Batteries International — Autumn, Issue 117 by hamptonhalls

Issue 117

Autumn 2020

Dangerous waters! Facing up to some of lithium's half-truths A brief history of 21st century battery time Future business models for the energy transition

Bob Galyen: a career in lead ... and lithium too BC L E 17 F O IS DE ER K AR D E TH

Virtual ELBC congress sets new conference standard

Bringing the industry together

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CONTENTS COVER STORY 46 Treacherous waters ahead — reasons to remain wary of lithium’s claims. Charge, recharge but then charge again

Recycling lead acid batteries is relatively straightforward and cost effective; lithium batteries present different challenges, which even the technology’s most ardent evangelists acknowledge and hope will be overcome soon. Lithium: a fiery if uncomfortable truth 58 With one lithium battery fire a week on US planes, should they be used in buildings? Or anywhere where safety is a primary concern. Why are we still not painting the true picture of what’s going on?

EDITORIAL 3 EU and the joys of last-mover advantage

PEOPLE NEWS

Obituary: Vivienne Empson: June 1963-September 2020 • IQ International signs up three former JCI Power Solutions professionals • ENTEK expands sales team with new account manager for North America • Chris Eperjesy takes up appointment as chief financial officer at Clarios • Alex Jiang joins CTT Technical following company reform in October • Microporous hires new product development manager Sunho Choi • ARPA-E appoints battery veteran Halle Cheeseman as program director • Amazon energy project manager Hirschboeck joins ESA board • Wirtz appoints Lorenzini as regional sales manager EMEA and Russia • Lead battery industry recognized by associations as a model industry • Macera named as project director for UK’s first gigafactory • Graeme Fraser-Bell returns to ENTEK

Sad farewell to TBS’ Vivienne Empson

NEWS 13 Stryten to forge ahead as it sheds Exide past, says CEO Tim Vargo • Hankook AtlasBX nears completion of recruitment for new US lead battery plant • Ecoult’s Ultraflex battery is recalled for safety reasons • Eos Energy receives orders for 1.5GWh of its zinc battery storage technology • University of California, CBI in nano-scale examination of lead charging cycles • Gridtential ties up with US Battery on developing silicon-joule technology • Chinese lead battery recycler gets go-ahead for 28k tonnes a year plant in Australia • Alliance urges governments to address lead recycling after Unicef, Pure Earth report Kenyan villagers awarded unprecedented $12 million in lead poisoning court case • East Penn Canada wins award with Terrapure for closed loop recycling • CATL in contract with Schneider Electric to attack lead battery industry • Insurance pay-out to Aqua Metals brings total to $20 million, plans to sell off plant • New desulfurization process by STC Italy produces agricultural fertilizer • Exide launches AGM batteries for telecoms and utility applications • Digatron extends new DCA testing package • Forklift battery supplier extends range with lead acid batteries • Lead battery maker Leoch launches lithium range in UK • EnerSys alters Core and Pure batteries for use in smaller machines • Kokam launches UPS lithium battery system ‘40% cheaper than lead’ • Bosch targets aftermarket with new line of start-stop batteries • Various product launches announced at September ELBC conference

ENERGY STORAGE NEWS

‘Tera is the new giga’ says Musk vowing to be world leader in energy storage • EIB rubber stamps further loan for Europe’s first lithium giga factory • UK government removes 50MW barrier to larger battery installations • Australia plans building of first lithium battery manufacturing plant • RollsRoyce to install battery system of microgrid on Cook Islands • AGL Energy plans 500MW battery installation in New South Wales • Western Australia for battery facility in ‘lithium valley’

VGG, VPP, FLOW BATTERY NEWS

Tim Vargo: clarity surfacing as Exide re-emerges as Stryten 18

London Bus2Grid facility to become world’s biggest V2G trial platform • Audi teams with Hager to research charging for vehicle-to-home • ABB launches bi-directional charger for vehicle-to-grid • Sonnen and Wasatch Energy to launch virtual power plant projects in California • Generac buys Enbala to expand in energy storage sector and VPP • Redflow, CarbonTrack join forces to develop VPPs in South Africa

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Sunho Choi: latest recruit for Microporous 9

Sonnen and Wasatch in joint VPP project in California

Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 1

CONTENTS PROFILE: BOB GALYEN

The right man, the right place, the right time Dubbed the thinking man’s ‘battery man’ or just ‘the big red’ — he’s comfortably over six foot tall — Bob Galyen has been an integral part of the rapidly developing world of energy storage for the past four decades. He’s made an indelible mark on the industry in both lead and lithium.

THE GRID: ENERGY IN TRANSITION

The ‘big red’. And big in lead and lithium too ...

Investors find ways to optimize battery assets. As the number of markets in which power can be traded increases, batteries are becoming an increasingly attractive option for investors. 63

EVENT REVIEW: 17ELBC

Prototypes for the future A new template for international lead conferences is being shaped following the success of last month’s 17th European Lead Battery Conference — the first in its history to be conducted as a virtual, online set of meetings. The energy transition, new finance, and business models emerging 73

17ELBC Review: gone virtual 82

VIEW FROM THE EXHIBITION FLOOR

Virtual trade shows can be a big disappointment if you don’t prepare properly. So why didn’t some exhibitors do so?

FORTHCOMING EVENTS

A BRIEF HISTORY OF BATTERY TIME: 2000-2020

To the outsider the lead battery business seems to be a tranquil landscape where nothing seems to change very rapidly. But to those in the know, the history of the battery is more a series of torrid episodes resembling scenes from Peyton Place than Little House on the Prairie!

CONFERENCE IN PRINT 106 Expander mix formulations and their effects on battery performance

THE LAST ELBC WORD Bah humbug! Why use the worldwide interweb thingie when you’ve got a fax machine? 111

111

Tales of darkness and desperation at a virtual conference — Zooming ... without the bookcase • Glasses are for amateurs, mugs for pros • ELBC 2022: where to next? • The pros and cons of virtual conferences • Who wants a gala dinner anyway? Not Yuasa!

Publisher Karen Hampton karen@batteriesinternational.com, +44 7792 852 337 Editor Michael Halls editor@batteriesinternational.com, +44 7977 016 918 Advertising director Jade Beevor jade@batteriesinternational.com Deputy editor Debbie Mason debbie@batteriesinternational.com

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The contents of this publication are protected by copyright. No unauthorized translation or reproduction is permitted. ISSN 1462-6322 (c) 2020 Mustard Seed Publishing, UK company no: 5976361. Printed in the UK via ThisismethodUK

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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 • Autumn 2020

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EDITORIAL Mike Halls • editor@batteriesinternational.com

Last mover advantage? Experts! Who needs them? Especially if they come in the form of over-powerful civil servants in Europe? (Or Washington, or anywhere for that matter.) But specifically here we’re talking about the European Commission, the civil service bureaucracy that runs the European Union. Unelected, apart from by their peers, they more or less set out how the future of Europe should run. But experts? Experts on what? Have they the commercial nous to set up businesses from scratch? Or turn businesses around that are struggling? Have they any commercial experience at all?

knew, that every electric vehicle has a lead battery to start the car. Forgetting too that recycling lithium batteries is going to be a huge headache in the future. Misinformed, yes. Misguided too. At the latest 25th International Congress for Battery Recycling, there could have been gems of commercial wisdom and business insight from EU officials about the future. Instead there were platitudes.

And experts armed with facts too? In a recent interview, number two in the European Commission, Frans Timmermans, told the world of energy storage that the Green Deal was going to make sure that those dreadful rare earth elements were no longer going to be tolerated in batteries.

For instance, Mattia Pellegrini, EU head of unit for raw materials, metals, minerals and forest-based industries, said: “A revolution is coming up. It is not a question of if there will be giga-factories in Europe. Our estimate is there will be between 10 and 20 giga-factories by the end of this revolution. Europe will become an important player.”

Apart from the fact that nobody can pronounce most rare earth names — you try to say dysprosium or praseodymium after a pint of lager — these are 17 metals that have never turned up in car batteries.

It’s a fine soundbite. But better still would have been an explanation of where the expertise for his prediction came from.

Or stationary batteries, for that matter. Or any form of regular battery used across the European Union. But getting rid of these pernicious batteries is clearly going to be a Good Thing to Do. They’ve been legislated against. Manufacturers will stop making them. Case closed. We can almost hear the popping of champagne corks in the European Commission’s offices in Brussels, Belgium. But there was also probably a faint echo from the European Commission’s other offices in Strasbourg, France. (EU law says the European Parliament has to spend four days a month in Strasbourg before moving back to Brussels — and many civil servants move with the MEPs unless they’re hopping to and from another Commission headquarters in Luxembourg.) For US readers, think of having to move your seat of government from Washington to Chicago for four days a month because the guys in Illinois said otherwise they wouldn’t pay their taxes. And also why not keep most of your admin staff in New York? It really isn’t that far away — an hour by plane. Europe’s civil service experts for the past decade and more have tried to ban lead batteries (or their manufacture, which is almost the same thing) because They Know Best. Mainly they think lead is old fashioned. “It doesn’t seem to have a lot of potential for further development and has a huge negative impact on the environment,” says Mr Timmermans, our freshly minted metallurgist. Instead they only want those shiny zingy-keep-your-teethwhite-and-clean-lithium-batteries — forgetting, if they

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No criticism of Mr Pellegrini, who has been a leading figure of the Commission for the past 13 years, is a visiting professor across Europe and has a Master’s degree and a Phd in European law. He must be a clever man. But has he any commercial experience? Of building a business and running it? Or understanding the nuts and bolts of business seen from the vantage point of the shop floor? Or the intrigues of the directors’ boardroom? So talk of “10 to 20 gigafactories” (cough, admirable precision?) across Europe is fanciful and disingenuous. Some 85% of all lithium batteries are made in either China, Japan or South Korea. The race to build lithium gigafactories has already been won thousands of miles east of Brussels. (And not forgetting the thousands of miles from Strasbourg or Luxembourg too.) The European Commission started to face up to the lithium EV challenge just three years ago, almost a decade too late. With — to date — not a single gigafactory on the European continent, how are they going to compete with the decade plus of experience that Asian gigafactories have had in overcoming the difficulties of manufacturing in scale? The billions of euros being ploughed into giga-greenfield projects across Europe — and now partly being subsidized by EU taxpayers — is going to be largely wasted. At every turn the ability to make European batteries costcompetitive will be doomed to failure. It’s a shame they didn’t listen to one of Europe’s early poets, Horace, who wrote …“Sero venientes male sedentes … those who’re late always get the bad seats.” Or in modern parlance … late mover advantage is no advantage at all.

Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 3

PEOPLE NEWS

IQ International signs up three former JCI Power Solutions professionals Swiss lead battery maker IQ International on September 25 said it had hired three former Johnson Controls Power Solutions (now Clarios) battery experts, Dennis Brown, Ray Brown and Allen Martin, to its full-time workforce. The firm had already appointed them to its advisory board in April to assist the company in its expansion plans. Dennis Brown has been appointed chief marketing officer. He worked most recently at Interstate Battery, from 1991 until 2016, early on co-patenting the Early Diagnosis Battery Tester. He later became president of Interstate All Battery, then senior vice president and chief marketing officer as well as adviser to the board of directors of Interstate Batteries. Under his leadership, IQ International says, the company grew to become the largest battery distributor in the US automotive market. Before this, he held senior posts with Johnson Controls Power Solutions including marketing planning and research manager, and

Expansion plans for IQ International with hires of (from left to right): Dennis Brown, Allen Martin and Ray Brown

business group manager OEM — Chrysler, Nissan and Diamond Star Motors. Allen Martin left JCI in 2013 after serving 30 years in multiple leadership positions, most recently as vice president/general manager, global aftermarket, Power Solutions division. Martin is currently an independent distributor and franchisee with Interstate Battery. Ray Brown retired from JCI in 2010, after 30 years in a number of senior global positions in the Power Solutions division build-up. Since then he has worked on several boards of directors, including the Indian battery-making giant Am-

ara Raja. Ray Brown has acted as project lead for several JCI battery factories. His career has been on the evaluating and purchasing side, initiating, planning and managing joint ventures, building and overseeing new battery plants and keeping OEM customer relationships. The three have been brought in to help IQ with its expansion plans, which received a boost on September 16 when IQ signed a term sheet for $130 million institutional equity and debt financing with an unnamed Asian fund. “IQ has been working for over 18 months on transi-

tioning the company’s business strategy from purely licensing to one that vertically integrates its technologies into owned and operated battery factories,” the company said. “The financing is intended for IQ’s expansion that will address the current capacity-constrained battery industry and the batteries’ shrinking life in today’s highly electrified vehicles.” The company says the expansion includes buying two battery plants and installing its Advanced Battery Factory production technologies into the two and also its existing SIA plant.

ENTEK expands sales team with new account manager for North America International battery separator firm ENTEK announced on September 4 it had added Andrew Wimer to its sales team as account manager for North America. Wimer knows ENTEK well, having joined in 2011 to work with the company’s lithium group looking after quality and

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business development. He made the transition to lead acid in 2017, when he implemented a new management system for capturing, communicating and managing risk associated with process change, before becoming lean manager at ENTEK’s Oregon manufacturing site.

“I’m excited to have Andrew join the sales team,” said global VP of sales Clint Beutelschies. “He will be a great customer resource with a deep understanding of process and products gleaned from his experience working in quality, lean and change management.”

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OBITUARY

Vivienne Empson

June 1963-September 2020 It is with sadness that Batteries International must announce that Vivienne Empson, long-standing group finance and HR director at TBS Engineering, and one of the driving forces behind the success of the UK headquartered company, lost a long battle with cancer on September 19. David Longney, TBS group managing director said; “Viv and I worked closely together for over 30 years during which time Viv was undoubtedly a thoroughly professional board member and leader of TBS at all times. As such, Viv played a major role in building TBS to become the successful, world-wide operation we have today. “Viv was an extraordinary person in many ways and her passing is truly a great loss to our company and to our community. She will be profoundly missed by everyone whose lives she touched.” Kathrin Beckerleg, HR manager at TBS who worked with her, said: “Viv was much loved and much admired by all who worked with her. She will be missed by everyone — she was warmhearted, kind and immensely generous with her time. She had an amazing sense of humour which she used to great effect to boost morale during difficult times.” Mark Gardiner, group director for sales, said: “She was a colleague, teacher, listener, friend. Viv, you are sorely missed.” Another employee said: “She was a kind and wonderful work colleague … she will be missed greatly. Viv always had time for everybody at TBS.” Laurie Gardiner, former managing director at TBS said: “We built a solid and successful company at TBS and noone — and I mean no-one — worked harder and was more committed and professional in their job than Viv. “As MD and her boss I can truly say hiring her was one of the best decisions I ever made, she was a real TBS team player.” Viv’s story really begins in the 1980s when she gave up her ambitions of working in criminal psychology and took a correspondence course in accountancy. Tenacity, a good head for understanding what company numbers meant, and a strategic vision, were what she offered the battery machine

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“Viv was an extraordinary person in many ways and her passing is truly a great loss to our company and to our community. She will be profoundly missed by everyone whose lives she touched.” manufacturing firm, when she joined TBS as finance manager in 1989. She little realised that the small engineering firm, then situated in a cramped factory in a terraced street in Cheltenham, some 100 miles from London, was to be a key part of her life for the next three decades. Nor could she have envisaged that it would grow from a few handfuls of staff to become an engineering giant that exports to some 90 countries around the world. Her talents were quickly spotted. Three years after joining she was appointed company secretary in April 1992. Two years later she became a board member and director and for the last 22 years she was a director of TBS, now part of MiTek Inc which took over the firm in 1998. (MiTek is part of the Berkshire Hathaway Group of Companies.)

But the early days of the firm were very different. In an interview last year, she recalled “In those days we employed 30 or 40 people, we did very little exporting because the owner just wasn’t interested, it was a private company. When the former owner retired and Laurie Gardiner took over as managing director, TBS’ fortunes turned around quickly and Viv was a major factor in the company’s expansion to a purpose-built, 26,000sq ft unit in Elmstone Hardwicke near Cheltenham. “We thought back then it was amazing, but we continued to expand through products and exports,” she said. The company strategy, which she helped devise with the other directors, was based on four pillars aimed at differentiating itself from its industry competitors. These were: being a one-stop source of battery assembly equipment (a major part of this was achieved by the purchase of Tekmax and then Cominco); worldwide product availability and customer support; high quality machinery manufacture; and. a strong investment in design to provide high quality batteries and operating efficiencies. In the early 2000s the company began to branch out into new markets, a strategy which increased turnover considerably with customers around the world, notably the US and China where it also has facilities. Its key sectors are the automotive industry, reserve power and motive power. In the last five years Viv was one of the main drivers behind the company’s relocation to a bespoke 100,000 square foot facility on a nine-acre site at Gloucester Business Park. In addition to the strategic planning — she spent three years trying to find the perfect site — she was intimately involved in the design of the plant which cost around £15 million. TBS moved into the new factory in June 2018. She stepped down from the firm that she had loved for 31 years at the beginning of August. She leaves behind her husband and friend, Mark, of some 26 years and her son, Josh. Her son has organized a JustGiving charity page for —https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/ vivienne-empson — for the Sue Ryder Hospice which supported her in her last days. She was just 57 when she passed away.

Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 5

PEOPLE NEWS

Chris Eperjesy takes up appointment as chief financial officer at Clarios Clarios has appointed Chris Eperjesy as chief financial officer, the world’s biggest battery maker announced on August 20. Eperjesy will “help support Clarios’ global growth objectives in delivering smart energy storage solutions”, the company says. Before Clarios, Eperjesy was senior vice president and CFO at Cooper Tire & Rubber Company, the parent company of a group of firms that design and manufacture tyres for all kinds of automobiles and sell them around the world. Eperjesy was previously CFO at automobile parts makers Twin Disc and Arctic Cat, IMAGINE, the marketing products provider, and lastly Cooper Tire & Rubber. The appointment comes three months after Clarios

Eperjesy will “help support Clarios’ global growth objectives in delivering smart energy storage solutions”, the company says.

appointed Mark Wallace as CEO and president. The firm was relaunched as Clarios after Brookfield Business Partners bought Power Solutions, the battery division belonging to Johnson Controls, in May last year.

Last month, Wallace presented a nine-page ‘Clarios Sustainability Blueprint’, which set out the various partnerships, policies and practices the company says it will work with in the future. They fall under five pil-

lars — value, operational excellence, life-cycle stewardship, transparency and advocacy. Mark Wallace is a keynote speaker at next month’s 17th European Lead Battery Conference, which is being held online.

Alex Jiang joins CTT Technical following company reform in October Alex Jiang joined CTT Technical as its representative in China and south-east Asia in July. CTT Technical is a new company formed from Chloride Technical and Trading in October last year by Mike Dunn, who has become managing director following the retirement of its former CEO, Ian Pinson. Jiang, a Chinese national based in Changsha in the People’s Republic, speaks fluent English and has worked with Dunn in the past, most notably on a CTT slurry filling system and paste recovery plant. The two have known each other for 12 years. Dunn was previously senior project engineer with Chloride Technical and has worked in a huge variety of lead battery projects around the world after

joining Chloride Industrial Batteries in 1973. Dunn said: “I’ve worked with Alex on various projects over the years and he

6 • Batteries International • Autumn 2020

Alex Jiang

will be a valuable addition to our international support team. He’s a lead battery man through and through. He understands

the complexities of battery manufacturing from all points of view — electrochemical, technical and engineering.”

Mike Dunn

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our new strip caster technology raises the bar on strip quality The Wirtz strip caster is production ready and produces the highest quality dross free strip. A patent pending, completely enclosed lead delivery system is the key to our high quality strip.

The as-cast strip thickness can be varied simply by changing the feed nozzle and adjusting the casting roller positions to produce as-cast thicknesses between about 0.200 inch (5.0mm) and 0.470 inch (12.0mm). Our rolling mills can also make minor adjustments to the ﬁnal rolled thickness “On the Fly” during operation so the Wirtz strip casting system produces the highest quality strip in the most ﬂexible system.

Our completely enclosed lead delivery system delivers molten lead from the furnace into our patent pending feed nozzle without any exposure to the atmosphere. The lead feed nozzle distributes lead to the casting wheels without any turbulence for consistent grain sized, dross and impurity free high quality strip. There is no dross generated anywhere in the process. The caster is easily started, runs automatically with little-tono operator intervention, and can be stopped and restarted very easily during production runs. It was designed to take very little floor space. We understand grid and plate making. We developed and patented the grid surface “Reforming and Texturizing” to improve paste adhesion to the highly corrosion resistant wrought strip punched grid. Our steel belt pasting developments revolutionized plate making by holding exacting tolerances at high pasting speeds, and our patented “On the Fly Thickness Control” gives operators the ability to adjust plate thickness to be during operation. Call Wirtz to produce the highest quality strip and punched grids and pasted plates in the world at +1 810 987 7600 or email us at sales@wirtzusa.com.

INNOVATION. PERFORMANCE. RELIABILITY.

PEOPLE NEWS

Microporous hires new product development manager Sunho Choi Separator firm Microporous announced the appointment of Sunho Choi as product development manager on September 15, to work at the company’s

Piney Flats facility in Tennessee. Sunho has researched and worked in membranes and absorbents development for 17 years, specifically in

Sunho Choi

polymer/inorganic/mixed matrix membrane thin films and hollow fibres, micro/nano-porous inorganicorganic hybrids, and metal organic frameworks. He joins the company after nine years at Northeastern University in Boston, where he administered nanomaterial R&D processes supervising a team of more than 60 scientists and engineers, among other things. He has won three US/ world patents and been featured in more than 25 journal publications with more than 4,000 citations. “Sunho’s main mission and deliverables in his new role at Microporous will be imparting fundamental materials engineering and membrane film process expertise to stage gate product and process development project teams during the design and implementation phases of the programs,” said Microporous. “His fundamental understanding of membrane technology will be brought

Amazon energy project manager Hirschboeck joins ESA board The US Energy Storage Association has appointed Amazon Web Services’ energy projects manager Peter Hans Hirschboeck to its board, the trade association announced on September 21. His focus will be to help Amazon achieve its netzero carbon emissions by 2040. “To achieve these goals, Amazon is innovating with new energy technologies that enable us to better integrate the renewable energy from our wind and solar projects as well as better manage energy use at our facilities,” said Hirsch-

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Hans Hirschboeck

boeck. “Energy storage is a piece of this effort, and I look forward to working with the board to support ESA in its mission: to accelerate the widespread use of competitive and reliable energy storage systems in North

America.” Hirschboeck has had a long career in the energy industry, having been involved with providing strategy and analysis for utility, distributed energy and financial organizations, the ESA said. ”Amazon is committed to powering its operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025, and we believe that their leadership gives all our members insight and understanding as to how corporations can achieve those goals when considering energy resources,” said Kelly SpeakesBackman, CEO of ESA.

to bear in enhancing and developing further the cutting-edge Microporous portfolio of technical separator products.” In June, Microporous said a new PE separator line was fully functional at the Tennessee site, and would double capacity for the US market.

