exports and companies from the country, says Wood Mackenzie’s Ahmed.

“The export trade in lead batteries has been worth approximately $400 million a year over the past decade,” he says.

“A 15 percentage point hike to 25% — the 10% rate was introduced last September — in tariffs is going to hurt the industry.”

According to the Shanghai Metals Market, China exported 200 million lead acid batteries a year to the US, which made up 1220% of total exports.

26 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

Ahmed believes that new tariffs could add impetus to the existing drive for China to move battery production for export markets to joint venture companies set up in nearby countries with lower production costs.

The new tariff structure includes refined lead, but only lead alloyed with antimony.

However, Ahmed says this will have a “negligible” effect on the price of the metal.

“At the turn of the century, China was typically exporting around 20 kt/a of refined lead to the US,” he says. “By contrast, in recent years, that total has not exceeded 1 kt/a for well over a decade.

“China’s domestic demand for refined lead has

meant they simply haven’t had excess production to spare for export. The Chinese preference has long been to export lead in the form of an added-value product, particularly as a lead battery,” he says.

Trade in lead concentrates flows in the opposite direction — into China — as the US has no primary lead smelters but produces more than 250 kt/a of socalled ‘contained lead’ from its mines.

China has not increased its tariff on US lead concentrate, which remains at 10%, however imports from the US halved in 2018 as domestic smelters began seeking supplies from other countries once the trade war began, according to the SMM.

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NEWS

Remy battery wins $43m contract with FreshStart packaging innovation Remy Battery announced on May 21 that it had won a $43 million contract with the US Department of Defense to supply up to 83,000 batteries a year for three years. This includes two one-year option extensions.

Remy attributes winning the contract to its new FreshStart product which was short-listed for the BCI innovation awards in 2017.

Remy’s FreshStart is a patented, dry-charged battery packaging and activation solution that eliminates the storage of excess chemicals, reduces hazmat shipping costs, and allows simple and mess-free bat-

tery activation by a single individual.

Along with the drycharged battery, FreshStart contains individually packaged portions of the electrolyte required for each battery cell.

“FreshStart is the allin-one solution for those looking for the advantages of a dry-charged, lead-acid battery without the extra work to source battery electrolyte and dispose of any excess,” says Michael Moeller, president of Remy Battery.

“Our product solves a real problem for the US military in a simple, hasslefree way. It is our hope that

this government contract will help springboard the FreshStart packaging solution into the private sector for commercial and consumer applications.”

FreshStart efficient packaging frees up storage space with its reduced footprint, allowing more units on a pallet, and reducing shipping costs.

The packaging can also be used to return ship scrap batteries and empty electrolyte bottles for proper recycling. Everything needed to activate the battery is included in one package.

This minimizes spills from individual electrolyte bottles with its snug funnel fit.

Adding the electrolyte only when needed lengthens the shelf life and increases the performance of the battery.

Soon after Remy Battery’s recognition at the BCI innovation award, a US Department of Transportation Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) rule was passed eliminating the permit requirements for shipping batteries packed with electrolyte.

Companies will no longer need to regularly re-apply for a special permit to ship dry batteries packaged with electrolyte.

Lead batteries in India lose subsidies under new FAME-II regulations For the record, around 95% of India’s e-bike batteries will not attract subsidies under the government’s FAME-II regulations — because lead-acid batteries are no longer included and most e-bikes are fitted with them, following a ruling by the Ministry of Heavy Industry and Public Enterprise on March 28.

The Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Hybrid and Electric Vehicles in India was first launched in 2015 and named FAME-I. Under it, electric vehicles including scooters, cars, buses and three-wheelers attracted subsidies for not using internal combustion engines.

FAME-II removes electric vehicles with lead acid batteries from the subsidy qualification along with the Indian government’s push for lithium. However, most e-scooters use lead batteries as they are a much cheaper option.

FAME-II also requires

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e-scooters to have a minimum top speed of 40 kmph and a minimum range of 80km on a single charge.

They must also conform to new clauses on energy consumption efficiency.

The regulation follows a report by research organization Credit Rating Information Services of India, which found that 90% of the beneficiaries of the FAME-I subsidy, which

ran from April 2015 to the end of March 2019, were escooters.

The FAME-II subsidies amount to Rs10,000 crore ($150 million) to be implemented over three years.

Boost for lead batteries after New York pledge of $280m for energy storage For the record, a decision by New York State governor Andrew Cuomo on April 25 to plough $280 million into energy storage has been welcomed by the Consortium for Battery Innovation as an opportunity to boost advanced lead battery technology.

The funding will come out of $400 million earmarked for installing 3,000MW of energy storage by 2030 under a ‘Green New Deal’ that aims to get New York State carbon neutral.

“Energy storage is vital

to our resiliency work and this funding will enable us to grow the industry and create jobs while we continue on our path towards meeting the country’s largest energy storage target,” Cuomo said.

The cash should provide an incentive for energy storage firms to bid for tenders and lead batteries should be among the first, offering products with a 99% recycling rate that fits with the green pledge.

“Many cities want to improve their energy storage capacity but they need battery technology that

is both reliable and safe,” said CBI director Alistair Davidson.

“Fire safety is of course important in any building, but in built-up areas or tower blocks it is critical.

That’s why buildings in New York are using lead battery storage, and as a consortium we are carrying out research that will develop batteries with improved performance and lifetimes, making it possible for buildings in cities to provide secure and safe electricity and back-up supplies throughout the year.”

Batteries International • Summer 2019 • 29

NEWS

Exide hits back at California’s DTSC over ‘demonstrably false’ violations

Exide Technologies has strongly rejected a July 19 letter from California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control that threatens to fine the company thousands of dollars for violations which Exide says are ‘demonstrably false and will be proven to be so’.

Exide says: • The DTSC has ignored the scientific findings/ basis of Exide’s report.

• The DTSC failed to respond to Exide in a timely manner.

• The DTSC response is inaccurate, and riddled with incorrect and misleading statements.

The DTSC letter contains a review of Exide’s 250page draft Residential Facility Investigation report, which was filed in time to meet an October 24, 2018 deadline to address lead contamination issues around the closed Vernon lead battery recycling plant.

It is the DTSC’s first review of the RFI, coming some nine months after Exide’s submission despite repeated attempts by the firm to get a response to its findings.

And this was despite a pledge by the DTSC in a November 21 letter saying it was “working diligently to complete its review of the Draft Report and respond”.

Yet without any dialogue in the interim, the DTSC has treated the draft RFI as its basis for threatening to fine Exide a further

$240,000 for ‘24 violations’ and $70,000 a day for violations of the Hazardous Waste Control Law. It also notifies Exide that it will terminate a nonprosecution agreement made in 2014, claiming Exide “is failing to investigate the full extent of its contamination from its former facility in Vernon”.

“The women, children and other people who live around Exide’s nowshuttered facility have suffered for too long,” the letter says. “Federal and state governments must work together to end Exide’s holiday from criminal liability. The time has come for action and accountability.”

Exide immediately hit back, issuing a statement saying: “DTSC’s accusations are demonstrably false and will be proven to be so,” it said.

“Throughout 2018 and 2019, Exide has proactively solicited feedback from DTSC, giving them many months to critique our approach and analysis. The DTSC did not respond.

Rather, months late and well after the completion of the reports, instead of evaluating the science, DTSC has chosen to issue an inaccurate response, riddled with incorrect and misleading statements to the public.”

Exide says it has fully complied with all the orders that have been issued in the past, and in its RFI report provides scientific sources

30 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

which provide evidence its claims that lead found in soil in some residential areas is from other sources, such as lead paint, leaded gasoline and aviation fuel.

In some samples of soil taken from further away from the Vernon plant, lead concentrations are in fact higher than they are in properties adjacent to the site, the findings revealed.

Citing hundreds of sources and scientific data, Exide’s 250-page report concludes: “The conclusion of the RFI Report is that the impacts which are attributable to the Vernon Facility do not extend into the residential areas of the RIA (Residential Investigation Area). The extent of each COPC (Constituent of Potential Concern) is well delineated and limited to the industrial area within approximately 0.5 miles of the Vernon Facility…

“No residential properties have been identified within the extent of COPC impacts potentially attributable to Exide. Impacts in the residential area are most likely associated with roadway, vehicular and lead-based paint sources.

“For this reason, there are no corrective measures required to address the CACO (Corrective Action Consent Order) and 2014 requirements for the residential area and therefore the residential RFI process is complete,

with no CMS (Corrective Measures Study) or subsequent residential corrective actions or reports required.”

In its rebuttal to the letter, Exide said: “Exide’s report — supported by sound and widely accepted scientific methods as well as data from governmental agencies — demonstrated that the company’s efforts not only meet but exceed obligations.”

Batteries International contacted the DTSC, which said it would answer our specific queries in due course, but in the meantime information officer Barbara Zumwalt said: “The Exide project is one of DTSC’s highest priorities, protecting the health and safety of people in the community, especially the youngest and most vulnerable.”

Hywel Jarman, director of communications at the International Lead Association, said: “Industry will always strive to work openly and constructively with regulators and it’s in everyone’s interests that these processes are open and transparent.

Any investigatory or regulatory actions must follow due process and be fair, as should industry’s response.

“Where disputes or disagreements arise over data or procedure, some form of arbitration would be appropriate to allow for any necessary checks and further assessments to take place.”

“No residential properties have been identified within the extent of COPC impacts potentially attributable to Exide.

Impacts in the residential area are most likely associated with roadway, vehicular and lead-based paint sources” — Exide www.batteriesinternational.com

NEWS

Lead prices soar after Port Pirie outage Lead prices have soared in June and July by around $250/t from $1,790/t on the back of an unplanned production outage at Nyrstar’s primary lead refinery at Port Pirie in south Australia.

“The Port Pirie outage has been the key driver to propel the lead price so much higher in July — it was over $2,100/t at one point— as the market frets about refined lead availability, particularly in southeast Asia where so much of Pirie’s output goes,” said Farid Ahmed, lead analyst at Wood McKenzie.

Certainly the firm’s prediction of a €20 million-€25 million hit to

gross earnings and 30kt of lost production will not help Nyrstar which has recently beenrestructured.

On July 31 Trafigura Group formally became the majority owner of the Nyrstar in a deal that has taken months to complete This follows the implementation of the scheme of arrangement: reinstatement of financing facilities with Nyrstar’s financial creditors; completion of a new money facility; issuance of the bond instruments detailed below; and agreement being reached with the State of South Australia on the key terms of the restructure of the Port Pirie perpetual securities,

according to a Trafigura statement.

Daniel Vanin was appointed chief executive officer of the operating business of Nyrstar following the announcement. He has 40 years’ experience and international mine and smelting development experience.

Separately, the relationship between primary lead pricing and secondary lead markets, and the blurring of quality boundaries between the two, will be one of the themes of 6ISLC — the sixth international secondary lead conference — that is being held in Bali in early September.

“We’ve got a superb tech-

nical line-up for these meetings,” says Mark Stevenson, one of the organizers of the conference. “We will bring together all aspects of secondary lead smelting; discussing plant design, smelting regimes, refractories, burner design, slag formation and structures, and pollution and environmental control among other presentations.

“It is a further aim of the conference to open up for discussion all aspects of plant operations and control as to give not only operators, but people interested in secondary smelting a better understanding of the processes involved in the industry.”

Belarus’s IPower lead battery plant rejects polluting claims, ready to open Belarusian lead acid battery plant IPower, which has been the subject of public protests for over a year, has hit back at claims that its proposed new plant is polluting and hazardous, telling Batteries International on July 31 that it meets all environmental standards.

The factory, near the town of Brest, is owned by the 1AK Group and has been the subject of media reports of protests for more than a year, claiming it is hazardous and will pollute the surrounding environment. It has still not opened because of the protests.

But the company says it has the most modern equipment, from global companies such as Sovema, Sanhuan, Ecofilter and Frimax, and that the authorities in Belarus regularly monitor it to ensure they comply with standards.

It also plans to become a member of EUROBAT, the company told Batteries International.

“The standard of dispersion of lead in the sanitary

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protection zone of the plant allows it to discard into the air up to 124kg of lead per year. The project provides a little over 3kg. Thus the plant is absolutely safe for the population and the environment,” the company said.

“IPower is equipped with modern technology and air cleaning equipment which meets the modern standards of environmental safety. The authorities are carrying out actions aimed at monitoring compliance with the established maximum permissible concentrations for emissions, as well as compliance with other requirements established for the enterprise.”

The company also it was open to queries from outside parties and it had set up an independent monitoring group, which had already begun visits.

The plant, which has been built but cannot begin operating until it has received all the necessary permissions ‘in accordance with the terms established by the legislation of the Republic

of Belarus’, will ultimately produce two million automotive batteries a year, a full range of maintenancefree lead batteries for cars, trucks, buses and tractors.

Around 70% would be exported to Ukraine, Georgia, the EU, Asia and Africa, it said.

1AK Group says it is a vertically integrated group of companies, the main activities of which are production, recycling and distribution of batteries. It says it owns a lead smelter, two other lead battery plants and a distribution company, all in Belarus.

The company also denied media claims that a Chinese company had bought the plant. It said that there had been loan agreements set up between the State Development Bank of China and the Bank of Development of Belarus opening a credit line to finance projects in transport, energy, industry, infrastructure, small and medium businesses, but that no Chinese company had any shares in its business.

Part of the funding for the battery plant, will come from Belarusian banks as well as its own sources, the company said.

Aqua Metals announces surge in lead production for Q2 2019 Second quarter results for 2019 released by lead battery recycling firm Aqua Metals on July 31 have shown over a fourfold leap in lead production, said the company.

The company also posted a net operating loss of $10.5 million for

the same quarter of 2019, compared with $9.9 million for the second quarter of 2018.

Costs included the appointments of 25 production staff as the company prepares for ramping up its operations, it said.

Batteries International • Summer 2019 • 31

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PRODUCT NEWS

Orion releases extended carbon black product range for greater DCA Orion Engineered Carbons has extended the range of its speciality carbon blacks, which are tailored for lead batteries. They were showcased for the first time at the Battery Council International meetings in New Orleans at the end of April.

“Our new range of high quality carbon blacks act as conductive additives and increase the dy-

drogen evolution as the battery’s negative electrode side resulting in high water loss during charging. The modified surface of these products maintain their conductivity and surface area while suppressing the hydrogen evolution reaction lowering water loss to acceptable levels and which gives battery manufacturers the freedom

to use higher loading to achieve higher charge acceptance.”

Orion’s new range of products — Printex kappa 210, 220 and 240 grades — follow the acquisition last November of French acetylene black manufacturer SN2A. The firm has since been renamed Orion Engineered Carbons France SAS.

Russian scientists find way to retrieve lead and recycle silver-zinc batteries

suddenly blow up.

“With silver zinc you always get a warning when something’s going to happen. It can’t be fully cycled more than 50 to 100 times, but then neither can lithium be fully cycled as many times as we are led to believe.

“Once the silver zinc batteries reach their end-of-life they are collected and everything is reclaimed to come back to us.”

Adamedes said BST also sometimes used lead as an additive along with other elements such as mercury.

“Everything is sent off to our reclamation people and it all comes back,” she said.

Scientists at the National University of Science and Technology in Russia announced on May 21 they had developed a way to recycle silver from silver-zinc military batteries even when it has had lead added to it.

Some batteries made for the Russian Navy are colossal, 14-tonne alkaline batteries that contain seven tons of silver plate, the scientists said.

To save some of the expensive silver, a decade ago manufacturers began adding lead to them as it did not affect performance — yet ultimately saved nearly 500 million Russian roubles ($7.8 million) per battery.

However this almost completely prevented recycling the silver — until now.

Working with JSC Shchelkovo Plant of Secondary Precious Metals, the procedure is a cascade method that purifies the silver from spent batteries used in military submarines and aircraft so it can be reused.

The technology is a twostage melting of silver, as a result of which the melt is separated from the slag,” said Sergey Rogov, associate professor of the university’s MISIS Department of NonFerrous Metals and Gold.

“Subsequent rapid cooling

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namic charge acceptance of batteries by up to 60% while maintaining acceptable water loss,” said Kane Henneke, a sales engineer at the BCI convention.

“Our latest Printex kappa grades have very low metallic impurities which results in extended battery cycle life.

“Most conductive carbon blacks increase hy-

enables the capture of oxygen, which oxidizes the lead in the composition of the silver material. In the second melting under the coating layer of flux (magnesium and sodium salts) oxidized lead is separated and goes into the slag.

“As a result of this twostage process, lead is removed, and a commercial product of 99.99% purity is obtained from raw materials with 85% silver content.

The pure product is suitable for the manufacture of a new battery.”

Rogov said the technology had been used at JSC Shchelkovo and no additional equipment had been required apart from a highspeed melt cooling unit.

“The use of the new technology has allowed involving previously non-recyclable waste of silver-zinc batteries in the production, increasing the volume of products manufactured by the plant by 7.5%,” said Aleksandr Savisko, director for production at JSC Shchelkovo.

Using silver in military batteries is ideal because volumetric energy density is very high, says Zoe Adamedes, business development manager at BST Systems, a US designer and manufacturer of power systems

including silver zinc batteries for military and deep sea applications.

“They’re ideal in places where there’s not a lot of room, especially underwater, where the space is very small,” she said. “Often the machines are designed and just an odd-shaped space left for the battery.

“Lithium ion has very good energy density and lots of cycles but it needs lots of control circuitry and when it goes, it goes suddenly. Larger applications can work and work then

“As a result of this two-stage process, lead is removed, and a commercial product of 99.99% purity is obtained from raw materials with 85% silver content. The pure product is suitable for the manufacture of a new battery” – MISIS’ Sergey Rogov: Batteries International • Summer 2019 • 33

PRODUCT NEWS

Exide announces new generation of Carbon Boost 2.0 technology batteries ...

Exide Technologies launched its latest generation Carbon Boost 2.0 technology for EFB and premium batteries for light vehicles at this year’s Autopromotec exhibition at the end of May. Carbon Boost was designed by Exide in collaboration with major car manufacturers. It uses improved carbon additives that combine an optimized surface structure with better conductivity. This enables a better current flow within the battery, resulting in improved charge acceptance.

It also helps dissolve the lead sulfate deposits that consolidate on a battery’s discharged negative plates, reducing its ability to recharge efficiently.

Stringent new EU regulations have set a CO2 emission limit of 95g/km in vehicle homologation testing by 2021. The new global test protocol, the Worldwide Harmonized Light Vehicles Test Procedure (WLTP), for the first time measures the depletion of

the battery capacity during testing and converts it into the equivalent fuel consumed and CO2 emitted by a car.

Effectively, the battery needs to retain a high percentage of its initial capacity to help car makers avoid being penalized when passing certain thresholds.

The recharging process accounts for just 8% of the total test duration, with the remainder spent on discharge.

Compared with previous EFB generations, 75% more energy is recovered in the same amount of time. This allows the new Exide EFB range to exploit regenerative braking energy to a much higher extent, and therefore contributes

to meeting the new vehicle emission targets.

Michael Geiger, vice president, sales and marketing, Exide Technologies, EMEA, said: “The higher dynamic charge acceptance for EFB and faster recharge for Premium batteries generate a range of additional efficiencies.

“For Exide’s new EFB offering installed in cars with regenerative braking — given that in a braking phase, time is limited to a few seconds — Carbon Boost 2.0 allows the battery to accept greater charging current, resulting in the battery remaining at a higher state of charge (SoC). This en-

... releases sub-zero battery too Separately, Exide launched its GNB Marathon Subzero battery, designed to meet the specific demands of cold-storage applications.

GNB Marathon Subzero batteries are outperform

conventional batteries in both runtime and lifespan in cold environments (39°F/4°C and below), says the firm.

“Our customers using GNB Marathon Subzero

EnerSys completes motive power range of batteries with lead and lithium options Battery manufacturer EnerSys is to launch another thin plate pure lead battery for motive power applications at an international exhibition on material handling equipment in September.

The NexSys PURE battery, which is a combination of advanced carbon and TPPL technology, will be launched at the IMHX 2019 in Kuala Lumpur at the end of September.

The battery will complete the company’s range of NexSys offerings, said EnerSys official Christopher Butcher.

sures that the start-stop system is not disabled by the battery management system but continues to deliver fuel savings and reduced CO2 emission over time.”

Exide Premium batteries with Carbon Boost 2.0 for cars with conventional powertrains now recharge twice as fast compared with other standard flooded batteries.

The company claims the battery offers a higher cycle life for applications that would normally require regular opportunity charging, such as pallet trucks.

Already launched in the UK this February, the NexSys iON, a lithium counterpart to the NexSys PURE, will also be on show at the exhibition.

34 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

The NexSys iON can be directly replaced with the TPPL option and vice versa, and both are compatible with power management technology also developed

by EnerSys. A battery monitoring device from EnerySys’ WI-IQ series collects data via wireless sensors in each battery, whether they are lead or lithium.

All NexSys batteries are available in standard and fast configurations so the right combination of battery, charger and monitoring system can be applied.

batteries are experiencing increased runtimes by up to 53%, at a temperature of nine degrees Fahrenheit, compared to conventional batteries,” said Ted Becker, president, Exide Americas.

“The result of fewer battery changes translates to a higher volume of materials moved per hour, which raises productivity and lowers total cost of ownership.”

GNB Marathon Subzero is a military-grade engineered battery that was initially designed to withstand the rigours of deepsea work and to handle the most severe applications in the harshest conditions.

It uses Tensor technology to incorporate copper for negative grid materials, replacing the lead used in conventional batteries.

This results in enhanced conductivity. This benefit of low-resistance allows for both fast and opportunity charging.

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FLOW BATTERY NEWS

Saudi Arabia to make flow batteries with Schmid, Nusaned and RIWAQ Three firms — Schmid Group, Nusaned Investment (an investment company owned by SABIC) and RIWAQ — announced on May 14 that the parties had agreed to set up a joint venture in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia focusing on manufacturing and technology development of vanadium redox flow batteries.

The joint venture said it aims to become a global technology leader and champion in the utility-

scale energy storage segment, supporting Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 economic diversification objectives.

With research and development facilities in Germany and Saudi, the joint venture plans to set-up a GW scale manufacturing facility in the kingdom for production in 2020.

Saudi Arabia aims to install 57.5GW of renewable capacity by 2030.

Utility-scale stationary energy storage systems will

be critical to ensure that the new renewable capacity is stabilized and connected reliably to the grid.

The kingdom could also leverage this technology in upcoming mega-projects in the kingdom.

The partners in this investment say they are aiming to position the kingdom to become an R&D and manufacturing hub for utility-scale energy storage, and play a leading role in the development of domes-

tic and international markets.

Nusaned Investment is an investment company based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and owned by SABIC with a mandate to increase local content in the kingdom.

The SCHMID Group is a technology group based in Freudenstadt, Germany.

The RIWAQ Industrial Development Company is an investment and project development company based in Saudi.

US military uses solar-plus-storage with iron flow battery system ESS, the flow battery manufacturer, announced on May 14 that it had deployed its long-duration flow battery system known

as Energy Warehouse at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in San Diego, California.

“The 50 kW / 400

kWh battery is integrated into a microgrid with a CleanSpark microgrid controller, and provides up to eight hours of

EES industry award celebrates energy storage technology mix This year’s ees prestigious annual award recognised solid-state lithium metal polymer and redox flow battery technologies during a ceremony held on the first day of The Smarter E exhibition in Munich on May 15.

The annual awards pay tribute to companies’ pioneering products and solutions that advance storage deployment from stationary and mobile solutions to virtual power plants.