ARPA-E appoints battery veteran Halle Cheeseman as program director Halle Cheeseman, former vice-president and CTO of Exide Technologies, announced in September that she had been hired as program director at ARPA-E, the US research agency that focuses on energy technologies. “I had been looking for some time for something to finish off my career, but the right opportunity had been eluding me,” she said. “I can think of nothing more significant and meaningful than working to promote and fund projects that will drive us towards clean, efficient and independent energy.” Cheeseman says she will focus on about 10% of ARPA-E’s portfolio of advanced energy technologies, batteries and other electrochemical devices. She has worked across a wide range of battery technologies, including zinc-air, lithium-ion and lead-acid, and spent four years with the nickel-iron battery startup Encell Technology in Florida before leaving in 2017 to set up her own cooperative consultancy, Energy Blues. She is best known for her research at Duracell, Spectrum and Exide.

Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 9

PEOPLE NEWS

Wirtz appoints Lorenzini as regional sales manager EMEA and Russia Stefano Lorenzini has joined Wirtz Manufacturing as regional sales manager for Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Russia the company announced on October 6. Lorenzini began at Wirtz on October 1. He previously had spent 28 years with Sovema, the international battery machine manufacturing firm. He takes over from Eric Donjon who left Wirtz early in the Covid lockdown. Lorenzini told Batteries International that he thanked Sovema for the years of experience he had enjoyed with the firm, saying it was that which had made him what he was. “But after 28 years you need some fresh air,” he said, “it was time for a change. But of course I

wish them well, I am what I am thanks to Sovema, it’s a part of my past and my experience and I have to thank them for everything we did together.” Wirtz, said Lorenzini, was a historical company with a good name in the battery business. “I can see a future in this kind of company. It’s big enough that it will give me the potential to use my experience with Sovema in all the different fields and

processes of battery manufacturing,” he said. “I feel a responsibility for my customers and they trust me to build something with them.” Lorenzini sees many years of growth ahead for the lead battery business, as long as it continues to develop. “You cannot change a technology that’s been in place for so long in a couple of years,” he said. “But you have to continue developing or you can find yourself left behind in the dust.” If the surname sounds familiar in the lead battery industry it should be — Stefano is married to Claudia Lorenzini, the charismatic and popular vice president for sales and marketing at separator firm Microporous. “We are delighted to wel-

Hoglets back to the wild after success of Leoch rescue mission Flash news from our cosy armchair department, Leoch UK has just announced a news update on three baby hedgehogs saved by its sales and marketing team last year. The hoglets — the correct name for baby hedgehogs — had been found stranded and defenceless outside Leoch’s offices in the wilderness best known as the Welland Business Park.

Leoch’s resourceful staff quickly spotted the distressed animals and rushed them in a mercy dash down the A4304 to the Leicestershire Wildlife Hospital. Now recovered from their ordeal, the prickly trio has been released and let back into the wilds of Market Harborough on World Wildlife Day. “This is the lead battery business at its best,” said one commentator on an important battery magazine. “Enterprising, compassionate and quick witted.” Some facts about hedgehogs: • They belong to the Erinaceidae family, which has 17 species of the creature • A group of them is called an ‘array’ • Each animal has between 5,000 and 7,000 spikes, or ‘quills’ • In the UK, hedgehogs are officially classified as ‘vulnerable to extinction’ • In the US, specifically Arizona, California, Georgia, Hawaii, Pennsylvania, New York City and Washington, DC, it is illegal to keep them as pets.

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come Stefano into our company,” said Doug Lambert, vice president of sales and technology.

Ørsted hires Mads Nipper as new CEO

Danish power company Ørsted has appointed Mads Nipper as CEO to take over at the beginning of 2021 when he leaves water technology company Grundfos, group chairman of Grundfos Jens Moberg said on September 9. Nipper, who has been CEO of Grundfos since 2014, worked for Lego, the company that makes plastic interlocking bricks for modelling, for 13 years as chief marketing officer. “I have made the incredibly difficult decision to leave Grundfos,” he said. “For over six years, I have been privileged to be part of a team with passion and competence to help fight the world’s water and climate challenges. “The one company in the world that could make me take this decision choice is Ørsted. Ørsted has, over the past years, made an incredible transformation to become a global leader in renewable energy, and one of the catalysts driving change towards a world that runs entirely on renewable energy.”

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PEOPLE NEWS

Lead battery industry recognized by associations as a model industry The lead battery industry was included by the American Society of Association Executives as part of its centennial celebration on August 1012, where those that had made ‘meaningful contributions’ over the last 100 years were identified. Founded in 1920 in Washington, DC, the ASAE is a membership organization of 46,000 executives and people in industry and provides a range of services such as advocacy, contacts and business advice. Battery Council International’s ‘Model for Recycling’ vignette, which was featured at the celebration, focused on the lead battery industry’s sustainability. It highlighted how the lead battery industry ticked three boxes considered to be association accomplish-

PENOX Red Lead grade

ments: major legislative/regulatory contributions; times when the country came together; and policies that changed society. Roger Miksad, BCI executive vice president, said: “BCI drafted one of the first model laws to promote the sustainable materials management and recycling of batteries. Today, more than 40 states have adopted the model, and lead batteries are the most recycled consumer product in the US. “We are thrilled to be in the same company as the USO, the Civil Rights Act, and the Red Cross blood donation program.” “In 1988, when we started this work, recycling of household waste was just gaining traction,” said David Weinberg, a partner at Wiley law firm, which has been working with BCI for

decades. “We were pioneers in creating a circular economy within the manufacturing sector, where we make-userecycle-manufacture in a closed-loop operation rather than take-make-use and then send the product to a landfill. “Lead is still the only battery chemistry that can claim such complete recycling success.” In September 2019 the World Economic Forum recognized the lead battery industry for its closed-loop nature in mature economies such as Europe and North America. However, it also said that in several countries up to 50% of end-of-life lead batteries were recycled in informal facilities, leading to environmental problems.

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Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 11

PEOPLE NEWS

Macera named as project director for UK’s first gigafactory Britishvolt, the owner of what will be the UK’s first battery gigafactory, on August 13 announced the appointment of Ray Macera as project director, along with contracts for building firm NG Bailey and architects Ridge and Partners. Macera joins the firm from the international metal and automotive components firm Gestamp, where he was also project director and where he was in charge of the Gestamp pressing facility, which supplies Jaguar

Land Rover’s plant in Slovakia. He has a long career in the automotive parts sector, in-

cluding positions at Jaguar, Magna International and Stadco. With the coronavirus pandemic bringing all sorts of disruptions to distant supply chains, many analysts reckon that more needs to be made closer to home, or at least sourced from more than one option. The gigafactory, a site for which has not yet been confirmed, although Wales and Teesside are looking like possible locations, would initially supply batteries

for the growing EV market with a focus on the UK, with energy storage applications and other markets to be explored later. “It is costly and carbon intensive to have lithium batteries imported from Asia, and this giga-plant would cement a solid onshore supply chain to ensure quality and eliminate future uncertainty of supply,” said Lars Carlstrom, who co-founded Britishvolt in December 2019 with fellow Swede Orral Nadjari.

Graeme Fraser-Bell returns to ENTEK Lead battery veteran Graeme Fraser-Bell, one of the so-called ‘Gang of Eight’ that completed the management buyout of ENTEK International in 2007, has returned to the energy storage markets. Fraser-Bell, a well known and popular figure in the lead battery market, joined ENTEK in 1996. He was largely responsible for ENTEK’s first entry into the separator market for lithium batteries and was vice president for international sales before he took early retirement in October 2012. When asked about the reasons for his return — he now becomes vice president for lithium sales and market development — he said: “In one sense I’d never quite left ENTEK. “I kept in touch with my old friend Rick Pekala [chief technology officer] and we’d always talk about what ENTEK was doing and where it was going. “In recent times our conversations grew more frequent and more pressing from his side — these are extraordinary times to be living through and he persuaded me that I should be

part of them. “There’s been a paradigm shift in the way that the EV markets are developing,” he says. “We’re witnessing, in them, the equivalent revolution of the move from the horse and cart to the internal combustion engine. “The lithium battery separator market is massive and is increasing almost exponentially. When I left ENTEK the entire market production was about 700 million square metres annually. Nowadays, it’s about five times that — 3.4 billion square metres.” At the moment ENTEK is part of this market but not regarded as a major league player. Fraser-Bell’s initial target is to achieve market penetration of around 5%. He says: “We have a huge production capacity from our plants in Lebanon, in the US state of Oregon, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the UK as well as our joint venture with Separindo in Indonesia — so we can cover the Americas, Europe and Asia.” Various analyst firms are predicting a compound annual growth rate for this sector of between 9% and

12 • Batteries International • Autumn 2020

18%. After his retirement, during this interim, with his wife Daphne and sister Fiona he took his interest in board games from a startup idea to an international business. ENTEK’s Pekala later said: “The unprecedented growth in demand for lithium battery separators required us to appoint

someone who could focus solely on our lithium battery materials offering, and we were very fortunate that Graeme agreed to step back in. “He’s able to step up to the challenge immediately and position us for growth with existing and upcoming lithium battery manufacturers throughout the world”.

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NEWS

University of California, CBI in nano-scale examination of lead charging cycles Researchers at the University of California will use STEM — scanning transmission electron microscopy — to observe lead batteries in real time at nanoscale while they charge and discharge, scientists said on July 27. In partnership with the London-based Consortium for Battery Innovation, the scientists will explore the fundamental processes of crystallization and dissolution using the electron microscopic technology, which should give answers to key challenges facing advanced battery development. The 18-month research project, the results of which will be shared with all CBI members, ultimately aims to control lead sulfate growth and dissolution, which has a direct effect on the life of lead batteries and also key performance characteristics such as DCA, said CBI technical manager Matt Raiford. “It will use direct observation of current effects that inhibit battery performance, for instance lead dioxide growth on the positive and how that leads to contact loss,” he said. “But also a cadre of experiments based on probing lead sulfate growth on the negative and how carbon and other species present during charge and discharge of the negative interact and are influenced by each other.” Once data have been collected, they will be used to facilitate understanding on the specific benefits of additives, Raiford said, “which will shed light on what is contributing to deficits and

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lay the foundation for what specifically needs to be done to solve them.” “Understanding these dissolution mechanisms (and hopefully how to control them) will open avenues to enhance cycle life, DCA and the energy density of lead batteries,” he said. The work complements similar research that has been taking place at the Argonne National Labora-

tory, where real-time imaging is also used but with a synchrotron, which uses X-rays to probe the surface and form an image. “Electron microscopy utilizes an electron beam as the probe source,” said Raiford. “Furthermore, the resolution is much higher for the electron microscope.” “Lead batteries have been a mainstay of industry for more than 100

years, but there is a significant amount that is still to be understood about the fundamental reactions occurring in this chemistry,” said UCLA research team head Chris Regan. The CBI says that with the ever-growing need for grid flexibility and stability, the US alone is predicted to require 100GW of energy storage by 2030. Batteries will be central to the transition.

Gridtential ties up with US Battery on developing silicon-joule technology Bipolar battery developer Gridtential said on July 28 it had signed an agreement with flooded lead-acid battery firm US Battery to collaborate on the firm’s silicon joule technology. The firms say they will industrialize bipolar plate pasting and curing processes, as well as assemble and test bipolar AGM batteries with US Battery active material, which they expect will drive further improvements in cycle life, energy density, battery efficiency and charging rates. It is unclear as yet how far advanced Gridtential is in terms of automating the production of these bipolar batteries. In a demonstration last October at Crown Battery’s plant in Ohio, firms such as MAC Engineering, Sovema Group and TBS Engineering were invited to look at how they could move manual assembly of the silicon joule element of the batteries’ production to a mechanized process. “As US Battery achieves

performance milestones, the company will be well positioned to manufacture and distribute industry-leading bipolar AGM products to the market,” the companies said. “US Battery hopes to combine the current advantages of premium deep cycle, lead-acid battery cycle life that provides low cost per watt hour over the life of the battery with the advantages of high power density and increased cycle life offered by the Gridtential technology,” said US Battery CEO Terry Agrelius. “This combination could provide the improvements necessary for US Battery to better compete with the advanced battery technologies currently on the market and proposed for future market development while maintaining the safety and recyclability of lead-based battery technologies.” US Battery makes deep cycle flooded batteries for many kinds of applications, including golf cars and low-

speed EVs, as well as industrial electric vehicles. It also makes batteries for renewable energy storage. “Leapfrog product innovation often starts with fresh thinking on how best to utilize core company strengths to make a disruptive move,” said Gridtential CEO John Barton. Gridtential has agreements with a growing number of battery makers, and in June signed a deal with the Indian firm Amara Raja to evaluate, assemble and test its batteries. That month Gridtential also announced it was working with LOLC Advanced Technologies on prototyping lead batteries using both Gridtential’s silicon joule plates and adding graphene, a battery additive, to active materials, The graphene additive — AltaLABGX — will be supplied by Ceylon Graphene Technologies, a joint venture set up between LOLC and the Sri Lanka Institute of Nanotechnology.

Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 13

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NEWS

Hankook AtlasBX nears completion of recruitment for new US lead battery plant Korean battery firm Hankook AtlasBX’s new manufacturing plant should be operational and making batteries by the end of the year at its site in Clarksville, Tennessee, according to the local paper Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle. The newspaper suggested that full employment at the plant would reach 190 by then — around 90 more than reported by the paper. The firm, which made its first AGM battery in Ko-

rea in 2005, now makes a range of industrial and automotive batteries with the technology. It has been reported that the Clarksville site will produce 2.4 million batteries a year. The company says it will make standard sealed maintenance-free batteries, with a dedicated line for AGM batteries. Batteries International reported in November 2018 that the firm had been given the go-ahead to open a plant, the first for

five years with the previous one being in the state of Georgia in 2013. The plant will cost around $80 million to construct. It will also be the first plant in the US to be built and operated by Hankook AtlasBX, a sister company of Hankook Tire, which already has a plant just opposite the new battery factory. The Leaf-Chronicle quoted Frank Tate, executive director of the Clarksville-Montgomery County

Industrial Development Board, as saying the Korean company was adding staff to the site every day while testing equipment and procedures. Tate said that since trial production runs had been carried out, beginning last autumn, the county’s air monitors had not detected any air lead concentrations outside the federal Environment Protection Agency and National Ambient Air Quality Standards.

Ecoult’s Ultraflex battery is recalled for safety reasons The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission on August 18 issued a recall of UltraFlex batteries by Ecoult, warning that they pose a risk of fire and electrocution. The recall of the 48-4, 48-3 and 48-2 models has been issued to everywhere the product was sold between June 2014 and November 2019, which includes all of Australia apart from the province of Tasmania, and ‘international’. It follows an earlier recall of the product in New Zealand, which on August 26 said was complete. “The UltraFlex was not designed to independently protect itself or the user against excessive voltage, overheating, or excessive gassing when combined with other equipment in a system,” the ACCC said, which had a risk of fire and electrocution that could lead to serious injury or even death. “Consumers should immediately contact Ecoult to arrange for the decommissioning and removal of the UltraFlex units by a licensed electrician. Ecoult will provide a refund and remove the units,” it said. UltraFlex is touted by Ecoult as ‘the king of versa-

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tility’, suitable for applications where there is a need for high power and sustained energy. The battery is paired with a diesel generator and can be remotely monitored. It is not yet known what prompted the recall. Last month, East Penn said it was withdrawing its investment in Ecoult, its

wholly owned subsidiary, “based on multiple factors including evolving market strategies and changes in the energy storage sector as well as streamlining operations and communications”. East Penn bought the firm in 2010 from the Australian research organization CSIRO, who originally came up with the UltraB-

attery, a combination of a battery and electrochemical ultracapacitor operating in sulfuric acid with a high surface area carbon electrode. This is connected in parallel to the negative plate and uses the high capacitance of the positive plate to solve the partial state of charge problem.

Eos Energy receives orders for 1.5GWh of its zinc battery storage technology Energy Storage, the zinc battery maker, announced on August 31 it had received orders totalling 1.5GWh for its systems which, it says, are a viable alternative to lithiumion stationary storage systems. Trademarked as the Eos Aurora, the batteries are a zinc hybrid cathode battery technology with an aqueous electrolyte. Although the company would not give the finer details of the technology, it did say it had similarities with flow batteries. “Eos technology has the higher energy and lower power like flow,

but provides daily cycling with low maintenance and flexibility,” it told Batteries International. Eos is pushing its technology as a credible alternative to lithium-ion. “Lithium-ion is the mainstay of the energy storage market,” it says. “However, Li-ion batteries have several downsides. Li-ion systems cannot effectively discharge for longer than four hours at a time; there are risks in the supply chain, which can increase costs and likelihood of disruption; there are human rights concerns around sourcing of materials for Li-ion manufacturing; there is

a tendency for lithium batteries to overheat, which creates risk of fire; and there are challenges to safely recycle retired lithium batteries. “Although improvements in lithium battery compositions are making them safer and more scalable, a number of new energy storage chemistries have emerged, and among them are zinc battery technologies.” Eos says 1GWh of the orders has been signed with International Electric Power in Texas for standalone grid connected projects, which will be delivered in the third quarter of 2021.

Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 17

NEWS

Stryten to forge ahead as it sheds Exide past, says CEO Tim Vargo Former CEO and president of Exide Technologies Tim Vargo on October 8 spoke exclusively to Batteries International about the road ahead for Stryten Manufacturing, the company that was set up when Atlas Holdings bought the company in August. He spoke of a healthy future for the company, with a focus on lead and lithium batteries and the continued operations of GNB, the industrial battery division. He said the recycling firm Element Resources, set up at the same time, would provide services to Stryten and would be its main lead supplier. The basic question, however, remains why should Stryten Manufacturing succeed where its predecessor had

failed, not only once, but three times? “The decision for Exide Technologies to sell its operating assets in the Americas was about positioning the company for long-term growth. The global economic impact from COVID-19 on the EMEA/APAC and Americas businesses was significant,” Vargo said.

“Stryten is focused on building the best batteries for each market we serve, and that includes lead and lithium solutions.”

Vargo said the company saw enhanced flooded batteries as the better solution for the automotive industry, “where it has been either performing on par with, or, in several cases, exceeding the performance of AGM — all at better cost efficiency. 18 • Batteries International • Autumn 2020

“Selling substantially all the operating assets was the best opportunity to continue delivering high-quality energy storage solutions and services to customers. “Stryten Manufacturing has strong financial backing from its new owner, Atlas Holdings. As a standalone company, Stryten will be able to focus on manufacturing industry-leading energy storage and power management solutions for our customers and have the ability to invest in continuing to strengthen our market capabilities and deliver bestin-class experiences to customers and to our employees.” He said the company would set up Stryten Power Solutions for the transport sector, and GNB Industrial Power would continue to serve the motive and network power sector under Stryten. “We have a strong portfolio of solutions for each of the markets we serve and are looking to grow our market share by investing in innovative technology and collaborating closely with our customers to win new business,” he said. Focus on building batteries Building batteries across all markets was Stryten’s strong point, and now that the recycling side of the business had been removed that is precisely what the company could focus on, said Vargo. “Element Resources was formed by Atlas Holdings from the lead recycling plants it acquired from Exide Technologies. Stryten has a long-term tolling agreement with Element Resources as well as most major tollers, to help us keep our manufacturing costs competitive and to serve our customers’ recycling needs. “But Stryten is focused on building the best batteries for each market we serve, and that includes lead and lithium solutions.”

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NEWS Vargo said the company saw enhanced flooded batteries as the better solution for the automotive industry, “where it has been either performing on par with, or, in several cases, exceeding the performance of AGM — all at better cost efficiency. “For us, it’s about leading with the market need and then bringing the best solution for that need or application.” And there will be plenty of applications requiring batteries, Vargo believes, saying the company was bullish on the outlook for the lead battery industry and continued growth. “Trends such as growth in the automotive industry, the increasing power needs of the modern vehicle, the growing demand for renewable energy storage for utilities and backup power capabilities for data centers and telecommunications provide a need for lead batteries for many years to come,” he said. With governments around the world setting goals and targets for decarbonization and electrification, a range of battery technologies was going to be needed to meet demand, He quoted Alistair Davidson, director of the Consortium for Battery Innovation, who said: “Lithium-ion will obviously be a key player, but lead batteries are the only other battery technology that can meet the technical requirements for energy storage systems on a mass market scale.” The transport sector would remain key for lead batteries, Vargo said, with almost all EVs being manufactured today still needing one in them. “Overall there will be 17+ million cars, trucks and SUVs made this year. When you add that to the 280 million vehicles in North America and consider the fact that the average vehicle life in North America is just over 12 years, that’s a long runway for lead batteries to stay relevant and important in providing energy for our transportation industry.” Telecoms, utilities and railroads were all growing sectors, and GNB would be a cornerstone in that segment, he said. Fate of staff and Vernon When Exide was sold, all employees were offered employment either with Stryten or Element, said Vargo. In the UK the 300 employees at the former Exide’s Manchester plant have moved to Stryten. The factory

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has a seven day a week operation and Vargo says business is very strong with huge demand for their product, At a hiring event in early September 20 new jobs will be created. “I never cease to be impressed with the amount of talent we have in our workforce as well as the long tenure of employees in our plants that make our batteries. In a time when some manufacturers are laying people off, we’re hiring people, which is a great spot to be in as a company.” One thing that Vargo didn’t say much about was the fate of the Vernon site and other nonperforming assets, which were largely to blame for the ultimate demise of Exide. “Stryten Manufacturing is a new company separate from Exide Holdings, which should be wrapping

up their bankruptcy in the coming months,” he said. “My understanding is that the Exide Estate has proposed a settlement regarding these sites.” After this interview was held, on October 16 after a two day hearing chief judge Christopher Sontchi of the US Bankruptcy Court District of Delaware ruled that Exide Technologies would be allowed to abandon its shuttered battery recycling plant in Vernon. UCLA law professor Lynn LoPucki, said California lawmakers were ultimately to blame for the state having little legal rights to recoup funds for the cleanup through the bankruptcy. This is because California law gives secured creditors priority over environmental obligations or liens.