The year’s winners were French firm Blue Solutions, Austria’s Enerox and German firm Maschinenfabrik Reinhausen.

• Blue Solutions’ solidstate, lithium metal polymer battery LMP (lithium metal polymer) 250/400

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rack system impressed judges with its high level of safety and the performance offered by the solution.

LMP batteries do not contain liquid electrolytes and can be operated at up to 105°C without the need for cooling.

• Enerox — part of the CellCube Energy Storage Systems family — also caught the eye of judges with its CellCube FB 5002000. The CellCube storage system is one of the first in the industry to offer vanadium redox flow batteries with a 1,000 volt DC range. The flow battery stores energy in vanadium electrolyte tanks.

The scalable, high-performance 250 kilowatt

units can be used in largescale solar parks and wind farms, self-sufficient building solutions, and standalone grids The vanadium redox flow battery was commended for its ‘electrolyte as a service’, business model that brings capital costs below €300 kW/h — an innovation in the field of flow batteries.

• Maschinenfabrik Reinhausen’s Gridcon PCS 4W — power conversion system is a modular, bidirectional storage inverter for on-grid and off-grid applications. Designed as a fourwire system, it can be operated as a TN grid without the need to install additional transformers.

storage to enable backup capabilities for critical loads; operational energy cost savings through on-site generation with storage; and full islanding capabilities for resilience,” says ESS. The project is being completed in partnership with the project’s prime contractor, Bethel-Webcor JV. It is the second Energy Warehouse system deployed in a military microgrid application, says ESS. “The Camp Pendleton project, is the first ever deployment of a solar-plusstorage system utilizing an iron flow battery,” said Anthony Vastola, SVP of projects for CleanSpark.

“The solution operates in off-grid mode by default so as to maximize efficiency, utilize solar over-generation and extend the overall life of the system.

CleanSpark provides intelligent energy monitoring and controls, microgrid design and engineering, microgrid consulting services and turn-key microgrid implementation services.

Batteries International • Summer 2019 • 35

FLOW BATTERY NEWS

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36 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

Southern Research has opened an Energy Storage Research Center in collaboration with industry leaders, government departments and other scientific bodies, it announced on July 16.

The center, which is at Southern Research’s Oxmoor, Alabama engineering campus, is to be an industry-wide resource for testing and validating energy storage technologies.

Among the participants are energy firm Southern Company and its subsidiary Alabama Power, the Electric Power Research Institute, the US Department of Energy and its Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

“The center will focus on grid-scale energy storage applications in combination with renewables in the southeast through the development of joint energy storage research, demonstration and test projects,” Southern Research said.

“Additionally, the ESRC will serve as an industrywide resource to evaluate the emerging energy storage technologies needed to fully realize the potential of energy sources such as solar generation, and to improve the reliability and resiliency of the power grid.”

One of the ESRC’s first projects is to evaluate a rechargeable flow battery produced by California-based Avalon Battery. Its co-founder and chief product officer Matt Harper said he was pleased to help promote technology for grid-scale energy storage systems.

“This is the result of years of dedicated work by a team with decades of flow battery experience and it has been selected by the ESRC for evaluation. We look forward to working with them,” he said.

“A well defined portfolio of different energy storage technologies is critical to allow a variety of energy storage plus renewables necessary to optimize the energy mix, increase grid resilience and power quality while minimizing the carbon footprint inherent in the power generation and delivery process,” said Bert Taube, energy storage and renewables program manager with Southern Research’s Energy & Environment division.

Imre Gyuk, director of energy storage research with the US DOE’s Office of Electricity, said: “A regional research center can provide needed validation of storage technologies as well as validation of business cases and benefit streams.”

The ESRC will be independent, providing third-party services to technology vendors and users, among other stakeholders.

“The ESRC will broaden our work with stakeholders and technology developers from across the industry to better understand energy storage systems and how to fully use this technology to build the future of energy,” said Roxann Walsh, research and development director at Southern Company.

According to the Energy Storage Association, the global energy storage market is growing exponentially, predicting an annual installation size of 40GW by 2022.

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LITHIUM NEWS

Decarbonizing the US power grid to cost +$4tr, 900GW of energy storage needed The transition to a 100% renewable US power grid will need investment of up to $4.5 trillion over the next 10 to 20 years, require the installation of 900GW of energy storage as well as building 1,600GW of new wind and solar capacity, according to analysis from Wood Mackenzie released at the end of June.

Dan Shreve, head of global wind energy research at the international research consultancy, said: “The mass deployment of wind and solar generation will require substantial investments in utility-scale storage to ensure grid resilience is maintained.

“Energy storage is a vital component of the estimates, given the need to ensure wind and solargenerated power is available exactly when consumers need it.”

Shreve considered a total restructuring of the way the US sourced and used its power and created its energy storage would be needed.

“The challenges of achieving 100% renewable energy go far beyond the capital costs of new generating assets. Most notably, it will need a substantial redesign of electricity markets, migrating away from traditional energyonly constructs and more towards a capacity market.

“The current US power grid has about 1,060GW of nameplate capacity, including roughly about 130GW of wind and solar capacity.”

Aggressive 2030 climate targets would require more capacity to be installed every year for the

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next 11 than the total capacity put in place over the previous 20.

The move to renewables is starting to look unstoppable in the US. On July 18 a bill, dubbed the ‘most aggressive climate law in the US’, was signed off by New York governor Andrew Cuomo.

Known as the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, this requires utilities to source 70% of their electricity from renewable energy by 2030 and install 6GW of distributed solar by 2025.

It aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 85% by 2050.

Cuomo also signed off two offshore wind projects in what would be the country’s biggest renewable energy installation, 1.7GW, by any state in US history.

If the Wood Mac figures look unachievable in the near term, the consultancy says that extending

the time horizon to 20402050 would allow new technologies to develop and reach commercial scale.

Allowing 20% of the power mix to come from existing natural gas-fired generation would also reduce renewable energy costs by roughly 20%, and energy storage costs by at least 60%, Wood Mackenzie found.

Issues such as the question of resources — material as well as monetary — look also to be part of a technological block to achieving these goals.

Lithium batteries, which are now the standard in most large scale ESSs around the world, may not be the automatic way forward.

Jim Robb, president and CEO of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, recently dubbed lithium ion batteries the “gatekeeper tech-

nology” for this expansion into the so-called clean energy transition.

Others, such as the International Lead Association, are arguing that lead batteries, with their proven record of reliability and cost-effectiveness, will also play a role in the future.

Oddly enough, reaching a halfway house in the clean energy transition may not be so impractical.

Wood Mackenzie’s director of Americas Power Research Wade Schauer said: “Our analysis of the data suggest that reaching 50% of supply from intermittent renewables system wide is relatively straightforward in most of the US. “But above 50%, integration challenges accelerate rapidly. Achieving full decarbonization will require long-duration energy storage, and the electric grid will need to roughly double its capability.”

Huge rise in H1 2019 venture capital funds for battery storage Venture capital funding in battery storage companies was up by 139% in the first half of 2019 compared with last year, with $1.4 billion recorded in 17 deals compared with $543 million in 30 deals in 1H 2018, Mercom Capital Group announced on July 22.

The clean technology research and communications firm says the top five VC funding deals this year were Northvolt’s $1 billion raise; Sila Nanotechnologies’ raise of $170 million; Romeo Power,

$88.6 million; Zenobe Energy, $32.3 million; and LivGuard Energy Technologies, which raised $32 million.

Announced debt and public market financing was also up in the same period in five deals by 275% compared with 2018, when $146 was raised in six deals, Mercom said.

With battery storage project funding deals, four were announced in 1H 2019, totalling $499 million, compared with just $34 million in four deals

last year.

There were six battery storage M&A transactions in 1H 2019 compared with eight in the same period last year.

VC funding in smart grid companies fell by 11% in the first half of 2019, with $120 million compared with last year’s $135 million. With energy efficiency companies the numbers rose, with funding 25% higher this year at $207 million compared with 1H 2018’s $165 million.

Batteries International • Summer 2019 • 37

VPP NEWS

Autogrid, ENERES in world’s largest virtual power plant venture in Japan Energy software company AutoGrid and Japanese energy services and trading company ENERES announced on June 17 their plan to create the largest storage VPP in the world by asset volume.

The project anticipates adding more than 10,000 assets to the VPP between 2020-2021, with rapid scaling in subsequent years.

“This project is truly exciting. This is the assimilation of multiple power generation assets forming new microgrids and electrical grids of the future,” says one commentator.

AutoGrid will supply ENERES with VPP and customer engagement software to aggregate, dispatch and market energy from demand response and distrib-

uted energy resources.

The partnership will enable ENERES to combine DR resources into large enough blocks of energy to sell into capacity markets.

The first phase of the project begins this year and will result in a large, dispatchable DR portfolio.

A second phase will enable ENERES to deploy a full-scale VPP to aggregate behind-the-meter DERs, including solar PV panels, energy storage systems, combined heat and power units and electric vehicle batteries, along with DR. ENERES will pool DERs from its customers into a dispatchable virtual resource to participate in Japanese wholesale energy and capacity markets.

“As solar and storage

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costs continue to decline and new capacity markets open, DER and DR resources are becoming a key component of our daily operations,” said Masahiro Kobayashi, president of ENERES. “AutoGrid Flex gives us a proven, AI-driven comprehensive distributed energy management solution that allows us to fully leverage our own DER and DR resources and those of our customers in real time.”

“Japan is in the midst of a massive market transformation that requires much greater supplies of flexible energy,” said Amit Narayan, CEO of AutoGrid.

“We’re excited to team with ENERES to provide a scalable platform to meet this critical challenge.”

This March, the feed-in tariff for Japan’s commercial and industrial solar segment was cut by 22%, with the expectation that the residential sector will follow suit after the 2020 review.

Japanese consortium triples EV/PHEV deployment in vehicle-to-grid experiment

cellcare.com The second stage of a project to test V2G technology on Japan’s grid began on June 3 after the country’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry approved plans by a consortium of power, gas and vehicle OEMs. It is the second time the companies have participatComplete management service for your standby ed in this project; this time battery systems 40 more electric vehicles/ Plug-in Hybrids (for 59 EV/ CellCare Technologies Ltd PHEV vehicles) will be addA2, Harrison Road ed to create the VPP. Airfield Business Park Complete management service for your standby Trials at five locations Market Harborough, within Japan will continue Leicestershire, LE16 7UL battery systems through to February 17, Tel: +44 (0) 1858 468438 Email: sales@cellcare.com 2020, after the consortium was granted cash to cover the costs of the FY2019 virwww.cellcare.com tual power plant construc38 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

AutoGrid says its activity in Japan has increased as the new energy market’s generation targets have driven rapid adoption of storage and as the industry races to integrate more renewable and storage into the mix to achieve 2030 goals.

Separately in May, Schneider Electric, the French energy giant, became a major stakeholder in AutoGrid.

Schneider Electric says it “will leverage AutoGrid’s Energy Internet and Flex platforms to add artificial intelligence-driven solutions for customers’ distributed energy projects.

“This will accelerate new capabilities for Schneider Electric’s leading microgrid and behind the meter solutions, as well as advance its ability to better serve the utility segment as the grid becomes more distributed and prosumers demand greater participation and control over their energy usage.”

tion demonstration project.

The consortium, of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, TEPCO Energy Partner and TEPCO Power Grid, Mitsubishi Motors Corporation, Hitachi Systems Power Services and Shizuoka Gas, will investigate demand-side energy resources during the project.

The project will investigate how EVs used as a virtual power plant can balance the supply of renewables on the power grid.

The consortium will adjust power supply and demand through a two-way power exchange between the accumulators in EV/ PHEV and power grids.

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ONE

MINUTE

GIVEBACK A CSR initiative supported by

USA: sorfin@sorfin.com

JAPAN: tokyo@sorfin-yoshimura.jp

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COVER STORY: SEPARATORS

The new kingmakers: It’s boom time for separator firms working in Asia where there is a record demand for batteries of all descriptions and in particular a hunt for better quality product.

An automotive boom has swept across Asia in the past two decades.

Last year China manufactured 23.8 million passenger cars, Malaysia 8.4 million, Indonesia 4 million and India also around 4 million, although the market for erickshaws and scooters in the country was around five times that number.

Given that every vehicle needs a lead acid battery and every battery needs a separator, the stakes for firms active in this massive business sector are huge.

All the major separator makers are beefing up their operations in the region — both in terms of manufacturing capabilities and also in designing products to meet specific needs and environments.

There is a variety of factors for players wanting to establish local operations rather than just tap into greater volumes of business.

The first is that shorter lead times are as important to customers as they are to separator manufacturers. Lean manufacturing is a gospel doctrine to battery manufacturers in India and China, which dislike the build-up of inventory and subsequent lower profitability.

In principle, the more local the operation the shorter the lead time — shipping separators from Europe or the US may take weeks rather than days.

The second — though not a new story at all — is that international companies can see the economic benefits of having a cheaper labour force in a local plant with its reduced operational costs and less expensive shipping bills.

Less obvious, but perhaps more interesting, is the

40 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

changing landscape of battery manufacturing across the region. Manufacturers are aiming to up their game — lower quality batteries with say a two-year operational life used to be acceptable to customers. They were cheap to buy and then buy again.

But that is changing because of two things. The first is the rise and rise of the middle class across the region.

China alone was reckoned by its statistics agency to have some 400 million middle class citizens last year.

This was up from 29 million in 1999.

A similar demographic trend is occurring across south-east Asia and the Indian subcontinent.

With greater disposable income comes greater ability to buy up the value scale: the bicycle is replaced by the motorbike, which in turn is replaced by the car. The search for a better lifestyle means better products.

And that includes a better car battery too.

The second is that government regulation over transportation is increasing, as it is on better production values.

Governments across the region are starting to talk about EV charging infrastructures, lower CO2 car fleet values and a move into stop-start. All these require better batteries — and better batteries need better separators.

And better separators need to meet the specific demands of the region which are dissimilar — sometimes totally dissimilar — in many ways from in Europe or North America.

“The issue of tailoring products to the needs of the region is particularly important,” says Dawn Heng, vice president of global marketing for Daramic. “Local usage of the battery, the difference in the way batteries will be deployed, is never going to be the same as in the western world.

“Everything from the depth of discharge and related partial state of charge is at odds with the way that

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COVER STORY: SEPARATORS

why separator firms are fuelling Asia’s battery boom SEPARATORS JUST PART OF A WIDER PICTURE The last five years have been busy ones for the lead battery business. Faced with a growing threat from lithium ion batteries penetrating almost every sector of energy storage, the lead industry has fought back. Innovation was the key to the change. A wave of innovations grabbed the headlines — bipolar success, yet better expanders, oxides, grid making equipment.

Less well voiced, but certainly as radical, have been the advances made by the major separator firms that have matched progress with progress.

Industry advances around pastes, oxides and production have been complemented by related advances increasing their performance by better separators.

Apart from the materials in a lead acid battery, the production costs in energy and time (including depreciation) amount to more than 15% of the total, says one industry consultant.

“Anything that can improve the automation of manufacturing will help to reduce the batteries’ net cost. Separators that lend themselves to continuous rather than batch processes, such as online pocket manufacture from a flexible roll, enable battery producers to automate and speed up product throughput.”

All the leading separator manufacturers have upped their game enormously in the past five years. R&D budgets have soared as these firms have fought to offer yet better and more competitive products.

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batteries work elsewhere.”

In a worldwide separator market reckoned at around $4 billion (see box) and of which as much as two thirds could be coming from Asia, a lot is at stake.

Asia destination, manufacturing hub

The most recent investment in the Asian region has come from Microporous, historically perhaps best known for its long connections with the separator market and in particular its invention in the 1930s of the rubber separator.

At the end of May Microporous announced it had formed a partnership with the Chinese micro-glass fibre firm Zisun for the manufacture, devel- “It’s a merging of two skill sets opment and distribution of … of membrane expertise and AGM battery separators.

The deal means that Mi- battery experience” croporous will be able to add AGM separators to its prod- — David Mihara, Microporous. uct portfolio. At the moment the two separator manufacturers that dominate the market space in lead acid battery chemistry and for AGM batteries are Hollingsworth separator engineering with high-end and Vose and Bernard Dumas. micro glass fibre and related wet laid Both have the long experience and technologies is a winning combinaspecialized equipment needed to make tion for our global customer base,” AGM separators successfully — they says David Mihara, VP for Technolalso have established order books in ogy at Microporous. “It’s a merging place to manufacture in size. (The two of two skill sets — of membrane exlargest separator firms in the world, pertise and battery experience.”

Daramic and Entek, are not major Mihara has some 35 years’ experiplayers in this market sector.) ence in the battery market, including Zisun, which is based in Chongqing, periods in R&D with Exide Technolois the largest fully integrated producer gies and most recently spending five of micro-glass fibre in Asia, and has years at AGM battery manufacturer fully owned and controlled access to NorthStar as chief technology officer raw materials, micro-glass fibre man- before joining Microporous last July. ufacturing with both rotary and flame He says he is particularly excited attenuated technologies, and state of about the fact that Zisun is not relithe art, fully automated wet-laid me- ant on other suppliers. “The quality dia production lines. of raw materials is very important “This marriage of leading expertise for AGM separators. Zisun has its

Batteries International • Summer 2019 • 41

COVER STORY: SEPARATORS FROM ASIA TO ALL POINTS EVERYWHERE

A newly created Chinese firm, Separator Technology (Bengsu) is aiming not just to help satisfy the demand for separators in Asia but to reach a yet-wider audience.

The firm believes the key to its success will be greater automation and a better product. Batteries International spoke to Zhao Zhanjun, the new general manager.

So what’s the thinking behind your new firm?

We aim to be the most efficient separator manufacturer in the world in three years’ time!

To achieve this we’re merging the philosophy behind 7 MUDA — the elimination of waste and nonvalue adding processes — to the mechanics of separator production.

Our solution has been to automate as much as possible and eliminate the need for workers on the factory floor.

What are the benefits of yet greater automation?We’ve found that it is hard to hire and keep good people in most industries but especially so in manufacturing.

If automation is carried out in the right way it will reduce dependence on any single person or management system. This improves consistency and reliability as well as driving down costs.

Automation is a more reliable and stable process and high automation can guarantee products’ consistency and stability.

How far have you got with your plans?We’re running two lines at the moment with a total capacity of 50 million sqm. But when we’ve got all four lines running we’ll have a total capacity 120 million sqm. That probably will be in 15 months’ time.

For the moment we’re focusing on flooded batteries but later on we

42 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

hope to make a high-end double layer — not single layer as is the norm — AGM separator in the future.

This double layer AGM separator will have a fine fibre structure towards the positive plates and rough structure towards the negative. This increases the battery performance, reduces the costs and increases the acid content.

What material will you be using as the base for the separator?

We’ve produced a new generation of PE separators where formula design, structure design and process design all work against stratification, reduce oil leaching and cut down on water loss.

These innovations will improve battery performance. Typically our products have a very high porosity of between 65%-70%, which makes for very low electrical resistance.

However, if you compare us with our competitors’ thinner back web products, we’re going in the opposite direction — we can produce thicker back web products with lower electrical resistance, (such as 0.3 mm back web thickness with 40mΩ·cm²).

Our special designs allow battery makers to gain better run abilities, reduce shorts, reduce corrosion of the separator. Overall, these contribute to extending battery life and improving battery performance.

own micro-glass fibre production and thus control of the raw materials, plus high-end micro-glass fibre and wetlaid process capabilities,” he says.

“For both companies excellence in manufacturing, engineering and innovation are very important and Microporous has a great customer base for flooded lead-acid batteries worldwide who are interested in an alternative high-quality supply source,” says vice president, sales and marketing Claudia Lorenzini.

“The partnership allows Microporous to offer an immediate and competitive source for high-end AGM separators and in the future, pasting paper as well.

“We can guarantee a completely controlled supply chain and quality with a production line dedicated to Microporous, with optional regional warehousing and slitting capability.”

Entek partners Separindo

The theme of partnership with a local company can be picked up by Entek International, a separator firm that seemingly emerged out of nowhere in the mid-1980s. The firm, initially based in the City of Lebanon in the US state of Oregon, but subsequently with operations in the UK, dominated much of the lead battery automotive market in the US and Europe.

The firm announced in 2015 that it was no longer going to ship its products from the US and the UK to Asia but was looking for a local Asian firm to partner with.

Kirk Hanawalt, co-owner of Entek, speaking at the time at a local business forum in Lebanon, said: “China is now the biggest automobile market in the world but in Asia, our market share is small today.

“In America, there are 16 million new cars on the road, compared to 170 million already in use. New batteries for old cars are the market here, but that’s the reverse in Asia.

“Lead acid batteries will be the focus in Asia. Lithium ion batteries aren’t as profitable, in part because China has forced investment and research into that type of product and flooded the marketplace as a result.”

But while Entek was keen to tap the Chinese market, Hanawalt was cautious about basing facilities in the country. “The government can decide to do something, and there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s one of our big concerns there,” he said. “It’s a freefor-all. You can do whatever you want to do, so copying things is considered

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Higher Porosity Lower Electrical Resistance Higher Puncture Resistance Durable Oxidation Resistance New Generation of PE Separator -Ultra Porosity

COVER STORY: SEPARATORS normal. There’s no stigma.”

Talks between Entek and Indonesian firm Separindo, based in West Java, continued throughout 2016 and in February 2017 the two announced they had reached an agreement on a joint venture arrangement for the production, sales and marketing of polyethylene battery separators for flooded lead-acid batteries in Asia.

The joint venture — PT Entek Separindo Asia — committed the partners to share technology and to integrate their manufacturing and sales efforts in Asia.

Larry Keith, CEO of Entek, said at the time, “Our partnership with Separindo enables us to reach Asian customers with quality products from the Separindo and Entek product portfolios delivered with the short lead times and trade-advantaged benefits of manufacturing in Asia.

“We will immediately start expanding the existing capacity in Indonesia.

I am also directing the Entek in-house design and manufacturing group to start the design work to add 60 million square meters per year production capacity to the Indonesian facility.”

The two were clearly a good mix.

Separindo had a long experience and contacts with Asian battery makers.

Entek had the global scale and broad expertise in continuous manufacturing.

The partnership with Separindo was extended later in 2017. That July the two firms announced they had reached a further agreement with the Japanese glass company NSG Group.

While the initial partnership was aimed at boosting the firm’s business in the SLI, traction and stationary power markets, the new joint venture aimed to focus on separators for startstop batteries.

Christophe Thuet, vice president Asia Pacific, Entek, said at the time: “Stop-start- technology is growing not only in Asia, but worldwide. As governments around the world adopt policies to drive down emissions, auto manufacturers are meeting the challenge of these new regulations in a number of ways. One way that they are able to meet new regulatory challenges is to convert to start-stop technology.”

NSG makes polyethylene separators as well as AGM or absorptive glass mat separators. Typically, these batteries are used in high-end start-stop, marine and industrial applications.

“While AGM is not part of our joint

44 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

Stop-start- technology is growing not only in Asia, but worldwide. As governments around the world adopt policies to drive down emissions, auto manufacturers are meeting the challenge of these new regulations in a number of ways — Christophe Thuet, ENTEK

THE BASICS OF A SEPARATOR

A separator is a membrane between a battery’s anode and cathode. Its function is to keep the electrodes apart to prevent short circuits while also allowing ionic charge to pass through it and complete the circuit.

Separators are critical components in liquid electrolyte batteries. They generally consist of a polymeric membrane forming a microporous layer.

They must be chemically and electrochemically stable with regard to the electrolyte and electrode materials and mechanically strong enough to withstand the high tension during battery construction.

Their structure and properties considerably affect the battery performance, including the batteries energy and power densities, cycle life, and safety.

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COVER STORY: SEPARATORS

“The E-Rickshaw market has long faced challenges related to the deep cycling, abusive usage patterns, and improper charging, Our RickLife separator improves cycle life by as much as 50%” — Rajneesh Singh, Daramic venture, we look forward to a longterm partnership with NSG, where together we will be able to focus on new technologies for the lead acid battery applications,” said Thuet.

“The joint venture will give Entek, NSG and Separindo access to additional production capacity to serve the growing customer needs.”

Daramic too

Out of the major western separator firms, Daramic has had the longest experience in Asia.

Daramic made its first moves to set up a regional presence in Asia in 2000, with the opening of a manufacturing plant in Prachinburi, Thailand.

In 2006 it formed a joint venture in China, following this a year later with the acquisition of a plant in Tianjin and establishing a new one in Xiangyang in 2011.

Although China was a major market where it needed to have a huge local presence, the boom in automotive and other demand was also happening in India. In 2008, Daramic acquired Super-Tech Battery Components Pvt in Bangalore, in the south of the country.

By 2011 it had acquired a larger factory in Bangalore as it prepared

46 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

India.

That year the firm also started the move to a new Asia Technical Centre near Bangalore. In July, Daramic launched RickLife — a polyethylene separator for flatplate e-rickshaw batteries which improves cycle life by as much as 50%.

RickLife was the result of three years of research.

Rajneesh Singh, RickLife product manager, said, “The emerging E-Rickshaw market has long faced challenges related to the deep cycling, abusive usage patterns and improper charging of the application. We are excited to provide this solution.”

In 2017-2018 Daramic India released HiCharge and XCharge, mostly for inverter batteries.

The business approach has tried to be tailored to the needs of the region.

These include a reversal of imposing the standard western template on an Indian battery.

So, for example, one key product in this range, known as DuraLife, followed the unusual pattern of being launched in the Asian market first and then two years later in 2017 was released worldwide.

H&V and others too to increase its production. Later that year it made the Bangalore facility the headquarters of its operations in the country.

In 2013 it set up its Asian Technical Centre, also in Bangalore. This was specifically designed to explore making improved battery separators for the Asia region.

“Our research centre gives us a unique chance to develop on the ground and test new products,” says Heng.

“Local usage of the battery is never going to be the same as in the western world. There’s a huge range of different applications for batteries in India — just think of the range nowadays from two wheelers to cars to trucks to e-rickshaws. You can’t simply take a template product from the US or Europe and put them as separators into Indian batteries.”

Further advances in the development of its Asian operations were the creation of a finishing facility in Baddi, in the north of India, in 2014. In 2017 it opened a major manufacturing plant in Gujarat. Daramic became the first company to invest in building the infrastructure to manufacture and locally supply PE battery separators in

Other separator firms have also formed ventures across the region.

In November 2014 Hollingsworth & Vose announced it had acquired Raman FibreScience Private Limited, based in Mysore, India.

H&V CEO Val Hollingsworth said: “Raman FibreScience has a highly professional team with considerable experience in fibre forming technology. They have a unique culture where R&D and manufacturing are highly integrated and they have taken some very unique and innovative products to market.”

The acquisition also gave H&V a strong, on-the-ground operational base. “This will enable H&V to better serve our customers and is consistent with our strategy to become a longterm participant in the markets for filtration media and battery separators in India and the surrounding region.”

Ben Hall, global marketing director, Battery Products says, “India is a market that is going to grow and grow.

Our HiSep separator, created from the Raman acquisition, is a separator designed for hotter temperatures where other PET separators break down, or leach oil.”

Hall also sees a switch of the business in China, with a general trend

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= mc2 At ENTEK, we are working tirelessly to move the battery industry forward. We have expanded capacity to keep up with monumental growth in Asia. Our scientists are working on technologies that will revolutionize battery storage and efficiency. Our customer care team is delivering on its promise of 100% on-time and in-full delivery. And our pr production team continues to raise the bar, increasing efficiency and quality.

So, whether your battery is powering a storage grid, an automobile or an e-bike, ENTEK will be there, working with our customers to innovate, improve and invigorate the battery universe.

Yeah. We know about energy.

US • UK SINGAPORE • INDONESIA

+1 541 259 3901 (US) +44 191 268 5054 (UK) +65 6956 6119 (Singapore) +62 21 823 2295 (Indonesia)

www.entek.com www.entek-nsg.com

COVER STORY: SEPARATORS of greater demand for energy storage moving from the telecoms business to the data centre, one that will mean a need for separators that have lower electrical resistance and higher rates of charge.

Amer-Sil, the Luxembourg-headquartered separator firm, has also been active for more than a decade in Asia. In 2009 its managing director Guy Dauwe spearheaded setting up a manufacturing plant in Shanghai.

From 2015 onwards — following a successful management buy-out of Amer-Sil from the US parent The Moore Company — the firm has set up a manufacturing plant in Brazil and is in a joint venture with Indian gauntlet market leader Ketex, managed by Sukumar Roy. Amer-sil Ketex is now heading four factories in India and one in Bangladesh.

Asia and globalism

But this isn’t to say that the move into Asia has been one-sided or one-directional.

Daramic, for example, may appear at first glance a quintessential US firm, given its history. But the firm’s business — the founding company based in Massachusetts developed a rubber separator in 1930 — has changed hands many times.

In the last set of moves US private equity firm Warburg Pincus sold Polypore International, the parent of Daramic, to Asahi Kasei Group, the Japan headquartered multinational, in 2015. Daramic’s operations are still headquartered in Charlotte, in the US state of North Carolina.

It’s a similar story too for specialist paper and AGM separator firm Bernard Dumas, which was acquired in September 2012 by Hokuetsu Kishu Paper, one of the major papermakers in Japan.

The firms promised great things.

“The acquisition by a strong paper player in Asia will enable Bernard Dumas, specialist in technical papers, to accelerate its development in the global market, the firm announced at the time.

“By combining Hokuetsu Kishu Paper’s strong presence in the Asian market for glass micro fibre-based high efficiency air filter media and Bernard Dumas’ strong presence in the European market and US for glass micro fibre base battery separators for AGM, the group will be able to position itself to capture growing worldwide demand and become one of the top glass micro fibre sheet suppliers in the world.”

50 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

“India is a market that is going to grow and grow. Our HiSep separator created from the Raman acquisition, is a separator designed for hotter temperatures where otherwise PET separators break down, or leach oil” — Ben Hall, H&V

HOW MUCH IS THE SEPARATOR MARKET WORTH?

It is difficult to assign an average cost to lead battery separators. They vary considerably depending on how they are used, what they are made of, and the technical needs that they have to fulfil.

“That said, I’d guess that separators account for around 5% of the total cost of a battery,” says one researcher. “That’d be an average for their use in stationary batteries or automotive ones.”

The annual size of the lead battery market is a notoriously difficult one to pin down — even to the nearest billion dollars. But most researchers reckon that sales of lead batteries were around $80 billion in 2018.

Putting the two guestimates together, a reasonable value for the separator market worldwide might be around $4 billion.

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CONFERENCE IN PRINT

Welcome to a special section of our magazine, called Conference in Print.

Our aim is a simple one. We want to offer you the readers a section where you can highlight your products, technology and skills to our broader audience — rather like going to a conference or an exhibition without the inconvenience of all the travel!

We’re putting no restrictions on what you’d like to showcase — this is your section not ours — but hope that this will prove an invaluable and cost-effective way to reach our audience of subscribers and readers.

CONFERENCE IN PRINT: ADVANCES IN SEPARATOR TECHNOLOGY Kevin Whear, chief technology officer at Daramic, highlights some of the firm’s recent developments in separator technology such as antistratification measures for the electrolyte and the role of additives.

Next generation separators to drive lead battery success Recently vehicle electrification across a wide sector of applications, automotive, motive power and golfcart, has created new challenges to operate in a partial state of charge and new solutions are needed.

So what are the macro trends that are creating this new norm?

Historically, the lead acid battery only needed to start the vehicle and supply lighting when the engine was disabled. The battery started the vehicle a few times a day and then spent most of the time fully charged.

To insure the vehicle regularly started even in cold temperatures, the battery was sized such that when starting the engine, it only discharged a small percentage of its total capacity.

Start-stop vehicles require 10 to 100 times higher flow of energy in and out, versus previous vehicles, thus resulting in a partial state of charge operation.

For electric fork trucks, the batteries were operated for eight hours, taken out of the truck,

End of Charge Voltage

Slide 1

PSoC Cycle Test

EFB, Mixing Device, Carbon

Cycles

Cost

Mechanism

SLI Battery

<500

$

Stratifies Acid

EFB + (Mixing Device, Carbon)

+1000

$$

Mixes Acid

AGM

~2000

$$$

Immobilizes Acid

AGM

Standard SLI

0

Solution

500

1000 1500 Cycles

2000

Hypothesis: Minimizing Acid Stratification = Longer Life

Improve PSoC life by preventing acid stratification © 2018 Daramic, LLC

6

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Acid Stratification and Means of Resolution Acid Stratifies upon Charging

+

Headspace of Battery

Pb Harness the motion of the vehicle to mix the acid

Separator

Slide 2

Pos. plate

1

-

Pb02

Acid of 1.84 g/cm3 at charge

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)

Acid Mixes with Overcharge

Neg. plate

O2 and H2 generated at electrode surface

2 Electrodes and Separators

1.

1

Accelerating and braking of vehicle creates movement of acid in headspace

2.

2

Modify the separator rib design to mix the acid

With limited or no overcharge, must find alternative means to prevent acid stratification © 2018 Daramic, LLC

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

52 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

7

charged for eight and then allowed to cool down for eight hours. This single fork truck, essentially needed extra sets of batteries to operate in a 24-hour mode. To avoid the expenses of extra batteries and the effort of swapping batteries each and every shift, the new trend is toward opportunity charging done in the fastest manner possible.

Here, the battery is never removed from the truck and rare;y experiences a full charge. In additions to startstop vehicles and fork trucks, we see that batteries used in over the road trucks and renewable energy applications will also operate in a partial state of charge condition and face the same challenges.

If we take an SLI battery that was designed to provide high power and operate in a charged condition and then subject it to PSoC cycling test, we see that they do not last very long (see slide 1) To extend the life of these batteries, there are proposals to add mixing devices and carbon to the NAM to extend life.

However, the most robust solution for longest life is to utilize a VRLA battery with the AGM separator.

The AGM separator is highly porous, immobilizes the acid, and thus prevents acid stratification.

Each method to minimize acid stratification comes with additional cost. Certain EFB batteries have additional costs associated with the acid mixing devices. To make an AGM battery versus a flooded battery, increases the cost of manufacturing through the use of high purity lead, slower assembly and formation processes and different cases and vents.

Daramic’s goal here is to take the cost-effective flooded battery and provide technical solutions to address acid stratification to meet the challenges associated operation in partial state of charge (see slide 2). Before proposing a solution to

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distributed upward. (Slide 4) The next step is to take the optimized separator profile from computer modelling and test in batteries, but they must be in motion. There are commercial motion tables available, but they only test one battery at a time and we wanted to test multiple batteries simultaneously and develop statistics to take conclusive decisions.

To simulate a motion table, we installed force gauges to take measurements on automobiles, fork trucks and golf carts and then followed their driving patterns. The chart shows the g forces pattern associated with a fork truck.

We worked with an outside vendor to design a motion table that could test multiple batteries simultaneously and have the flexibility to test a wide range of batteries. We also wanted the ability to change the frequency of the movement and the rate of change of g forces to match that which we found from the field.

Finally, we wanted the motion table to communicate with the cyclers so that we could decide whether to have motion during charging or discharging.

To ensure safe operation, we enclosed the tables in cages to prevent incidental contact. We

With a computer model in place, our goal was to convert the separator rib design into a passive mixing device and harness the energy of the crashing wave in the head space that acts like a Rip-Tide current at the seacoast and mix the acid between the plates.

Acid Mixing with Novel Rib Designs Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Modeling

Improved Mixing Pure Water

Slide 3

Serrated* Rib Profile 1)

Start with completely stratified situation (acid/water)

2)

Computer simulates 60 seconds of sideways motion

3)

Evaluate degree of mixing

Optimize Mixing* (RipTide™ M)

1.280 Acid

* Daramic Proprietary Intellectual Property

Computer modeling yielded optimum rib designs for acid mixing © 2018 Daramic, LLC

8

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Testing Batteries in Motion Accleration (g-forces)

0.5

Fork Truck Drive approx. 4 hrs Avg = 0.08G, Max = 0.45G

0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0

Critical Design Criteria* 1)

Ability to test multiple batteries simultaneously

2)

Flexible design to test automotive batteries to motive power cells

3)

Ability to program frequency of motion (G forces) to match field observations

4)

Interact with cyclers

* Daramic Proprietary Intellectual Property

Motion Table Control Panel

Acceleration (g-force)

Slide 4

acid stratification, let’s look first at the mechanism of creation. Upon charging, concentrated sulfuric acid is produced at the surface of the electrode. This concentrated acid is substantially heavier than the bulk acid between the plates and thus will sink to the bottom of the battery and stratify.

If the battery is then allowed to be fully charged, oxygen and hydrogen will be produced at the electrodes.

As these gases rise to the surface, they will carry the heavier acid upward. In a partial state of charge operation, we can no longer rely on overcharging to mix the acid.

One strategy is to harness the energy of the vehicle to mix the acid.

As vehicles accelerate or brake, the acid will crash back and forth like a wave at sea. Using computational fluid dynamics, we sought to model this wave and the graphic is the output of the modelling.

With a computer model in place, our goal was to convert the separator rib design into a passive mixing device and harness the energy of the crashing wave in the head space that acts like a Rip-Tide current at the seacoast and mix the acid between the plates. (Slide 3) Utilizing computational fluid dynamics, we started modelling by assuming the worst case scenario, namely a completely stratified condition, with water on the top and acid at the bottom. To determine if the stratified acid mixes, the computer simulates sideways motion for 60 seconds and then creates a visual output regarding the degree of mixing.

Our first step was to model the standard solid rib, SLI separator.

After 60 seconds of motion, we can see a very slight level of mixing, especially toward the outside of the plate, but definitely not enough to resolve acid stratification.

The next step was to break or serrate the ribs so they are no longer solid barriers preventing acid movement along the horizontal plane. The computer simulation shows that we are getting a degree of mixing and moving in the right direction.

Next, with various design parameters set, the computer model found the optimized profile to mix the acid we call this RipTide M. The acid, previously in the bottom of the battery case, is now being

0.4

DTC Motion Table Avg = 0.06G, Max = 0.19G

0.3 0.2

0.1 0.0

Motion table developed to test mixing capabilities of new profiles © 2018 Daramic, LLC

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

9

Batteries International • Summer 2019 • 53

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CONFERENCE IN PRINT: ADVANCES IN SEPARATOR TECHNOLOGY have also outfitted these tables with gauges to confirm the actual g forces produced on the motion table to match those that were observed from the field observations. (Slide 5) Our first test was to take the optimized mixing separator generated from the computational fluid dynamics work and compare

the performance against a standard SLI separator. Since we hoped to mix the acid by the profile, we did not overcharge the batteries every 85th cycle as is sometimes done.

From the early cycling data, we were encouraged that batteries with RipTide M showed higher voltage when compared to those with the

Demonstrated Acid Mixing in PSoC Testing Analysis: Battery Teardown

17.5% PSoC Test in Motion#

End of Charge Voltage (V)

Slide 5

12.5

Consistently higher voltage demonstrates acid is being mixed

Mixing Ribs pattern imprinted onto the swollen NAM

Mixing Ribs RipTide™ - M

12

11.5

11

Typical Plate Spacing <1.0 mm

SLI Separator

10.5

Swollen Negative Plate

Compressed Separator

Positive Plate

Reduced fluid space creates acid starvation

10

Hypothesis:

Cycle #

#

NAM swelling causes acid starvation resulting in shortened battery life

No Overcharge Conditioning Cycles

To extend life, solution needed to mix acid and prevent NAM swelling © 2018 Daramic, LLC

10

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

NAM Swelling and Separator Designs Fresh and 100% Charged Plates +

SLI Separator in PSoC

Heavily Cycled and Discharged Plates +

-

Swelling Positive

-

Swelling Negative SLI Separator (~11 ribs)

Slide 6

Unsupported active material continues to swell and becomes inactive

Compression Resistant Separator in PSoC Swelling Positive Deeper Discharge Creates More Active Material Swelling

Swelling Negative Compression Resistant Separator (~35 ribs)

Smaller area of unsupported active material

NAM swelling can be restrained with higher amount of separator ribs © 2018 Daramic, LLC

11

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Compression Resistant and Acid Mixing Separator Design Hypothesis

17.5% PSoC Test in Motion#

Compression Resistance and Mixing Separator

Observations

1) Higher voltage demonstrates acid being mixed

12.5

RipTide™ C Separator

End of Charge Voltage (V)

Slide 7

Serrated Rib Profile 12.0

RipTide™ C Separator

11.5

2) Longer life demonstrates prevention of NAM swelling

11.0

10.5

SLI Separator

Design Parameters 1)

Compression Resistance Solution*: ~35 Ribs

2)

Acid Mixing Solution: Serrated Rib Profile*

10.0

0

100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 1100 1200

PSoC Cycle # No

Overcharge Conditioning Cycles

* Daramic Proprietary Intellectual Property

RipTide™ C mixes acid and resists NAM swelling can substantially extend life in PSoC operation © 2018 Daramic, LLC

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

www.batteriesinternational.com

12

standard SLI profile. We took this voltage difference as an indication that the acid was being mixed or not allowed to fully stratify.

However, the batteries with the RipTide M started to decay in performance, we conducted battery teardown and found excessive NAM swelling with the reverse image of the profile. The NAM swelled wherever there were not ribs to hold it in place.

From this we developed the hypothesis that as the batteries cycled, the NAM swells sufficiently to block off the channels and became acid starved in these narrow channels which are often less than 1.0 mm in thickness. Therefore, to extend life, we must mix acid and prevent NAM swelling. (Slide 6) To expand the hypothesis associated with NAM swelling, the deeper the battery is discharged, the greater the conversion of lead to the more voluminous lead sulfate. If the active material is unconstrained, it will fill the space between the separator ribs. To reduce the lead sulfate back to lead, the swollen active material must have an electronic conductance to the current carrying grid.

The separators for traditional SLI batteries were designed assuming the battery was not regularly cycled.

Unlike a separator used in motive power batteries, the SLI separator has very few number of ribs, say 11. Therefore, as SLI separators are used in cycling EFB applications, there will be large areas of unsupported active material that will swell and become inactive.

To solve the issue of excessive NAM swelling, a more compression resistant separator is needed. If we assume that the number of ribs are substantially increased from 11 to 35, then the area of unsupported active material is greatly reduced.

As an individual area of swollen active material is reduced in size, there is a greater chance it will still have electronic contact with the grid and will ultimately be reduced from lead sulfate to lead upon recharge.

The proposal is to use this compression resistant separator to counteract the NAM swelling, which prevents acid starvation and then extends life in a partial state of charge condition. (Slide 7) The next step was to take a

Batteries International • Summer 2019 • 55

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CONFERENCE IN PRINT: ADVANCES IN SEPARATOR TECHNOLOGY compression resistant separator and repeat the PSoC test. However, we acknowledged that acid mixing functionality was also important.

Therefore, we reverted to our computer modelling work which showed that serrating the ribs would also provide a level of acid mixing as compared to the solid rib.

To maintain compression of the active material, we designed a separator with approximately 35 ribs across the plate surface versus the typical 11 ribs found with the SLI Separator. These ribs were then serrated, allowing horizontal channels for acid mixing.

As we combine acid mixing and compression resistance to support the active material, we call this profile, RipTide C. Batteries were built with RipTide C and standard SLI separators and were tested in a partial state of charge with no overcharge while on the motion tables. The batteries with the SLI separators quickly died as expected. However, the batteries with Riptide C separator showed significant improvement in life — we now believe the active material is restrained and not allowed to swell and the rib serrations allow for acid mixing.

With higher voltage, this is an indication that the acid is being mixed. As automotive batteries move from fully charged to PSoC operation, we have demonstrated that the design of the separator can be modified and yield longer life.

Partial State of Charge Cycling Shallow Cycling PSoC (<5% or SBA)

Deep Cycling PSoC (17.5%)

12.5

12.5

End of Charge Voltage (V)

End of Charge Voltage (V)

Slide 8

12.0 12.0

RipTide™ M

11.5

11.0

SLI Separator

10.5

10.0

RipTide™ C 11.5

11.0

10.5

SLI Separator 10.0

Conditions:

Need for acid mixing, shallow cycling and no evidence of NAM Swelling

Conditions:

Need for acid mixing, deep cycling and control NAM swelling

Solutions:

RipTide™ M (Mixing Profile)

Solutions:

RipTide™ C (Compression Resistant Profile with Mixing)

Mixing Profiles (RipTide™) are designed for the deep and shallow cycling conditions © 2018 Daramic, LLC

13

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Poor Charge Acceptance (CA) with SLI Separators SLI Separator in PSoC Cycling Swelling Positive SLI Separator

Slide 9

Swelling Negative Unsupported active material continues to swell and becomes inactive

11 Ribs SLI Separator

1/3 of the pellets are unsupported

Swelling NAM shows a high degree of PbSO4 and actual loss of active material

Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) of NAM

Negative Plate After PSoC Operation

Current SLI separator allows for NAM swelling and pellets to pop causing poor charge acceptance © 2018 Daramic, LLC

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

www.batteriesinternational.com

By offering a solution for NAM swelling in this PSoC test, we were able to substantially extend life.

With higher voltage, this is an indication that the acid is being mixed. As automotive batteries move from fully charged to PSoC operation, we have demonstrated that the design of the separator can be modified and yield longer life.

(Slide 8) The choice of separator design must be paired with the depth of discharge the battery will experience. The deeper the discharge, the more the NAM swells and the more compression needed to insure appropriate recovery of the battery.

If the discharge is shallow, say less than 5%, such as in the SBA test, the NAM swelling will be marginal and the RipTide M or optimized mixing profile is sufficient to prevent acid stratification and extend life. If the discharge is deeper, such as in the 17.5% PSoC test, then due to the risk of NAM swelling, we recommend a compression resistant and acid mixing separator such as RipTide C.

15

Improving sluggish charge acceptance To start, we want to apply what we’ve learnt from extending life in the PSoC operation to improving charge acceptance. (Slide 9) We showed earlier that the SLI separator with wide rib spacing allowed for unsupported active material that would continue to swell, resulting in higher degree of sulfation such that it would be very difficult to convert back to lead. The SEM picture of the active material validates our hypothesis showing a high concentration of lead sulfate.

Next, if we overlay the typical SLI Separator with 11 ribs over a grid, we can quickly see that a third of the pellets will have no immediate contact with ribs to hold them in place. As a battery is operated in PSoC, the unsupported active material will grow and eventually lose contact with the grid and then fall out. This is exactly our observation when we teardown down automotive batteries with an SLI separator operated in a PSoC. Therefore, we also see that a compression resistant separator is needed to improve charge

Batteries International • Summer 2019 • 57

CONFERENCE IN PRINT: ADVANCES IN SEPARATOR TECHNOLOGY acceptance as it supports the active material. (Slide 10) A battery with a compression resistant separator will minimize the swelling of the active material in PSoC. The SEM of the active material shows the NAM to be in a very healthy state. When looking

at the same grid, we see that every pellet of active material has support from multiple ribs to hold it in place.