Stryten Manufacturing and Element Resources Atlas Holdings’ formal acquisition of lead battery manufacturer and recycler Exide Technologies was announced on August 25. Exide’s Tim Vargo was appointed CEO of Stryten Manufacturing, alongside Mike Judd, also formerly with Exide, as president and chief operating officer. Stryten will continued to be headquartered in Milton Gerogia. The seven former Exide manufacturing plants across the US Details of who will head up Element Resources have not been given, though Atlas said the firm will own and operate recycling plants in Canon Hollow, Missouri and Muncie. “These facilities provide environmentally responsible recycling services to Stryten Manufacturing and other battery manufacturers,” said a statement. Stryten will also operate the GNB Industrial Power business, which runs supply chains for motive power batteries for forklift and

materials handling manufacturers and railway firms, and provides UPS and back-up energy storage for telecommunications and utilities. Jacob Hudson, managing partner of Atlas Holdings, said: “With the successful conclusion of the 363 sale process [section 363 of the US bankruptcy code], the two companies can now concentrate on doing what they do best — delivering innovative and reliable power solutions to a broad range of blue-chip customers.” No mention was made of the non-performing sites that were owned by Exide before the sale to Atlas Holdings, nor what will happen to the Vernon recycling site, which was largely to blame for the company’s three Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings. The European and Asia-Pacific operation was split from the North American business during the third Chapter 11 proceedings and is to continue to operate under the terms of an agreement made this May.

“Stryten Manufacturing is a new company separate from Exide Holdings, which should be wrapping up their bankruptcy in the coming months.”

Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 19

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Chinese lead battery recycler gets go-ahead for 28k tonnes a year plant in Australia The Environmental Protection Agency of the Australian state of Victoria on August 31 approved the construction of a recycling plant by Chinese secondary lead firm Chunxing in a first step towards the firm being given permission. The facility in the Latrobe Valley, west of Melbourne, will be able to recycle 50,000 tonnes used of leadacid batteries a year and produce 28,000 tonnes of refined lead. The company says the facility will be a ‘full secondary lead smelter facility, which will produce recycled lead products’. The firm claims that: “Around 98% of the materials in a used battery will be recycled — this includes contents such as lead, plastic and electrolyte (sulfuric acid).” Australian national broadcaster ABC reported that residents were protesting about the site with fears of pollution, for which the firm made headlines 12 years ago in China. In a Q&A page on its website Chunxing has sought to allay fears about the Australian project, promising that lead emissions from the new site in a worst-case model would be 300 times lower than EPA standards. “This worst-case result falls within the boundary of the Chunxing facility,” it claims. “At the nearest residences (approximately 1.5km from the stack emission point) the emissions are virtually zero (1,500 times lower than EPA standards), which is undetectable by field monitoring equipment.” Chinese newspaper reports in 2008 said its facility in Pizhou, Jiangsu Province,

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had poisoned 41 children in the village of Xinsanhe. Then named the Chunxing Alloy Group, the firm expanded near the village, generating large amounts of dust, says the NGO Environmental Justice Atlas. Wastewater containing lead and other heavy metals then began to flow into a nearby river and into the

groundwater, contaminating villagers’ crops. After months of protests and petitions to the authorities, villagers eventually succeeded in getting treatment for their children and forcing the plant to be relocated. The firm didn’t move far — just to the Pizhou Renewable Economy Industrial Park — where it resumed

operations under the new name Chunxing Resource Recycling Co Ltd. Chunxing has facilities in Thailand and Pakistan as well as China and is carrying out feasibility studies in the US, Poland and Mexico. “Chunxing is striving to become the largest secondary lead group in the world,” it says.

Alliance urges governments to address lead recycling after Unicef, Pure Earth report A global alliance of lead and battery associations has condemned all informal lead battery recycling in response to a report launched by Unicef on July 30 that says a third of the world’s children are lead poisoning victims. The report estimates that the actual number of children affected is 800 million. The alliance, comprising the ILA, EUROBAT, BCI and the Association of Battery Recyclers, has issued a statement urging governments to do more to crack down on illegal recycling and provide incentives to ensure recycling of used batteries is only done by high performing recyclers. “It is a tragedy when a person or community is damaged or harmed by improper recycling of used batteries and the findings of the report warrant careful scrutiny,” the statement said. The report, The Toxic Truth: Children’s exposure to lead pollution undermines a generation of potential, was produced by the Institute of Health Metrics Evaluation, a research body set up by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

in 2007. It was launched by the children’s charity UNICEF and the environmental group Pure Earth, and identifies the children of low and middle-income countries as the most likely to suffer from lead poisoning. After carrying out case studies in five countries — Bangladesh, Georgia, Ghana, Indonesia and Mexico — the report concludes that the leading contributor to the poisoning is the ‘informal and substandard recycling of lead-acid batteries’. “Through our global material stewardship programme, the trade association member companies are committed to ensuring that inappropriately recycled lead does not enter our supply chains,” said the alliance. “We are also providing expert consultancy in many affected countries to improve recycling standards and will continue to work with NGOs like Pure Earth in their efforts to create sustainable solutions globally. “However, we cannot do this alone. Success requires strong commitment from governments and regulatory bodies in the coun-

tries affected for real and long-lasting improvements to take place. For many people in low and middleincome countries, informal and unregulated recycling is a subsistence issue, and the materials they are handling have a high economic value. “Governments and regulators must incentivize high-performing, regulated recyclers and crack down on the informal sector and its practices.” Other sources of lead exposure identified in the report are still pipes, paint, gasoline, solder, cosmetics and toys as well as mining and battery recycling. “The good news is that lead can be recycled safely without exposing workers, their children and surrounding neighbourhoods,” said Richard Fuller, president of Pure Earth. “People can be educated about the dangers of lead and empowered to protect themselves and their children. The return on the investment is enormous: improved health, increased productivity, higher IQs, less violence and brighter futures for millions of children across the planet.”

Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 21

NEWS

Kenyan villagers awarded unprecedented $12 million in lead poisoning court case Villagers in Kenya were awarded compensation of Ksh1.3 billion ($12 million) in July after a fouryear court battle against lead battery recycler Metal Refinery EPZ Ltd, which began recycling ULABs near the village of Owino Uhuru in 2007. The Environment Court of Mombasa on July 16 made the award and ordered the government and the MRL to clean up the soil around the facility and pay up within four months or the fine could double. Between 2008 and 2009, villagers started complaining of sickness and even deaths that they said were caused by the improper operations at the factory. Lead levels in soil tests increased 10-fold in the period, a report by the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre said. A petition was raised following a visit by the public health department to the site in February 2009, whose report painted a woeful picture of conditions in the factory, including waste matter piling up in rooms for up to two years, insufficient protective clothing for workers and no blood checks on them, dirty and leaking facilities and no approved remedial plan in place. The factory was closed and ordered to make changes and testing was carried out for lead blood levels, but it was met with resistance from people who were worried they would lose their jobs. “Soil, water and air lead levels were not tested by the public health department due to lack of resources,” the public petition to the Kenyan parliament said.

Despite the report’s findings, the factory was not permanently closed until 2014, after the NGO Human Rights Watch visited the village as part of a series of investigations into lead exposure in other countries. The fight was also taken up by villager Phyliss Omido, who founded the Centre for Justice, Governance, and Environmental Action. She had worked at the plant, and called for testing when she noticed that her infant son and others were beginning to feel unwell. The smelter finally closed in March 2014 amid public opposition but not before leaving a legacy of contam-

ination and lifelong health effects, said Human Rights Watch. “The Kenyan government found the smelter violated numerous laws, endangering the health of workers and residents, but did little to remedy the situation.” Omido began her legal action in 2016, despite threats and being forced into hiding, said the Organization for World Peace, one of a growing number of NGOs coming out to support her. The matter was finally put to rest on July 16. The factory was one of several smelters that had been hastily built in Kenya

after 2013 in an effort to avoid a tax imposed on the export of scrap batteries, according to the petition. “In the last two years, there has been a mushrooming of scrap lead acid battery smelters in Kenya, who are apparently avoiding the imposition of a 20% suspended duty on the export of scrap lead acid batteries,” it said. “They are now either removing the plastic covers of the scrap battery so that their exports cannot be defined as scrap batteries under the tariff. They are also setting up crude lead smelters to obtain raw blocks of lead for export and avoid the duty. This has also resulted in the growth of scrap dealers who crudely smelt lead for export avoiding the duty.” The Owino Uhuru community was also awarded legal costs.

East Penn Canada wins award with Terrapure for closed loop recycling East Penn Manufacturing’s Canadian branch has won an award with Terrapure Environmental for their ‘closed-loop, circular-economy approach to lead battery recycling’, East Penn said on July 21. Publishing and events organizer Environment + Energy Leader gave the award in its Project of the Year category, which it announces annually along with its Product of the Year prize. East Penn collects spent batteries from its customers and ships them to Terrapure, in Ontario, which breaks them down, processes and refines the lead according to East Penn specifications, then returns it to the battery maker’s facility in Pennsylvania to be used in new batteries. “Not only does Terrapure’s recycling process provide a circular economy solution for a portion of

22 • Batteries International • Autumn 2020

East Penn’s lead batteries, it also takes 60% less energy to produce recycled lead, helping to reduce our carbon footprint,” said Mike Bouchard, East Penn Canada president. “Building a closed-loop circular economy system is a significant challenge and expense,” said one of the judges. “It’s great to see an investment that will impact a broad sector, since lead batteries are used in so many products, both consumer-focused and manufacturing/industrial. “The entry provides multiple environmental management results, including preventing waste and promoting reuse, reduced energy consumption for production, and reduced waste to landfill.” East Penn unveiled a website on July 27 to demonstrate the benefits of its Deka Fahrenheit battery

system, which it has designed for data centres. The company says its new microsite, www.dekafahrenheit.com, gives the technical viewpoint together with detailed cost analysis over a 15-year period for a 1MW system, and proves its capability is at least on par with lithium systems. “As lithium technology and other chemistries are being deployed in reserve power applications a lot of questions remain especially specific to safety, sustainability, actual field performance and end-oflife costs,” said Mark Wels, vice-president for sales and reserve power. “Our Deka Fahrenheit microsite clearly demonstrates how this lead-based product family has the proven results to excel in all of those critical parameters while providing the lowest TCO.”

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Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 23

NEWS

CATL in contract with Schneider Electric to attack lead battery industry Chinese lithium battery giant CATL — probably the largest lithium battery cell maker in the world — agreed on August 5 to work with Schneider Electric with the specific aim of replacing lead-acid batteries with lithium. Chinese business journal 21Caijing reported a strategic partnership agreement was signed between the two at Schneider Electric’s online Innovation Summit 2020. This specified that one of its main targets was to replace leadacid batteries with lithium-

ion in new application areas, such as industrial and commercial fields and data centres. According to market analysis firm Grand View Research, lead is holding its own in these areas with 47% of the market share, while lithium and other chemistries combined now make up 53%. Grand View also says the lithium-based product segment should register the highest CAGR during its forecast period, 2020 to 2027, being used in numerous industrial applica-

tions, such as UPS systems, industrial automation systems and grid-level systems. It also cites the growing demand for renewable energy to be stored in lithium battery systems. “The two sides will cooperate in the fields of green smart factories, new energy power generation, safe electricity use and energy storage, including CATL helping Schneider Electric to replace lead-acid batteries with lithium,” according to 21Caijing. “They will also jointly

Insurance pay-out to Aqua Metals brings total to $20 million, plans to sell off plant Aqua Metals’ latest insurance pay-out for $5,279,000, brings the total collected to $20.3 million since a fire destroyed equipment at its Nevada site last November, the firm announced on August 26. Almost $7 million of this has been used to settle a bank loan with Veritex. The rest has been paid to the company. The firm said a month later that is has officially placed its recycling plant for sale. In an statement it said, “the company now plans to monetize this noncore asset with the sale of the plant as a means of financing the company’s continued acceleration of its core business of becoming an equipment supplier and licensor of AquaRefining technologies. “The company intends to market the land and building as a general use industrial facility. Residing on 11.5 acres, the 136,000 square foot plant contains 14,000 square feet of operational office space. The facility also includes three exterior dock doors with seven exterior grade level

doors, 13,000 amps of total building power and a temperature-controlled warehouse with negative or positive pressure. “The company believes the sale proceeds, potential future insurance collections (total policy of $50 million for equipment losses from the November, 2019 fire)

and the $20.3 million in insurance collected to date will be sufficient to fully fund the AquaRefining licensing business strategy as the company transitions towards scalable revenues.” Despite the damage inflicted on the Reno facility, where all 16 of the AquaRefining modules were de-

expand the emerging lithium battery application market. Schneider Electric, in return, will provide a full range of services for the planning and implementation of CATL’s green smart manufacturing projects, as well as helping the company establish advanced green smart factories.” It also says the two firms have similar customer groups and complementary products and they will work together to create a distributed energy platform. CATL already has a huge foothold in the EV market, in August adding Mercedes-Benz to its portfolio of OEM customers. stroyed, the company in June said it had managed to complete an initial run of its V1.25 Electrolyzer, two weeks ahead of the original schedule. “This first iteration of improvements ran very well and as expected, produced ultra high-purity lead metal assayed at 99.99+%, consistent with lead production from the previous electrolyzers in 2019,” Aqua Metals said.

Hoppecke signs deal with CATL to service EV batteries across Europe Germany-based battery manufacturer Hoppecke has signed a deal with the Chinese lithium-ion battery giant CATL to service its EV battery systems across Europe, the company said on July 27. Hoppecke, which makes predominantly lead-acid batteries, says it added lithium-ion to its portfolio 15 years ago to supply industrial trucks, rail and bus systems and large-scale storage systems. Last year it founded the Intilion company to focus on this market segment. CATL (which stands for Contemporary Amperex

24 • Batteries International • Autumn 2020

Technology Limited) was founded just nine years ago and is already one of the biggest, if not the largest, EV lithium battery firm in the world. Under the agreement, Hoppecke will test, repair and replace CATL batteries in electric vehicles across Europe, with an initial focus on vans and buses in Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Hungary and the UK. “With 2020 gearing up to be the year of the electric car, many vans and buses are already ahead of the game,” said Hoppecke. “A wave of new models

is continuously being launched as electric models become Europe’s vehicle of choice. “However it is the lithium-ion battery that is the key differentiator in the choice to go electric, the focus being on capacity and service life. After-sales service is essential to the user’s experience and the safe handling of lithium batteries is sensitive and requires a lot of technical experience.” Hoppecke’s 23 subsidiaries worldwide and 300 service engineers in Europe give it good positioning to support CATL, it says.

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NEWS

New desulfurization process by STC Italy produces agricultural fertilizer Battery recycling, lead recovery and water treatment company STC Italy has developed a paste desulfurization process which produces a by-product that can be used as fertilizer, the company told BESB at the virtual ELBC conference this September. The process, called U4Lead, is based on using urea (CH4N2O) instead of sodium sulfate or ammonium carbonate, which are widely used in desulfurization. The end product is ammonium sulfate, which is widely used as an agricultural fertilizer and commands a ready price in international markets. “The need to develop an alternative desulfurization process to the ones already available on the market arose about three years ago,” says Alberto Bergamaschini, commercial and marketing director at STC. “We wanted to propose our lead paste desulfurization process via ammonium carbonate to one of our clients but we immediately realized that due to its high price, volatility and toxicity, it was necessary to look for other valid options.” The firm had been looking for a more efficient desulfurization process starting from a cheaper amino compound, which was easier to find, treat and handle. But that is not to say that the process will be a magic cure for one stage of the lead battery recycling process. In a paper that was to have been presented at the LABAT conference in Bulgaria this summer (which was subsequently postponed due to the Covid crisis), STC demonstrated that the urea conversion needed was practical but would be energy intensive. The conversion rate needed to work is a temperature of 140°C180°C and a pressure of be-

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tween 5 bar and 12 bar. Since then STC has improved the efficiency of the conversion rate. “The U4Lead system is based on a well-defined and innovative STC process protected by patent and has been successfully installed and commissioned in the ULAB recycling plant realized by STC of our Nigerian client Green Recycling Industries based in Agbara, Ogun State,” says Bergamaschini. In this project, STC implemented the design, construction and supply of a complete lead acid battery

recycling plant composed of a breaking and separation area, lead paste super desulphurization, double effect evaporator to concentrate ammonium sulphate solution in to obtain a usable liquid fertilizer, and a final lead smelting and refining area inclusive of a lead ingots casting machine and an air pollution control system. The plant has an inlet exhausted battery capacity of up to five tonnes per hour and in May it reported it was in the final commissioning stage. A simplified reaction of the U4Lead process for

“The need to develop an alternative desulfurization process to the ones already available on the market arose about three years ago.”

dealing with the lead sulfate is: CO(NH2) 2 + PbSO4+H2O = PbCO3 + (NH4) 2SO4 And this for neutralizing the sulfuric acid: CO(NH2) 2 + H2SO4 + H2O = (NH4) 2SO4 + CO2 “Depending on local requirements, it can be concentrated in a simple evaporator and used directly in agriculture or alternatively crystallized to produce pure crystals,” says the firm. STC says it offers turnkey plants, plug-and-play integrated technologies and a complete range of equipment mainly for the recovery of lead, polypropylene, PE and other materials from exhausted lead-acid batteries.

Cellusuede completes acquisition of Engineered Fibers Technology Cellusuede Products, the international fiber company. completed the purchase of Engineered Fibers Technology earlier this summer. The acquisition — Cellusuede has a 100% stake up from its 20% ownership first made in 2014 — will greatly expand Cellusuede’s capabilities as a precision short-cut fiber supplier. “EFT’s solutions-based technical focus combined with Cellusuede’s long standing history of highest quality short-cut fibers and larger scale capacity will catapult the company into new technical markets,” says Andy Honkamp, president and CEO at Cellusuede, “while entrenching the company even further

into existing markets as a first quality partner to our customer base.” Honkamp says EFT is well recognized for its materials science expertise and proprietary technology for high performance technical applications. EFT, founded in 1998, is an industry leader in precision short-cut technical fibers (including Ni coated carbon, Vectran, BioMid, lyocell, S-2 glass, aramid, and PEEK, among several others) into technical markets, including specialty papers, construction and composites, as well as into thermoplastic/thermoset molding compounds, with coated (controlled strand integrity) fibers. Cellusuede, an ESOP

company founded in 1938, says it will look to leverage EFT’s capabilities to grow its business in energy storage markets, automotive applications, and additive manufacturing. Andy Honkamp is the new president of EFT. Bob Evans, founder, and former managing director of EFT, will stay on in a technical consulting role, and Dave Merrill, former sales and marketing director for EFT, will remain in a sales and customer service support role. Cellusuede will continue to be based in its Rockford Illinois headquarters while its EFT operation will continue at Shelton, Connecticut.

Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 25

NEWS

Shortage of tin to raise price of battery-making over the long term A variety of media reports in the week of October 12 said that increased demand for tin — a vital element in many lead battery alloys — was pushing up prices and that in the long term a price spike is on the way. Tin prices are up 6.5% since January at $18,300/tonne, close to last month’s high of $18,510/t. Roughly half of all tin is used in soldering, lead-acid battery production accounts for a small section of the market. Analysts at Macquarie Bank are forecasting that Chinese demand for the metal, which has become increasingly more essential for its role in electronics, will cause supply deficits every year until 2025. Analysts at Roskill forecast these deficits to continue until 2023. The amount of tin added to lead batteries over the last 40 years has steadily been rising. “In the mid-1970s the predominant grid alloy system for lead-acid batteries was based on antimony but contained around 0.2% tin to aid fluidity of the alloy during casting,” says Doug Lambert, vice president of sales and marketing at Wirtz Manufacturing. By the mid-1980s, due to the technological shift towards lowmaintenance and maintenance-free batteries, and high-speed continuous grid and plate manufacturing processes such as continuous casting, the alloy had changed to be based on binary lead-calcium and ternary leadcalcium-tin alloys. “Early alloys contained tin in the range 0.2-0.7 wt.%, but by the mid1990s, as a result of the extensive research into premature capacity loss, it was found that tin was needed on

the positive plate to overcome the ‘antimony-free effect’. It was found that at least around 1% tin was needed but there were other beneficial effects with tin-rich alloys containing as much as 1.2 wt.% of the element. “Today, we are seeing still further increases in the amount of tin used in grid alloys, particularly in the binary lead-tin system where tin contents in the range of 1.5-2.0 wt.% are not uncommon.” Two years ago, the International Tin Association also noticed this trend for greater use of lead. “Several indicators suggest that the intensity of tin use in lead-acid batteries is increasing, both in the continued transition from older flooded types to higher performance products and in increasing tin content of grid alloys,” the association said. “Major supplier Exide previously published a grid alloy patent with ‘about 2%’ tin, up from the typical 0.7-1.5% tin. A 2016 patent from Panasonic had also specified higher levels of ‘2.3% tin or less’ to improve corrosion resistance particularly. “Now an expert from a leading battery recycling company has reported increasing customer specifications in the positive plate by 0.1-0.2% tin and a major lead-acid producer expected overall tin use in 2017 would increase by almost 30%. “This is likely to be at least partially in response to the increasing use of mild hybrid start-stop cars that require more advanced performance technology.” Lambert takes this further: “With the world-wide use of highspeed continuous grid and plate

Metals most impacted by new technology

26 • Batteries International • Autumn 2020

manufacturing processes for leadacid batteries used in transportation, industrial and reserve power applications, it is quite likely that we shall see a technological shift in grid alloy systems towards pure lead and lead-tin, while still continuing to use lead-calcium-tin alloys for specific applications. “Which, on the basis of a supply and demand model with increased amounts of tin consumed in lead-acid cells and batteries, must surely result in another hike in the market price of tin.” Tin is classified as a critical metal in the US, but not in the European Union. The EU has a major producer through Belgium’s Metallo, a recycling company that is now part of Germany’s Aurubis. The last US tin mine, by contrast, closed in 1993 and the last smelter in 1989. The question bugging analysts in the tin market is what China thinks about the metal’s future in the longer term — should it, for example, be classified as a strategic commodity and large reserves be put in place? China has been the world’s largest producer and consumer of tin for some years. However, recently, the country has grown heavily reliant on imports of raw material from tin mines in Myanmar, where there have been problems of supply and mine flooding. The coronavirus crisis has additionally exposed China’s dependency on its neighbour for tin concentrates. China is now widely expected to include a stockpiling programme for strategic commodities in its next fiveyear plan beginning 2021, and tin could well be on this list. According to the International Tin Association, research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology showed that tin was a metal to ‘be most impacted by new technology’. The MIT said it saw it benefiting from all four factors — electric vehicles, renewable energy, advanced robotics and advanced computation and IT. Macquarie says: “Some concerns have emerged around future supply from Myanmar, with market participants telling us that Chinese buyer inquiries are now reaching Africa and the new Alphamin mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo.”