When we teardown a battery operated in PSoC with the compression resistant separator, we do not find any pellets that

have popped out of place and the NAM has not swollen excessively.

Therefore, our hypothesis is that when the NAM is restrained and maintains contact with the grid, charge acceptance will be improved.

(Slide 11) Therefore, we built batteries with standard SLI and Compression Resistance Separators, which we call RipTide C and then measured the DCA. At 80% state of charge, we see DCA is increased by 30% by changing the separator profile.

This result substantiated our hypothesis that that compression resistant separator restrains the NAM, minimizes the pockets of lead sulfate swelling will indeed improve DCA versus batteries with a SLI separator. This compression resistance separator, RipTide C, is also the same separator that substantially increased life in a PSoC operation. (Slide 12) The second approach for improving charge acceptance is derived from understanding the mechanism of lead sulfate formation. In a simplistic manner, as a battery is discharged, the lead sulfate will be formed. The relative speed of discharge will impact the size of the lead sulfate crystals, slow discharge allows time for large crystals to form while faster discharge creates many smaller crystals.

The smaller the crystals the more surface area and the faster the time to charge or reduce the crystals back to lead. If small crystals are given enough time, they will form large crystals, which are more thermodynamically stable and this

Improved CA with Compression Resistant Separator Compression Resistant Separator in PSoC Cycling Swelling Positive

Swelling Negative

~35 Ribs

All Pellets Supported and intact

Slide 10

Compression Resistant Separator

Restrained NAM and high surface area of Pb structure Negative Plate After PSoC Operation

Scanning Electron Microscope(SEM) of NAM

Changing the rib structure will keep healthy Pb structure and prevent dislodged pellets © 2018 Daramic, LLC

16

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Step 1: Improving Dynamic Charge Acceptance (DCA) NAM with Compression Resistant Separator

Dynamic Charge Acceptance (DCA) @ 80% SOC

1.2

DCA (A/Ah)

Slide 11

1.0 Negative Active Material after Cycling

0.8 ~30% Increase in DCA by changing the separator profile

0.6 0.4

SEM of NAM

NAM with Standard SLI Separator

0.2

Compression Resistant Separator* (RipTide™ C)

Standard SLI Separator

Boxes represent 95% Confidence interval, data based on 3 cells each

* Daramic Proprietary Intellectual Property

Negative Active Material after Cycling

SEM of NAM

Compression Resistant Separator (RipTide™ C) Improves Charge Acceptance © 2018 Daramic, LLC

17

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PbSO4 Crystal Formation: Mechanism

: Standard Industry Solution

Lead

Addition of Carbon to NAM

Slide 12

Solution Hypothesis

Ostwald Ripening

PbSO4

Likely to occur during rest time (e.g weekend periods)

1

Carbon provides nucleation site so that small PbSO4 crystals form

2

Carbon provides an alternative path to reduce PbSO4 crystals

Small PbSO4 Crystals High charge acceptance

Large PbSO4 Crystals Low charge acceptance

Carbon interacts with PbSO4 and improves charge acceptance © 2018 Daramic, LLC

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

58 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

18

The smaller the crystals the more surface area and the faster the time to charge or reduce the crystals back to lead. If small crystals are given enough time, they will form large crystals, which are more thermodynamically stable and this we call Ostwald Ripening Effect.

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CONFERENCE IN PRINT: ADVANCES IN SEPARATOR TECHNOLOGY we call Ostwald Ripening Effect.

In automobile applications we are not at liberty to dictate the speed of discharge, but we do have the goal of improving that rate of recharge by keeping the lead sulfate crystals as small as

possible. Therefore the industry has proposed the addition of carbon to the NAM as a primary means for improving charge acceptance.

Many have hypothesized regarding the mechanism of carbon which includes nucleation sites for the

New Means of Carbon Addition Present Solution

Slide 13

Active Material

Proposed Solution

Separator

Negative Grid

Separator

Negative Grid

Strategically apply carbon to affected area

Carbon Particles

EFB NAM

Carbon Coating

Porous Carbon Layer PbSO4 forms first on the outer plate surface

PE Layer Daramic Carbon Coated Separator*

* Daramic Proprietary Intellectual Property

Separator as a means to deliver the carbon to the area where PbSO4 first forms © 2018 Daramic, LLC

19

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Carbon Coated Separator Properties and Usage Current Separator

Daramic Carbon Coated Separator

Separator Backweb

250

260

Carbon Layer

N/A

10

Characteristic

Units

Thickness

microns

Basis Weight

PE Separator

g/m2 Separator

Slide 14

Porous Carbon Layer

Carbon Layer Electrical Resistance

182

193

N/A

11

54

57

N/A

3

Cross Sectional SEM

mΩ/cm2

Separator Carbon Layer

Observations 1

Coating the carbon on the separator can lower usage when compared to addition in the NAM

2

Less carbon in the system can lower the amount of water loss

3

Carbon on separator will not interfere with the expander in the NAM

Carbon Usage Per Battery Typical Separator Area

1.2 to 1.4 m2/battery

Amount of Carbon

10 to 15 g/m2

Amount of Carbon

~15 g/battery

* Daramic Proprietary Intellectual Property

Addition of carbon to the separator can reduce the usage and bring further benefits © 2018 Daramic, LLC

20

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Step 2: Improving Dynamic Charge Acceptance (DCA) Dynamic Charge Acceptance (DCA) @ 80% SOC

Actions / Benefits

DCA (A/Ah)

Slide 15

1.2 1.0 ~85% Increase in DCA by optimizing profile and coating with carbon

0.8

0.6 0.4

Step

Actions

1

Optimize profile to keep active material (pellets) in close contact with current collector

>25% Improved DCA and no increased water loss

Benefits

2

Coat optimized profile with carbon

>40% DCA

0.2 No Coating

Carbon Coated

Standard SLI Separator

No Coating

Carbon Coated

Compression Resistant Separator (RipTide™ C)

Boxes represent 95% Confidence interval, data based on 3 cells each

* Daramic Proprietary Intellectual Property

DCA can be substantially improved with optimized profile and intimate contact of the carbon to layer of PbSO4 © 2018 Daramic, LLC

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

60 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

21

precipitating small lead sulfate crystals or that carbon forms and conductive path to electronically connect the sulfation layer with the grid.

Another theory is that the carbon actually provides a capacitance effect and readily accepts a surface charge. Nonetheless, we would like to propose an alternative method to improve charge acceptance.

(Slide 13) The present solution is to add a relatively small percentage of carbon to the negative active material. We propose to put the carbon only where it is needed. As the battery is discharged, the lead sulfate first forms on the outer layers of the grid. Therefore, we propose that the carbon is most needed on the outer surface of the plate and the carbon that is buried deep in the active material is of little use when the discharge is relatively shallow.

Therefore, another approach is to deliver the carbon to the surface of the negative electrode so that it has intimate contact with the lead sulfate as it is formed. A method of delivery is to coat carbon on the side of the separator that is in direct contact with the negative electrode.

(Slide 14) With a process developed to coat the separator, it is worthwhile to look some key properties. First off, the coating process is very precise, allowing us to put a very thin layer of carbon on the separator which is approximately 10 microns.

This very thin coating layer adds approximately 11 grams of carbon to a square meter of separator.

As we developed the coating process, we were mindful, that the carbon layer needed to be porous and have minimum impact upon the electrical resistance of the separator. From our analysis, we see that the separator ER increases marginally when coated with carbon. From the SEM picture of the coated separator, you can see that the carbon layer is indeed porous.

By adding a thin layer via the separator, it is worth considering the impact upon the battery.

Our first assumption is that an automotive battery used in PSoC operation requires approximately 1.4 square meters of separator.

From development work, this

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CONFERENCE IN PRINT: ADVANCES IN SEPARATOR TECHNOLOGY coated separator has 11 grams of carbon per square meter of separator.

Thus if we add the carbon via the separator, we will be adding approximately 15 grams of carbon per battery. From our discussions with battery manufacturers, we find this to be substantially lower amounts of carbon than when it is added to the negative active material.

Assuming the total carbon usage is indeed lower when coated on the separator, we believe that amount of water loss will be less. When the carbon is added to the negative active material, it has been reported that the increased surface area preferentially absorbs the expander chemicals and there is detriment to the power of the battery. With the carbon out of the negative active mass, we also believe this effect will be minimized or eliminated.

The primary question now is to determine if this carbon coated separator will indeed improve charge acceptance. (Slide 15) To show the impact of the carbon, we coated a standard SLI separator and the compression resistant or RipTide C separator. The carbon coated SLI separator shows a marginal improvement upon the DCA. We also showed that a compression resistant separator restrains, prevents the swelling of the active material and improves DCA. We also coated this separator with carbon and observed a nice increase in DCA. In comparison to the standard SLI separator, the carbon coated compression resistant separator increases DCA by 85%.

The present solution is to add a relatively small percentage of carbon to the negative active material. We propose to put the carbon only where it is needed. As the battery is discharged, the lead sulfate first forms on the outer layers of the grid.

In this work, we have demonstrated that DCA can be improved by first selecting a profile that restrains the active material and keeps it in close contact to the current collector.

In this work, we have demonstrated that DCA can be improved by first selecting a profile that restrains the active material and keeps it in close contact to the current collector. As a note, this special separator is in production and can be commercially supplied.

The second step of coating this separator with carbon can then

improve the DCA by another 40%.

The process to coat separators with carbon is only in the prototype phase and not yet ready for commercial production.

However, we see this novel rib design and the addition of carbon to the separator as another tool available to advance the performance of lead acid batteries.

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Batteries International • Summer 2019 • 61

LITHIUM RECYCLING

Making the economics of lithium recycling stack up…

“It is impossible using current recycling technology to make money from recycling most lithium-ion batteries.

The costs of shipping, storing and recycling those batteries is simply greater than the revenues to be made from selling the recycled materials” Jim Greenberger, NAATBatt

It’s a stark quote coming as it does from Jim Greenberger, executive director of NAATBatt International, in a testimony this July to the US Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee on lithium ion battery recycling.

The economics don’t stack up. Or most of the time they don’t.

There are effectively five lithium ion battery types that are in mainstream use.

62 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

• Lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) — LFP • Lithium manganese oxide (LiMn2O4) — LMO • Lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide (LiNiMnCoO2) — NCM • Lithium nickel cobalt aluminum oxide (LiNiCoAlO2) — NCA • Lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO2) — LCO At the current prices LMO and LFP

contain almost nothing of any commercial value. One commentator says “there’s not enough embodied metal value to cover pack disassembly costs less metal recovery costs.

‘Moreover, unless there were a catastrophic increase in metal prices, batteries using LMO and LFP chemistries will never be recyclable and post-life processing will always be waste management.”

www.batteriesinternational.com

LITHIUM RECYCLING

…they don’t

LFP batteries were at one time the national China standard for electric vehicles. Analysts at UBS, the investment banking group, predict that LiFePO4 as a share of the cathode chemistry in EV sales will decline from around 56% now to just 11% by 2025.

In effect this suggests that the recycling value of half the world’s cars is valueless.

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John Petersen, a seasoned commentator on the battery industry says: “After adjusting for estimated pack disassembly costs $2,000 per tonne, the net embodied metal values of NCM and NCA chemistries compare favorably to lead acid batteries that contain about $1,400 worth of metals per tonne.

“While the net values won’t necessarily be a bonanza because the recycling processes will almost certainly

be complex and costly, there appears to be enough value to incentivize the recycling industry.”

Part of the trouble for those looking at trying to make lithium recycling profitable is that while they are looking at extracting the valuable metals — primarily cobalt, nickel and to a lesser extent manganese — battery manufacturers are looking at ways of cutting the costs of these materials.

Batteries International • Summer 2019 • 63

LITHIUM RECYCLING “Unlike lead batteries, where someone will always pay for a used lead battery, the output from lithium batteries is — for the time being — not sufficient to pay for the recycling process itself” — Jim Greenberger, NAATBatt Last year’s hike in the cost of cobalt fuelled an acceleration of research in how to the amount of cobalt in the battery mix or eliminate it all together.

Elon Musk, the battery and automotive entrepreneur, said at the time that his eventual desire was to eliminate cobalt altogether. Removing cobalt has safety risks — the metal helps keep the battery stable — as well as an economic advantage. It is the most expensive raw material input.

Nickel-cobalt-manganese (NCM) cathodes — which were originally favoured by most vehicle makers — contain around a third cobalt with a chemical composition of 111: one part nickel, one part cobalt and one part manganese.

They accounted for 39% of all EV battery cathodes in 2017 but, because

“RSR has been researching the recycling of lithium batteries for 10 years, we have a lot of technology that allows us to reclaim the elements, we just can’t figure out the economics of it” — Tim Ellis, RSR Technologies 64 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

of cheaper alternatives, are unlikely to be mass produced after 2020.

The original NCM111 cathodes were these refined to NCM523 — five parts nickel, two cobalt and three manganese, and these are being mass produced.

The next iteration, NCM622, reduces the cobalt further though this, according to mining firm, American Manganese could be made profitable.

The addition of greater nickel also increases the energy density. The eventual goal is to produce NCM811 in commercial quantities. This, however, is still years away from commercial adoption in scale. And may, in any event, not happen at all according to scientists at MIT and Berkeley in the US. So this leaves recycling LCO batteries. And this is profitable. When recyclers talk about lithium can be recycled profitably they are talking about LCO, or if there are other batteries in the mix a profit can still be made. Its high specific energy makes Li-cobalt the popular choice for mobile phones, laptops and digital cameras. The battery consists of a cobalt oxide cathode and a graphite carbon anode.

That said LCO is losing favour to NMC and NCA because of the high cost of cobalt and the improved performance by blending with other active cathode materials.

And then there’s the question of the vagaries of volatile metal markets. Cobalt, the most valuable metal, in the lithium recycling stream has been on a helter-skelter ride. London Metal Exchange prices have crashed to twoyear lows of under $30,000 a tonne compared with levels near $100,000 in the first half of 2018.

Making meaningful investments when predicted returns on your money are guesswork of the most inaccurate kind — not a business plan that most enterprises could live with.

But even if lithium battery recycling is unprofitable, the fact of the matter is that it has to be done. And industry leaders such as Greenberger are at the forefront of exploring future ways of cutting recycling costs for their

www.batteriesinternational.com

LITHIUM RECYCLING disposal — better collection arrangements, a more stable stream for disposal, exploration The booming demand for electric vehicles, with countries across Europe and India setting targets for all new cars to be electric in the next few decades, the issue of recycling the battery packs is a growing problem the US Department of Energy calls ‘critically important’.

“Global EV sales are expected to reach 30 million by 2030, up from 1.1 million in 2017,” says a spokesman from the DoE. “This growth, as well as increased demand for consumer and stationary uses, is expected to double the demand for lithium ion batteries by 2025 and quadruple the demand by 2030. Demand for global production of lithium, cobalt, manga-

None of the materials in the battery makes up the lion’s share of the mass and you have to separate them from each other, which isn’t so easy because there isn’t one that’s a lot heavier than everything else” — Linda Gaines, Argonne National Laboratory SECOND LIFE FOR EV BATTERIES A WAY FORWARD? What to do with EV batteries has only just become an issue, with the first generation of them only reaching their end of life (8-10 years) now.

Today’s two million EV batteries will require a solution in about 10 years’ time, and if predictions by research firm Deloitte come true and we see another 21 million electric vehicles on the world’s streets then, they will need a much more efficient solution in 20 years’ time.

With various countries setting targets for the elimination of new petrol or diesel cars by certain dates (Norway, 2025; India, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland, Israel, Netherlands, 2030; France, UK, 2040), the trend can only go up —and according to Michael Woodward, UK automotive partner at Deloitte, cost will soon not be a barrier to drivers and numbers could well go much higher.

“In the UK, the cost of petrol and diesel vehicle ownership will converge with electric over the next five years,” he said. “Supported by existing government subsidies and technology advances, this tipping point could be reached as early as 2021.”

As each generation of EVs reaches the end of its life its batteries are likely to outlive the vehicles, and they are already being used in alternative applications.

Management consultants McKinsey & Company says stationary storage powered by used

www.batteriesinternational.com

EV batteries could exceed 200 gigawatt hours by 2030.

“Re-use can provide the most value in markets where there is demand for batteries for stationary energy storage applications that require less frequent battery recycling (for example, 100 to 300 cycles per year), the firm says.

“Based on cycling requirements, three applications are most suitable for second-life EV batteries: providing reserve energy capacity to maintain a utility’s power reliability at lower cost; deferring transmission and distribution investments; and taking advantage of power arbitrage opportunities by storing renewable power for use during periods of scarcity.”

However scientists at American Manganese are sceptical. “We’re not big fans of secondary use,” says chief technical officer Zarko Meseldzija.

“For example, we don’t believe that you can tell customers how long a reconfigured battery is going to last. It’s a used product. You also don’t know what other things could be wrong with it.

“And it’s the costs associated

with it – taking an old battery pack, reconfiguring it, trying to sell it to someone as a used pack at a discounted rate – how can you make it profitable?

“You’re not going to put that on your wall when there’s a cheaper and easier way to make a new one that will give you a warranty as well.”

“There’s a question as to whether the batteries should be used for utility storage, home storage, backup power or whatever,” says Linda Gaines, systems analyst at the Argonne National Laboratory, home of the new ReCell Center, which is working to develop a recycling method for lithium batteries.

“But even if there are electric vehicle batteries being used for grid storage right now, the concern is that this is just the first crop of cars coming off — consumers have been purchasing more and more electric vehicles over the last 10 years and it’s expected to continue, so there will become this groundswell of batteries that will probably surpass the current recycling resources.

“Eventually they will all come back to recycling anyway.”

Consumers have been purchasing more and more EVs over the last 10 years and it’s expected to continue, so there will become this groundswell of batteries that will probably surpass the current recycling resources Batteries International • Summer 2019 • 65

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LITHIUM RECYCLING THE APPROACH FROM UMICORE Belgium-based Umicore’s battery recycling process recovers the full battery, the company says.

“Our recycling rate is about 95% for target metals like Cu, Co and Ni,” says Marjolein Scheers, media and external affairs manager. “Metals are infinitely recyclable without losing their properties.

“Our recycling is a combination of pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgial processing.

We have proprietary smelting technology, minimizing energy consumption and treating potentially harmful gases.

“After sorting and dismantling, metals are recovered in a high temperature smelting process.

Treatment includes the safe dismantling of large industrial batteries such as EV batteries without crushing or shredding the cells. The advantage of this process is that operators and the environment are not exposed to hazardous battery compounds.

“Recycling includes the transformation of battery materials in a smelter into a metal alloy, containing cobalt, nickel and copper and a concentrate containing lithium and rare earth elements. This fraction is further refined for lithium and REE recovery in a refinery outside Umicore. Manganese is not

being processed.

“The process is energy efficient as it recovers the energy present in the batteries, while treating potentially harmful gases. The plastics and other organic compounds, including solvents and electrolytes, are burned as a gas to produce heat for the process. The gas is cleaned so there are no harmful emissions.”

Scheers says all Li-ion and NiMH batteries are recycled and metals retrieved in their purest form for re-use in cathode materials.

Lithium is also recovered with a pyrometallurgical process and externally refined for re-use.

“Lithium plays a vital role in powering the rapid trend towards electrified mobility. By recovering lithium from end-of-life batteries, Umicore is leading the way towards a circular economy, providing solutions to the growing demand for sustainably sourced materials,” says Scheers.

“Eventually batteries will have to be recycled as valuable metals such as cobalt and nickel should not go to waste and hazardous components should not end up in the environment. The pilot plant has a capacity of 7.000t/y. When the market in end-of-life EVs will start to grow, we can and will scale up our recycling activities.”

Li-ion reaching end-of-life, (global tonnes)

Li-ion batteries available for recycling (global, tonnes)

800,000

800,000

600,000

600,000

400,000

400,000

200,000

200,000

0

2018

2019

2020

2021

Electronics Industrial automation

2022

2023

2024

Power tools UPS/data centers

2025 Electric cars Telecom

Li-ion reaching end-of-life Vs available for recycling (global tonnes)

www.batteriesinternational.com

nese, nickel and graphite will grow at similar rates.

“Currently, lithium ion batteries are collected and recycled at a rate of less than 5%.”

Anecdotal evidence from around the world suggests that spent lithium batteries are being warehoused rather than recycled. Or if not warehoused shipped off to countries such as China that welcome them.

“It’s as if the whole industry is waiting for a technological miracle to happen,” says one commentator. “It’s a blind belief that science will eventually have the answer… and until then we just hang on.”

The situation is even worse in Australia. LIB waste is already growing at a rate of more than 20% a year, according to the April 2018 CSIRO report Lithium battery recycling in Australia: current status and opportunities for developing a new industry.

In 2016, it says, 3,300 tonnes of LIB waste was generated ­— of which just 2% was collected and exported for offshore recycling.

LIB waste generation is forecast to grow to between 100,000 and 188,000 tonnes by 2036, the report predicts. “Unfortunately, the majority of Australian LIB waste is disposed of in landfill.

“This constitutes an economic loss to the Australian economy due to the estimated potential recoverable value of between A$813 million ($570 million) and A$3 billion based on current

-

2018

2019

2020

Electric buses Other

2021 ESS

2022

2023 2024

Ebikes

2025

E-scooters

Source: Global Battery Alliance

Batteries International • Summer 2019 • 67

LITHIUM RECYCLING

Argonne battery post-test lab

commodity prices (of cobalt, lithium, base and other metals and graphite),” states the report.

And that’s just Australia, and it’s just the beginning.

The clock is ticking

NAATBatt’s James Greenberger says the clock is ticking while the industry works out what to do. Lithium battery recycling is in its infant stage, he says, and the volume is low.

“Batteries are not yet reaching endof-life,” he says. “A lot of what is coming in is manufacturing scrap, but we do expect it to go up very quickly as the number of EVs rises. But unlike lead batteries, where someone will always pay for a used lead battery, the output from lithium batteries is — for the time being — not sufficient to pay for the recycling process itself.

“If the technology doesn’t change there will be a tipping fee, we will have to pay someone to take the battery away and it’s likely to be assessed against the buyer of the EV in the form of a deposit or fee upfront, and this will not be good for EV business.

“Probably the leading candidate is direct recycling, cathode to cathode — take the waste battery and rather than reducing it to the base elements of cobalt, copper, nickel and lithium, keep the cathode materials together and recycle them, getting a new cathode material out of the back end that a

68 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

maker of cathode materials could use directly. This is not a new technique, but it needs to be refined.”

Greenberger says this has been done ‘at some bench level’ by the CATL subsidiary Brunp, as well as one or two other Chinese battery companies.

“It’s a bit opaque exactly what is going on, and it’s not clear whether they are getting it to work efficiently enough so that the value out of the back end is high enough that you will be able to eliminate the necessary tipping fee,” he says.

“There is a lot of cathode-to-cathode recycling out there, it may have been done at a lab scale, at some pilot scale, but we’re still in the early stages of figuring out which is the most effective.

“I believe most of the recycling going on is the consumer batteries, and I sense that’s what Brunp and so on is doing. No one really has auto batteries yet in such quantities that they know what to do with them.

“But the clock is ticking. We’re so early in the EV age that we don’t know what the true life cycle is going to be — it varies tremendously, depending on how often they’ve been used and cycled, and where. So there’s a whole bunch of variables to which there will be a mathematical answer in time — but in the meantime, the clock is ticking.”

Realizing this, the US DoE has offered a $5.5 million ‘Battery Recycling Prize’ to incentivize businesses to develop a process that can profitably capture 90% of all discarded or spent lithium batteries in the US. It has also given a grant of $15 million over three years to the Argonne National Laboratory, which is working with a consortium of companies and research institutes — including Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Worchester Polytechnic Institute and the University of California — to set up a ReCell Center to develop a precommercial prototype for the industry

“If the technology doesn’t change there will be a tipping fee, we will have to pay someone to take the battery away and it’s likely to be assessed against the buyer of the EV in the form of a deposit or fee upfront, and this will not be good for EV business” — Jim Greenberger, NAATBatt www.batteriesinternational.com

LITHIUM RECYCLING to take and scale up by the end of that period.

Linda Gaines is systems analyst at the ANL, and chief scientist with the ReCell Center. One of her principal research tasks is looking at extricating the cathode structure in its entirety rather than separating its constituents — a technology that is being tried elsewhere but has yet to achieve results that prove it could be profitable.

“None of the materials in the battery makes up the lion’s share of the mass and you have to separate them from each other, which isn’t so easy because there isn’t one that’s a lot heavier than everything else,” she says. “And right now you’ve got cobalt driving the recycling process in the plants where it is happening, because it’s profitable.

“But one of the areas the DoE is concentrating on is how to make batteries with less and even no cobalt — which is good in that we wouldn’t be dependent on importing it, but bad because it means at the end-of-life there’s less to recover, reducing the materials of value to get out of the process.

“This is what makes the structure of the cathode a valuable commodity to recover. Even if you have less valuable elements, if you put them into a structure that’s valuable and can recover that structure, you have the possibility of having an economical process.”

RSR Technologies is also working with the ReCell Center. President Tim Ellis says the company has been researching the recycling of lithium batteries for 10 years.

“We have a lot of technology that allows us to reclaim the elements, we just can’t figure out the economics of it,” he says. “It’s part of our normal technical development; we are the largest recycler of lead batteries in the western world but we don’t see ourselves as a lead company, we’re an electrochemical cell recycling company. We’re in lead because it’s the biggest volume.

“But we believe all the chemistries will show up and one thing it seems the world agrees on is that digging mines and holes in the ground to make batteries and then throw them in a landfill is a bad thing.

“The DoE is very honest because it’s not wedded to anyone’s business plan.

2,500,000

1,875,000

1,250,000

625,000

2010 2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

Placed on the market

2017

2018

2019

End-of-life

2020

2021

2022

2023

2024

2025

Available for recycling

EV batteries POM, EOL, recycling (tonnes global)

Source: Global Battery Alliance

“Frankly lead is easy to recycle, which is why we do it. Lithium is not. But the DoE is interested because it’s trying to build an energy storage economy. It has a lot of technology related to that, which has come out of its work in nuclear fuels and special alloys. It has a lot of technology in metallurgy, chemistry and process chemical engineering to do these kinds of processes.”

There is a lot of hype in recycling batteries but some of these guys are just interested in flipping a venture startup, they’re not interested in building a business. And there’s a lot of interest in second use because it’s not obvious that material reclamation from the lithium battery is an obvious path like it is for lead.

“Frankly lead is easy to recycle, which is why we do it. Lithium is not. But the DoE is interested because it’s trying to build an energy storage economy. It has a lot of technology related to that, which has come out of its work in nuclear fuels and special alloys. It has a lot of technology in metallurgy, chemistry and process chemical engineering to do these kinds of processes.”

But there are lots of unanswered questions.

“In any secondary material, and this includes lead, what is the spec that

you have to meet?” says Ellis. “How much of a contaminant can you put back into a battery and how does that affect performance? When you mine it out of the ground in the Congo, you separate the copper and the cobalt and you get a very high purity cobalt.

“If you start recycling scrap, you start getting aluminium, lithium, copper, manganese, iron, phosphate — a bunch of contaminants, and the question is how do those contaminants affect battery performance, which sets the definition for what the purity specs need to be for the materials going back in to the battery.”

He says the Joint Center for ElectroChemical Research, also at Argonne, is looking into this. “They have access to a good range of technologies,” he says. “They can look at electrostatics and magnetics and froth flotation and acid leaching — and this direct recycling.”

While recyclers are looking at extracting the valuable metals — primarily cobalt, nickel and to a lesser extent manganese — battery manufacturers are looking at ways of cutting the costs of these materials. www.batteriesinternational.com

Batteries International • Summer 2019 • 69

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INNOVATION. PERFORMANCE. RELIABILITY.

LITHIUM RECYCLING CANADIAN MINER TURNS LIB RECYCLER It was almost coincidental that American Manganese already had the bones of a process for recycling lithium batteries — thanks to its mining processes.

It began in Arizona, when this Surrey, Canada-based manganese mining company developed a low-cost process for recovering the low-grade manganese it was mining — without using the heat that conventional processing required.

Instead, it used reagents combined with ‘unit operations’.

“We were able to get very competitive with conventional processing methods — we did a pre-feasibility study and so on — but manganese prices started dropping and the project was no longer feasible,” says chief technical officer Zarko Meseldzija. “So we got patents for the process, but we put it on the shelf.

“A few years later, we saw the trend in EVs, the electrification of everything, and with the help of Kemetco Research, we realized this could work for cathode materials which contain cobalt, nickel, manganese, aluminium and lithium.

We did some initial bench testing and the theory proved out — it was spot on. We got out the pure cathode material with 100% recovery.”

Meseldzija accepts that in an industrial process the results are unlikely to be so impressive because of impurities in the feedstock and so on, but he still reckons on 90% recovery.

“And the material comes back as a cathode material so it reduces the number of steps involved in the manufacture of the cathode,” he says.

Meseldzija says he’s aware of other laboratories doing the same thing — but they have had their own patent granted in record time. “It was done in 13 months — they normally take up to five years, so it was a great achievement and shows it’s a hot topic,” he says.

One of the most important aspects is reducing the number of steps required in the re-manufacture, he says.

“Where other processes are used, the batteries are smelted down.

But that breaks it down into a black slag, and from that slag you have to process more to break out the

72 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

“Someone said that the recycling of lithium batteries would be a $23 billion business in 2025. Actually there’s room for a lot of people.” – Larry Reaugh

individual metals, which means they’re not going to come up to the purity that batteries need. It’s most likely that maybe 50% of the metals that are recovered go into industrial metals like alloys for steel, if they even manage to get any of it refined.

And to refine it you have to go through so many steps it’s just not worth it.”

Meseldzija says American Manganese has been tackling the easiest challenges first in its pilot plant to prove its technology — the scrap material that’s coming off the battery production line and doesn’t go into the cell.

“But it still has all of the material

on it, and it’s a perfect way for us to tackle the issue and prove our technology. The calculated value of the metals on a NMC622 are about $16 a kilogram, and the reagents we’re using in the pilot work out to be just under a dollar per kg.

“When you consider our utility costs, it’s very minimal. No heat, no energy. When it gets to being commercial, you’ll have labour costs and whatnot but with the economies of scale and processing more material, that’s also going to drop off on your operating expenses.”

Meseldzija says American Manganese is way past the research stage — it simply needs the materials to work with, but there just aren’t sufficient batteries yet.

“There are a lot of people trying to find the recycling solution, Some are coming a little late to the game, we have a lot of expertise and our mining experience has really helped us because a lot of the equipment we use in mineral processing is similar,” he says.

The company’s CEO, Larry Reaugh, says there are lots of other companies claiming they recycle lithium batteries. “They all talk about recycling batteries like it’s a slam dunk,” he says. “But they’re not transparent about it. We know that some of them are using solvents and hydrogen peroxide and those types of chemicals. We’re lucky to have a lab that’s got battery expertise and they’ve worked on all of those things — they’re not user friendly.

“Someone said that the recycling of lithium batteries would be a $23 billion business in 2025. Actually there’s room for a lot of people — and it’s reached that inflection point where it’s going to be a runaway trade over the next decade.”

“We had our own patent granted in record time. It was done in 13 months — they normally take up to five years, so it was a great achievement and shows it’s a hot topic” — Zarko Meseldzija, American Manganese www.batteriesinternational.com

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LITHIUM RECYCLING Hans Eric Melin is the founder of Circular Energy Storage Research and Consulting, based in London and specializing in lifecycle management of lithium ion batteries. The firm helps companies develop end-of-life strategies for lithium batteries and gives advice on how the end-of-life sector affects the energy storage market overall

Lithium recycling has always been done — it’s a myth to say otherwise There are three widely upheld beliefs within the lead acid battery industry when it comes to lithium batteries.

One — they are more expensive. Two — they have a tendency to blow up.

And three — they’re unrecyclable.

Or rather unrecyclable at a profit.

While the first two are undeniably true to a large extent, the third is now being challenged, not just by the companies who are making money doing it, but by consultants and industry observers as well.

“Lithium batteries have been recycled for a long time, almost 20 years, and it has not changed for years,” Melin told Batteries International. “The lack of recycling has become one of the pillars in the dark side of the EV and there’s a lot of interest in keeping up that image.

But when we talk about lithium batteries not being recycled, the case

“Today about 80% of the batteries coming in to be recycled are from electronics,” he says. “By 2025 the proportion will be down to 40%. Another 40% will be different kinds of vehicles — light duty vehicles and trucks, which will hugely change the market” — Hans Melin, Circular Energy Storage Research and Consulting 74 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

www.batteriesinternational.com

LITHIUM RECYCLING is that they’re primarily not recycled here.”

And that, he says, is where China, Japan and South Korea are playing a massive part.

“To me, lithium batteries are more circular and sustainable than many other products and if you compare them with lead acid, they’re not toxic in the same way,” he says.

“Sure, cobalt and nickel are not good for you, but they’re not as hazardous as lead. And the batteries are always re-used, in a second application. To be able to still be using something in 15 years’ time is sustainable, and much more circular.

The reality is there are processes in Europe and North America — just not the batteries.”

In China, recycling is being done because of the need for materials.

In the west, the focus has always been on getting rid of the batteries responsibly, which has meant packing them off on ships to China.

The waste ban implemented a year ago, when China stopped taking the rest of the world’s rubbish, did not apply to batteries because they are imported for ‘re-use’ — in power banks, for instance — and only sold to recyclers if they were found to be not fit for purpose.

Melin says the perception that it costs more to recycle lithium batteries than make new ones is not really true.

“There is also this perception that there is a lack of technology, which is the reason why we are not recycling the batteries — but the main reason is simply that there aren’t that many batteries to recycle,” he says.

“So even in Europe, where we have a few companies that have hydrometallurgical processes, they haven’t really been able to use it because they don’t have enough materials — so they export it, either as a black mass or in some cases exporting batteries whole, because it’s not economical to run that process.”

90% of LiB materials are recovered

Melin says he has read up to 100 studies on hydro processes in which more than 90% of the materials have been recovered — “and it’s been done for quite a long time,” he says. “None of the new processes has been invented — there may be new patents filed, but everyone is able to get their own patent for something —

www.batteriesinternational.com

A NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL DIMENSION In July testimony to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Lithium on battery recycling, Jim Greenberger said the following (in italics).

Greenberger, is the head of NAATBatt, a trade association of about 120 corporations and research institutions working to promote advanced battery technology and the industries it will power in North America.

His thoughtful comments about the economic needs of North America, in terms of recycling are applicable to other economic blocs and countries, “For the United States to have a vibrant lithium-ion battery industry, it needs to ensure that US based manufactures have access to the energy materials and compounds needed to manufacture batteries.

Few of those energy materials, such as lithium, nickel and cobalt, are found in great quantities in the US and almost none of the chemicals into which those energy materials must be processed to make batteries are manufactured here.

Recycling lithium-ion batteries used in the US offers a partial solution to this supply chain problem. Recycling batteries can create a strategic reserve of battery

materials, which can provide supply and some assurance of price stability to domestic manufacturers.

Building a strong lithium-ion industry in the US is critically important.

Few other industries have the potential to create more jobs, both upstream and downstream of their immediate products, than advanced battery manufacturing.

As we have long pointed out at NAATBatt: He who makes the batteries will one day make the cars.

Recycling high voltage lithium-ion batteries is also important for the environment and for public safety.

Making lithium-ion battery cathode materials from recycled batteries can use as little as 18% as much energy, 23% as much water, and produce only 9% as much SOx emissions as producing those compounds from virgin materials.

Recycling high voltage lithium-ion batteries at the end of their useful lives also removes them from potential contact with incautious adults and curious children. A high voltage battery no longer powerful enough to power a car is still powerful enough to electrocute a human being.

Recycling lithium-ion batteries is a matter of public safety as well as good environmental stewardship.

“As we have long pointed out at NAATBatt: He who makes the batteries will one day make the cars” it doesn’t mean it has been invented from scratch.”

A perception that most processes are pyrometallurgical is also simply not true, he says.

“It might be used as a pre-step, going down to cell level to take smaller modules and packs, and from that they get an alloy with nickel, cobalt and copper. But that will be further refined if needed and they will do that with a hydro process.

“In China and South Korea, they never use smelting as a pre-step. They can use pyrolysis, or calcination, and some only use a mechanical process, like a straightforward one where the battery is discharged in a brine,

which enables them to crush the battery without it exploding.

“There are machines which can cut the batteries open to get out the anode and the cathode but normally the battery will be crushed. Most recyclers are targeting the cathode, which is an aluminium collector, and you want to get out that powder to get black mass.

“This sometimes contains only cathode powder but normally has graphite from the anode. This powder is then taken out and put into a hydro process. Leaching may then be used to leach out the different materials using acid like hydrochloric acid, and liquid extraction is used

Batteries International • Summer 2019 • 75

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LITHIUM RECYCLING “It will get to the stage where you will pay to get hold of the battery, not pay to dispose of it, as is the case in Europe today” — Hans Melin, Circular Energy Storage Research and Consulting to separate the materials – unless they are not separated, and kept in the same mixture as it was at the beginning.

“In China, recyclers are paying for all batteries. They are even paying for lithium iron phosphate batteries, which are the least valuable Liion chemistry because they don’t contain cobalt or nickel. That’s why they require big scale, and Chinese companies are recycling them.

They’re in a good position – they want the lithium and they don’t have to compete with the other recyclers who are more targeting the cobalt and the nickel.”

Melin says there are recyclers in Europe and North America — but the difference is that there is much greater demand for the materials in

China, where the ballooning battery manufacturing industry in the past decade means two thirds of all lithium batteries in the world are made there.

“It’s such a huge part of the market.

There is Tesla in Nevada, some being made in Japan and South Korea, and all the rest are made in China,” says Melin.

“China is importing all the materials — the lithium, cobalt, nickel — the only material they use from domestic resources is graphite, so recycling has always been a very important part of the build-up of the industry and it’s a very important source of materials.”

Melin cites the cobalt miner and producer Huayou Cobalt, which recycles 65,000 tonnes of lithium batteries a year. CATL subsidiary

Brunp last year recycled 30,000 tonnes, and Gansu High Power 10,000 tonnes. This is more than Europe and North America combined, he says.

Huayou has its own mines in the Congo, and has recently repositioned itself as a cathode maker.

The growth in EVs is going to change the situation on a massive scale, says Melin.

“Today about 80% of the batteries coming in to be recycled are from electronics,” he says. “By 2025 the proportion will be down to 40%.

Another 40% will be different kinds of vehicles — light duty vehicles and trucks, which will hugely change the market.

“On the end-of-life side the change will not be as quick, because the batteries replaced in cars will last much longer than they do in an electronic device.

“In EV batteries, the first warranties were for six years, then extended to eight years — and now it’s expected that the battery will outlive the vehicle.

“Then second life for these batteries means they will be used in energy storage applications, so a lot of the batteries on the market now won’t reach end-of-life until 2027/8. It doesn’t mean they won’t be recycled — they will be, and in an efficient market, like in China and South Korea, they have a positive value right through the entire chain.

“It will get to the stage where you will pay to get hold of the battery, not pay to dispose of it, as is the case in Europe today.”

Automized battery dissassembly plant in China. Right: Black mass awaiting processing in Chinese plant.

www.batteriesinternational.com

Batteries International • Summer 2019 • 77

ENERGY STORAGE USA

Four US states

The commercial logic in favour of renewables — and with it energy storage — has become unstoppable. California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York are leading the way, reports Paul Crompton.

Energy storage in the US has started to take off. And in size too.

One recent study forecasts that the US grid-tied energy storage market will nearly double this year from 367MW in 2018 to 712MW in 2019.

And that’s not including the almost hundreds of megawatts of behind-themeter storage in residential and commercial properties Last year the US installed just under 11GW of grid-scale solar, bringing the country’s total to around 62GW. The Solar Energy Industries Association predicts more than 15GW of PV capacity will be installed annually by 2024.

The issue today is not too little renewable generated power, but too much.

78 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

The short term answer has been curtailment — in the first four months of this year alone California wasted more than 200,000MWh of wind and solar power. It was more than just waste — it had to pay the neighbouring state of Nevada to use its spare capacity One immediate answer would appear to be battery energy storage systems.

But just like solar a decade go, individual states are still working out how to make storage work through tariffs, regulations and policy.

California, Hawaii, Massachusetts and New York Energy are leading the way when it comes to ESS adoption, with a number of other states pursuing storage on straight economic grounds rather than bold moves to

encourage it.

Three of those four states have announced overall storage deployment targets and have developed programs to support their overarching deployment goal. While Hawaii has no such firm storage targets, it is growing rapidly thanks to market conditions.

(It’s worth noting, in passing, that Oregon has a storage target of a minimum of 10MWh and maximum of 1% of peak load for both utilities, and New Jersey has a 2GW storage goal.)

“We expect that trend to continue to put new states on the map,” says Nitzan Goldberger, the Energy Storage Association’s state policy director.

Innovative market-based mechanisms such as non-wires alternative competitive solicitations (New York)

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ENERGY STORAGE USA

to watch and a first-of-a-kind clean peak standard (Massachusetts), as well as incentive programs, are forging the path to ESS adoption, Goldberger says.

In total, 29 states are pushing ahead with their own renewable power standards, despite both president Donald Trump’s withdrawal of the US from its Paris Agreement commitments, and reports the world’s biggest oil and gas producer will ramp up production, rather than decrease it, in the next decade.

Sue Babinec, Argonne National Laboratory program lead for grid storage, says: “In the US the thing that’s pri-

marily driving the market is renewables.

“The grid of the future will have to integrate renewables, while being cyber secure. But for renewables integration, in the 29 states that have renewable goals, there are very few that have stand alone energy storage.”

Last year, the California Energy Commission approved a law that requires all new build homes to be fitted with rooftop PV panels as the state moves toward its goal of 50% renewables in its energy mix by 2030 and reducing greenhouse gasses by 40% from 1990 levels in the same

Just like solar a decade go, individual states are still working out how to make storage work through tariffs, regulations and policy.

ECONOMICS OF DEPLOYMENT Politicians can do their bit by introducing policy and legislation, but the factor determining if storage is deployed across all 50 states is economics, especially in terms of lifecycle. The variables of that are the up front costs, and throughput — in its lifetime how many megawatts can the user put through it.

Wood Mackenzie forecasts battery rack prices will drop below $150/ kWh over the next five years. So that’s one element. But what about throughput?

Babinec says it’s the most important factor. “While a person may buy an EV they like for emotional reasons or status, this is a grid. It’s a commodity. It’s economically dominated and the economics of that are really about the life-cycle cost.”

When it comes to managing throughput there is not just one variable, and the complexity of the

question can be handled by mining data and testing.

“When we come into this brave new world we are entering we have to think in terms of life cycle throughput, which is called the levelized cost of storage. Cycle life is a common metric people use, but in fact it is only one part of the better metric of total energy throughput,” says Babinec.

“Its all about throughput versus capital and the way you optimize the use of a battery. There are general guidelines for how you cycle a battery, but those are only rules of thumb.

“If you are going to build a giant plant and you are going to put in 20MW of storage you want to know, in detail, exactly how you optimize that asset. You are going to need to do very detailed calculations and measurements and that’s what Argonne is working on.”

Now that many of those demonstration projects are done the floodgates can open. They are not going to go from a tenth of a gigawatt-hour to 2GWh until they have pilot demonstrations completed” — Sue Babinec, Argonne National Laboratory www.batteriesinternational.com

Batteries International • Summer 2019 • 79

ENERGY STORAGE USA CHANGE NEEDED TO THE INVESTMENT TAX CREDIT Energy storage in the US could be deployed more widely if a major deficiency in the federal Investment Tax Credit is fixed, say commentators.

Under the federal ITC, stand-alone energy storage systems are not eligible for the ITC. Instead, such systems must be paired with a solar or other renewable generation resources in order to get federal tax benefits.

The US law offers an up to 30% business ITC based on a qualified energy storage system that is paired with a solar energy/renewable generation resource. But for the owner of such a project to claim the full 30% ITC, the project must start construction this year.

After 2019, the amount of the ITC will step down to 26% in 2020, 22% in 2021 and 10% in 2022.

Because the ITC has played a major part in the development of the renewables industry, and consequently, the energy storage market by making investments in such technologies attractive to investors, there are concerns that a step-down of the ITC would stunt the projected growth of such markets in the US. Unfortunately, neither the prior version of the ITC nor the extension addressed energy storage with

sufficient clarity, despite the major role it will play in grid modernization,” says Carl Mansfield NantEnergy’s head of the C&I energy storage business “Without clear statutory rules, the industry operates in a state of uncertainty because of a lack of unambiguous IRS guidance about the eligibility of energy storage equipment for Section 48 & 25D tax credits when paired with ITC-eligible resources.

“Congress has a ready opportunity to correct this oversight through the Energy Storage Tax Incentive and Deployment Act, bipartisan legislation introduced in both the House (H.R. 4649) and the Senate (S. 1868). Passage of this legislation would ensure the tax credit applies to energy storage explicitly by making it an ITC-eligible resource in its own right, so that it can compete fairly with all the other energy resources that enjoy favourable ITC treatment.

“Extending the ITC to storage is also important for American competitiveness in the global energy storage market. Many new and highly promising battery technologies are emerging in the US and the ITC will help these new technologies gain a foothold that might otherwise be hard to achieve.”

The grid of the future will have to integrate renewables, while being cyber secure. But for renewables integration, in the 29 states that have renewable goals, there are very few that have stand alone energy storage. time frame.

In real terms, California-based residential PV supplier Sunrun predicts that if the percentage of new single and multifamily solar installations that include a battery in Los Angeles increases to 80% by 2025, the cumulative amount of solar-charged residential battery capacity available to utility Los Angeles Department of Water and Power as a dispatchable resource could grow to more than 1GWh by 2030.

“The adoption of residential batteries is growing nationwide, predominantly in tandem with home solar,” stated Sunrun in its 2019-2030 Repowering Clean Gigawatt-Scale Potential for Residential Solar & Battery Storage in Los Angeles report.

It went on: “In response to utility programs, incentives and ‘Time of Use’ rates, customers are embracing storage to manage their electricity bills and store energy to have backup power in outages.”

It envisages that the combined output of some 75,000 rooftop residential power plants form the equivalent of a virtual power plant and would help replace three gas plants that are being retired.

The regulatory foundations

The foundation for US market expansion was laid during the past 12 months with a number of develop-

“Neither the prior version of the ITC nor the extension addressed energy storage with sufficient clarity, despite the major role it will play in grid modernization” – Carl Mansfield, NantEnergy 80 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

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ENERGY STORAGE USA ments that laid the groundwork for further market expansion and new business-model development in 2019.