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PRODUCT NEWS

Exide launches AGM batteries for telecoms and utility applications Exide Technologies has launched a battery for telecoms and electric utility applications, the France-headquartered battery maker said on September 3. The GNB Marathon FTX ¬¬range of advanced AGM batteries is ideal, the firm says, for 5G and progressive network diversification, with an extended service life at extreme operating temperatures of -40°C to 55°C. “Its special diamond sidewall design maintains battery integrity in extreme

temperatures, ensuring that all internal components remain tightly packed with no degradation in performance,” it says. “Otherwise, plastic components soften when exposed to heat, which weakens the contact between the plates and separator.” “Network densification is a major topic in the telecom industry, as network operators find ways to meet the ever-increasing demands of 5G,” says Serge Arbes, senior business director for

network power, EMEA at Exide. “Managing both capital and operating expenditure is a major focus for network operators in this environment, and the Marathon FT is specially designed to reduce cooling costs and minimize total cost of ownership.” The new-look Exide — which now does not include the former company’s North American side of the business since its sale to Atlas Holdings in May — has

also launched a battery testing app to make it easier for workshops to test and replace batteries, the firm said on September 1. The company is working to schedule in finalizing its structure and management team, said a company spokesperson. The announced appointments so far are Stefan Stübing as executive vice president for Exide EMEA and Daniel Royer as senior vice president for manufacturing and supply chain planning.

Digatron extends new DCA testing package International battery testing firm Digatron launched an all-in-one package for DCA testing of lead batteries at the ELBC conference on September 22. As more exhaust legislation forces car manufacturers to limit their CO2 emissions as far as possible, for small and mid-range cars a micro-hybrid concept helps to save CO2 at a reasonable cost, says Digatron. With stop-start technology and regenerative braking both aiming to achieve this, exactly how much is achieved needs to be measured during recuperation phases of the battery, when it should be accepting micro-hybrid load pulses. Digatron’s package allows this to happen by including a DCA programme that supports DCA testing under the European standard EN 50342-6; a key-off resistor assembly that simulates the load of the boardnet during standstill phases; a calculation sheet to work out the correct resistor value; and the recommended testing hardware — the UBT-RE equipment. The UBT-RE enables high-current tests to be performed on starter batteries

from 150 amps, Digatron says. “Equipped with regenerative DC links, the device offers ultimate energy and cost efficiency. A large part of the energy used is made available again thanks to this technology,” the company says. “The device also features the highest packing density on the market and saves an enormous amount of space. These features make the device perfect for laboratories that perform automated test runs on battery modules in

28 • Batteries International • Autumn 2020

the high-current range and want to save money.” DCA testing has to some extent been standardized under the European standard EN 50342-6, but the procedure is still very complicated and difficult to manage because of the different pre-conditions there might be for each product. The new Digatron UBTRE equipment supports a high package density of testing with six channels per module, as well as being compatible for all of its former equipment and

available as an add-on to its existing equipment. Earlier in September, Digatron launched an end-ofline tester for lithium battery production along with DSA, a company that specializes in communication equipment for automotive electronics. The firm has global manufacturing facilities in the US, China, India and Italy, and since it was founded half a century ago, has expanded its technology into many battery chemistries and sizes.

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PRODUCT NEWS

Forklift battery supplier extends range with lead acid batteries Materials handling firm Crown Equipment Corporation, the fifth largest manufacturer of powered industrial forklift trucks in the world, has expanded its portfolio of forklift batteries and equipment with the addition of a new lead-acid battery range as well as the lithium batteries it supplies, the firm said on October 6. The new V-Force forklift batteries come as flat plate lead-acid batteries and tubular batteries, and the firm says they provide a ‘cost-effective power solution for a

range of duty cycles, including multi-shift operations’. The flat plate batteries provide durability in rough applications, says Crown, with minimal positive active material shedding and corrosion. The tubular batteries are suitable for multi-shift applications because the increased active material surface area means runtimes are extended. “Crown’s tubular batteries feature a first-of-its kind flexible bolt-on inter-cell cable connector,” the firm

Lead battery maker Leoch launches lithium range in UK Chinese lead battery giant Leoch on August 24 announced the UK launch of Leoch Lithium, a range of lithium iron phosphate batteries for network power, signalling and mobile energy, solar and renewables backup, motive power, EVs, marine, golf cart and materials handling applications. “The big buzz in batteries is lithium-ion technology and lithium batteries are now a common source of power in many leisure and industrial applications.” The new LFeLi series of batteries are available in both 12V and 24V and, the firm says, surpass lead battery performance levels in depth of discharge and weight. Leoch is the fourth or fifth largest lead-acid battery maker in China, but with the growing presence of lithium-ion batteries the company has joined many traditional lead battery firms in taking on the technology itself. “For Leoch, we will be a company of two arms – lead and lithium,” says Dong Li, founder and CEO of the firm. “Lead will take

the major part, and at the moment we are not interested in other chemistries as they are more niche.” Dong Li has a lot of faith in Gridtential’s bipolar technology, in which he has invested and says he will aim to commercialize in China in EV, hybrid and data centre applications. “The next 15 to 20 years will be about 48V bipolar batteries for hybrid vehicles, starter batteries, motive and network applications,” he said to Batteries International this summer. Leoch is headquartered in the southern city of Shenzhen, with sales offices across Europe, Asia and South Africa.

says. “This connector allows for easy maintenance, higher current delivery with less internal resistance and lower operating temperature.” “We have the expert guidance and resources to work closely with customers to build a complete power system for any application,”

says Todd Fleck, director of parts and motive power at Crown Equipment. “Having one single source that offers forklifts, chargers and batteries enables our customers to pick the efficient, reliable and affordable power solution specifically configured for their applications.”

EnerSys alters Core and Pure batteries for use in smaller machines EnerSys, the lead battery manufacturer, has slightly expanded its TPPL portfolio with 12V versions of its CORE and PURE batteries so they may now be used in smaller machines in sectors such as food production and logistics, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, the company said on July 16. The new bloc batteries are suitable for small traction motive applications such as small AGVs, cleaning machines and ground handling vehicles in airports. The firm’s CORE and PURE batteries for larger materials handling vehicles, such as forklift trucks, were released in February. They both mix TPPL technology with carbon in the active material formulation in updates to traditional lead-acid bat-

teries and an alternative to lithium-ion in materials handling applications. In May, EnerSys launched an ATEX range of TPPL batteries specifically suited to being worked in hazardous areas where there could be an explosion risk. “Because they are made with TPPL technology, the batteries have more plate surface area for higher power density and increased efficiency, are capable of high energy throughput and up to 160% capacity per 24 hours,” says the firm. “The net result is to increase productivity and lower total cost of ownership. Thanks to TPPL technology, the batteries don’t need water topping up while their virtually zero emissions are ideal for sensitive environments.”

Kokam launches UPS lithium battery system ‘40% cheaper than lead’ South Korean lithium battery and battery system maker Kokam announced the launch on August 31 of a battery system for uninterruptible power systems that it says has a higher energy density for supporting mission-critical

30 • Batteries International • Autumn 2020

facilities. Kokam says the battery is 46% smaller physically and 20% lighter than conventional lead-acid battery systems, yet also 40% cheaper. “With data centre growth and grid instability,

the UPS battery market is experiencing considerable expansion,” said Kokam president Ike Hong. “Our system aims to provide a cost-effective and advanced solution to address the current grid stability challenges.”

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PRODUCT NEWS

Bosch targets aftermarket with new line of start-stop batteries Technology firm Bosch has expanded its line of starter batteries with a new Eco Line range for start-stop applications that are more affordable for older vehicles, it said on August 12. Saying it was ‘reacting to current market developments and new statutory requirements’, it has both captured the new car market and the aftermarket, which will be more vital than ever for the lead battery industry with new car production and demand having come to a standstill

in much of the industry. New car registrations in Germany showed a 32% drop in June, according to market research firm Autovista Group. Spain was worse, with around a 38% drop. Bosch says it will roll out its new range, which work in passenger and commercial vehicles, powered twowheelers and recreational vehicles, first in Germany. “In tough economic climates, the new Eco Line range of batteries represents both an expansion of

the previous range of batteries and also a solution that is in line with the fair market value of older vehicles,” said Bosch. “Bosch’s Eco Line offers a high-quality solution for the majority of vehicles in Europe.” It will also fill the batteries in the factory to meet EU stipulations. Battery makers will be desperate for relief from the aftermarket, given that factory shutdowns in Europe alone resulted in almost 2.5 million motor vehicles not

being made in the first half of 2020. In the UK, the SMMT (Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders) said car manufacturers’ factory shutdowns in the second quarter of the year resulted in the slowest car production since 1954. The first six months showed a 48.5% drop in new car registrations, according to the SMMT, but there were signs of hope in July itself, when a rise of 11.3% year on year was recorded.

Various product launches announced at September ELBC conference Sovema Group Sovema says investments in R&D over the past few months have resulted in a whole set of new equipment and upgrades to its machines, ranging from oxide production to battery finishing. The key drivers, the company says, were increasing the quality of the products and giving better performance – as well as making sure cost savings were achievable and energy consumption could be reduced. The new range includes a cold lead cubing machine; a Sovema E | 125 enveloping and stacking machine; and a plug setting machine that allows the customer to reach high automation and flexibility in the final stages of battery production; and a small plate pasting process line. Redesigns and upgrades have been carried out on Sovema’s wide strip casting lines, its drum paster and flash drying oven. Hammond Group Hammond has achieved IATF 16949 Certification. “This is an automotive quality management system standard that is built on the backbone of ISO

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9001,” says Ray Goodearl, director of global accounts. “We challenged all employees to raise the bar on quality as part of our continual improvement program. The challenge was met in less than two years and Hammond is already benefitting from the improvements implemented. “This culture of quality will mitigate risk, empower employee growth, reduce cost of poor quality, and differentiate us from our competitors. This IATF certification will not only energize our employees, but now we are on a very elite list of OEM suppliers to better serve our customers.” Co-Efficient Precision Engineering Ontario-based Co-Efficient Precision Engineering has developed a benchtop thickness gauge which it claims is the ‘smallest, lightest and most affordable piece of machinery we’ve manufactured to date’. The thickness scanner measures wide continuous strip materials prior to downstream operations and can be used for real-time monitoring and generating quality reports. Based on the Mate Gauge 3, the

Mate Gauge S has improved efficiency and a smaller, more streamlined touch screen. “As an engineering-forward company we believe that the harder we work and the more we bring the team together, the more we can achieve cost reduction without a reduction in features or quality,” says CEO Steve Mate. BM-Rosendahl With its move into lithium, BMRosendahl has developed machinery for automotive lithium-ion batteries, including a laser-welding unit, cell-stacking machine and gluing machine. It has also come up with a matrix concept which differs from conventional assembly lines in that it is not limited to one kind of cell type (whether it’s cylindric, prismatic or pouch), or module or pack specifications. “We are aware that battery manufacturers and OEMs have special needs regarding the automation of the core assembly steps,” says sales manager Gerhard Scheithauer.

Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 31

ANALYSIS: CMW’S EOL TEST MACHINE CMWTEC has developed a new end-of-line testing machine for leadacid batteries together with newly developed water-cooled modular e-load modules with highly efficient process control software. Michael Wipperfürth, sales manager at CMWTEC discusses the product.

Pushing out the boundaries of end of line testing

After commissioning and running our The graph below is for the first rejected battery #198. This battery has first EOL testing machines for two of continued to supply current until the end of discharge period, even if the voltage our customers, we were able to colwent out of the range after ~ 0.5 seconds. lect a lot of real battery data from the production lines and examine each individual measurement on site. Being able to combine up to five battery profiles in one testing sequence — and the related data acquisition — every single battery can be tested to the level of that achievable in a well equipped laboratory but within a normal production rate. Beside the different profiles of high rate discharges, the machine can deIn opposite to that the second rejected battery #615 delivered a normal current for termine the AC impedance and DC By contrast, the second rejected battery #615 a normaliscurrent for approx. 1,5 seconds and then the voltage drops till 0 delivered volt. This behaviour significantly different from the first rejected Battery These two can be used is for internal resistance of the battery for approximately 1.5 seconds before the#198. voltage drops to batteries zero. This behaviour In opposite to that the rejected battery #615fault delivered a normal current for further examination “e.g.second tear down” to find out each reason. a deeper understanding of the status significantly different from the first rejected battery #198. These two batteries approx. 1,5 seconds and then the voltage drops till 0 volt. This behaviour is significantly of the battery and also a significant can be used for further examination, for example, as a tear down to find out the different from the first rejected Battery #198. These two batteries can be used for indicator about its quality. reasonexamination for each fault. further “e.g. tear down” to find out each fault reason. The combination and evaluation of these measurements all in one system allowed us to successfully detect the most common failure in lead acid batteries right after the formation — more details about that will be published soon. As a simple example, below are the (EOL) End-Of-Line Test Machine By comparing the other test measurement of this battery (ACR, DCR or Delta V) all measurements of the constant curtogether with the voltage drop profile, you obtain much more data to find out the failure rent voltage (CCV, that the voltage After commissioning and isrunning our first EOL machines reason. In this way you can efficiently set and adjust your control limits, where the real comparing the other test measurement of By this battery (ACR, DCR Delta V) all of the under loadweatwere the end comparing the orother test for two battery of our customers, able to By collect acould lot ofbe. failures with the voltage drop profile, you obtain much more data to find out the(ACR, failure of the discharge batterieslinestogether measurements of this battery real battery data test) from of the650 production and examine In this way you can efficiently set andDCR adjustor your control the real each measurement on site. thanksreason. to the feature with individual an acceptance limit of 6.6V. Delta V) limits, with where the voltage failures could be. of As combining 5 test profiles at one test sequence and the test data acquisition, drop profile, you obtain much more you see, up twotoof the batteries are every produced be tested like what can be done in high equipped data to find out the reason for failure. out ofsingle the CCV limit.battery That can is what laboratory within normal production rate. Beside the different profiles of high rate In this way you can efficiently set and conventional HRD machines can do. discharge, the machine can determine the AC impedance and DC internal resistance But with the new EOL, in addition adjust your control limits for where of the battery for deeper understanding the status of the battery and significant to the internal resistance values, you the real failures could be. indicator for the quality. The combination and evaluation of these measurements all in can pick out the discharge curve of ning and running our first EOL machines one system allowed us to successfully detect the most common failure in the lead acid a specificright withformation, a high measafter the ustomers, batteries we werebattery able to collect amore lot details of about that will be published soon. “Being able to combine urement frequency for analysis pura from theAs production linesbelow andareexamine poses. a simple example, the measurements of the constant current voltage up to five test profiles in

ne Test Machine (EOL)

1 measurement thankswith to the feature limit of 6,6 V. ) ofsite. 650 Batteries an acceptance (CCVon p to 5 test profiles at one test sequence and the test data acquisition, duced battery can be tested like what can be done in high equipped n normal production rate. Beside the different profiles of high rate machine can determine the AC impedance and DC internal resistance or deeper understanding the status of the battery and significant quality. The combination and evaluation of these measurements all in wed us to successfully detect the most common failure in the lead acid ter the formation, more details about that will be published soon.

As you see, 2 of the batteries are out of the CCV limit. That is what the conventional

32 HRD • Batteries International • Autumn 2020 the of machines do. But with newthe EOL,constant in addition current to the internal resistance below are the can measurements voltage

ample, values, you can pick out the discharge curve of a specific battery with a high atteries with an acceptance of 6,6 V. measurement frequency limit for analyse purposes. The graph below is for the first rejected

onetest sequence and their corresponding data acquisition lead us to believe that every single battery can be tested to that level, which is only achievable in a well-equipped laboratory, all that within a normal production rate.”

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FLOW BATTERY NEWS

RWE, CMBlu begin joint trial of organic electrolytes in 100kW/1,000kWh project RWE Gas Storage West and CMBlu Energy announced on September 30 they had started a collaborative project to investigate whether organic electrolytes can be used in a flow battery project in RWE’s salt caverns. The project will be in three phases. The first, which has just begun, is a feasibility study to determine which organic electrolyte should be used. The second, starting next spring. will involve the construction and commissioning of the plant. The third will be a fine tuning of the system which, when finished by the spring of 2024, aims to result in an operational system with an output of 100kW/1,000kWh. The choice of the organic electrolyte will be an interesting one given that the roughly dozen firms around the world developing organic electrolytes keep their technology a well guarded secret. “Organic electrolytes are being increasingly proposed as an alternative to vanadium or zinc in flow batteries as they are not subject to the wild price swings that these metals have had historically,” says Anthony Price, principal of his consultancy firm Swanbarton. “They are also viewed as environmentally more positive.” In the past sudden huge rises in the price of vanadium have forced many flow battery start-ups to the wall. Two years ago, for example, China insisted that all steel would need to be reinforced by vanadium. This caused a spike in the price

Huge salt caverns such as these have the capacity to store gigawatts of energy in flow batteries

of the metal — roughly 80% of the metal is used in the steel industry — and the downfall of many promising flow battery firms. The price of vanadium pentoxide moved from a low of $2.4/lb in January 2016 to $33.9/lb in November 2018. Given that the price of vanadium is the most expensive factor in these flow batteries, such a price leap is devastating. “The perfect electrolyte for a flow battery should have around five specific qualities,” says Price. “It shouldn’t degrade over time — flow batteries are meant to be for the long haul, say in use for 20+ years, they should have good ionic conductance, a high electrochemical potential, they shouldn’t be corrosive and are well suited to the environment: safe, in other words. And last, they should be affordable and remain so.

34 • Batteries International • Autumn 2020

“A good organic electrolyte should tick all these boxes.” The second phase of the project is likely to be relatively straight-forward as flow battery construction firms already exist with prepared designs that can be adapted. For example, firms such as Pinflow Energy Storage, based in Prague, the Czech Republic, can already provide customized products. One puzzling question is whether there is a need to build flow batteries in these vast caverns. Flow battery electrolytes typically have an energy density of between 20kWh per litre to 100kWh/l. Much higher densities are theoretically possible but to date cannot be commercialized. For this flow battery to achieve an output of 1,000kWh and assuming

that the electrolyte has a density of 40Wh/l — this compares favourably with a typical VRFB delivering 30Wh/l — would require 25,000 litres of electrolyte. Give that 1,000 litres equates to one cubic metre, then this battery would occupy just 25m3. That is roughly two-thirds the size of a 20 teu container. RWE Gas Storage West is part of German utility RWE Group. It operates five underground (salt cavern) natural gas storage facilities for the northwest European gas market with a working gas volume of about 1.7 billion cubic metres. CMBLu Energy describes itself as a pioneer and market leader in sustainable organic flow batteries, It is based near Frankfurt-amMain in Germany. RWE is likely to have plans to scale the facility up. “These underground caverns could potentially store capacities of up to several gigawatt hours of electricity from renewable sources,” says a statement from the firm. “By comparison, Europe’s largest battery at present — based on lithium-ion technology — is located in Jardelund, SchleswigHolstein, and has a storage capacity of about 50MWh. Andreas Frohwein, technical managing director of RWE Gas Storage West, said: “In the future, we may be able to use our salt caverns as batteries for storing enormous quantities of electricity. Using existing technical infrastructure, they could also be connected to the electricity grid quickly.”

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ENERGY STORAGE NEWS

‘Tera is the new giga’ says Musk vowing to be world leader in energy storage If the world is to achieve 100% renewable energy it’s going to need at least 135 gigafactories to make 20 terawatthours’ of lithium batteries, and with a host of new technologies this is what Tesla is aiming to achieve, said the cofounder Elon Musk at the firm’s Battery Day held in Fremont, California, on September 22. Standing on stage at the event, to which a couple of hundred Teslas drove in to watch in a kind of drivein show, Elon Musk unveiled battery cell adaptions, factory processes and the acquisition of new rights to lithium mining, all aiming to massively increase production but at a lower cost and energy footprint than ever before. He said EVs alone would need 150TWh of batteries, and when it came to grid storage the world needed another 1,600 times that being made if energy were ever to become 100% renewable. “As the world economy matures, we could see this number be even more — something like 20-25 terawatt-hours per year for 15-20 years — to transition the world to renewable,” he told a horn-hooting audience. “This is a lot of batteries.” The carmaker has already made clear its intentions to be a serious player in the grid storage industry as well as electric vehicles, already supplying Australia with the world’s largest lithium battery at Hornsdale and marketing its Powerpack batteries all over the world. “Essentially Tesla announced that it is going to be a battery company, not a car company,” said Jim Greenberger, executive director and co-founder of NAATBatt. “I found that to be an exciting and important announcement. But execution will be daunting. It begs the question: just how much did Tesla learn from Panasonic over the course of its joint venture? I always thought that Panasonic would go out of its way to make sure that Tesla did not learn too much. “Tesla’s move upstream will be a master stroke if Tesla can pull it off. The announcement will put considerable pressure on other automotive

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A couple of hundred Teslas drove in to watch a kind of drive-in show

OEMs — and the fear of God into LG Chem.” The major key was cutting costs, and Musk revealed a range of new technologies — such as new cell tabs and dry-coat electrodes — that while still in the development stage, could result in huge reductions in footprint, investment and energy use, he said. Among other methods were a highspeed continuous assembly line that will increase capacity by seven times; changes to both anode and cathode for far greater energy density; and cobalt to be replaced with much cheaper and more energy dense nickel. Musk also revealed the company had secured its own lithium mining rights across a 10,000-acre area in Nevada, where its gigafactory is sited, and it was working on a technology using sodium chloride that had never been used before to extract the metal from mined clay. “There’s enough lithium in the whole of the US to convert the entire US fleet of vehicles to electric,” he said. “And people haven’t even been looking for it. “To extract it in an environmentally friendly way we use salt — dig out a chunk of dirt, extract the lithium and put the dirt back. There’s enough lithium in Nevada alone to electrify the entire US fleet.” Musk also said the company could recycle 100% of its batteries, and that it made much more sense to do this than use raw materials. Moss Landing project starts Separately, Tesla and the Pacific Gas

and Electric Company on July 29 broke ground on a 182.5MW/730MWh lithium-ion battery installation at Moss Landing, California that they say will be the largest utility-owned storage system of its kind in the world. The agreement allows Tesla to increase the size even further, to a total of 1GWh in total, which would mean six hours of power at 182.5MW. California already has the largest battery in the US connected to its grid, on July 13 saying it had connected a 62.5MW/250MWh battery to its San Diego County power grid. Tesla won approval from the Monterey Planning Commission in February to install the Elkhorn Battery Storage Facility, which will store wind and solar power and replace the existing power plant. More than 250 Tesla Megapack units will be installed on 33 concrete slabs, and will be able to dispatch the energy to the grid at periods of high demand. “The scale, purpose and flexibility of the Moss Landing Megapack system make it a landmark in the development and deployment of utility-scale batteries,” said Fong Wan, senior vice president for energy policy and procurement at PG&E. The utility predicts the system will save more than $100 million over the 20-year life of the installation. Tesla is no stranger to massive-scale battery storage projects, but this one will be five and a half times the size of its largest one to date, the 100MW/129MWh Hornsdale Power Reserve in South Australia.

Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 35

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ENERGY STORAGE NEWS

EIB rubber stamps further loan for Europe’s first lithium giga factory The European Investment Bank on July 29 rubberstamped a €350 million ($416 million) loan to finance Europe’s first gigafactory for lithium-ion battery cells, being built by Swedish battery company Northvolt, in Skellefteå, Sweden. The loan follows a successful financing of Northvolt’s demo line in 2018, for which the EIB disbursed a €52 million ($62 million) loan.