These developments, according to Wood Mackenzie, include: • Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Order 841 filings that expand the opportunities for storage participation in wholesale markets • Programs that implement residential storage to provide grid services, creating new revenue streams for a segment historically limited to backup power • Record low solar-plus-storage PPA pricing that illustrates the technology continues to compete head-tohead with incumbent generation • Battery supply shortages, which plagued the market in 2018, started to abate in 2019, which will alleviate system pricing issues Taken together, such activity shows clear opportunities for the expansion of storage deployment.

In terms of policy, anything where developers can ensure demand will be helpful when looking at the main challenges of deploying grid-scale ESS in the US. A major development came on February 15, 2018, when FERC passed Order 841. The order, first proposed in November 2016, sets out rules for the participation of electric storage resources in the capacity, energy, and ancillary service markets.

The ruling stated its goal was: “To remove barriers to the participation of electric storage resources in the regional transmission organization and independent system operator markets.”

The draft Final Rule requires each RTO and ISO to revise its tariff to establish a participation model consisting of market rules that, recognizing the physical and operational characteristics of electric storage resources, facilitates their participation in the RTO and ISO markets.

In other words, it removed barriers that prevented storage resources from realizing multiple value streams.

Although there are some concerns — economic, regulatory and market barriers — consulting firm Brattle Group found there was a potential to add 50GW over the next decade if storage costs continued to decline and state regulatory policies built upon the order.

“Policy changes are underway in New York to open the door for more storage,” says Brett Simon, a senior analyst at consultancy firm Wood

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“New York is also doing a big over haul of their storage rules in terms of how storage can participate in the wholesale markets.

Again, this points to opportunity opening up for storage to provide grid services” — Brett Simon, Wood Mackenzie Mackenzie Power and Renewables.

“These include opportunities in wholesale markets spinning out of FERC Order 841.

As more BTM storage is able to access wholesale market revenue streams, we’ll see further opportunity for growth, especially as system prices continue to decline.”

Brattle Group’s 2018 study Getting to 50GW? The Role of FERC Order 841, RTOs, States, and Utilities in Unlocking Storage’s Potential estimated at least half of the total value storage could provide would be achievable in wholesale electricity markets, with the remainder accruing at the transmission and distribution and customer level.

The study said: “To fully realize the value of electricity storage, including benefits related to reduced T&D costs and reduced customer outages, the FERC wholesale market reforms will have to be matched with similar efforts at the state regulatory level.”

In essence, the Brattle study showed the market could increase up to fivetimes by combining the policy with state-level initiatives, compared to a future that limited storage to capturing only wholesale market benefits.

“Ultimately, the more sure the demand, the more likely industry is to start spending,” says Babinec.

Solar+storage policy moves

It’s clear the combination of solar with storage is the next step in developing a reliable and clean electrical grid, and policy will have its part to play in enabling opportunities to deploy batteries beyond the few markets where energy storage is currently economic.

US representative Mike Doyle introduced a key policy on April 4. The updated version of the Energy Storage Tax Incentive and Deployment Act — first introduced by US senators Cory Gardner and Martin Heinrich in 2016 — aims to extend to batteries and other energy storage systems the

“Long term, the key for these systems will be regulatory and market reforms that create additional opportunities to provide services and secure revenue streams” — Nitzan Goldberger, ESA

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ENERGY STORAGE USA same 30% investment tax credit offered to solar PV systems. As it stands only a small subset of energy storage projects co-located with solar are eligible.

If ratified, the bill will establish a federal investment tax credit for business, residential, and utility-scale projects using batteries and other energy storage technologies.

Importantly, the legislation seeks to establish the tax credits for both commercial and residential energy storage through 2021. The incentive would then be phased down annually — 26% in 2020, and 22% in 2021 — before levelling off after that to a standard, permanent 10% tax credit for commercial projects and zero for residential projects.

The energy storage industry believes the new investment tax credit should cover not just batteries but also other storage technologies—such as pumped hydropower, more efficient flywheels, and technology that converts electrical energy into high-pressure com-

“Massachusetts has always been an early adopter of clean energy and environmental issues, but right now there happen to be some people in positions of leadership interested in energy storage” — Todd Olinsky-Paul, Clean Energy Group

pressed air, which can be stored for later use, says Jason Burwen, the vice president of policy at the ESA. Carl Mansfield, head of NantEnergy’s commercial & industrial energy storage business applauded the proposed bill. He believes it’s an important recognition of the critical role energy storage plays in modernizing the electric grid and the tax credits would support diversity in the storage market.

Meanwhile, US senators Amy Klobuchar and Jerry Moran introduced bipartisan legislation to give clean energy and microgrids a boost in April. The Expanding Access to Sustainable Energy Act aims to assist rural communities and rural electricity cooperatives to overcome the barriers to renewable energy storage and grid improvements by providing them access to relevant resources and expertise.

BEHIND-THE-METER AND FRONT-OF-THE-METER DEPLOYMENT When it comes to BTM and FTM deployment, the main drivers for the market are the declining installed costs of storage — roughly 10% year-on-year — and the increasing needs for flexibility on the power system.

For BTM systems, incentive programs play a critical role in driving down soft costs. “Long term, the key for these systems will be regulatory and market reforms that create additional opportunities to provide services and secure revenue streams beyond the primary application for the customer (back up or bill management),” says Nitzan Goldberger, the Energy Storage Association’s state policy director.

Today, when it comes to BTM deployment, the pecking order sees California remain in the lead with Hawaii, Massachusetts and New York following.

Hawaii will continue to be a very strong state in the coming years, but Massachusetts and New York are catching up, albeit at the start of their upward trajectory right now, says Brett Simon, a senior analyst at consultancy firm Wood Mackenzie Power and Renewables “Both states have, over the past year, and especially in the past six months, been initiating policy directives that are opening the door for behind the meter storage.”

Moving forward — possibly as early as the mid-2020s — Massachusetts and New York could pull ahead of

Hawaii in the BTM market because policy initiatives will lead to storage market growth in both states, starting in the early 2020s, and lead to them to overtaking Hawaii’s commercial and industrial market during that period, says Simon.

However, because the BTM market includes both residential and nonresidential applications, Hawaii will probably remain the number twostate.

But when it comes to C&I applications, then New York and Massachusetts could very likely pass Hawaii, with Simon predicting that New York could become the definitive number two in the C&I markets by the early 2020s.

In states where there are integrated resource planning and transmission planning processes in place, FTM systems can compete head-to-head with traditional peaking plants and transmission investment if states revise their rules to require that ESSs are evaluated and considered fairly, as seen in Colorado, Washington, and New Mexico.

“As for front-of-the-meter systems on distribution systems,” says Goldberger, “Regulatory reforms are needed to enable the same asset to serve several applications, including clarifications around ownership and dual market participation for assets that are providing grid services — doing so can unlock significant value and make project economics quite favorable.”

“Massachusetts and New York could pull ahead of Hawaii in the BTM market because policy initiatives will lead to storage market growth in both states, starting in the early 2020s”

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FOUR STATES TO WATCH California led the way in embracing renewable energy and its storage.

In many ways the state continues to set the templates — both regulatory and financial for energy storage across the union.

The Golden State approach

“Unless new solar power projects are paired with energy storage … they will exacerbate California’s obvious mid-day solar power glut.”

In 2010, California established the US’s first energy storage target with the passage of AB 2514, which established a goal of 1.3GW of energy storage by 2020 for the state’s three investorowned utilities: Pacific Gas & Electric (580MW), Southern California Edison (580MW), and San Diego Gas & Electric (165MW).

In 2016 the state added a new target with the passage of AB 2868, which called for 500MW of storage, or 167MW for each investor-owned utility.

In February 2018, SDGE announced plans to add 166MW of storage in San Diego County to ensure the region’s security of supply in case of another major emergency like the 2015 Aliso Canyon gas leak which led to Tesla (20MW), Greensmith Energy (20MW) and AES Energy Storage (30MW) deploying lithium ion battery projects in the area to replace the gas plant.

The utility’s seven proposed projects were in response to AB 2868, which was signed into law in 2016 and allows companies to add distributed en-

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ergy storage.

Lessons learnt by California are informing the mandates of other states.

“They threw the gauntlet down and that’s a really good thing because the folks that are in behind-the-meter and front-of-meter projects have to respond,” says Babinec.

“So what that does is there are rules for utilities advising them of what’s allowable in terms of technology risk.

“People are looking at each other to see what’s going on. For example, in California, for the first two or three years they had a lot of demonstration projects, so it starts at a low level.

“Now that many of those demonstration projects are done the floodgates can open. They are not going to go from a tenth of a gigawatt-hour to 2GWh until they have pilot demonstrations completed.

“That happened in California and one of things that really impressed is they had that Aliso Canyon problem.

California had set its mandate and then had this catastrophe of the natural gas leak and it wasn’t something

they could fix in a day, so they installed a bunch of energy storage as a way to fix that problem.”

But the need for energy storage is pressing as there are frequently times when the growth of renewables has overtaken the growth of storage. Over the past three years California has been in the strange position of paying to generate electricity that it cannot use and then paying for it a second time by passing it on to neighbourhod states who charge to use it.

California’s Independent System Operator, or CAISO, has long cautioned that renewable power production would eventually grow to a point where supply exceeds demand on pleasant spring and autumn days.

While CAISO can manage oversupply with economic curtailments and exports, those tools are suboptimal because curtailments impair the economics of existing solar power projects and exporting power is costly.

“This year, solar curtailments have been a daily occurrence, and through May 9, 2019, cumulative curtailments of 446,500 MWh were 189% of 2018 levels,” says John Petersen, a veteran energy storage commentator, “There also were 25 days when CAISO, like Germany, was a net power exporter for at least one hour, compared with zero days in 2018.

“Unless new solar power projects are paired with energy storage facilities to support time shift from afternoon to evening, they will exacerbate California’s obvious mid-day solar power glut.”

One consequence of curtailment is that it makes a mess of project finance arrangements and complicates PPAs. “Since California’s solar power generating capacity has reached a tipping point where the mid-day solar power glut is obvious, I expect to see significant changes in CAISO’s approach to future solar power projects,” says Petersen.

“At the utility-scale level, new projects will be strongly encouraged if not compelled, to incorporate energy storage for time shift. Since time shift is not a high-value energy storage application, I expect storage issues to complicate project feasibility analysis, financing, and engineering, procurement and construction.”

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FOUR STATES TO WATCH Hawaii has set the most ambitious renewable targets of any of the US states. By virtue of being an island archipelago — all energy sources such as diesel have to be imported — means the cost efficiencies stack up well.

World leader Ka Hae Hawaii

Hawaii Electric Company is talking about installing around 1.4GWh of storage along with 135MW solar to its grid by 2022 In 2015, the volcanic archipelago of Hawaii became the first US state to set the goal of 100% renewable energy supply by 2045, with a goal of reaching 30% by the end of the 2020.

Investor-owned utility Hawaiian Electric Company reached 27%, last year.

Hawaii has consistently been a leader setting a record with utility scale solar plus storage bids under 10¢ per kWh. It was the first to implement a solar+storage peaker plant.

Partly the push into renewables is due to its own limited resources. Hawaii is the most geographically isolated population centre opn the planet. on Earth. As a result, the state must import nearly all of its energy resources – primarily crude oil and other petroleum products.

Each of Hawaii’s islands has its own electric grid, owned by the utility serving that island. Because transmission cables do not connect the islands, each island has to generate its own power.

With that in mind to meet its ambitious targets, the state is deploying residential to grid-scale storage-plus-

88 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

PV systems — it provides a unified plan that deals with the disparate situation of the islands.

Across the Hawaiian Electric Companies’ five-island service territory 18% of residential customers use rooftop solar — around double that of Connecticut, which is second at 6.8%. Incidentally, California is third at 5.9%, Arizona, fourth at 4.5%, and Utah and Massachusetts both at 3.4%, according to the Smart Electric Power Alliance.

As a renewable energy source, there is now 418MW — and climbing — of residential solar capacity online in the state.

Parallel to the state’s adoption of PV is the adoption of storage. On the island of Oahu, solar+storage installation permits leapt from 40 being granted to 773 in 2017, according to a report from the state’s Department of Business Economic Development and Tourism.

The average cost that households in Honolulu have paid to install a solar PV system together with battery was

$29,475, according to the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism. “By contrast, the average costs of installing battery alone and PV alone were $12,799 and $24,407 respectively.

“So, installing PV together with a battery on average was about $7,700 cheaper than installing PV and battery separately, indicating clear evidence of economies of scope of installing PV and battery together.”

In March, the state’s Public Utilities Commission approved plans for projects totalling 247MW of solar with almost 1GWh of storage: three on Oahu, one on Maui and two on Hawaii Island.

The ESSs will be used for peak shifting services and provide enough power for 105,000 homes per year while eliminating the use of more than 48 million gallons of imported fossil fuels annually.

Two months earlier, Californian firm Clearway Energy Group was awarded two projects on Oahu: 156MWh storage coupled with 39MW of PV capacity (Mililani 1 Solar plant) and a 144MWh systems coupled with 36MW of PV (Waiawa Solar project).

The company signed 75MW of power purchase agreements with utility Hawaiian Electric Company for the projects.

The projects are just the tip of the iceberg in the state, with HECO is talking about installing around 1.4GWh of storage along with 135MW solar to its grid by 2022.

After approval by the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission, which is expected this summer, the second phase of renewable energy procurement will open to bids from developers. Pending approval, the first projects are expected to come online in 2022.

The estimated targets for new renewable generation are the equivalent of 594MW of solar for Oahu, 135MW for Maui and 32MW to 203MW for Hawaii Island, dependent on whether other renewable energy projects become available. The company will seek proposals for Molokai and Lanai later this summer.

The approximately 900MW of new renewables would be among the largest single procurement efforts by a US utility.

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FOUR STATES TO WATCH Massachusetts has been at the forefront of looking to find the most cost-effective integration of renewables and storage. It has to. It has some of the highest demand changes in the US.

The joys of getting SMART

“There’s also a good number of people in top positions that are interested in making the state the Silicon Valley for storage” In its Energy Storage Initiative, Massachusetts aims to find the most cost efficient and effective way to make the commonwealth a national leader in the emerging energy storage market.

The initiative aims to install 200MWh of energy storage by January 1, 2020 and 1GWh by 2025.

The state also has its Solar Massachusetts Renewable Tariff, known as SMART. “The SMART program is the successor to their net metering program and includes an incentive adder for any solar system that enrols under the tariff and is paired with storage,” says Brett Simon, a senior analyst at consultancy firm Wood Mackenzie Power and Renewables who focuses on energy storage.

Massachusetts is also trying to reduce the amount of fossil fuel generation used to address system peaks — another opportunity for storage.

In January, the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities approved a new three-year energy efficiency plan. Known by many through Mass

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Save — its energy saving initiative — it brought energy storage, normally in the form of residential batteries, into the program.

The plan made batteries eligible for state energy efficiency incentives, a move that will be considered by other states. In reaction to the plan a report Energy Storage: The New Efficiency — How States Can Use Efficiency Funds to Support Battery Storage and Flatten Costly Demand Peaks, was published by the Clean Energy Group on April 4. It covers the process the state made to finalize the plan, and presents economic analysis showing that energy storage can be cost-effectively deployed behind the customer’s meter.

Report author Todd Olinsky-Paul says that as more renewable energy is deployed, reducing peak demand becomes more important. And while battery storage can do this, states need to expand their efficiency plans to embrace peak demand reduction and the new technologies, like battery storage, that can accomplish it.

He said it marked the first time any state had included batteries in an energy efficiency plan. This opened a new and steady source of funding to pay incentives to customers that install batteries at their home, business or rental property.

Lewis Milford, president of CEG, said: “Energy efficiency programs always have included new energy technologies. Storage is now a technology that deserves early stage funding support, a trend that other states should follow to bring down their energy costs and bring more customers into this emerging storage market.”

Massachusetts also has its ACES (Advancing Commonwealth Energy Storage) program that promotes leadership and innovation in energy storage deployment. It is the states first substantial investment on energy storage projects with the goal of growing the market. Over the last few months a number of ACES projects have come online and most should be operating by early 2020.

It focuses on programmes that demonstrate new applications or business models that show storage can provide services that are not currently monetizable through existing markets.

“Massachusetts has always been an early adopter of clean energy and environmental issues, but right now there happen to be some people in positions of leadership interested in energy storage that are very interested in getting storage developed in the state,” says Olinsky-Paul.

“There’s also a good number of people in top positions that are interested in making the state the Silicon Valley for storage, not just developing policy and deployment but making the state a place that attracts industry to come and set up shop in Massachusetts to gain early mover advantage.”

Urgency for reform comes from Massachusetts paying some of the highest demand charge rates — which are utility-specific — in the country, equal to California, with commercial customers in the state paying $20-30 per kW, CEG’s report found.

However, an important qualifier is the high rates in Massachusetts are in the Eversource territory (which includes Boston). Much lower rates are found in National Grid territory.

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FOUR STATES TO WATCH New York State has been one of the early adopters of energy storage and has led the way in terms of researching the subject. Interestingly one of their findings blocks lithium in some ESS projects.

The state we’re in: New York

Fire safety in built-up areas or tower blocks is critical.

That’s why buildings in New York are using lead battery storage and lithium cannot be deployed.

In his 2018 State of the State address, New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced a 1.5GW energy storage target for the state by 2025.

The target is part of a far-reaching Energy Storage Roadmap that includes adding 3GW of energy storage by 2030, a figure established by the Public Service Commission in December 2018.

To meet these goals the New York State Energy Research & Development Authority and the Department of Public Service expects investor-owned utility company Consolidated Edison to procure at least 300MW of storage, with other state IOUs required to procure 10MW. Each four-hour duration system must be ready for dispatch by January 1, 2022.

Additionally, New York is rolling out its $280 million (with more to come and that doesn’t include a $40 million adder to the NY Sun program) Storage Bridge Incentive storage program to accelerate the growth of the energy storage industry and drive down the cost of deploying storage projects Cuomo announced the war chest

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during Earth Week, with commentators suggesting it could spur a 1.8GWh flurry of additional storage capacity.

The cash is part of a larger $400 million investment to achieve its ambitious storage target.

He says: “The state is also overhauling its wholesale market participation rules for storage. Again, this points to opportunity opening up for storage to provide grid services.

“There are quite a few opportunities that are coming out. The only reason storage hasn’t been built out to satisfy the high demand charges in New York, especially downstate, are certain permitting challenges, which are being worked through, though the timeline remains murky.

“Then there’s also the resilience angle for New York. It was a state that was hit hard by Hurricane Sandy. So we are going to see municipalities and local governments and critical infrastructure like hospitals and fire stations look to solutions like storage to ensure they have back-up in the event of another catastrophe.”

In April, the state also launched its NYPA Innovation Challenge, devised by utility New York Power Authority and Urban Future Lab at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering. The challenge connects early stage clean-tech start-ups to the utility, enabling next-generation technology demonstrations designed to rapidly scale across its network of businesses and customers.

The utility will seek public and private partners with expertise in innovation, energy efficiency and clean energy generation to support advanced pilots of new technology and business models as the power grid transforms and begins to work with more distributed energy resources and grid edge solutions.

“Energy storage is vital to our resiliency work and this funding will enable us to grow the industry and create jobs while we continue on our path towards meeting the country’s largest energy storage target,” Cuomo said.

The cash should provide an incentive for energy storage firms to bid for tenders and lead batteries should be among the first, offering products with a 99% recycling rate that fits with the green pledge.

“Many cities want to improve their energy storage capacity but they need battery technology that is both reliable and safe,” said CBI director Alistair Davidson.

“Fire safety is important in any building, but in built-up areas or tower blocks it is critical. That’s why buildings in New York are using lead battery storage, and as a consortium we are carrying out research that will develop batteries with improved performance and lifetimes, making it possible for buildings in cities to provide secure and safe electricity and back-up supplies throughout the year.”

New York has always expressed particular interest in microgrids because they offer a greater resilience in the event of natural disasters. Hurricane Sandy in October 2012 showed that many of the power outages could have been averted if a differently structured electricity network had been created.

The result was the first of a two phase funding program, starting in 2015, offering finance for microgrid feasibility studies. In the first phase some 83 studies were started.

Batteries International • Summer 2019 • 91

EVENT REVIEW: BCI 2019 2019 BCI Convention & Power Mart Expo April 28-April 30 • New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

Convention discusses advanced lead, electricity grids, accepts lithium The annual Battery Council International meetings opened with a difference this year reflecting a change of direction for the convention taken by its new executive vice president, Keith Moran.

The emphasis continued to be on the huge networking opportunities that the meetings provide for the great and the good of North America’s lead battery industry.

But this year there was a palpable difference.

For the first time two sessions looked at the impact that lithium was having on the industry — and from a positive viewpoint too. There is now a real acknowledgement that lithium has an important role to play in the new energy storage landscape that is emerging across the continent.

But it’s very much a recognition that the lead industry is changing too.

“I don’t think there’s a single US battery maker that isn’t also working on either providing a lithium product or already has products in place,” one consultant told ESJ. Certainly all the major players US players — think East Penn, Exide Technologies, Trojan (now part of C&D) and Clarios (formerly part of JCI’ — have products in place.

The choice of speakers reflected this change too. The keynote address for the opening meeting was given by Curt Hébert, a former chairman, of the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission who argued persuasively that energy storage was going to be a huge growth area in supporting electricity markets throughout the country. So far North American grid use of battery energy storage has been almost entirely using lithium products.

Given the scale of the deployment required there is a clear need for every available battery chemistry to be used.

A point argued by at least two of the speakers.

The continued price advantage lead has over lithium and its easy recyclability suggested that lead should be a more prominent player but it still continues to be regarded

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as yesterday’s news and outdated.

A shame given that much of this is disinformation.

As in previous years the winner’s ceremony at the start of the convention was eagerly awaited. This year the annual award for the most important and innovative achievement in 2018 went to RSR Technologies for a development that helps level the playing field between lead and lithium battery performance.

BCI said the award was given in recognition of the combination of RSR’s research into the fundamentals of lead battery charging and discharging and the resultant use of a ground-breaking alloy that can double cycle life and vastly reduce water loss.

RSR, working with East Penn Manufacturing and the US Argonne National Laboratory, has been using Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source synchrotron to look at, in real time, the crystallization of lead plates at the atomic level during the charging and discharging process. The results of the research enabled the firm to

develop its alloy, known as SupersoftHycycle, which enhances lead battery performance.

Tim Ellis, president of RSR Technologies, said: “This has been a tremendous opportunity to dramatically improve the performance of the active material in lead batteries to reach the full theoretical potential of the lead battery system.

“We can compete and win against lithium in many applications with higher performance.

“The work at Argonne has helped us understand the physical processes taking place in real time inside batteries to develop higher performance advanced lead batteries.

Our Supersoft-Hycycle lead really improves cycle life as validated by many of our customers, especially in higher temperature and extreme operating conditions.”

The alloy is already being used by South African battery firm Auto-X, the maker of the Willard brand of batteries.

Kelvin Naidoo, Willard’s manufacturing and technical director, said: “The results are spectacular and showed vastly improved cycling and greatly reduced water loss — the holy grail for lead batteries…

We are getting results that we can’t understand because we expect there to be a failure amount and we’re not getting one at all.

“In Africa with the high temperatures you expect grid corrosion and we’ve just tested some imported batteries in the field, which all failed. But this alloy is performing remarkably well.”

Naidoo said he expected the new material will prove to be a spectacular game changer for the lead battery industry.

Supersoft-Hycycle is undergoing trials with half a dozen companies in North America and Europe. Ellis says he anticipates it will be fully available commercially by the end of the third quarter.