In May 2019, the gigafactory was given approval in principle from the EIB, which said the northern Swedish region in which it would be sited was home to a prominent raw material and mining cluster ‘which has a long history of process manufacturing and recycling’. “Noting the region’s clean power base, building the factory in northern Sweden will enable Northvolt to utilize 100% renewable en-

ergy within its production processes,” it said. “Europe needs to build its own supply chain for large-scale battery manufacturing and the EIB is a true cornerstone of that process,” said Peter Carlsson, co-founder and CEO of Northvolt. “Since the creation of the European Battery Alliance in 2018, the EIB has stepped up its support for the battery value chain to help build Europe’s strate-

UK government removes 50MW barrier to larger battery installations Planning changes will eliminate the need to get government approval for battery installations above 50MW, the UK secretary of state for business, energy and industry strategy announced on July 14. Until the change was made, such projects fell under the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIP) regime in England and Wales, although in Wales that already ap-

plied only to storage above 350MW. It meant that applications could take up to two years to be approved. Now, all energy storage technology applications except for pumped hydro will proceed under the Town and Country Planning Act — which means permission should be granted within weeks rather than one to two years. In Wales any size (except pumped hydro) can be passed by the relevant lo-

cal planning authority. To date, the vast majority of battery storage projects deployed in England and Wales have been no bigger than 49MW to avoid this lengthy and costly procedure. “The previous cap was largely arbitrary and skewed the market,” said Frank Gordon, head of policy at the Association for Renewable Energy & Clean Technology (REA).

Four-fold rise in 13 years for global batteries and storage patents A study released in September by the International Energy Agency and European Patent Office shows that patenting activity in batteries and other electricity storage technologies grew four times faster than the average of all other technology fields between 2005 and 2018. Innovation in batteries and electricity storage: A global analysis based on patent data September 2020 is the first such study to be carried out

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by both agencies into the trends that patent filing tend to indicate. “Because patents are filed many months, or even years, before products appear on the market, patent information is an early indicator of which technologies could be poised to play groundbreaking roles in the future,” says Antonio Campinos, president of the EPO. The study found that 7,000 international energy storage-related

patents were filed in 2018 compared with just over 1,000 in 2000, with a sharper acceleration since 2005, when there was a growth rate of 14%. Other technology areas showed just 3.5% growth on average. Most key battery technology variants were on the rise — including lead-acid, redox flow and nickel batteries — but Li-ion was the dominant innovator, with 45% of all patenting activity to do with Li-ion cells.

gic autonomy in a technology that is key to its competitiveness and low carbon future,” said EIB vice president Andrew McDowell. The site, Northvolt Ett, will be the primary production site and initially will produce 16GWh of battery capacity a year. It has the potential to scale up to 40GWh, the EIB said. Northvolt’s batteries are designed for automotive, grid storage, industrial and portable applications. “As energy storage built alongside new renewables projects is crucial to unlocking subsidy-free deployment, the old system acted as a major barrier to achieving our net zero target and building low-cost generation sites. “The UK is home to pioneering compressed air, flow battery, gravity battery and cryogenic systems in addition to lithium-ion batteries.” The BEIS says the planning change could result in a trebling of the number of batteries serving the electricity grid, which currently stands at 1GW, the government department says. “There is 4GW of storage projects in planning, which could power a combined six million homes, in addition to the 1GW of battery storage already in operation,” it says. Ben Irons, co-founder of Habitat Energy, the UK gridscale storage trading platform designer, said very few projects were going through the NSIP process. “So this won’t increase the number of projects, but it does mean that a lot of the 50MW developments already in the pipeline may look to increase their size up to 100MW or more, depending on investor appetite,” he said. “It’s certainly very positive news for the industry.”

Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 37

ENERGY STORAGE NEWS

Australia plans building of first lithium battery manufacturing plant Australia’s first lithiumion battery manufacturing factory will be built in the Hunter Region, about 75 miles north of Sydney, by Energy Renaissance, the firm announced on October 13. The 4,000 sqm facility will have an initial annual battery production capacity of 66MWh, and the batteries will be sold to the

power infrastructure, buildings, businesses and homes markets. The company plans to scale up the operation to 5.3GWh a year, and managing director Mark Chilcote said the site should be finished in 2021. Energy Renaissance was founded in 2015 and has an exclusive partnership with Cadenza Innovation — a

US-based lithium battery firm headed by Christina Lampe-Onnerud. A memorandum of understanding was signed between the two firms in 2017, giving the Australian company exclusive manufacturing rights of Cadenza’s patented technology, which consists of ‘bricks’ of batteries containing cylindrical jelly rolls that can

Rolls-Royce to install battery system of microgrid on Cook Islands Rolls-Royce, the UK multinational engineering company, is to supply the batteries for a microgrid on the remote Pacific island of Rarotonga, one of the Cook Islands roughly halfway between Los Angeles and Sydney, Rolls-Royce Power Systems announced on September 3. It is the third time that Vector Powersmart, a New Zealand-based energy solutions provider, has chosen Rolls-Royce for microgrid systems. In this installation the luxury carmaker’s business unit, Power Systems, will supply three battery

containers of MTU EnergyPacks with a total storage capacity of 4.2MWh and a power output of 4.8MW. The PV systems, diesel generators and battery containers will supply 11,000 householders on the island with grid support. The system will be integrated with local utility

Te Aponga Uira’s existing power plant. The other two RollsRoyce and Vector Powersmart projects on the Cook Islands were in the island of Aitutaki, where a microgrid has been operating since 2019, and the holiday resort of Glenorchy in New Zealand.

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Western Australia for battery facility in ‘lithium valley’ AMTE Power, the company behind the UK’s first gigafactory for lithium batteries, has set its sights on Western Australia for its next move, according to a memorandum of understanding signed on September 15. The MOU with infrastructure firm InfraNomics will look into the technical and commercial viability of setting up a lithium-ion cell manufacturing facility in the so-called ‘Lithium Valley’ in Western Australia.

Cameron Edwards, founder of InfraNomics, said the location of the proposed plant had direct access to critical raw materials, low-cost energy and major local industries. The focus of the plant is to produce and sell lithium-ion batteries, for industrial applications focused on energy storage, along with domestic and export distribution facilities, said a joint statement. In the UK the emphasis will be on providing batteries for EVs.

38 • Batteries International • Autumn 2020

Australia, home to the Hornsdale lithium battery built by Tesla that has briefly been the largest battery in the world, is a prime region for solar and storage systems, given the abundance of sunshine and the tremendous cost of power. In May, AMTE Power signed an MOU with Britishvolt to build a UK gigafactory at Bro Tathan in Wales. The two will work with Italian automotive designer Pininfarina.

be stacked according to required size. Energy Renaissance says it expects to export more than half of the cells made, with the remainder ‘enough to power every public school, hospital, fire station, SES unit and new homes built in Australia’.

AGL Energy plans 500MW battery installation in New South Wales Australian electricity firm AGL Energy has begun a process to transform the New South Wales Liddell coal-fired power station into a battery up to 500MW in size, on August 14 lodging a scoping report with the NSW Department of Planning Industry and Environment for a grid-scale battery system on the site. The battery, which will start at around 150MW before being expanded to 500MW, will be more than three times larger than the world’s current largest battery, the Tesla system at Hornsdale in South Australia. This is itself in the process of being expanded from 100MW/129MWh to 150MW/194MWh. AGL Energy’s project with the Liddell Power Station is part of an 850MW multisite integrated battery system that the company aims to develop by 2024. “Battery storage is critical to enhance the energy system’s flexibility and support the integration of renewable sources,” said AGL chief operating officer Markus Brokhof. “It removes one of the biggest limiting factors of renewables, by providing electricity any time but particularly during peak demand.

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ENERGY STORAGE NEWS: IN BRIEF Largest battery in the US connected to California ISO grid California Independent System Operator on July 13 said it had connected a 62.5MW battery to its San Diego County power grid, which supplies about 80% of the state, in the first phase of the Gateway project, which will ultimately add 250MWh to the grid when it is fully operational. CAISO says the installation signals an era of rapid battery growth for the operator over the next several years. “We are at a turning point for storage on our system,” said CAISO president and CEO Steve Berberich. “For many years, we have understood the promise of storage to take oversupply off the grid in the middle of the day and deliver it at the end of the day when the need is great. “With some of these large-capacity projects coming online, 2020 will be the transition year for battery storage to play a critical role in integrating renewables in the future.” USTDA provides Senegal with $1m grant for BESS study The US Trade and Development Agency has handed $1 million to African multicountry power company Lekela Energie Stockage to pay for a feasibility study into what would be one of the first standalone grid-scale batteries in Senegal, it announced on September 28. US businesses are being asked to submit proposals by the end of October to carry out the study. The battery, which is expected to have at least 60MWh of storage capacity, will store power generated by the Taiba N’Diaye wind farm, owned by Lekela, to help stabilize the grid as more renewables are integrated within it.

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Energy storage in 31% CAGR in run-up to 2030 Wood Mackenzie reckons that energy storage will grow at 31% CAGR and the world will have 741GWh of cumulative capacity by 2030. Of this some 70% will come from front of the meter deployments, according to a Wood Mackenzie report released on September 30. CAGR, admittedly from a very small base,

climbed at 66% from 2013 to date though deployments fell this year due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The report said the US, the largest adopter, will make up more than 49%, or 365 GWh, of this global capacity by 2030. Utility resource planning in the US is set to be a huge driver for deployments over the coming decade. China’s cumulative storage capacity, coming in

second after the US, will account for 21% or 153 GWh of global cumulative capacity by 2030. The growth will be exponential. NRStor C&I relaunches as Aypa Power Canadian energy storage supplier NRStor C&I, which was bought by investment firm Blackstone Energy Partners in March, has relaunched as Aypa Power, the firm announced on August 4.

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Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 39

ENERGY STORAGE NEWS: IN BRIEF

Blackstone Technology develops 3D printed lithium ion solid state batteries Blackstone Technology announced on September 16 that its proprietary 3Dprinting technology had advanced sufficiently to allow it to move into mass production of lithium ion solid-state batteries. “This could be a game changer for the development of solid-state bat-

teries,” says the firm. “An automated 3D-printing production process could save up to 70% of the traditional capex used to produce solid-state batteries.” Solid-state lithium batteries are widely thought to be the next generation of storage that would replace today’s lithium-ion batteries.

They are also safer as they do not use flammable liquid electrolytes. The firm says its 3Dprinting process offers advantages over conventional battery cell design that use liquid electrolytes: significantly lower costs; a higher level of production flexibility when it comes to the

First all-solid-state lithium pouch cells delivered for trial Lithium battery company Solid Power on October 8 said it had delivered its first solid-state lithium metal cells. The pouch cells, which have a solid sulfide electrolyte, were manufactured using the company’s rollto-roll pilot line and will target the EV sector, where they have already been vali-

dated by several OEMs, the company says. It has shipped more than 250 prototype cells and will deliver several hundred more to partners by the end of the year. While the company is targeting the electric vehicle and mobility market, other applications such as highaltitude satellites would

also be a good fit, says Will McKenna, marketing manager with Solid Power. He admitted that the batteries would not be a fit for energy storage systems because of cycle life, although they could potentially be a future target: “ESSs require a different value proposition compared to EVs,” he said.

2019 microgrid bonanza in the US 2019 was a bumper year for the microgrid industry in the US with 546 installed, more than in any other year, said research firm Wood Mackenzie in a report on July 22. However actual capacity was down 7% on 2018’s levels, signalling a new trend for smaller systems, typically under 5MW. “Most of the systems installed last year were below 5MW,” said research analyst and report author Isaac Maze-Rothstein. “This is part of a larger trend we are seeing. The

market has shifted from being led by projects above 5MW pre-2017 to smaller systems starting in 2017. Technology-neutral microgrid developers are taking notice and developing more modular designs.” Three organizations — Powersecure, Enchanted Rock and the American Red Cross — had 67% of the projects installed among them. “These are some of the first mass deployments of solar-plus-storage at nonresidential locations that are designed to power schools

“These are some of the first mass deployments of solar-plus-storage at non-residential locations that are designed to power schools for more than 24 hours” 40 • Batteries International • Autumn 2020

for more than 24 hours,” said Maze-Rothstein. The report did not paint a rosy picture of renewable resources, saying that 86% of this microgrid energy was generated by fossil fuels in 2019. “Although most of the power distributed via microgrids came from fossil fuel generation last year, we believe that microgrids in the US will become increasingly reliant on renewable technologies,” it said. “Through our five-year forecast we are optimistic that solar, wind, hydropower and energy storage will grow to account for 35% of annually installed capacity by 2025.” Up to 2025 pre-coronavirus forecasts are unlikely to be met, with 2020 the slowest start to any year since 2016.

format of the cell; a 20% increase in energy density and the amount of materials that do not store energy, such as aluminium and copper in the casing and connections, could be reduced by up to 10%.

Overhaul of interconnection rules in California to have major impact Sweeping adjustments to California’s Rule 21, the rules under which distributed energy resources and storage can connect with the state’s grid, will pave the way to more clean energy and storage being deployed in the State, the Interstate Renewable Energy Council said on September 24. IREC has been working since 2011 to change Rule 21, which the IREC says puts up barriers to potential interconnections with unnecessary and length approval procedures. It says the changes are a major milestone. “The revisions to Rule 21 encompass many issues but three of the most noteworthy include 1) the plan to incorporate data on the actual grid conditions at the locations of projects that request to interconnect; 2) an option for developers to propose grid project operating schedules that are based on those grid conditions; and 3) the addition of more advanced interconnection policies for interconnection of energy storage projects,” the IREC says. One of the adjustments to the rule is the Integration Capacity Analysis (ICA), which models the electricity grid and how it can best connect DERs, such as solar or storage, at specific locations.

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ENERGY STORAGE NEWS: IN BRIEF BayWa buys out Enable Energy German renewable energy and storage provider BayWa re has expanded its reach in North America with the buy-out of US commercial and industrial solar and energy firm Enable Energy Incorporated in September, the company said. “With 750MW of solar and wind projects under construction in California, North Carolina, Texas and Mexico, BayWa will pass 1GW of utility-scale installations in the Americas by the end of 2020,” the company said. “The addition of EEI’s pipeline will push BayWa’s total pipeline of solar and wind projects to more than 5GW in the region.” BayWa says the purchase will result in ‘multiple synergies’, particularly from EEI’s capability in C&I customers and utilities. IKEA rooftop to become first Australian commercial microgrid Swedish furniture and home accessories giant IKEA is to become a community microgrid in Australia, operating with 100% renewable energy from its rooftop solar and storage installation, it announced on October 14. IKEA Adelaide has been given A$1.95 million ($1.4 million) by the South Australian government’s renewable technology fund, and in the first stage of the project, 1.2MW of solar panels will be installed on the rooftop alongside 3.4MWh battery. This will supply 70% of the store’s electricity needs, and surplus stored power will be traded with the SA Power Networks during peak demand periods.

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Hawaii brings battery storage projects to 1GW/3.8GWH Applications for two new battery energy storage projects for the US island state of Hawaii were set in motion September 8, bringing the total number of battery storage projects under contract negotiation to 14. In terms of power this equates to 731MW/2.8GWh. Three of the 14 projects awaiting approval from the

Public Utilities Commission are for just batteries, but the rest are all solarplus-storage developments by a variety of firms including the Hawaiian Electric Company, Innergex, AES, Engie and EDF. If given the go-ahead, the projects will be completed in 2022 or 2023. A further seven solar-

plus-storage projects totalling 260MW/1GWh have already been approved by regulators and are estimated for completion by the end of 2022.

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ENERGY STORAGE NEWS: IN BRIEF Eos Energy to supply zinc cathode batteries to microgrid firm Verdant Zinc battery maker Eos Energy will supply its Zynth storage systems to Verdant Microgrid for microgrids in California, the firms said on October 8. Verdant installs microgrids in a range of situations, such as greenhouse and indoor agriculture operations, with roof-top systems that include snow melt functions as well as solar panels and battery storage. Eos uses a zinc hybrid cathode technology at the core of its stationary energy storage system, which it says uses just five core materials that are not rare earths and are commercially available and scalable. “The Zynth battery technology and Eos’ configuration provide platform Final Ad.pdfour 1 9/17/2019 3:13:17 PM

with fire safety and energy flexibility that we cannot get from lithium-ion,” said Robert Babcock, a partner at Verdant. Singapore to deploy first floating energy storage system A consortium led by energy firm Envision has been awarded a research grant by the island’s Energy Market Authority and Keppel Offshore & Marine Digital to deploy the first floating energy storage system for Singapore, the EMA said on October 26. The 7.5MW/7.5MWh ‘floating living lab’ will have enough capacity to power more than 600 four-room apartments and if successful it could be replicated across Singapore, the EMA said. “Besides supporting Singapore’s energy needs, the developed solution will

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have multiple applications such as supporting areas with intermittent power supply, and rapid deployment to provide emergency power for places or remote islands affected by power disruptions,” said Chris Ong, CEO of Keppel O&M. The $10 million grant will be used to pay for a battery stacking technology, which is the first of its kind in the island nation, reducing the physical size of the footprint required by up to 40%, the EMA said.

Recharge (the European industry association for advanced rechargeable and lithium batteries); the EPBA (European Portable Battery Association); PRBA (Portable Rechargeable Battery Association); EBRA (European Battery Recycling Association); ACEA (European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association); LEVA-EU (Light Electric Vehicle Association); and MDBTC (Medical Device Battery Transport Council).

First utility-scale ESS installed in Singapore by Wärtsilä Singapore’s Energy Market Authority has agreed to install the country’s first 2.4MW/2.4MWh utilityscale ESS by the Finnish energy firm Wärtsilä, working with Asian utility SP Group, it said on October 22. The move is another step towards Singapore’s goal to install 200MW of energy storage from 2025. The system will be used in the wholesale electricity market to mitigate intermittent power from solar-generated sources, and it will also reduce peak demand.

Russia’s Rosatom moves into developing lithium ion storage Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom has launched an energy storage business unit, RENERA, to develop lithiumion batteries for EVs and emergency power supply, renewable energy and load smoothing, the company said on October 8. RENERA was formed from Rosatom’s TVEL Fuel Company, when it was called Cathode Materials LLC. The agency’s press statement says it already has 120 projects in its portfolio for the supply of lithium-ion storage devices.

Associations form information platform to battery transport Battery organizations and associations have joined together to launch an information platform to ensure battery cells, batteries and anything with batteries in it are safely transported, tested and packaged, a group announcement said on September 1. EUROBAT is one of the organizations involved in the BatteryTransport. org scheme, which offers general information for shippers, transport operators and end-users, with two dedicated eBooks with all relevant instructions per transport mode for testing, packaging and labelling. The group also includes

Fluence snaps up Advanced Microgrid Systems Energy storage technology firm Fluence said on October 15 it had bought Advanced Microgrid Systems, the digital intelligence platform that provides optimized bidding software for utility-scale storage and generation applications. The purchase is being hailed as a combination that will help utilities and developers optimize their storage assets to make more money, improve grid reliability and efficiency and drive the move towards more sustainable, resilient power systems. The deal comes a year after the two companies struck up a partnership.

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VEHICLE TO GRID NEWS

London Bus2Grid facility to become world’s biggest V2G trial platform London bus garage Northumberland Park, one of the biggest electric bus facilities in Europe, is to become a ‘bus2grid’ facility with 100 buses plugging into the grid, energy company SSE Enterprise, leading the project, said on August 11. Also working on the project is Go Ahead London, the transport operator, battery maker BYD, Leeds University and UK Power Networks, the cables and

lines owner. The initial trial will use the batteries of 28 doubledecker buses which in total would restore 1MW of energy to the grid. “Bus2Grid will explore the commercial value and social benefits to the energy and passenger transport systems by developing services for the national grid, regional distribution network operators and transport authorities,” said SSE.

“The development and test of the underpinning technology is also an important objective of the trial.” “Developing a charging infrastructure that operates in two directions so that batteries can give back as well as take from the grid is an important part of this,” said Niall Riddell, the SSE director focused on smart systems innovation. According to UK Power Networks, there will be

more than 3.6 million EVs connected to its power network by as early as 2030, compared with less than 95,000 today. The UK government predicts the number in the UK as a whole could reach 10.6 million by then, surging to 36 million by 2040. The Faraday Institution reckons that 64% of all new cars bought in 2030 will be electric, rising to 95% by 2040.

Audi teams with Hager to research charging for vehicle-to-home German carmaker Audi and the Hager Group, a manufacturer of electrical installations, are working together to put bi-directional charging in 20 models of electric cars to enable vehicle-to-home functionality, the companies announced on July 23. Vehicle-to-home technology enables the car to become a source of electricity to the home — storing elec-

tricity at night when prices are low and discharging it to the home when the prices are higher. “The battery of an Audi e-tron could supply a single family home with energy for around one week independently,” said Martin Dehm, technical project manager for bidirectional charging at Audi. “Looking ahead, we want to make this potential ac-

cessible and make the electric car part of the energy transition as an energy storage device on four wheels.” The firms say their systems help to solve two problems that have been caused by the increasing reliance on more intermittent renewable electricity: that there will always be backup when power is not being generated; and that when there is over-capacity, more

ABB launches bi-directional charger for vehicle-to-grid Swiss technology giant ABB on October 13 launched an 11kW bi-directional charging system with joint venture DREEV, formed between the French utility EDF and software firm Nuvve, that it says will set a global benchmark for this kind of vehicle-to-grid charging. The product will be made available first in France, then the UK, Italy, Belgium and Germany. OEMs such as Audi and Nissan have already developed their own bi-directional chargers for EVs which are increasingly be-

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ing seen as a necessary part of the electricity network, supplying the grid with power when the EVs do not need the charge. EDF in November bought the UK battery storage and EV charging network firm Pivot Power to expand the firm’s footprint in this sector, saying it would enhance network reliability and boost the integration of renewable energy. Frank Mühlon, head of ABB’s global business for e-mobility and infrastructure solutions, said: “The development of this intelligent bi-directional charging

solution will be key in enabling the next step in the evolution of our e-mobility ecosystem and represents a key milestone in ABB’s sustainability strategy.” ABB says that while few electric cars support V2G now, it is expected to become a dominant technology within five years. “With the number of EVs on the road predicted to rise to 559 million by 2040 and 33% of the global fleet to be powered by electricity, the world’s energy ecosystem needs to evolve to support this transition,” the firm says.

storage is available. “The idea is as simple as it is ingenious: the electric vehicle’s high-voltage battery is not only charged from the home electricity supply for use as an energy source for the vehicle, it can also be used as a decentralized storage medium for the home power grid,” said a Hager official. He said that the percentage of ‘green’ electricity in the total mix in Germany had exceeded 50% for the first time in the first half of this year. Vehicle-to-home works in a similar way to the vehicle-to-grid systems that are already beginning to gather pace, particularly in the UK, where millions of pounds have been made available by the government for studies and pilot projects. One pioneer in the technology is Nissan, which 10 years ago foresaw potential problems with the new wave of electric vehicles that would suddenly require power from the grid. Since then the Japanese car giant has been working with companies such as OCO, Octopus EDF and Eon to begin exploring the V2G market.

Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 43

VPP NEWS

Sonnen and Wasatch Energy to launch virtual power plant projects in California German battery firm Sonnen and Wasatch Energy will launch a 60MWh virtual power plant project in California to connect up to 3,000 homes, the firms announced on August 27. The so-called Wasatch California COO Fleet I and II, comprising solar generation paired with Sonnen’s batteries, will make the VPP the largest apartment community-based VPP in the world, the firms claim. The batteries are Sonnen’s ecoLinx individual battery systems which can communicate with others in the community as one large battery asset to optimize the solar production, grid

use and individual apartment loads. They will also participate in the California demand response market and other grid services. Wasatch and external investors will fund the $130 million project. The fleets include seven communities throughout the state of California, with the first installations beginning this month. Wasatch and Sonnen worked together on a similar project that was unveiled almost exactly a year ago at a new apartment community in Utah. In a project with the utility Rocky Mountain, Power, more than 600 individual

Sonnen ecoLinx batteries with total storage capacity of 12.6MW will provide emergency back-up and

Generac buys Enbala to expand in energy storage sector and VPP US generator firm Generac has expanded its presence in the energy storage sector with the purchase of Enbala, a distributed energy resources technology company offering virtual power plant software, it said on October 5. Calling the move an ac-

celeration of its energy technology capabilities, Generac says the acquisition solidifies Generac’s position in Smart Grid 2.0 technologies and opens opportunities for the firm as a grid services provider. Generac made its first move into the sector in April

2019, when it bought the residential battery storage firm Pika Energy, which makes lead-acid and lithium batteries for back-up power applications. “We’re on the leading edge of a remarkable transformation of the electrical grid, moving from a dated

Redflow, CarbonTrack join forces to develop VPPs in South Africa Redflow, the zinc-bromine flow battery firm, said on July 22 it had signed an agreement with CarbonTrack, the smart energy system company, to join both firms’ technologies to enable the batteries to operate as virtual power plants. The first systems will be developed in South Africa. The firms, which are both Australian, say each side’s technology will complement the other, optimizing Redflow’s batteries using

CarbonTrack’s control algorithms to tailor each customer’s power needs to suit them. Target deployments include commercial and large residential deployments, as well as off-grid energy systems. Redflow says its zincbromine batteries, with the brand names ZBM2 and ZCell, are the smallest of their kind in the world, and offer heat tolerance, no capacity degradation with heavy cycling use and long operating life.

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“Redflow’s plug-andplay energy storage system, based on its zincbromine flow batteries, can shift and manage large volumes of energy,” said CarbonTrack managing director Spiros Livadaras. “We see great opportunities to work with CarbonTrack in South Africa and the potential to then target other markets such as off-grid deployments in Australia,” said Redflow CEO Tim Harris.

manage peak energy use. The Soleil Lofts apartments are scheduled to be completed this December.

and centralized power distribution model to one that will be digitized, decentralized and more resilient,” said Aaron Jagdfeld, Generac CEO. Enbala provides distributed energy optimization and control software to utilities and energy retailers with its Concerto platform, which monitors DERs and allows them to respond to real-time energy balancing needs. “Enbala is a proven virtual power plant and distributed energy management platform, and we believe their business model can be incredibly synergistic with our business,” said Jagdfeld. “Distributed generation is a critical next step for utility companies faced with meeting peak demand while also dealing with capacity constraints and regulatory restrictions. “Enbala and Generac will be able to harness the power of everything from solarplus-storage systems to our own generators to help limit the need for new power plants and maintain the convenience and flexibility of diversified power production.”

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COVER STORY: THE TROUBLE WITH LITHIUM — RECYCLING

Charge, recharge but then charge again

Recycling lead acid batteries is relatively straightforward and cost effective; lithium batteries present different challenges, which even the technology’s most ardent proponents hope will be overcome soon. Frank Millard reports. The perfect battery? It’s not there yet, but it will be one day. That’s long been the history of most modern technologies. And many aspects of the development of the lithium battery — think about its huge price falls over the past decade and

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the new range of applications being found for it — are part of this classic, it’ll-all-be-right-in-the-end thinking. Yes, technology has solved much of the price issues around lithium batteries but there is still the blind belief that science will solve two of its out-

standing problems — safety and recyclability. Each issue has its own economic implications. In terms of safety, when things go wrong with lithium they can do so quite spectacularly. Samsung admitted

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COVER STORY: THE TROUBLE WITH LITHIUM — RECYCLING The trouble is that since the first lithium cells came on to the market for Sony video cameras in 1992, little attention has been paid to what one did with them when the batteries became dud. The fundamental problem associated with the recycling of lithium batteries comes from their design, which was driven by contemporary requirements rather than anticipation of future need. The scientists and engineers did not design the batteries to save the planet or arrest carbon output — energy density, power, weight, size, longevity and cost were far greater priorities than eventual disposal and potential reuse. Nor were thoughts about sustainability or recycling uppermost in the minds of scientists and engineers when battery technology went multi-chemistry. Lithium was plentiful enough for commercial needs. Lithium, copper, nickel, manganese and cobalt were included from the chemistry set as required. Who would have sat down 20 or 30 years ago to design a sustainable battery for a sustainable future? However radical or apparently all embracing, disruptive technology is itself disrupted over time, but only after everything has had it built in. Once that happens the problem of disposal catches up with it as it has now with the near-ubiquitous lithium-ion battery.

Recovery

at the time of its worldwide recall of the Galaxy Note 7 that it would cost the firm $5.3 billion. And in terms of recyclability, anecdotes of warehouses stacking up with used lithium cells are testimony to the fact that around half of the most common type of battery cannot be economically recycled. Of the six variants of lithium battery chemistries, only three — those that contain cobalt, manganese and nickel — can be recycled profitably.

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While a circular economy was not originally conceived for lithium batteries, the contradiction of an unsustainable key to sustainable energy use invited regulation. The EU Battery Directive (2006/66/ EC) mandated that a minimum 50% of a battery must be recycled. Although around 90% is possible, the actual percentage is likely to be confined to what maximizes return against the price of the process of recovery. Put simply: what does it cost to recycle the battery and what does one get back? For lead batteries this has never been a problem. Smelting may be expensive but the end lead product at say $2,000/tonne makes the process profitable. At least, under normal circumstances. Commercial viability determines what is recycled and therefore decreasing recycling costs are a vital component of current environmental aspirations.

Faraday research fellow Gavin Harper: “We look at the whole process, from where the battery pack is removed from the vehicle, all the way through to producing materials to make the next generation of the batteries”

The Directive also stipulates that member states must ensure cycling is fit for purpose throughout and encourage improvements to the environmental impact of batteries, restricting the inclusion of elements such as mercury and cadmium, for example. Meanwhile, in the US Li-ion batteries are classed as hazardous waste and so their safe disposal is essential. To this end the Faraday Institution’s ReLiB Li-ion battery recovery, recycling and reuse project in the UK, for example, aims to eventually save almost 100% of EV battery components. The project covers a range of different technologies that demonstrate potential in improving the efficiency of lithium-ion battery recycling. “We look at the whole process, from where the battery pack is removed from the vehicle, all the way through to producing materials to make the next generation of the batteries,” says Gavin Harper, Faraday Institution Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham in England.

THE CHALLENGES The challenges facing recyclers are: low volumes of Li-ion batteries; high capital costs for pyrometallurgical routes; no standardized battery design; a fast evolving battery chemistry; a lack of better sorting technologies; no established method for separating electrode materials; and no legislation in place driving industries to design batteries for recycling.

Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 47

Different research groups within the project have investigated approaches ranging from pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy through to direct recycling and even biological recovery of cathode materials. “One particularly stand-out feature of our project is a group that is looking at the robotic removal and disassembly of lithium-ion battery packs,” says Harper. “One area where we think it is possible to make great progress is in removing as much menial manual labour from the process of removing, gateway testing and disassembling batteries.” Recycling is particularly important now as early 21st century electric vehicles come out of their warrantied first life. Europe and North America is behind China and Korea, which ac-

COURTESY: ARGONNE

COVER STORY: THE TROUBLE WITH LITHIUM — RECYCLING

Inside the Argonne National Laboratory: quality control of lithium batteries

DEVELOPMENTS AND PROCESSES There are several processes that have been developed and refined such as thermal treatment to separate and remove battery components often combined with hydrometallurgical processes to improve recovery rate or efficiency. New processes and refinements continue the quest for viable recycling. Some of the latest may sound fanciful — one of the latest being discussed uses orange peel and citric acid, according to Singapore researchers. Others are boasting of special machines that use hydrometallurgical processes to pull out the cobalt and manganese and promise, as early as next year — though no scientific explanation has been given — to profitably recycle lithium iron phosphate batteries. Researchers led by Sulalit Bandyopadhyay, post-doctoral researcher as the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, have developed hydrometallurgical routes for the extraction of cobalt, copper, nickel and manganese from mixed electrodes (cathode and anode) after initial discharging, dismantling and physical separation. In the last year or so, there has been research into the direct recycling of cathode material by breaking it down to its elemental components, such as lithium, nickel and cobalt, says Jim Greenberger,

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executive director, NAATBatt International. “You can directly recycle it into new cathode material that can be used as feedstock in new batteries without the processing that would have to take place if you were just going to recycle it into lithium particulate or nickel sulphide, or whatever needs to be reprocessed to make it into new battery material.” Linda Gaines, chief scientist at the ReCell Center at Argonne National Laboratory, sees upgrading old cathode formulations as a technical obstacle to be overcome: “The biggest challenge will be to convince battery manufacturers that recycled material can consistently meet specifications. We are also recovering electrolytes and salts, anodes and binders.” She says they have developed numerous processes, including ones to separate active materials from current collectors, anode materials from cathode materials, and different cathode materials from each other. “We can also restore full function to degraded cathode material, and we are working on upgrading obsolete cathode formulations to match new ones.” Meanwhile, the ReLiB project is looking at a variety of solutions, including robotics and automation. Harper says the importance is in recognizing how different the process of taking something apart is to the process of putting something

together. “If you think about traditional industrial robotics, a robot on a production line is relatively ‘dumb’ — it deals with goods that are presented to it that are uniform and all conform to a standard, and repeats a pre-programmed set of processes to manufacture the item. By contrast, a robot dealing with the ‘un-manufacturing’ of electric vehicle batteries has to deal with all manner of complexities and challenges. For example, we don’t know what has happened to the vehicle over its lifecycle. “It could have been subject to a botched repair where the bolts that fasten the battery pack have had their heads rounded. There will be corrosion over time, things will seize into position over the years. It may have been involved in some sort of accident distorting the battery pack and the position of the bolts. This means that were a ‘dumb’ robot to go to the point at which it expects to find a bolt, it may not be in the correct place, or difficult to remove.” says Harper. He also says there is the enormous variety to contend with. A car manufacturer generally manufactures a small handful of models on a production line. It is configured to deal with limited variety. However, given the vast range of different electric vehicles on the market (and manufacturers all have different form factors for their battery

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COVER STORY: THE TROUBLE WITH LITHIUM — RECYCLING count for about 70% of global battery recycling. Valuable lithium and cobalt extracted from battery cathodes retain their electrochemical properties intact in a new storage device as if freshly mined and so incentives are there. Further to legislation are financial incentives and in 2019 the US Department of Energy (DOE) announced plans for a $20.5 million investment in lithium-ion battery recycling, with the goal of boosting capture rates to 90%, from a rate of less than 5%. The investment included $15 million to create a Lithium Battery R&D Recycling Center in partnership with Argonne National Laboratory, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

packs), within those packs, modules are arranged in different ways, and they use different types of cells such as pouch, prismatic and cylindrical cells. “The process needs to be very flexible to accommodate this enormous variety.” To that end, one of the developments of the project, which will enable more efficient recycling, is a delamination process that has been trialled at the University of Leicester, which allows for very rapid separation of the cathode material from the electrode foil. Harper believes the technology could improve the throughput of cleaner recycling processes. Wen Zhang, an associate professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, and his team use nonharmful organic acids (eg citric acid and acetic acid) and organic aqua regia to dissolve battery solids ready for recovery. “Lithium, cobalt oxides and lithium nickel oxide are readily dissolved in the acid, achieving total dissolution within half an hour,” he says. “With the separation of the dissolved lithium either in ionic solutions or in solid forms, the organic acid has potential to be reused instead of disposing of them to avoid negative environmental impacts. You also need to reduce the dose of the acid while achieving decent levels of extracted lithium or cobalt ions to save money and save time.

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Cost effectiveness

Operators need to retain as much of the value of the material as possible when recycling lithium batteries. The streams of value include the intrinsic value of the chemicals that make up the cathode materials, plus the enhanced value when those materials are configured into the structure of a battery cathode material. So, says Harper, recovering the ma-

terial is one thing, but if it is possible to recover the cathode material in the form in which it is used in the battery, and put this into a new battery without loss of performance, this would be a significant step forward. “There are a number of firms that have developed proprietary technologies for ‘relithiating’, or restoring, the performance of this used cathode material.

However radical or apparently all embracing, disruptive technology is itself disrupted over time, but only after everything has had it built in ... Once that happens the problem of disposal catches up with it as it is starting to do now with the near-ubiquitous lithium-ion battery

“One challenge is to make the technology safe and simple to follow and replicate to effectively motivate and enable this new business in society. “We don’t want to make extraction complicated unnecessarily,” he says. An alternative to these processes is

reuse in less demanding applications than those for which they were originally used, for example in solar panels, or in the case of autobatteries, Volvo bus batteries, for example, adapted and repurposed by Stena Recycling subsidiary Batteryloop, then placed into

“One challenge is to make the technology safe and simple to follow and replicate it to effectively motivate and enable this new business in society. We don’t want to make extraction complicated unnecessarily” — Wen Zhang, New Jersey Institute of Technology

Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 49

COVER STORY: THE TROUBLE WITH LITHIUM — RECYCLING “For certain battery chemistries — most particularly lithium iron phosphate — the value of the materials is low. The economics of trying to recover the raw materials are very challenging, but a better proposition may be the recycling of the whole cathode material.” Linda Gaines, chief scientist at the ReCell Center at Argonne National Laboratory, refers to cost effectiveness as their key mission, which she says they are accomplishing in two ways. “First, we are recovering cathode material, which retains its value even as there is less and less value in the constituent elements. Other recycling technologies rely on cobalt content for profitability. “Second, we are recovering as many of the other cell constituents as possible. These will provide additional revenue, or at least allow us to avoid costly disposal as waste.” Sulalit Bandyopadhyay, a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, believes a combination of pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgical routes might be one way to be cost effective. Other ways include an increased volume of batteries for recycling, automated dismantling of batteries, and the development of a robust procedure that can take in different battery chemistries and sizes. Dirk Spiers, founder and president

Sulalit Bandyopadhyay: “A combination of pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgical routes might be one way to be cost effective”

of Spiers New Technologies, thinks recycled materials will be needed to continue the ramp up for electrification. He believes recycling will become an important source and therefore there will be an economic balance. Scale, innovation and competition are key and all three are happening, he says. Understanding the composition and state of an individual battery is crucial to its recycling. Some of the challenges are sufficient knowledge and control-

ling what gets recycled, says Spiers. “Then there is knowing what you put in your recycling line. For that we rely on our computer management software platform, ALFRED. “We scan a part number or serial number and know the composition of the battery pack. The other question is if you need to discharge a pack/cell and how you do it. But that relates again with what type of batteries you work with.”

BETTER COLLECTION TO REDUCE COSTS Jim Greenberger, executive director, NAATBatt International, points out that much of the work associated with recycling is not in the actual

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process of material recovery, but in the mundane question of how used batteries are collected, transported efficiently and recycled efficiently at scale. So, finding a way to develop systems to centralize and make the collection and transportation of batteries more efficient would be helpful. Although the collection rate on end of life lithium ion batteries will be high when vehicles go to approved treatment facilities, more of a challenge will be consumer lithium ion batteries, which are small and easily misplaced, says Harper. “Think of the ‘mobile phones in a drawer’ scenario… so ensuring consumer batteries make it into the right channels is a bigger challenge.”

Dirk Spiers, Spiers New Technology: There are always two design objectives which “work against each other: The objective for battery manufacturers is to make the cheapest possible battery (provided that quality and safety parameters are met). That means they need to use low costs and therefore often plentiful ingredients. A recycler’s job becomes easier when there are high value materials in a cell and that that there is an easy way to extract these. So often these two things sit in direct opposition”

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COVER STORY: THE TROUBLE WITH LITHIUM — RECYCLING Closed loop

For a truly closed-loop in lithium battery recycling, as much material value and structure must be retained. The technology that looks closest to a true closed loop is direct recycling, says Harper, where value is created rather than destroyed. However, there are questions. “For direct recycling, there remain substantial technical challenges in being able to disassemble batteries cost effectively — furthermore, there are also some social-business model questions that this approach would raise. “For example, if a recycling plant processes batteries from a range of different manufacturers, how might one manufacturer feel about making and warranting a ‘recycled’ battery that contains the recycled cathode material from another manufacturer? Surely there would need to be robust processes to ensure quality control and prevent contamination. “Where there is a more immediate opportunity to close the loop is in the short-loop recycling of production scrap and quality control fail cells. No process is perfect and manufacturing batteries results in production scrap. Because this could potentially be of known provenance, there is an opportunity to get closed loop processes right with scrap material within the manufacturing process.”

Removing disincentives

Lead acid battery construction and composition contribute to its ease and economy of recycling. lithium batteries require a more complex recycling process to recover the value from them. The value of lead acid batteries is also an incentive for collection. “If we can optimize the economics of LiB recycling, then we can ensure there are no disincentives to recycling, says Harper. Vasant Kumar has been working on lead acid battery recycling at the University of Cambridge and has developed a hydrometallurgical process, which enables regeneration and upcycling of end-of-life lead acid battery paste. He is sceptical about the chances of lithium battery recycling catching up. “The lithium battery supply chain is not as established when it comes to recycling. Battery chemistries are not harmonized, meaning that several different chemistries exist and are being developed — so a single process that can manage all lithium batteries from

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“We are recovering cathode material, which retains its value even as there is less and less value in the constituent elements. Other recycling technologies rely on cobalt content for profitability” — Linda Gaines, Argonne National Laboratory

a recycling point of view is not a realistic concept. “Moreover, lithium batteries possess several important elements, including lithium itself, that are not currently recycled, whereas lead can be recycled from end-of-life lead acid batteries with minimal loss.” Spiers is more optimistic: “Remember that lead acid had a very long time to get this far. With lithium-ion we are only just starting. So, I am confi-

dent that we will get there.” ‘Design for recycling’ may be the best way forward. This is where the batteries and packs are constructed to make them relatively easy to pull apart and to be recycled at the end of life, so reducing time and cost. However, the market is not communicating to manufacturers to do that now because it is too early. This may be an area where some regulation is likely and could be useful, says Goodridge.

“Lithium battery chemistries are not harmonized, meaning that several different chemistries exist and are being developed —a single process that can manage all lithium batteries from a recycling point of view is not a realistic concept” — Vasant Kumar, Cambridge University www.batteriesinternational.com

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INNOVATION. PERFORMANCE. RELIABILITY.

COVER STORY: THE TROUBLE WITH LITHIUM — RECYCLING There are many things manufacturers could do to enable easier recycling, says Gaines. She suggests that an important change would be the use of reversible joining technologies at the pack and module level. “Standardization of module design would enable a variety of packs, but still facilitate design of automated disassembly for the modules,” she says. “Similarly, standardization of cell design and materials would facilitate recycling. At the cell level, use of bind-

ers soluble in environmentally friendly solvents, or developing binder-less electrodes, would enable easier separation of cell materials.”

And the consequence was?

Back in the day, prospectors made a living panning for gold, but not necessarily a fortune. The profit motive is a significant factor in recycling. We can all be environmentalists with the right amount of government investment or commercial return, but personal diffi-

culties arise otherwise. The claims of academics and businesses may not be wild or that exaggerated, but research funding and sales are met with hyperbole and PR, rather than always firm solutions. Science is moving in the right direction and can solve most problems with enough time and money. As to whether the recycling of lithium batteries can ever be viable and cost effective, the answer in the long term is yes, says Greenberger,

IS SUSTAINABLE TECHNOLOGY SUSTAINABLE? Could attempts to recycle and reuse lithium batteries just be an attempt to patch up a failed model with a limited future as the answer to most of our environmental problems? Michael Kelly, emeritus Prince Philip professor of technology at the University of Cambridge, says that the research phase of a topic is normally quick compared with the phase to establish the low-cost high yield processes for manufacture — in this case the recycling of batteries as a manufacturing process. “The problems of lithium batteries are a function of all batteries. They are fine for small amounts of electrical energy and power, but woefully inadequate by orders of magnitude for energy and power at the metropolitan scale.” Kelly is sceptical that exclusively carbon-neutral solutions could ever be cost effective for any national economy or, indeed, practically achievable,

particularly at scale. “The use for high value materials is profligate for renewable energy. Today the manufacture of a kilogram of solar panel or wind turbine contributes of order of 2W-4W to a fully functioning panel or turbine. One kilogram of high-value steel in a Siemens combined cycle gas turbine generates of order 2kW, or if hooked up to a nuclear reactor, 1kW. There are no research prospects that will seriously narrow the gap.” Likewise there is the huge energy cost of making lithium batteries if all things from mining, shipping and processing are included. One recent estimate suggested that it took 400kWh to make 1kWh of Li-ion battery, plus the CO2 emissions — 75kg per 1kWh (35 litres of gasoline) in manufacturing and recycling a battery. Yet producing 1kWh of electricity from burning coal produces 1kg of CO2.

Another environmental hazard is obtaining lithium salts In South America, where the biggest problem is water. More than half of the world’s supply lies beneath the Atacama desert, which extends through Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. It is one of the driest places on earth. To extract lithium, miners drill holes in the salt flats and pump mineralrich brine to the surface. They let this evaporate for several months, creating a mixture of lithium, manganese, potassium and borax salts. This is then filtered and placed into another evaporation pool. After a year or so, the mixture has been filtered enough to extract lithium carbonate. This uses a lot of water — approximately 500,000 gallons per tonne of lithium. In Chile’s Salar de Atacama, mining uses 65% of the region’s water, hurting local farming and crop yields.

More than half of the world’s lithium supply lies beneath the Atacama desert which extends through Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. It is one of the driest places on earth.