The 2020 BCI Convention & Power Mart Expo will next be held in Las Vegas on April 26-28.

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EVENT REVIEW: PB2019 MADRID PB2019: 21ST INTERNATIONAL LEAD CONFERENCE Madrid, Spain • June 18-21, 2019

Supporting a sustainable future for lead The ILA’s international lead conference held every two years proved a gripping reminder that the lead battery industry continues to stride ahead on a great many fronts.

Turbulent times ahead. But positive ones too. That was the general theme of many of the presentations in the Pb2019 conference sessions held in Madrid on June 20 and June 21.

The International Lead Association’s meeting — held once every two years but not to be confused with its ELBC event — kicked off on Thursday with an analysis of the present lead battery market and its future direction. A wide variety of speakers covered an equally wide set of topics under the overall generic banner of “Supporting a sustainable future for lead”.

Geoffrey May, principal of Focus Consulting, predicted that lead battery sales would continue to grow at around 6% a year and in the automotive sector the general trend would be for the greater deployment of AGM and EFB batteries.

That said, lithium sales would rocket too. May reckoned that the entire battery market would be worth around $220 billion. Of this, lead would account for some $56 billion of sales while lithium ion would then account for $160 billion.

Part of May’s message — and reiterated in a variety of different ways by other speakers —was that energy storage offered an extraordinary opportunity for the lead industry.

One of the more exciting storage projects was detailed by Angie Rolufs, who gave a presentation looking at a CBI project for fast charging of EVs in the US state of Missouri. Although this is still a feasibility study, the potential implications for a wider application are huge. Northstar and EnerSys were battery partners on the project.

Perhaps the most interesting point of Roluf’s presentation was that based on a set of basic assumptions, there would be a reasonable return on investment.

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But the road ahead is not necessarily a smooth one and Steve Binks, regulatory affairs director at the ILA, warned that the regulatory environment was still uncertain. He pinpointed the challenges that the industry faced in Europe, in particular from the EU Reach Authorization, EU Reach Restriction, the EU ELV Directive, the Battery Directive, Vehicle Emissions Targets and the EU Circular Economy Strategy.

“Europe’s politicians and bureaucrats have an uncanny desire to want regulate whole industries out of existence,” one participant told BESB afterwards.

The afternoon sessions were dominated by talk of the advances being made in lead battery technology.

Matthew Raiford, representing the Consortium for Battery Innovation, highlighted the work the CBI was doing.

“It’s more than a talk of a set of initiatives but it’s our active participation within the R&D community in the US and our continued engagement with European Union institutions,” he said.

Lithium ion batteries have been developed up to 90% of capacity.

There are some big gains we can still make with lead,” he said.

Exide’s Francisco Trinidad painted a different picture, talking first about the recent progress the industry has made in terms of new technologies.

He reckoned that five new areas of research were going to open up new

possibilities.

These were: nano-structured active materials to improve energy efficiency, lead grid coatings to protect against sulfation, new lead alloys to improve life in high temperature, alternative current collectors such as aluminium, copper and titanium to reduce weight and thin bipolar electrodes to increase power and charge acceptance.

Two presentations looked at opportunities with a regional perspective. Huw Roberts from CHR Metals outlined the fact that despite all the talk of an EV revolution, e-bikes were going to be an important source of business and most particularly in China.

L Pugazhenthy — better known to the world as Pug — represented the India Lead Zinc Development Association and painted another wide opportunity for the battery industry.

The country’s focus on renewable energy has been the extraordinary explosion in the deployment of PV. To give an indication of the appetite for all things solar, some 60 ‘solar cities’ will be created in the future.

300GWh of storage will exist in 2025 he said — and the majority of this will come from lead batteries.

At the end of the second day, attendees were particularly fascinated by a presentation by Lisa Dry, director of strategic communications for BCI, at the subtle and various ways that she was putting lead batteries in the spotlight with the council’s Essential Energy Everyday campaign.

To give an indication of the appetite for all things solar, some 60 ‘solar cities’ will be created in the future.

300GWh of storage will exist in 2025 he said — and the majority of this will come from lead batteries.

Batteries International • Summer 2019 • 93

EVENT REVIEW: PB2019 MADRID, ILA WORKSHOP

ILA workshop reiterates 20 MCG/DL blood lead levels target ahead of ECHA review A day-long workshop to inform delegates of looming regulations on exposure to lead at work in Europe was held on the eve of the ILA’s annual lead consortium, Pb 2019, in Madrid on June 19.

The Lead Occupational Exposure Management Workshop also heard presentations from ILA members whose measures at work have already led to massive reductions in the blood lead levels of workers in their plants.

Steve Binks, regulatory affairs director at the ILA, said the exact Binding Occupational Exposure Limit Value had not yet been decided by the European Chemical Agency, which is instructed by the European Commission to prepare an opinion.

The current legal level is 70 μg/dL. Telling members they should expect the ECHA to take a ‘precautionary’ view, he said the ‘best case’ would be a 20μg/dL blood lead level – the target set by the ILA in 2017 and which as the workshop heard, was already either being achieved or predicted to be achieved by the end of 2020.

He later told Batteries International: “Our objective is to go beyond that because it benefits the health of employees. And with nonmember companies, we encourage them to join and we aim to influence them as we work through the supply chain in other parts of the world.”

Binks said the EC would appoint a ‘rapporteur’ who would assess the proposals and provide input to the EC, and while the ILA would not be consulted as such, it would be able to provide some input.

“Everyone who’s using lead or lead compounds will participate in a survey which give the cost of change to the ECHA, including socio-economic factors, and it needs to address the impossible costs as a counter balance to the ECHA proposals,” he said. “They won’t establish a limit that’s unachievable.”

Representatives from EUROBAT, BCI and the ILA separately reported improvements across the industry

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Perhaps the most striking presentation came from Mark Ashmore, HSQE at HJ Enthoven & Sons (part of Ecobat Technologies) who said that this June the blood level of all employees at the plant had fallen from an average of 8.2 μg/dL at the end of 2018 to an average of 7.9 μg/dL and just 8.6 μg/dL for process workers. that would be likely to lead to reaching the blood lead target of less than 20 μg/dL by the end of 2020.

For the ILA, Khareen Singh said that out of 34 sites, 23 now had no employees with a level above 30 μg/ dL, and three sites had no employees with levels above 20 μg/dL. For EUROBAT, Stefan Gielis said the target for members was to limit blood levels to 20 μg/dL by the end of 2025, and by the end of 2019, none above 25 μg/dL. “For the first half of 2018, 8.43% of employees had levels above 25. By the end of the second half, the figure was down to 6.7%,” he said.

From the US, BCI chief executive Kevin Moran said there had been a non-compulsory programme but that different state regulatory authorities, such as the OSHA (Division of Occupational Safety and Health) in California, would be likely to ‘keep moving the target down’. The target was the same as EUROBAT’s, with levels no higher than 25 μg/dL by the end of 2019, while currently it was 30 μg/dL. “Out of 13 companies, 99.9% of battery plant employees were under the target,” he said. “And 99.8% of secondary smelters were under the target.”

The workshop then heard from ILA member companies who all said that

by following guidelines on factors such as hygiene, training, education, safety equipment and filtered air they had seen remarkable reductions in blood lead levels in their workers.

Among the presentations was Javier Elso Galvez, plant manager at Exide Technologies’ San Esteban de Gormaz plant in Spain, who said that since 2006, when 60 workers had levels of more than 25 μg/dL, now not one was above 20, with the average recorded just 14.9 μg/dL. Perhaps the most striking presentation came from Mark Ashmore, HSQE at HJ Enthoven & Sons (part of Ecobat Technologies) who said that this June the blood level of all employees at the plant had fallen from an average of 8.2 μg/dL at the end of 2018 to an average of 7.9 μg/dL and just 8.6 μg/ dL for process workers. Ashmore said that every aspect of possible contamination had been analysed from first principles.

Peter Kelly, industrial hygienist at Canadian mining company Teck Metals, said levels among workers in 1991 averaged 80 μg/dL, and were now down to 27μg/dL. By 2022, he said, there would be no one with levels above 20 μg/dL. Steve Binks said the ECHA’s review was unlikely to be completed until the end of 2023.

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The Battery and Energy Storage

CONFERENCE WATCH MONTHLY The definitive guide to battery energy storage conferences and meetings for the year ahead

SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE Contact Jade Beevor jade@energystoragejournal.com

EVENT REVIEW: EUROBAT 2019 EUROBAT 2019 Berlin, Germany • June 13-14

EUROBAT readies lead industry action plan First wave of attack targets political representatives EUROBAT’s forum in Berlin on June 13-14 called members to arms at a powerful assembly that also elected new president Marc Zoellner — who was widely hailed by many delegates as the man who could save the European lead battery industry.

Delegates also told Batteries International the forum was the first time in many years they had witnessed such strong support for lead batteries from EUROBAT. Many said off the record that they had great faith

in Hoppecke CEO Zoellner, who was elected president after JohannFriedrich Dempwolff retired from the post after six years.

Dempwolff has been widely appreciated by EUROBAT members for providing leadership through a turbulent time of change in the industry. He was initially appointed for a two year position as president.

Thomas Bareiss, parliamentary state secretary in the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and

Thomas Bareiss, parliamentary state secretary in the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy gave the keynote address about the importance of energy storage in the future.

96 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

Energy gave the keynote address about the importance of energy storage in the future. However, Zoellner immediately challenged Bareiss about the lack of investment being channelled towards lead battery development despite a pledge from the German government to make funding available for lithium ion projects.

Bareiss admitted that while the German government was supposedly chemistry agnostic, lead batteries had not been considered in the drive towards electric vehicles.

“We want to emphasize the potential that’s in our technology with advanced lead acid batteries, projects we have heard about that need funding. It’s only fair that lead technology is budgeted for as well,” Zoellner told Batteries International afterwards.

“What the minister was saying was that there’s a focus on electro-mobility so there is a logic behind what he said but it needs to be fair.

“Technology agnostic means to support different technologies for different applications and there are certainly clear lead markets ahead of us which we see rising. There are certainly applications for lithium ion ahead of us — big energy storage systems, electric vehicles, automotive. But there are other applications clearly staying with lead — automotive, low-voltage systems, UPS applications and I also see lead with hybrid applications.”

The recent European parliamentary elections proved a worthy topic to look at given the push-and-pull forces at work within the European Union.

Karl Lannoo, the chief executive of CEPS, the think-tank on EU policies, presented his analysis of the EU

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EVENT REVIEW: EUROBAT 2019 elections and what they mean for the battery industry and future legislative developments.

“Given the major changes and challenges from the past five years, the previous EU Commission did better than generally perceived”, he said.

“Europe got a huge legitimacy boost with a voting percentage of 51% versus 43% previously. Specifically for the battery industry, the election results seem to confirm that decarbonization and the circular economy will be even more top of the agenda during the next term.”

Call for lobbying EU affairs manager Francesco Gattiglio called on EUROBAT members to lobby their local MEPs, trade associations, national governments and all political parties to get the message across that all battery chemistries were valid and must be given equal consideration when it came to regulation and budget.

“We are calling on all members to lobby the lobbyists,” he said. “We need to be talking to MEPs, political parties, national associations. We have a sustainable industry and we have to prove it to the European Commission.

That’s our challenge.”

The initiative involves EUROBAT working with the International Lead Association in a five-year campaign to put forward the case for lead — starting off just as new MEPs take their seats in the European Parliament.

EUROBAT and the ILA would be seeking clarification from the new ministers on many issues, he said.

“With hazardous materials there is an exemption in lead used in SLI

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“The European Commission proposes the legislation, the European Parliament checks it, then the council of member states looks at that. We need to lobby all of them.” batteries — we need to know if this exemption will be granted again. There are also socio-economic considerations — they must be taken into account or it will not be fair. And we need to show that lead is sustainable.

“Who will have the biggest obligation to recycle the batteries? Will this be clarified in the new directive?” (The EU is purportedly revising the directive next year, but timing and extent are vague.)

“We are going to try to convince them that targets for collection are not necessary, that we don’t want codes on batteries for scanning, nor recycling efficiency rates put higher.”

When asked by a member of the assembly who had decided that lithium batteries were ‘green’ and lead batteries were not, Gattiglio said: “It’s not that they don’t see lead as green — it’s that they don’t see lead.

“The European Commission proposes the legislation, the European Parliament checks it, then the council of member states looks at that. We need to lobby all of them.”

Gattiglio said the next five years — from 2019 to 2024 — would see campaigns launched by EUROBAT and the International Lead Association, such as ‘Charge the Future’, which would focus on the new Battery Directive, REACH consortium proposals to add lead to its list of

hazardous substances, and End-of-Life regulations.

In a later presentation, Steve Binks, regulatory affairs director at the ILA, made the point that while all batteries made in Europe would have to adhere to whatever regulations were eventually put in place, none of the rules would apply to imports.

“It will stop European manufacturing in its tracks but not apply to imported batteries,” he said. “The Battery Directive is too inflexible — it hasn’t caught up with the technology, and we will try to address this point.”

So will the lead battery companies step in and lobby the decision makers?

Gertrud Moll-Möhrstedt, managing partner at lead battery manufacturer Akkumulatorenfabrik MOLL, based in Bavaria, Germany, says her company is already doing its part. “I’m talking to everyone,” she said. “We give company tours to anyone who asks, we talk to local politicians, we even talk to schools to explain the value of a lead battery.

You have to make them understand it’s a great technology and it’s the only one with such a high recycling rate.

“We make presentations to ministers, we are doing what we can and I believe other companies are too.”

The next EUROBAT general assembly and meeting will be held in Brussels in early June 2020.

Batteries International • Summer 2019 • 97

FORTHCOMING EVENTS

China hosts two events in August in Guangzhou (left) and Shanghai (above)

11th Shanghai International Lithium Battery Industry Fair The 4th Asia (Guangzhou) Battery Sourcing Fair 2019

Oslo Battery Days

August 16-18 Guangzhou, China

The 3rd OBD Battery Conference will meet to discuss and provide a platform for technological innovations and business opportunities with the latest updates in the battery field in Norway and abroad.

The conference is held once a year and is the leading battery conference in Norway, bringing together participants from private and public companies, start-ups, investors, academics and businesses that are interested in the battery revolution.

Asia GBF is one of the professional demonstration and trade platforms of battery & energy storage industry.

Hundreds of exhibitors and thousands of professional visitors will gather there.

Contact Guangdong Grandeur International Exhibition Group Aileen Chen Tel: +86 20298 06525 Email: grand.fi@grahw.com www.battery-expo.com/index.php?lang=en

Advanced Batteries, Accumulators and Fuel Cells Conference (ABAF) August 25-28 Brno, Czech Republic The main fields of interest of this year’s conference are the research and development of materials designated for modern electrochemical power sources, new investigations in the fields of materials research, applied electrochemistry, corrosion, preparation and properties of nanomaterial structures, non-conventional sources of electrical energy including photovoltaic systems, ionic liquids for power sources and their properties, replacement of lithium by sodium in batteries, electrochromism and practical use of electrochemical power sources including their application.

As a new topic, special electrochemical technologies will be added.

Contact International Society of Electrochemistry Professor Vondrak Email: vondrak123@seznam.cz www.aba-brno.cz

98 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

August 26-27 Oslo, Norway

Contact www.oslobatterydays.com

August 28-30 Shanghai, China The fair continues to attract numbers of well known international enterprises from Japan, Korea, the US and Germany.

The show area is expected to reach 30,000m2, while more than 600 exhibitors will show their latest products and technology. An exhibition of new energy vehicles, super capacitors, charging equipment and energy storage will be held at the same time.

Contact Zhenwei Exhibition Group CNIBF Tel: +86 20839 53253 Email: lwy@zhenweiexpo.com www.cnibf.net

ees South America São Paulo, Brazil • August 27-29

The special exhibition — ees South America — is the industry hotspot for suppliers, manufacturers, distributors and users of stationary and mobile electrical energy storage solutions.

It will be hosted for the second time at Intersolar South America, taking place at the Expo Center Norte in São Paulo.

Contact Solar Promotion International Gioia Müller-Russo Tel: +49 7231 58598-218 Email: Mueller-Russo@solarpromotion.com www.intersolar.net.br/en/home/for-visitors/about-intersolar/focus-ees-south-america.html

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FORTHCOMING EVENTS 18th Asian Battery Conference September 3-6 • Bali, Indonesia

6th International Secondary Lead Conference Designed for battery industry executives, customers, marketers, academia, researchers, sales teams, reseller networks and suppliers.

The Asian Battery Conference has a long and proud history of bringing together the world’s leading battery industry C-Level executives, marketers, technical staff and sales teams biennially to remain updated on new and emerging technologies, understand future directions, meet new suppliers, conduct business and network with industry peers.

An integral feature of the Asian Battery Conference is the exhibition. A true international opportunity, the exhibition sees the world’s major battery companies come together to showcase their capabilities and leverage off the considerable business development and direct sales opportunities the conference provides.

The Asian Battery Conference has seen tremendous growth since its inception in 1986, not only in terms of the size of the event but more importantly its ability to act as an educator and business development tool for all of the worlds key battery industry executives.

Contact Conference Works Tel: +61 3 9870 2611 Email: events@conferenceworks.com.au www.asianbatteryconference.com

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September 2-3 • Bali, Indonesia The aim of this Conference is to share and increase knowledge over all segments of this vital industry, which produces the vast majority of the world’s lead supply. No other metal industry comes close to our mark on recycling of its own product.

The 6ISLC will bring together all aspects of secondary lead smelting; discussing plant design, smelting regimes, refractories, burner design, slag formation and structures, and pollution and environmental control among other presentations.

It is a further aim of the conference to open up for discussion all aspects of plant operations and control as to give not only operators, but people interested in secondary smelting a better understanding of the processes involved in the industry.

Contact Conference Works Tel: +61 3 9870 2611 Email: events@conferenceworks.com.au www.secondaryleadconference.com

Batteries International • Summer 2019 • 99

INTE RNATIONAL SECONDARY LEAD CONFE RE NC E BA L I, I N D O N ES I A 2 – 3 SEP T E M B ER 2019

G L O B A L LY R E C O G N I S E D A S T H E O N LY INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE DEDIC ATED TO THE WORLD OF SECONDARY LEAD HEAR FROM 2 5 + L E A D I N G E X P E R T S O N T H E M A N Y ASPEC T S OF S E C O NDA RY L E A D S M E LT I N G A N D R EF I N I N G

H EA R K EY SP EA K ER S F RO M:

Markets: updates of the lead market including insights into market situations

Montanuniversitaet Leoben

Plant Design: latest plant designs and operations

UN Environment Protection

Emerging Technologies; Latest from new process routes

Indian Lead Zinc Development Association

Refractories and burners: correct operating parameters

Consortium for Battery Innovation

Metallurgy of lead smelting and refining: Outline of the technology behind a smelter

The Ministry of Environment & Forestry, Indonesia

Slag’s and waste streams: Understanding the complex slag systems

Imperial College London

Environmental: legislation and pollution control

International Lead Association

Hedging: understanding the complex world of hedging and how it works.

...and more to come.

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FORTHCOMING EVENTS Future Resource

Intersolar Mexico September 3-5 • Mexico City, Mexico Making its debut in 2019, Intersolar Mexico serves as the industry’s go-to source for invaluable technology trends and premier B2B contacts in the promising Mexican solar market.

Intersolar Mexico sits at the cross-section of photovoltaics, solar heating and cooling technologies, and energy storage. Together, the two events will be the largest gathering of professionals in Mexico for international manufacturers and distributors looking to meet regional buyers in the fields of solar, renewable energy and cleantech.

More than 250 exhibitors and 13,000 visitors from over 35 countries are expected to participate in this year’s events!

Contact Daniela Friedrich Tel: +49 761 3881 3803 Email: Intersolar_mx@fwtm.de www.intersolar.mx/en/home

The Battery Show North America September 10-12 • Novi, Detroit, Michigan, US

September 11-12 Birmingham, UK Future Resource is the leading water & energy management event in the UK — showcasing the latest innovations shaping the sustainability sector for the industry’s most influential names and organisations.

From the UK’s leading local authorities and government departments, to the largest retailers, commercial and industrial end users, energy and water suppliers and trade associations, Future Resource attracts the most influential visitors and buyers who are attracted by the industry’s best content programme, speaker line-up and world-class exhibition.

Contact Prysm Group Tel: +44 117 929 6083 www.futureresourceexpo.com

CTI Symposium China September 23-25 Shanghai, China CTI has been organizing the nowfamous CTI Symposium China since 2012. The three day event provides an update on latest automotive transmission and drive engineering for passenger cars and commercial vehicles.

The international industry event delivers the appropriate platform to find new partners for purchase and sales of whole systems and components. Automobile manufacturers, transmission and component companies give an overview and outlook on technical and market trends.

Contact Tel: +49 211 88743-43333 Email: info@car-training-institute.com www.car-training-institute.com

Solar Power International & Energy Storage International September 23-26 Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

The Battery Show connects you with more than 8,000 engineers and executives, and more than 600 leading suppliers, across the advanced battery supply chain.

A powerful, end-to-end showcase, this leading global industry event covers today’s emerging advanced battery technology for the automotive, portable electronics, medical technology, military and telecommunications, and utility and renewable energy support sectors.

Explore the full spectrum of cutting-edge solutions you need to make faster, smarter, and more cost-effective products at the most comprehensive industry event in North America.

Contact UBM Tel: +1 833 202 3467 Email: batteryregistration@ubm.com www.thebatteryshow.com

102 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

As the anchor of the North America Smart Energy Week, the event has diversified to include Energy Storage International (ESI)—the largest storage event in North America, the Smart Energy Microgrid Marketplace, Hydrogen + Fuel Cells North America, and The Technical Symposium.

Leading education with exceptional speakers, combined with a diversifying exhibit hall that represents a comprehensive view of smart energy solutions, shows that SPI continues to build and expand upon its role as a leader in the solar and energy storage industries.

Contact Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) www.solarpowerinternational.com/about

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FORTHCOMING EVENTS EnTech

R-Zinc

October 8-9 London, UK

October 14-15 Brussels, Belgium

As the energy sector accelerates along its digital transformation journey, the industry is faced with deciding how best to deploy technology to transform operations, drive efficiency, reduce cost and lessen environmental impact.

EnTech features a case study-led agenda providing expert market insight and an unrivalled networking opportunity to discuss the latest innovation and implement the right technology roadmap.

At EverZinc, we are convinced that zinc will become a key component of the energy ecosystem in the next decades.

R-ZINC offers you the opportunity to discover the latest developments and applications from the energy sector during the first meeting entirely dedicated to rechargeable zinc battery technologies and markets in the capital of Europe.

Contact Email: entech@solarmedia.co.uk www.entech.solarenergyevents.com

INTELEC 2019 Paris hosts The Business Booster

October 13-17 • Singapore

The Business Booster October 3-4 Paris, France The Business Booster is an annual two-day international networking event that showcases 150+ sustainable energy technologies under one roof.

TBB rotates among our European capitals-in 2018 the event took place from October 17-18 at the Bella Center, Copenhagen-Scandinavia’s largest exhibition centre, with over 800 attendees consisting of startups, energy industry representatives, financial communities, policy makers and regulators.

October 6-9 Ulm, Germany The ABAA 12 conference brings together high-level policy makers from Europe, USA, China, Japan and Korea, as well as representatives from the automotive industry, battery manufacturers, material providers, and world-renowned scientists from academia.

The conference will be accompanied by a specialised industrial exhibition.