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COVER STORY: THE TROUBLE WITH LITHIUM — RECYCLING who gives the example of the automotive industry. “It would be anomalous if it didn’t figure out a way to recycle the lithium ion battery on a cost-effective basis. I am not sure exactly how we are going to get there, but it would be odd if we didn’t get there eventually, given how efficient the automotive industry is at recycling every other major component of the vehicle. “In the short term, it is going to be a challenge for reasons such as how the output of lithium-ion batteries can pay for the cost of the recycling itself. You can pay for the cost of recycling

a lead acid battery by selling the lead that comes out of the process. “It retains its market value and therefore is a very clean process of recycling, so I should imagine we will eventually figure out a way of doing that with lithium-ion batteries. That

said, there is a question that is causing worry, which is what that recycling is going to look like. “They will be recycled, I’m almost 100% confident of that, but not sure how and that is what we are struggling with right now.”

“For direct recycling, there remain substantial technical challenges in being able to disassemble batteries cost effectively — furthermore, there are also some social-business model questions that this approach would raise.

LiFePO4 BATTERIES TO DOMINATE ENERGY STORAGE MARKET FOR YEARS TO COME Lithium iron phosphate is poised to become the dominant stationary storage chemistry by 2030, overtaking lithium batteries that use nickel-manganese-cobalt-oxide, according to analysis from Wood Mackenzie released on August 17. LFP batteries, which accounted for 10% of the ESS market in 2015, will rise to more than 30% by the end of the decade. “The ESS market has heavily relied on EV batteries in the past but changing performance requirements will lead to an evolution of separate markets,” says Mitalee Gupta, a senior analyst at Wood Mackenzie. “Since 2010, the rapid rise in demand for EVs has driven down the cost of lithium-ion batteries by more than 85%. Historically, the ESS market has mostly deployed NMC batteries. In late 2018 and early 2019, demand for NMC batteries for energy storage industry grew swiftly, outstripping the available supply. “While there was a shortage of NMC batteries in the storage market, there were plenty of LFP batteries

“Aspects like high recycling capabilities and high frequency will take precedence over energy density and reliability for the ESS market.” — Mitalee Gupta, Wood Mackenzie

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available — with capacity mostly in China. “As lead times for NMC availability grew and prices remained flat, LFP vendors began tapping into NMC constrained markets at competitive prices, thus making LFP an attractive option for both power and energy applications.” The rise in LFP batteries is likely to cause a recycling headache in the future. NMC batteries contain cobalt and manganese — both metals that are of value when recycling. Nickel also has a limited value. LFP batteries, however, have little intrinsic value in their composition. The price of lithium, iron and phosphorous is low and the cost of recycling is high. Since all lithium batteries have to be recycled — they cannot be dumped into landfill as they can pollute groundwater — the recycling process creates little of value. This is unlike lead, where the cost of recycling creates a value stream. Demand from EVs and ESS will rocket in the coming years, says

Wood Mackenzie. However, evolving performance priorities will create a divergence between the types of batteries used for storage and those used for EV applications. OEMs will begin to innovate and specialize their product offerings. “Aspects like high recycling capabilities and high frequency will take precedence over energy density and reliability for the ESS market,” says Gupta. “Cost and safety will continue to top the mind of battery vendors for multiple applications.” Wood Mackenzie says EVs will continue to take the lion’s share of global lithium-ion battery demand over the next 10 years. Demand from portable electronics will drop from 26% in 2020 to 6% in 2030, as both EVs and ESS markets begin to take off. While LFP will steal the show for ESS applications, Wood Mackenzie says the use of LFP will remain popular within the Chinese EV market before breaking into the global passenger EV sector. In the early years of lithium battery development the Chinese government legislated that all batteries should be LFP but later changed its mind. The chemistry is expected to retain more than 20% of EV battery installations through 2025. “Improvements in gravimetric energy density combined with cell-to-pack technology is the key to LFP now becoming a more attractive proposition in the passenger EV space. “Not only will cost and safety be a benefit, but OEMs won’t have to worry about issues surrounding the supply of cobalt and nickel,” the firm says.

Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 55

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COVER STORY: THE TROUBLE WITH LITHIUM — SAFETY

Lithium: a fiery if uncomfortable truth With one lithium battery fire a week on US planes, should they be used in buildings? Or anywhere where safety is a primary concern. In the early days of Tesla — so the rumours went — whenever a car broke down the repair crew immediately had to cover it with a tarpaulin with strict instructions for it not to be removed until the vehicle arrived at the repair shop. Whether this was true or not the point was a simple one. In the early days of electric vehicles, image was vital to success. Mostly the lithium battery industry bided its time, waiting for the bad stories to fade away. Stories about battery fires on Boeing Dreamliners, a batch of exploding EVs in a tropical storm and even the GM explosion in 2014 that

“People have been going blindly down this road, that they have to have lithium ion. Yet it’s killed people!” — George Brilmyer

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killed one person and wounded eight more largely came and went. But one source of lithium fire has slowly grabbed the headlines. From January 2006, when the US Federal Aviation Administration began keeping records, until the end of 2019, 264 incidents had been recorded on aeroplanes where lithium batteries exploded or caught fire. Over 14 years that’s an average of 19 per year, but the numbers take on a different meaning when you consider the fact that 54% of them happened in the last three years. In the first month of 2020, four incidents were recorded, and if the Covid clampdown hadn’t happened, that accelerated pace meant a fire on a US airplane at practically one every week. And that’s not counting the other fires on planes outside the FAA jurisdiction. The rest of the world in other words. Mostly, these are little fires — the odd laptop, cellphone USB charger are the culprits or even e-cigarettes which aren’t even permitted to be switched on,” says George Brilmyer, R&D manager at battery separator firm Microporous. He is an expert in lithium battery fires, having invented a portable box device that contains them when they go off. “A laptop has six lithium batteries in it,” he says. “A Tesla will have 6,000. But a utility-scale battery could have 60,000, all heating up in massive containers when the air conditioning that is supposed to keep them cool breaks down, or something else happens.” The explosion at an Arizona Public Service facility in April 2019 showed the devastation and danger that could happen (see accompany-

ing boxed item). In South Korea, 522 grid installations were dismantled after a string of incidents beginning in 2017 saw 23 catch fire. “These were installed by reputable firms,” says Brilmyer. “But people have been going blindly down this road, that they have to have lithium ion. Yet it’s killed people! “We have been researching how to deal with lithium ion fires since 1994 when the first one blew. Lithium iron phosphate was supposed to do that, it was supposed to make it safer. But it’s just a version of lithium ion. The electrolyte in the battery is still flammable, like fingernail polish remover. “Water doesn’t put it out but if you dump the entire battery in cold water, you cool the reaction down and it stops temporarily. In a Tesla, the fire goes out, the fire department puts foam and water on the vehicle, it stops burning, they tow it back to the repair shop and it explodes and burns the repair shop down. “What they are doing now is bringing an open-top dumpster, putting a plastic pseudo bath tub in it, filling it with water, getting a crane to lift the whole car and put it into this portable swimming pool, and after it’s been in there for an hour you’re pretty safe.” It is possible that not all the claims of batteries causing the flames are entirely accurate. A report by market intelligence firm S&P Global reported that investigations into the South Korean fires showed the batteries themselves were not in fact the cause of the blazes. “An expert panel has blamed poor quality installations, faulty operat-

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COVER STORY: THE TROUBLE WITH LITHIUM — SAFETY

ing procedures, missing protections against electrical shocks and lack of overall control systems, several South Korean media outlets reported,” S&P Global said. “The probe also revealed manufacturing defects in lithium-ion battery cells from one undisclosed manufacturer, but did not find that those flaws ignited the fires.” However, electrical engineering professor Kin Jung-hoon who headed the investigating committee was quoted as saying that battery manufacturers were still being held to account: “Battery manufacturers, system integrator companies and power conversion system companies are all at fault,” he is reported to have said.

Lithium ban in NYC

In New York City, which operates its own codes independently from that of New York State, lead acid batteries are the only type that can be installed inside buildings, including in garages next to people’s homes. Where lithium batteries are concerned, while not specifically banned per se, “there is no defined process to get them permitted”, says Jason Doling, assistant director of the Distributed Energy Resource team with NYSERDA. New York City rules, guidelines and procedures for safe outdoor battery installation, operation and maintenance cover lithium-ion, flow, nickel cadmium and metal hydride batteries — but the rules are explicit that they” do not govern indoor battery installations. “Because of their energy density, lithium-ion batteries are increasingly being used in a wide range of applications, including consumer products,” say the rules, published by the Mayor’s office. “However, lithium-ion batteries are subject to thermal runaway, which occurs when the heat generated by a malfunctioning energy cell or module causes others to fail, potentially generating intense fires and fires that reignite after being extinguished. Various highly publicized incidents have illustrated the fire safety concerns associated with

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lithium-ion batteries.” “In New York State there have been places where lithium has or will be installed indoors, but New York City follows its own fire code and has these concerns about putting it indoors today,” says NYSERDA’s Doling. “They really want to see testing and listings through underwriters’ labs before they’ll see those systems go indoors. But I don’t want to say that they can’t be installed safely because that’s not true. “When we talk about what’s in the pipeline, most lithium systems are inside a structure, a big 40ft shipping container, or inside a big building that’s specifically constructed to house batteries. “There are clearly Li-ion systems being installed in special purpose buildings and even in residential installations in places throughout the state, it’s just that New York City is highly sensitive to these things because of how dense the building environment is.” “It’s important to recognize that even if other lithium technologies have some attributes that make them less susceptible to thermal runaway and explosions, the self-heating that causes thermal runaway is possible in all types

“NYC has these concerns about putting lithium indoors today.” – Jason Doling of lithium technologies,” says Ben Kaun, program manager for energy storage and distributed generation with EPRI. “There really needs to be a systematic view of safety. There are other industries who deal with hazardous materials and mechanisms all the time — but it does require a serious system.” “The simple fact is that lithium with an organic electrolyte in energy density is always going to be more dangerous,” says Geoffrey May, principal of Focus Consulting in the UK. continued on page 60 >

“The bottom line is that if you are storing energy, it’s inherently unsafe, it doesn’t matter what currency you store it in.” — Stanley Whittingham. Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 59

COVER STORY: THE TROUBLE WITH LITHIUM — SAFETY > continued from page 59

“If you are putting a battery in commercial premises I think there would be some insurance concerns there — would you be happy if you had such a large battery in the basement of an office complex?” Doling says: “It’s important to put fire risk in batteries, including lithium-ion, into perspective. “There are about 150,000 vehicle fires a year in the US and we’re still driving cars that run on gasoline. We have natural gas explosions but we’re still using natural gas. The events get a lot of attention because it’s a new technology, but there are multiple gigawatts of lithium-ion systems operating today.” Lithium battery inventor and nobel laureate Stanley Whittingham says: “The bottom line is that if you are storing energy, it’s inherently unsafe, it doesn’t matter what currency you store it in. “If the dam breaks with pumped hydro you’re in trouble, or if your gas catches fire, and lead batteries are just as bad if not worse, because they overcharge, generate hydrogen and explode — and they’re full of sulfuric acid as well. “People have to be trained in how to deal with them, and it depends on their size. On aeroplanes they put them in iced water. In some cases, like Teslas, it’s best just to let them burn. In gas cars you have the same issue — put too much water on them and you spread the gasoline everywhere. “Labs have protocols, fire chiefs have protocols, training symposia, safety officers — so they know what a lithium battery is and how to handle it. “The best place for batteries in buildings is the roof, but fire chiefs don’t want them higher than their ladders can reach, which is a problem for skyscrapers as you’d have to put them on the fourth or fifth floor and make the entire building fireproof. “But there’s no question that we need storage. New York is doing a big study to see what’s best. Hospitals, for example, all want storage built in them. “There are temperature problems, yes — but all these things can be solved.”

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Lithium’s burning, fire, fire! The implications of the lithium battery fire and explosion at a 2MW/2MWh Arizona Public Service facility that wounded four firefighters in April 2019 have yet to be digested. The reasons for the cause of the fire are contested and only the firefighters’ independent report drew clear conclusions. The incident (and a previous fire with a battery management system in 2012) prompted Arizona regulator Sandra Kennedy to write to the APS, recommending lithium batteries were not used at utility scale. She noted that that a 250MW lithiumion battery had energy equivalent to 215 tonnes of TNT. APS, meanwhile, has remained committed to the technology and plans further lithium ESS deployment. Last year’s explosion and the cold reporting that four firefighters were

injured disguised the seriousness of the blaze and explosion. Reading the subsequent report documented by the Underwriters Laboratories Firefighter Safety Research Institute, released this July, paints a far more vivid picture. The HAZMAT team that attended the fire were recording the hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide coming from the storage plant. While opening the door there was a sudden explosion. One firefighter was thrown 73 feet (25 metres) by the blast, passing through a chain-link fence into a bush that caught fire. Another fireman was thrown 30 feet. Both were unconscious, two had to be rushed to hospital by helicopter and another two by ambulance. The report and subsequent recommendations — the decommissioning of the ESS took two months to

“When considering a scenario in which an ESS facility is constructed on a high elevation level of a highrise building in the center of a metropolitan area, the total impact and the high number of potential victims in the event of a fire or deflagration event becomes staggering” — Firefighter Safety Research Institute

Looks safe and secure: the APS facility before the fire

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COVER STORY: THE TROUBLE WITH LITHIUM — SAFETY achieve — make fascinating reading. The firefighter institute’s recommendations are summarized in the attached box. The report also concludes with a warning.

As this type of installation is constructed in closer proximity to densely populated areas, the number of civilians who may be affected by a fire or deflagration incident will increase. When considering a scenario in which an ESS facility is constructed on a high elevation level of a high-rise building in the center of a metropolitan area, the total impact and the high number of potential victims in the event of a fire or deflagration event becomes staggering. A final report by risk management company DNV GL, submitted on July 27, concluded that “the fire and explosion, which injured four firefighters and destroyed the utility’s BESS and container, was initiated by an internal cell failure within one battery cell.” “It is believed to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty that this failure was caused by an internal cell defect, specifically abnormal lithium metal deposition and dendritic growth within the cell,” says the report, written by Davion Hill, energy storage leader with DNV GL. It also says that the fire suppression system installed in the BESS was working at first, but was not designed to prevent or stop cascading thermal runaway. “As a result, thermal runaway cascaded and propagated from cell 7-2 through every cell and module in Rack 15, via heat transfer,” the report says. “This propagation was facilitated by the absence of adequate thermal barrier protections between battery cells, which may have stopped or slowed the propagation of thermal runaway.” After cascading from module to module, flammable gases were released within the system, and when firefighters opened the door to the BESS after three hours, the gases were ignited and exploded. The report was commissioned by the Arizona Public Service Company after an explosion at the McMicken Battery Energy Storage Facility, which had been in operation for just over two years. LG Chem, the Korean firm that made the batteries, perhaps unsurprisingly rejected the claims. The battery was made by Korean

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battery giant LG Chem, and integrated by the energy storage systems provider Fluence. It had been used to integrate solar energy with grid services. However, LG Chem, with engineering and scientific consulting firm Exponent, on July 30 sent a 137-page letter plus appendices to the Arizona Corporation Commission rejecting the findings, saying the APS analysis did not produce evidence of metallic lithium plating being the cause of thermal runaway, and that their tests did not show internal cell failure. “Rather, the data collected and analyzed point to initiation of cell thermal runaway through intense heating of the incident cells caused by an external heat source such as external electrical arcing on Rack 15,” the letter says, going on to claim that the DNV GL report ignores evidence to this effect. “It is our current preliminary opinion that the analysis and testing performed to date does not support a single cell failure initiating the BESS event.” But the fires continue and the most recent in Liverpool, England rarely even reach the national press. In mid-

HAZMAT team at the Arizona fire just before the door was opened. One firefighter was thrown 25 metres by the force of the explosion, the other 10 metres.

September thermal runaway at a 20MW battery energy storage system kept local firefighters busy for half a day. The Carnegie Road project was Danish power company Ørsted’s first standalone grid-connected battery project, built using storage system equipment supplied by the now-defunct Energy Solutions division of NEC Corporation, and was housed in three containers.

MITIGATING THE HUMAN COST The factors that contributed to the fire will also prove instructive in providing ways to deal with conflagrations like this in the future. • The fire and smoke detection systems were not required by code to include, and did not include, sensors that provided information about the presence of flammable gases. There were no means for the HAZMAT team to monitor toxic gas concentrations, LEL, or the conditions inside the ESS from a physically secure location. • The ESS communication system failed before the HAZMAT team arrived at the incident. Personnel who maintained the ESS and the fire department were unable to use the system to understand the conditions inside the installation. • The emergency response plan was not provided to the responding fire service personnel prior to this incident. Advanced disclosure of the emergency response plan was not required by the applicable codes or standards at the time of the incident. • The emergency response plan that was provided to fire service personnel on the scene, although compliant with the applicable codes and standards at the time of the incident, did not provide adequate guidance for mitigating thermal runaway, fire, and explosion hazards generated by the ESS. • The design of the ESS did not include deflagration venting per NFPA 68 or adequate mechanicalventilation per NFPA 69 to prevent accumulation of flammable gases above an explosive concentration. Construction to these standards was not required by applicable codes at the time the ESS was commissioned. • The total flooding clean agent suppression system prevented flaming during the early phase of the incident, but was not designed for and did not provide explosion protection.

Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 61

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Meet the team

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PUBLISHER EDITOR DIGITAL MEDIA OPPORTUNITIES Karen Hampton Mike Halls Jade Beevor Tel: +44 (0) 7792 852 337 +44 (0) 7977 016 918 +44 (0)1243 782 275 karen@batteriesinternational.com editor@batteriesinternational.com jade@batteriesinternational.com Reception: +44 (0)1243 782 275 â&#x20AC;˘ www.batteriesinternational.com Mustard Seed Publishing Ltd, 10 Temple Bar Business Park, Strettington Lane, Strettington PO18 0TU, UK â&#x20AC;˘ Registered in England 5976361

THE PROFILE: BOB GALYEN

The right man A The right place The right time Dubbed the thinking man’s ‘battery man’ or just ‘the big red’ — he’s comfortably over six foot tall — Bob Galyen has been an integral part of the rapidly developing world of energy storage for the past four decades. He’s made an indelible mark on the industry in both lead and lithium.

t first glance, Bob Galyen has led a charmed life. A promising academic education blossomed into a successful period as an engineer on one of the most critical automotive projects of the last century. This in turn led to success both as a businessman and most recently as chief technology officer at what was to eventually become the largest lithium cell maker on the planet. But it wasn’t always that way. Bob was raised in the US Midwest as the eldest son of four children in a family struggling to stay afloat. Their father was disabled by a heart attack, and from an early age, much of his free time was spent helping to support the family. His own dreams of one day becoming a surgeon fell apart in high school where he had started a pre-med course, until an inherited hand tremor derailed plans for a career in surgery early in his years at Ball State University. Opting instead for a double major in chemistry and biology, and a double minor in maths and physics at Ball State University, he planned to pursue a doctorate in chemistry and see where that led him. But he was also a gifted athlete, representing his Knightstown High School at the Indiana State Track Meet for two years in a row as a top rated high jumper, well as being a popular basketball player due to his height and fitness. Life in Indiana in the 1970s may have been simpler than nowadays, but for the young Bob Galyen, successful both academically and in sport, it gave him a thirst to do well. “The combination of education and sport drove me from an early age to be competitive. We didn’t have money so I just had to work my tail off,” Galyen recalls. Looking back, with more than four decades of experience in the battery and energy storage business behind him, he admits he had a lot to learn in

As a staff engineer at the Delco Remy Division of General Motors — then regarded as perhaps the most exciting division of the automotive giant — he was to work there till 1998 when it was spun off to become Delphi. www.batteriesinternational.com

Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 63

THE PROFILE: BOB GALYEN

Galyen representing NAATBatt presents Nobel Laureate John Goodenough (left) with the association’s Pioneers Medallion for his work on the lithium battery and (right) with Detchko Pavlov with its lifetime achievement award for his immense contribution to our understanding of the inner mechanisms of the the lead battery.

terms of achieving goals and working with people. “In those days, I wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer and whether it was my dual bachelor’s degree in chemistry and biology or my later master’s in chemistry at Ball State, I was fortunate in that damn near everything I tried with new technology worked,” he says. But it was those early successes that would lead to his awareness of the importance of team. “My supervisor used to say: ‘put the weapons away! Work with people, don’t cut people down’, and that when you treat people like human beings, not machines, they treat you well back … And that has been the

main secret to my success.” The advice has served him well — and a major characteristic of his collegiate and managerial style across his later careers in GM, Delphi, Tawas, Magna E-car and CATL was this generosity of spirit. Freed from college studies in 1977 he looked for work. His mother suggested he apply for a post at the ‘89 Day Wonder’ scheme at General Motors’ Delco Remy plant at Anderson, Indiana. This was a well-known scheme whereby GM employed college students for 89 days, terminating them on the 90th day before they could legally become UAW union workers. But GM liked him. “I was working

ASSIMILATION, ASSIMILATION, ASSIMILATION Galyen’s ability to take a complex science like biology, chemistry or molecular theory and make it simple to understand came in handy during his early years in the industry. “Much of the research was not published so I had to piece together available literature, competitive analysis and my observations as well as those of others to come together … and then make a small change,” he says. “I did that more than once, along with Bob Bish and Dave Winterbottom at Delco Remy. “It was sort of a frosted crystal ball approach. We would scratch a bit to peer inside the crystal ball and see what was going on from multiple perspectives — we could see the chemistry, engineering, mathematics and the like to get a new technology perspective, and with the other knowledgeable people involved …

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would continue polishing until we had a whole new creation.” One result of this was his so-called five golden rules. “The underlying premise is a simple one,” he says. “It is never just a technical solution we are working on, it is a business solution decision and it has to be marketable as well. A mentor and friend, Jonas Bereisa, and chief engineer on the EV1 helped Bob develop the Five Golden Rules of Electrification. In descending order of priority these are: • Safety • Performance • Life • Cost • Environment A simple and elegant key to successful EV and battery manufacture that stands to this day.

the line’s second shift at night, and teaching medical students biochemistry at the university by day,” Galyen recalls. “But when management found out I had a science degree in chemistry, they took me right off the line, covered in grease, and moved me to their chemistry laboratory as a salaried employee.” As a staff engineer at the Delco Remy Division of General Motors — then regarded as perhaps the most exciting division of the automotive giant — he was to work there until 1998, when it was spun off to become Delphi. He started in the materials analysis lab but was then put on a tour of duty that led him through every engineering position on product, process and materials areas. It was a huge grounding in the automotive business and it would stand him in good stead for the rest of his career. Galyen quickly moved into advanced engineering as a technical liaison be-tween Delco Remy and GM Research. Here he worked with sophisticated mathematical model geniuses, particularly Hiram Gu, who pioneered GM’s first efforts toward creating the mathematical models that would later become optimized lead calcium batteries. “We determined proper lug width, the border height on the plates, and wire cut schedules from the top of the plate to the bottom of the plate,” he says. “We could save enormous amounts of lead to decrease the cost of the battery by simple math model calculations.” And there were many other career milestones on the way — from designing multiple OEM batteries; generating new polymer specifications for case and covers; establishing new methods of formation processes; and more.