Contact Mandy Wagner Tel: +49 3641 31 16-160 registrierung@conventus.de www.abaa12.org

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12th Energy Storage World Forum October 14-18 Rome, Italy Exploring new and innovative regulatory frameworks have long been a source of discussion in the energy storage world — it’s a programme topic in this year’s Energy Storage World Forum. But while regulations fail to keep pace with new advances in the sector, how much is this holding back the adoption of energy storage technologies?

This is the first Forum on Energy Storage in Europe since 2010. Since then we have executed successfully 11 different events featuring over 80% utilities/end users as speakers.

The programme covers more than 60 in-depth topics covering the key questions from the industry. Over 2,000 delegates and 40+ sponsors have attended our events in total so far.

Contact Dufresne Research Tel: +44 203 289 0312 www.energystorageforum.com

Contact InnoEnergy Email: tbb@innoenergy.com www.tbb.innoenergy.com

Advanced Lithium Batteries for Automobile Applications (ABAA)

Contact Ever Zinc Email: info@r-zinc.com www.r-zinc.com

INTELEC is an international annual technical conference which, for the past thirty-nine years, has been the premier forum for the science and engineering of energy systems for Information and Communications Technologies.

Research and technical papers explore the needs and trends in the subject areas of power conversion, energy storage, and high-reliability and mission-critical powering infrastructure.

Topics include DC power plants, powering architectures, converters, inverters, batteries, fuel cells, grounding, physical and thermal designs, building and equipment cooling systems.

Contact www.intelec.org

Interbattery Seoul, Korea October 16-18 InterBattery first launched in 2013 in Seoul, Korea, is Korea’s leading battery exhibition showcasing various new products and technologies related to battery industry. Running concurrently as a part of ‘Energy Plus’, it attracts over 900 domestic and overseas exhibitors and 1,500 booths!

InterBattery2019 has served itself as an exclusive business platform showing battery industry’s forthcoming prospects since its first launch.

Contact COEX Irene Kim Tel: +82 26000 1393 Email: irenekim@coex.co.kr www.interbattery.or.kr/en/

Batteries International • Summer 2019 • 103

FORTHCOMING EVENTS The Battery Technology Show

10th Annual Battery Safety Summit

October 22-23 Coventry, UK

October 22-25 Alexandria, Virginia. USA

Showcasing the incredible developments happening across the battery and energy storage markets. If you are looking to keep up with the latest news in breakthrough technologies, gain invaluable insight from key players in the market, and discover the emerging technologies, which are at the frontier of the energy revolution, this is the event for you. This show will feature a select line-up of world-leading manufacturers in the battery and energy storage space on our Expo floor, alongside a firstclass conference programme featuring three thought-leading symposiums: The Future of Battery Technology, The Future of Hybrid & Electric Vehicles, and The Global Battery Market.

Research continues to boost the energy storage capability of lithiumion batteries leading to expanding applications and consumer use.

Higher energy plus increased use leads to higher risk. Therefore, accurate tests and models are critical for predicting and controlling the complex electrochemical, thermal, and mechanical behaviour of these batteries.

Additionally, regulations to promote protection and information derived from forensic investigations to enhance prevention are required.

The task of implementing effective safety strategies falls on R&D scientists (chemical, electrical, material, and software engineers), battery manufacturers, regulatory authorities, forensic scientists, and the public.

The 10th Annual Battery Safety Summit convenes these stakeholders to continue the vital dialogue of integrating and implementing lithium battery safety to meet ever-increasing energy demands.

Contact Evolve media group Tel: +44 117 932 2586 www.batterytechnologyshow.com

Batteries 2019 October 22-24 Nice, France The market for batteries and their components has experienced a strong double-digit growth for 21 years and several positive factors should ensure that the rally continues.

For 20 years, the batteries event still remains one of the world’s most attractive event and the meeting place of technologies (lead acid, NiMH, Li-ion, post Li-ion), applications (from micro batteries to large format batteries) and of the value chain (chemists OEMs and end users)...

Batteries 2019 will focus on battery market issues, latest trends and will allow you to meet new partners and customers!

Contact Hopscotch Congrès Véronique Saint-Ayes Tel: +33 170 946535 Email: congress@hopscotchcongres.com www.batteriesevent.com

Nice hosts Batteries 2019

104 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

Contact Tel: +1 781 972 5400 Email: ce@cambridgeenertech.com www.cambridgeenertech.com/battery-safety

Advanced Engineering 2019 October 30-31 Birmingham, UK Bringing together thousands of attendees from OEMs, tier 1 manufacturers, and supply chain partners, Advanced Engineering is the UK’s largest annual advanced engineering and manufacturing event.

With a two-day attendance of some 15,000 engineering professionals, Advanced Engineering promotes supply chain business and technology transfer across aerospace, automotive, medical technology, energy, and indeed any sector that involves high-value manufacturing, R & D and innovation.

Contact Tel: +44 203 196 4300 www.easyfairs.com/advancedengineering-2019/advancedengineering-2019/

Birmingham, UK, hosts Advanced Engineering 2019

International Battery Production Conference (IBPC) November 4-6 Braunschweig, Germany Join us for the second International Battery Production Conference (IBPC) in Braunschweig.

The Battery Lab Factory Braunschweig in cooperation with the VDMA Battery Production, the German competence cluster ProZell and Fraunhofer IST invites you to share and discuss your research and innovations in battery production.

Contact Tel: +49 531 391-7154 Email: info@battery-production-conference.de www.battery-production-conference.de

Energy Storage North America November 5-7 Pasadena, California, US

Once a year, a marketplace for the Energy Storage sector is established for the entire value chain to meet, network and learn in one location over three days. Thousands of developers, energy users, utilities and policymakers will gather in Pasadena to advance the understanding and deployment of energy storage.

Contact Messe Düsseldorf North America Matt Spikehout Tel: +1 312 621 5804 Email: mspikehout@mdna.com www.esnaexpo.com

E-Waste World Conference and Expo November 14-15 Frankfurt, Germany E-Waste World Conference & Expo is a two-day international conference and exhibition dedicated to discussing the latest recycling technology, materials recovery solutions, green electronics, sustainable materials, non-toxic substi-

Frankfurt hosts the E-Waste World Conference and Expo

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The Leading Exhibition Series for Batteries and Energy Storage Systems

AUGUST 27–29, 2019, SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL SOUTH AMERICA’S NEW HOT SPOT FOR BATTERIES & ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEMS www.ees-southamerica.com

NOVEMBER 27–29, 2019, BANGALORE, INDIA INDIA‘S LEADING ELECTRICAL ENERGY STORAGE EXHIBITION www.ees-india.in

FEBRUARY, 4–6, 2020, SAN DIEGO, USA NORTH AMERICA‘S ULTIMATE HOT SPOT FOR ENERGY STORAGE SOLUTIONS www.ees-northamerica.com

MARCH 3–5, 2020, DUBAI, UAE EES@MIDDLE EAST ELECTRICITY: MENA‘S MOST COMPREHENSIVE ENERGY STORAGE EVENT www.ees-mena.com

JUNE 17–19, 2020, MUNICH, GERMANY EUROPE’S LARGEST EXHIBITION FOR BATTERIES AND ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEMS www.ees-europe.com

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FORTHCOMING EVENTS tutes, and end-of-life strategies, as well as regulatory and business models to help reduce the environmental impact of all forms of consumer and industrial e-waste.

The event will bring together globally renowned experts from consumer and industrial electronics manufacturers and suppliers, e-waste recyclers and waste management companies, recycling technology manufacturers, materials recovery experts, sustainable material and chemical suppliers, science and academia, policy-makers, NGOs, research institutions and consultants.

EMEX connects all commercial energy consumers with leading experts, policy makers and suppliers.

EMEX is more than just an event. It’s a platform where practitioners and experts from various backgrounds and sectors are coming together to share their knowledge and experiences from successful implementations of energy efficiency strategies.

Contact Tel: +44 1483 330 018 Email: info@trans-globalevents.com www.ewaste-expo.com

Battery & Energy Storage UK 2019

The Energy Management Exhibition-EMEX

As the UK’s energy generation and distribution market accelerates, attention is steered towards balancing generation, supply, and demand and creating necessary storage facilities.

The integration of cross-sector and collaborative projects becomes crucial for a sustainable energy future but what are the next steps?

November 27-28 London, UK EMEX is the UK’s must-attend energy event for everyone wanting to increase their organization’s energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions.

Contact Tel: +44 208 505 7073 Email: rr@emexlondon.com www.emexlondon.com

December 4-5 Warwick, UK

Battery and Energy Storage 2019 returns for its third year to unite all aspects of the ecosystem to showcase applications of the latest in battery and energy storage innovation across the transportation, energy, aerospace, transportation and industrial sectors.

Contact Email: info@iob-media.com www.bess.internetofbusiness.com

CTI Symposia Germany December 9-12 Berlin, Germany The International CTI (Car Training Institute) Symposium and its flanking specialist exhibition is the international industry event in Europe for people seeking the latest information on developments in automotive transmissions and drives for passenger cars and commercial vehicles!

Contact Tel: +49 211 88743-43333 Email: info@car-training-institute.com www.drivetrain-symposium.world/de

ees India November 27-29 • Bangalore, India

The market potential for electrical energy storage in India is expected to be tremendous in the future-especially driven by incoming policies for the e-mobility industry.

With the great success and support of ees Europe, Europe’s largest exhibition for batteries and energy storage, ees India becomes the most powerful energy storage exhibition in India.

The exhibition is the industry hotspot for suppliers, manufacturers, distributors and users of stationary electrical energy storage solutions. Covering the entire value chain of

106 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

innovative battery and energy storage technologies-from components and production to specific user applications.

Contact Solar Promotion International Ludmilla Feth Tel: +49 7231 58598 215 Email: feth@solarparomotion.com www.intersolar.in/en/for-visitors/about-intersolar-india/focusenergy-storage.html

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Batteries International • Summer 2019 • 107

BATTERY PIONEERS: PAUL RUETSCHI ‘Innovator’ may be an over-used term in modern battery circles, but it certainly applies to Paul Rüetschi. Rüetschi has been a pivotal figure in solving many of the development problems that plagued the advent of VRLA batteries, as well as a host of other energy storage chemistries and technologies. Kevin Desmond reports.

Understanding the mechanisms of energy Lead batteries may not be flavour of the month for many in the lithium world. But it would be foolish to ignore some of the giants of energy storage who took battery development to new heights in the 1960s through to the new century.

Among the forefront of some of these brilliant men and women is Paul Rüetschi, an all-round electrochemist as comfortable in researching, improving and commercializing lead batteries as working with fuel cells, nickel-cadmium, nickel-hydride batteries, silver oxide-zinc, manganese dioxide-zinc primaries, thermal batteries, and more…

Rüetschi — pronounced Richey — was born in 1925 in Schafisheim, a small town in the Swiss district of Lenzburg and a half hour’s drive from Zurich. An early aptitude for science led to studies at the Teacher’s College in Wettingen and then on to the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.

The institute — known in German as ETH Zurich — was already one of the most famous polytechnics in Europe. Today it’s ranked third in the continent, just behind Oxford and Cambridge. And in the 1950s it was quite simply one of the foremost institutions of its kind in post-war Europe.

It was at ETH that Rüetschi’s first

He returned to the US, this time to take the position of manager of the electrochemical research department at the Electric Storage Battery Company — nowadays better known as Exide Technologies

full involvement with the world of batteries and energy storage began.

And it was here where he obtained a PhD from the Department of Physical Chemistry, studying under its professor, Gottlieb Trumpler.

Trumpler was a leader in his field at this time.

His research work made a major contribution to the understanding of electrochemical passivation of metals of decisive importance in the field of corrosion. His work included polarography, the electrolytic deposition of metals, the flow of material on electrolysis, and the examination of chemical and physical equilibriums.

There was a strong bond in the relationship between Rüetschi and Trumpler. In Rüetschi, Trumpler found a collaborator, eager and very quick to learn. For Rüetschi, Trumpler was a keen and sympathetic teacher and provided the gateway to much of his later research.

Top left: Identity photo of Rüetschi as a student. Middle: Rüetschi some time in the 1950s in the US (PHOTO CREDIT: AIP EMILIO SEGRE VISUAL ARCHIVES, PHYSICS TODAY COLLECTION). Right: Rüetschi (2018) now in his 90s, but going strong.

108 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

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BATTERY PIONEERS: PAUL RUETSCHI In 1953, Rüetschi received the first of his industry awards: the Silver Medal of the ETH. Rüetschi stayed with Trumpler as his assistant until 1955, only leaving for a year’s sabbatical in a research group in the US run at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, by Belgium electrochemist professor Paul Delahay. The results of their collaboration resulted in a joint publication in the US, Influence of Electrode Material on Oxygen Overvoltage: A Theoretical Analysis.

America impressed Rüetschi but so did the practical application of his research work. And, aged 30, he returned to the US, this time to take the position of manager of the electrochemical research department at the Electric Storage Battery Company — nowadays better known as Exide Technologies.

Here he was involved in a number of investigations relating to lead acid batteries, though other disciplines were connected. One of his first studies, for example, was the development of fuel cell type auxiliary electrodes for gas consumption in sealed lead acid cells. Another area of research was the study of corrosion phenomena and the composition of multilayer corrosion films on lead and lead alloys.

His second official honour came in 1957, when he was presented with the Young Author Award by the Electrochemical Society.

As an example of his multi-disciplinary approach to energy storage, in 1961 he filed a patent for an “improved storage battery utilizing positive electrodes of zinc or magnesium … another object of the present invention is to provide a new and improved electrolyte for use in batteries of the so-called alkaline type”.

He was also active in many scientific societies. During his time in the US, Rüetschi became chairman of the physical electrochemistry division of the electrochemical research department for the Electrochemical Society, as well as executive committee officer of the battery division.

Perhaps the haunting ring of the bells echoing around the Jura mountains was too great and nine years after arriving in the US, in 1964, Rüetschi returned to Switzerland.

His new position at Yverdon-lesBains was technical director at Leclanché, a manufacturer of a wide range of primary and secondary batteries.

The firm itself dates back to the development of zinc carbon batteries by Georges Leclanché in 1866, and the

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THE SPIRITUAL ELEMENT OF THE UNIVERSE On retirement Rüetschi, a family man with four children and wife Elizabeth, made a farmhouse into his home at Vers-chez-Grison, at the foot of the Jura Mountains. It is here that, as a nonagenarian, he continues to reflect on the world and its nature. Like many of the great battery electrochemists and scientists — names such as John Goodenough, Kathryn Bullock and Jun Furukuwa spring to mind — he is a Christian and wants to assimilate his science and his faith.

Last year he wrote Verdichtete Gedanken und Gefühle [Condensed Thoughts and Feelings] and in 2017 he wrote Der Physiker und sein Engel: eine allegorische Geschichte [The Physicist and his Angel: an Allegorical Tale, subtitled Dialogues on Existential Questions in the Age of the Physical World]. It is illustrated with pen and ink drawings from his teenage years.

As a Christian, Rüetschi writes: “I do not say that God is identical to the physical forces. He just works in them and through them. It manifests itself in the laws of nature, in the

laws by which the physical forces, such as the gravitational force or the electrodynamic force, operate.

“If it is that God is at work in the physical forces, then he is in every atom, every celestial body, as far as the universe goes, and also trillions in our brain when we think and feel, for thoughts and feelings (including religious ones) are based on physical and chemical processes driven and directed by electrodynamic forces.

“He may not be at work anywhere in the universe in such a special human and personal way as in us humans here in this world. Through our consciousness he becomes an inner you, and we can consciously participate in his work.”

PAUL RÜETSCHI: THE IRREVERENT SIDE Rüetschi is a gifted sketch artist with a life-long interest in art. This cartoon, which he drew, hardly conceals his excitement, wonder and confusion with the wave of technologies and chemistries emerging.

The Battery System Tower of Babel

Batteries International • Summer 2019 • 109

BATTERY PIONEERS: PAUL RUETSCHI

Rüetschi addressing a LABAT conference in Bulgaria in the 1990s PHOTO CREDIT: DETCHKO PAVLOV

creation of the company in 1909. He was to remain at Leclanché for the next 28 years.

With characteristic energy, Rüetschi threw himself into work at Leclanché and under his guidance, research took off. This included a quantitative description of the pH-gradient that exists in corrosion layers and alkaline primary battery electrolyte-lithium miniature primary batteries with long service life.

Rüetschi continued to make major contributions in lead acid battery research, including: • the discovery of α-PbO2 in corrosion films formed on lead and lead alloys at high anodic potentials • disclosure of the individual self-discharge processes in lead acid batteries, and the stability of lead oxides in H2SO4 solution • determination of the composition of the corrosion layer on lead electrodes in H2SO4 at various poten-

tials; investigation of ion selectivity and diffusion potentials in such corrosion layers; quantitative description of the pH gradient in the corrosion layer • development of a cation-vacancy model that relates defects in the crystallographic structure of MnO2 and PbO2 to their electrochemical activity • various other achievements in the research of HgO, Zn, MnO2 and Ag2O electrodes.

By this time he had already attracted an international audience for his research. One leading industry figure later said: “In the 1950s, many authors writing about their battery findings were vague and imprecise in describing what they did and what they found out. They were only soft and qualitative in their conclusions.

Often they did not clarify what was hard proven fact and what was merely speculation.

As an example of his multi-disciplined approach to energy storage, in 1961 he filed a patent for an “improved storage battery utilizing positive electrodes of zinc or magnesium… another object of the present invention is to provide a new and improved electrolyte for use in batteries of the so-called alkaline type”. www.batteriesinternational.com

“By contrast Rüetschi’s papers have always presented results in a quantitative manner, providing values and potential variations in detail, and considering potential disturbances. Sample preparation and conditions of the experiments were precisely described.

Conclusions were clear in wording, without any kind of speculative touch.”

The breadth of his research was deepened by his now extensive contacts with the electrochemical giants of the day across Europe. “Contacts provide new ideas. Without contacts, the performance suffers; there is premature capacity loss!” he later said.

To this day he pays tribute to the memory of Detchko Pavlov, professor at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and Pavlov’s co-workers describing how his work was stimulated by Pavlov’s series of conferences held in Varna, Bulgaria from 1989 onwards.

In 1978, Rüetschi published the seminal paper Review on the leadacid battery science and technology in the Journal of Power Sources. It begins: “In spite of extensive and continued efforts aimed at developing new light-weight, low-cost secondary electrochemical power sources, the old lead-acid battery has still not been dethroned as the major battery system.”

It concludes: “What makes it so hard for new electrochemical power sources to compete with it is not only its long headstart, but also the high degree of sophistication and perfection it has reached.”

He was both right and wrong, as history would later prove.

In 1980 he was awarded the Frank Booth Medal of the International Power Sources Conference Committee.

In 1988 Eberhard Meissner — now senior technical leader, electrochemistry at Clarios (the former Johnson Controls Power Solutions) but then giving his first public presentation at the International Power Sources Symposium in Bournemouth, UK — met Rüetschi.

“He was very interested in the relaxation effects of PbO2, which I presented, and my interpretation,” he recalls. “In his polite and precise manner, he asked several questions in the Q&A — it was a great feeling for a youngster like me. He was one of those scientists whose publications I admired from the very beginning.

Rüetschi combined the values of a scientific education with expertise in the battery industry.”

Batteries International • Summer 2019 • 111

BATTERY PIONEERS: PAUL RUETSCHI Rüetschi retired, aged 67, at the end of 1992, although he continued to work part-time as a consultant for Leclanché.

The following summer he was awarded the Gaston Planté medal — the electrochemical battery equivalent of an Oscar — for his “significant contribution to the development of leadacid battery science and technology”.

But his life in research and problem solving was not over. Four years after retiring, and then into his seventies, Rüetschi, the doyen of lead acid batteries, was still writing and still ex-

cited at the wave of new technologies and chemistries emerging.

Alongside Felix Meli and the late Johann Desilvestro, he co-authored the paper Nickel-Metal Hydride Batteries. The Preferred Batteries of the Future?

His last battery book, Batterien und Akkumulatoren: Mobile Energiequellen für Heute und Morgen, was written with Lucien Trueb, science editor of a Swiss daily newspaper.

Batteries and Accumulators, Mobile Energy Sources for Today and Tomorrow was written to be understandable

and easily readable — for laymen as well as scientists.

As late as 2002, Rüetschi received a patent for a lead battery into which at least one silver-silver sulfate reference electrode was permanently integrated.

The reference electrode is used to control the charging or discharging of the battery, and can also be used to measure the acid density and charging state of the battery.

In total Rüetschi has contributed to more than 70 scientific publications and been granted more than 30 patents.

MIXING THEORY, CHEMISTRY AND COMMERCE Rüetschi was famous for having a variety and depth of knowledge that went from the theoretical, sub-atomic, to the practical and mechanical through to the commercial.

This example, from a patent filed in 1980 (US4315977A), highlights this. As ever looking for better performance, Rüetschi set his mind on improving tubular-plate batteries that could withstand from 1,000 to 2,000 charge-discharge cycles of a certain type, whereas batteries having ordinary pasted plates (at least at that time), in comparison, could withstand only 400 to 800 cycles of the same kind.

However, the casting of the hardlead grids for tubular plates presents greater difficulties than regular ones.

Increasing energy requirements and the relatively small floor surface in electric vehicles means that tall cells must be constructed for traction batteries — which means tall plates as well. Although the central grid rods are typically only 3mm in diameter, they must be produced in lengths of up to 800mm or more.

Very tall plates entail particular problems with casting.

The patent then speaks for itself.

“Pressure die-casting methods are widely used nowadays for producing tubular-plate grids.

Special die-casting machines for this purpose are commercially available from a number of manufacturers. In such machines, the lead is injected into the die under pressure in the longitudinal direction of the lead rods through a conical nozzle. The longer the casting, the more expensive the die-casting machine.

112 • Batteries International • Summer 2019

“Experience has shown that the pressure die-casting of grids containing very little or no antimony presents particular difficulties, for the casting properties of the lead alloys decrease as the antimony content is reduced. Until now, therefore, it has customarily been necessary to use lead alloys containing up to 12% antimony for tubular-plate grids, depending on the height of the plate.

“The high antimony content of the lead grids is, however, undesirable.

“Firstly, it makes the battery more expensive since antimony costs a great deal more than lead.

“Secondly, technical drawbacks arise when the antimony content is high. Antimony which is dissolved out of the grid by anodic oxidation diffuses in the electrolyte to the negative plate, where it is deposited in the form of metallic antimony.

The result is antimony contamination of the negative plate, for antimony reduces the hydrogen overvoltage of the negative lead electrodes.

Hydrogen is then generated much more rapidly, which leads to increased self-discharge of the negative electrodes.

“When the battery lies unused for a longer period of time, the acid density drops as a result of the selfdischarge, and this in turn accelerates the corrosion of the positive grids.

Moreover, the generation of hydrogen means a loss of water for the battery.

Consequently, there must be more frequent addition of water, ie, more maintenance.

“It would therefore be advantageous to produce tubular-plate grids of alloys having a low antimony content or none at all.

“It is an object of this invention to provide a means by which antimonyfree or low-antimony tubular-plate grids can be easily and simply produced. This should also enable the casting of very tall grids without difficulty.”

In casting tubular-plate grids, a molten lead alloy is poured into a mould along the long side of the grid perpendicular to the grid rods. Temporary connectors joining adjacent grid rods are simultaneously cast. These connecting portions have a thickened cross-section in the middle and a constricted cross-section at their points of junction with the grid rods.

In a subsequent operation, the connecting portions are punched out.

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