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THE PROFILE: BOB GALYEN Perhaps one of the most important was the start-up of a high-tech manufacturing plant for ENTEK for Delco Remy — then a dedicated supplier of battery separator technology to General Motors. This would shape Galyen’s career for years thereafter. “Launching that production plant was my first opportunity to start something on my own,” he said much later. The plant came online in about 1987 — becoming ENTEK’s world class separator plant.

The Impact and EV1

During this time Galyen was a guiding figure in the battery design for GM’s Impact electric concept car — a twoseater sporty coupé with a top speed of 100mph (limited to 75mph). He proudly remembers being the staff engineer for the Impact car’s VRLA battery and logging the miles in a closedloop track at GM’s Milford Proving Grounds. The development of this VRLA battery was a major undertaking as it was one of the first gas recombinant lead acid batteries to move into large scale production for electrified vehicles. The use of an adsorptive glass mat to hold the free electrolyte, while allowing for gas to transport across for recombination, was in its infancy at the time. Understanding the correct saturation levels, the right positive to negative active material balances to that of the electrolyte, took some fine tuning for the electric car. The result was one of the best VRLA batteries built in its era. The battery systems were modified in later versions of the Impact. Most notably, Galyen’s experience on the Impact led him to become the lead engineer for batteries on GM’s EV1 vehicle platform. It’s hard nowadays to quite understand how important the EV1 was in the mid-1990s. It was the first massproduced and purpose-designed electric vehicle of modern times from a major automaker. But it also — as GM had recognized with the Impact — happened at a time when environmental concerns were coming to the fore. Perhaps the big driver behind this came from California, where air quality was reckoned to be worse than all

Bob Galyen and his work on the Impact was at the heart of this new automotive revolution, arguably the most exciting change in motoring in a generation. the other US states combined. The California Air Resource Board delivered the body punch. It ruled that each of the seven largest carmakers in the US — the largest of which was GM — would be required to make 2% of its fleet emissions-free by 1998 (conveniently forgetting that EVs were recharged by fossil-fuelled power plants). Galyen was at the heart of this automotive revolution, arguably the most exciting change in motoring in a generation. “The fact of that battery’s power alone made the car’s acceleration and speed — from 0 to 50mph in 6.3 seconds — remarkable. The direct drive electric motor meant you could achieve 100% torque at 0 rpm.” He likes to compare the EV1’s complexity to that of the Space Shuttle fleet. “Given the car had seven computer systems — each communicating and working in sync with the others — the EV1 was the first truly networked and mostly by-wire car,” he says. “The vehicle had a fundamental sequence of protocols, and the number one protocol was the battery pack performance and safety and the brake system. Since the battery was involved in recovering brake energy, stopping the car took priority over everything else. It was the first time a futuristic EV, including computer systems, aero-

dynamics, electric drive train, power brakes, self-sealing tyres and wheel systems, had all come together. There was also the innovative use of regenerative braking. The aluminium space frame for mass savings was decades ahead of its time. The zero-emission vehicle had arrived and every aspect of the demands on the EV had to be met with a battery powerful enough to deliver. But the public greeted the launch of the EV1 in 1995 with … apathy. Some EV1 drivers were enthusiastic, but uptake was so slow due to range anxiety and availability of charging stations. Finally, in 1999, after spending $1.5 billion on the project, GM stopped making the EV1 after about 1,000 had been built. It, like Toyota, had discovered that there was limited interest in an all-electric car. For GM the situation was complicated that by law car manufacturers were required to supply parts for 10 years requiring the firm to stockpile a huge amount of parts for a slowselling car. Galyen doesn’t hide his disappointment when he talks about how GM discontinued the EV1. He wonders where we would be now if the car had been embraced by the people and government, when it was first developed. It was to be another decade before GM started to look again at electric

“My supervisor used to say: ‘put the weapons away! Work with people, don’t cut people down’ and that when you treat people like human beings, not machines, they treat you well back … And that has been the main secret to my success.” www.batteriesinternational.com

Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 67

THE PROFILE: BOB GALYEN vehicles and then it was a hybrid, the Chevy Volt. In 1998, Galyen’s Delco division was spun off to become Delphi and he continued working on EV1 battery systems. His next assignment was acting as programme manager for seven high-profile projects for the 11 global battery plants. His last work at Delphi was the deployment of a web-based quality system encompassing all processes of the battery plants.

Life after GM

For the next few years Galyen set up various small entrepreneurial businesses — Tawas, Indy Power Systems and World Energy Labs — capitalizing on his quarter century’s worth of experience. Tawas in particular proved successful, specializing in battery testing, materials analysis, field testing and a host of consulting services focused on energy generation and storage. “We had a very strong background in battery design and process engineering, coupled with significant application knowledge — it made us possibly the most comprehensive testing facility of its type in the world,” Galyen says. Hyperbole aside, his views were in demand from the US government too, and Galyen was one of the key advisers in parts of the huge ARRA stimulus package that president Barack Obama initiated in 2009. Some $2 billion was to be invested in the manufacture of advanced car battery systems and components, with further sums to be invested in electric vehicle development and procurement.

“At Tawas we had a very strong background in battery design and process engineering coupled with significant application knowledge — it made us possibly the most comprehensive testing facility of its type in the world.” But the world of EVs was still calling and Galyen’s consultancy work expanded into a permanent position as president of global cells and battery pack systems in the e-Car Division with Magna International. He was given the Herculean task of facing up to Magna’s challenge — to build a state-of-the-art electric powertrain and battery lab from scratch in record time. It was irresistible. Within a month Galyen was running an operation that, lacking a building or a mailbox, aimed to become the most prestigious battery research and testing facility in the world. And Galyen built it in record time. For the next three years his energy storage and material testing expertise was split between his home in Auburn Hills in Michigan, with work in Graz, Austria and Aurora, Canada. As division president he had global profit and loss responsibility for all development, testing and production of cells, modules and battery packs systems. His work at Magna was a classic Galyen situation — the right man in the right place at the right time. But the next phase in his life and career happened in a chance encoun-

SPEED QUIZ Galyen had to answer with one word or a maximum one sentence, as quickly as possible. Q: Biggest challenge to the industry? A: Handling the number of new technologies. Q: Most interesting industry leaders? A: Robin Zeng, Bill Wylam, Jonas Bereisa. Q: Project you’d most like to work on? A: Tygrus (he joined the board of directors in December 2019). Q: Would you choose to live in Indiana, Michigan, or Ningde? A: Indiana, where he has his family home. Q: A near-miss in the lab? A: Never!

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ter at a conference that was to lead to his next eight years working for ATL/ CATL in Ningde, China and his stake in helping create the energy storage powerhouse of the future. “It all started when I met Robin Zeng at a Shenzhen conference in December 2011,” Galyen remembers. “Robin asked me to dinner to meet ‘some’ of his engineering managers. “To be precise there was 56 of them! He wanted them to have some external exposure to the automotive industry. “Little did I know that it would turn into a job offer by April 2012! I wasn’t looking for a new job but the idea of working in China with one of the fastest growing battery companies in the world appealed to me. It appeared that all those years of training in the battery and automotive sector would pay off in a job offer as the CTO of the company.” Zeng invited him to Ningde that June — it’s about 700 kilometres south of Shanghai — to tour the plant and offered a formal contract. By July the move was complete and, he says: “a new chapter in my life had started. “Robin’s job offer made me think how I wanted to finish my career before retirement. After investigating Amperex Technology Limited, I found that its year-on-year growth rate, the vast customer base it has in consumer electronics and the forward planning into the transportation and energy storage market sectors, really appealed to me. “It looked to be a great place to make a difference — and that’s something I wanted to do — albeit half way around the world from my family. Clearly it was a tough decision to leave them behind for a five year contract but my children and their spouses provided great moral support. This later turned into a total of 7-1/2 years in China. “Over the years my career has been blessed with great mentors. During discussions with many of my colleagues, we agreed, where else could a battery expert help change the world via energy storage, than in China?

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THE PROFILE: BOB GALYEN

Galyen still regards his work for the SAE’s Battery Standards Steering Committee as a most positive contribution to the energy storage industry.

How else could someone make a big impact on the world by returning the favour to mankind than to train a company in the fastest growing country in the world? If you had to pick one, it would be China!” China also had a burning need for change, says Galyen. “The social load on the country was huge — people were becoming ill with respiratory diseases and dying. The Chinese authorities were aware of the situation and motivated to want to change.” Building the batteries to power the next generation of electric vehicles would be a huge step forward in mitigating the problems of air pollution. Galyen says pollution and suffering know no borders — by accelerating electrification in China, he feels he has helped the entire globe to be cleaner and sustainable. “Working in China with CATL is part of my passion to create a better planet for my family. “I may not live to see the fruits of my labour but I know we’ve made a difference.” In fact, since his retirement Galyen has continued to work with CATL as a senior consultant.

Setting standards

Both before his time in China and during it, Galyen was chairman of the SAE’s (Society of Automotive Engineers) Battery Standards Steering Committee. He still regards this work as offering the most positive contributions to the energy storage industry. The need for a coordination of standards is a pressing issue as the energy storage and automotive markets forge ahead with new technologies and innovations. Galyen was first involved with SAE

70 • Batteries International • Autumn 2020

standards in the mid-1990s when he became secretary of four of the subcommittees. The Steering Committee drills down into 24 sub-committees, including the recently added Micro-mobility and Heavy Duty e-Equipment committees. The micro team is particularly important with the explosive growth of scooters, skateboards, hoverboards and several other personal mobility devices. With safety incidents and other problems emerging, Galyen points out standards are always chasing technology, but “we just need to get a consistent methodology for testing these things”. He is equally proud of the Heavy Duty Equipment committee and its efforts to make the gravel and soil giants that reshape the Earth safer through non-diesel options, resulting in a quieter, cleaner, safer machines. Always on the lookout for industry standouts willing to serve, Galyen makes a plea for volunteers, along with a carrot of sorts: “There is always a challenge getting people to donate time — I get it, people are busy. Giving your time is an act of social responsibility, but where else can you have such in-depth contacts with colleagues, suppliers and competitors, as well as creating a long-lasting document for your industry?” For his work for SAE, Galyen has been made a SAE Fellow, an honour even he concedes is “quite prestigious”. “Given that the battery represents some 40%-50% of the cost of an EV it is important to get these standards determined — soon and correctly.” With the EV business booming

across the world, and record types of car and battery configurations being devised, the pressure is on to introduce some measure of standardization and conformity. Another major contribution of his to the electrification movement was joining NAATBatt International, a US trade association for the acceleration of adopting advanced battery technology. He has been chairman and active participant in the organization and is presently the chief technology officer. NAATBatt has honoured him too. He was awarded the “Lifetime Achievement Award” minutes before he awarded John Goodenough, one of the three Nobel Award inventors of the lithium ion battery, the ‘Pioneers Medallion’ for his contributions to developing the industry.

Farewell to Ningde

No matter how pleased Galyen has been with his experience with CATL and in China, the eight years of a trans-global commute had to come to an end at some point. He said before he went: “The biggest thing I’ll miss upon leaving China will be the people. Their sincere warmth and compassion to other human beings is impressive. Being a foreigner in someone else’s country speaking a different language can be intimidating, but here that isn’t the case. My working colleagues have become great friends. They help, and have helped, beyond the call of duty.” So retirement beckoned. It was time to return to his family and his home. And then, seemingly like most of the highlights of Galyen’s career, his dream position appeared after his retirement from CATL. The retirement solution — if retirement is quite the word for Galyen — came with a chance encounter in September 2018 with a company called Tygrus. The following year he announced his retirement from CATL and they snapped him up. “We thought, what could be better than getting one of the world’s finest battery experts on our team? Little did we know at the time that while Bob was truly an expert in batteries, he was skilled in both chemistry and biology and has had a long-hidden passion to work in these areas since his college days,” says Tygrus CEO Dan Jenuwine. Tygrus is a technology, manufacturing, and licensing company that has developed new patented Hydronium chemistries. Tygrus’ vision is to re-

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THE PROFILE: BOB GALYEN place hazardous chemistries with safer, less toxic alternatives across a wide variety of applications. One of these applications is the use of a safer acid as an alternative for sulfuric acid in the battery manufacturing process. Today, Galyen champions the company’s continued work in lead acid batteries and is intimately involved in work in two other areas. First, in agriculture, he has been instrumental in forging relationships with Purdue University, Indiana University, IUPU, Ball State University, and the University of Kentucky. His relationships have opened doors to assist the Tygrus subsidiary Aqueus to explore the mode of action behind increased plant growth and yield when the company’s product is applied to plants. Second, Galyen is assisting the company in its disinfectant subsidiary ZELLUS to advance their technology for commercialization. Having had the opportunity early in April to be tested in a level 3 US Government lab under the direction of Tony Atala of Wake Forest University, the company found out that the “Tygrus chemistry killed Covid-19, in one minute or less at a 5-log reduction.” “We are privileged and honoured to have the opportunity to work with a man like Bob, who has a reputation of turning ideas into opportunities to maximize profits,” says Jenuwine. “Bob is a wonderful adviser, but he also is a thoughtful and kind individual.’

A FAMILY AFFAIR Bob has been married to wife Susan since 1977. They have three adult children: Jennifer, Stephanie and Michael. Galyen’s daughters and son worked for him at Tawas, his testing business. Michael then pursued a technical degree in chemistry and

followed in his father’s footsteps to run the business. He later started Eclipse Energy, reputed to be one of the most successful privately held battery testing facilities in the US. “You might say that the passion for batteries may be genetically inherited,” says Galyen.

HIGHLIGHTS OF GALYEN’S CAREER AWARDS • People’s Republic of China “Friendship Award” (pictured above) • People’s Republic of China National Distinguished Expert • NAATBatt International Lifetime achievement • SAE Fellow • SAE International “Outstanding Contribution Award” • Ball State University “Circle of Excellence” Award • General Motors “Best of Best” • Automotive News “Electrifying 100” • NFPA Fire Prevention Research Foundation “Foundation Medal” • Energy Systems Network “Jim Rodgers Award” • Emerging Technology News “Top 50 Global Leaders in Energy Storage” PROFESSIONAL PARTICIPATION & NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS • SAE International Battery Standards Steering Committee chairman (24 sub committees) • NAATBatt international chairman emeritus • NAATBatt international chief technical officer • Dean’s Executive Advisory Board, Ball State University • Lugar Center for Renewable Energy Advisory Board

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Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 71

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THE GRID: ENERGY STORAGE IN TRANSITION

Embryonic industry prepares to mature We are living in a world that has been described far too often recently as ‘unprecedented’; but where the changing energy industry is concerned, the epithet is accurate. We all know about the need for storage to push the transformation — but there are many obstacles to jump before we get there, including the fact that as renewables increase, so does grid instability. Even before the Covid-19 crisis hit, energy demand was changing — but when the virus did cause the world to shut down, it was transformed beyond all recognition in the blink of an eye. Peak consumption slumped. Power generating assets such as wind turbines were paid to be switched off. There was nowhere to go for the power that wasn’t being used. It underscored the need for more storage, but it also emphasized the need for better technology to control supply and demand as generation itself becomes less controllable. Because of the drive to decarbonize, power generation is shifting away

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from huge, synchronous machines, which operate with high inertia, to intermittent renewables with very low inertia — which will cause instability and imbalance until it can be solved with technology. “Currently, the electricity system is experiencing lower inertia and larger, more numerous losses than ever before,” says the UK National Grid. “Faster acting frequency response products are needed because system frequency is moving away from 50Hz rapidly as a consequence of imbalances.” In the US, the Energy Information Agency expects coal to drop from providing the second largest share of

the US electricity generation mix to fourth this year (18%), displaced by nuclear (21%) and renewable generation (20%). It would be least amount of coal consumed since 1972.

“Faster acting frequency response products are needed because system frequency is moving away from 50Hz rapidly as a consequence of imbalances.” Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 73

THE GRID: ENERGY STORAGE IN TRANSITION National Grid ESO head of networks, Julian Leslie

But it means that the kind of generation needed will change — as there is less inertia on the grid keeping frequency stable (in the US, as close to 60Hz as possible), the need for fastresponding other sources becomes more and more crucial.

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To address the issue in the UK, the National Grid is to launch a Dynamic Containment product this autumn, a system bringing as much fast-acting frequency response together as possible to replace the loss of inertia that will inevitably happen as the bigger generators are switched off. “Dynamic Containment is a very fast-acting response service that only storage products can provide, so this is where we will really see the benefits of batteries,” says Julian Leslie, head of Networks with the National Grid. “As the device sees a drop in system frequency, it responds within a second or two to put power back on the system. As we remove the synchronous generation to get to these low-inertia, high renewable penetration systems, then having a very fastacting response is how to make sure the system remains safe and stable.” At first, battery providers will be offered access to the new product, then the range of possible providers will be expanded to allow them to offer both high and low frequency response. “As you devolve this power and fragment the power and supply, then storage becomes even more important,” says Leslie. “That flexibility we need in the system is only ever going to increase, which is where the forms of storage come to the fore. And if that daily demand trend — the historic demand curves of people getting up in the morning, levelling off during the day and picking up as people come home from work then tailing off into the evening — can be shifted to meet the

“Dynamic Containment is a very fast-acting response service that only storage products can provide, so this is where we will really see the benefits of batteries” — Julian Leslie, National Grid

74 • Batteries International • Autumn 2020

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THE GRID: ENERGY STORAGE IN TRANSITION generation on the system, which is now a renewable output, with storage you can control demand as you see it on the system.”

Covid-19 — a testbed

“In many ways the high renewable penetration of Covid-19 gave the industry a testbed for what will come as we shift to net zero,” said Shahid Iqbal, COO of energy technology company Limejump, recently bought by oil giant Shell. “While the market opportunities to date have been about providing capacity to the grid from batteries, we will increasingly see the need for turndown services that take capacity out of the system for stability when we have low demand. “We have already witnessed this on sunny, windy days in the Covid-19 lockdown, when demand hit record lows at a time of very high renewable power output. “The pace of change in the energy storage space has been gripping in the last 10 years. A decade ago energy storage was centred on the pumped hydro market. There were no grid-scale battery projects, and large lithium-ion wasn’t considered feasible due to its cost and technology maturity. “But change has come fast — as is often the case in new technology revolutions — and there has been a happy coupling of developments in two distinct areas. “In the technology camp, we’ve had three game-changing developments recently: a huge reduction in the cost of the physical battery storage cells; market maturity for grid-scale storage; and a more stable, less experimental technology. “At the same time, in the investor camp we have seen exponential growth in certainty of returns for investors. We have been at the forefront of trading and have seen the markets for battery storage become substantially more predictable over recent years with the advent of ancillary services such as frequency response, together with the balancing mechanism.” So not only can the influx of trading platforms help the grid stay stable, they can also make an attractive investment. “This coupling of developments means one critical thing has been achieved: recognized commercial viability,” says Iqbal. “In short, it’s a good time to start investing.”

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VPPS ELIMINATE INFRASTRUCTURE NEEDS As far as grid operators are concerned, optimization platforms such as virtual power plants offer an exciting key to the future and could lighten the cost of providing the infrastructure that might otherwise be needed. “From our perspective as the national system operator, we want to be able to get lots of energy very quickly,” says Julian Leslie, head of Networks at UK National Grid ESO. “If we can have one contract to provide 100MW in response then the aggregator might be talking to a million households to deliver the response within those timescales or whatever it might be. “As long as they have the technology in place and those households can deliver, we will enter into a contract with them.” The Energy Networks Association, the trade body for the gas and electricity network — effectively the wires and pipes of the network all over the UK and Ireland — set up a project with its electricity members to look at delivering a smart grid to its customers. The key aim is to avoid building more infrastructure, ie cables and wires, in favour of getting that capacity by buying it from service providers, most of whom will be storage providers. “Rather than installing a new cable, for example in a street, we will go out to tender to ask if someone can provide the necessary capacity for what it would cost to install that cable,” says Randolph Brazier, head of Innovation and Development with the ENA. “We are looking to buy services at all different levels — at a micro level on the street, from people who have batteries in their homes, to the industrial scale. We don’t care what kind of technology provides that, but batteries do have natural advantages because one of the critical needs is speed of response. “There is a massive shift under way because of decarbonization. There is a lot of renewable technology coming on to the grid, but lots of new demand — from EVs, potentially the electrification of heat — and it’s more decentralized so we need to have a much larger grid to make it all work together.”

ENA’s Brazier: “we need to have a much larger grid to make it all work together”

In Japan the virtual power plant scene is burgeoning, with smart battery software firm Moixa already taking full advantage, agreeing with battery firm Itochu to attach its Gridshare artificial intelligence platform to Itochu’s residential batteries. In July it announced it had doubled the number of these managed batteries to 20,000, which it says makes it the world’s largest fleet. The increased sales come as a government subsidy for Japanese home owners that adopted rooftop solar comes to an end. The Gridshare algorithms should optimize batteries in these homes in a way to replace the ending subsidy. “The scale of growth in just six months has been staggering and the Gridshare platform has enabled us to manage subsidy changes for Japanese home generators without a single blip in service,” said Hiroaki Murase, general manager of the Sustainable Energy Business Department at Itochu. And that is what the new platforms are all about: as power systems across the world transition from a centralized source because of the increase in renewables, they will fragment; and the key to managing the transition smoothly will be the firms that specialize in bringing it all together.

Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 75

THE GRID: ENERGY STORAGE IN TRANSITION As the number of markets in which power can be traded increases, batteries are becoming an increasingly attractive option for investors.

Investors find the way to optimize battery assets With the increasing number of markets it follows that the trading itself has become far more complicated, and battery owners themselves are not usually experts in finding their way around it. Enter a small but growing batch of companies that are competing to do just that. Limejump operates more than 1GW of renewable generation capacity, including battery storage. “Limejump provides access to the ever-increasing range of products and optimization options including trading in wholesale markets, balancing mechanism, DSO services (including reactive power and voltage constraints), frequency response as well as upcoming initiatives such as the National Grid’s Dynamic Containment,” says Iqbal. “So we’re seeing the picture improve for our battery customers through this growing ability to stack revenues from different markets together. We can use datadriven battery revenue optimization approaches to enable our customers to jump in and out of ancillary, BM and capacity markets on different timescales to ensure they get the best return for each charging cycle.

“We estimate that there will be 1,000GW of energy storage installed globally by 2040 — that’s up from just 9GW today” — Thomas Jennings, head of optimization at Kiwi Power

Limejump operates more than 1GW of renewable generation capacity, plus battery storage

76 • Batteries International • Autumn 2020

“This is critical for optimum asset management as we need to help our customers maximize revenues and avoid degradation-causing cycles running at too low a return.” Kiwi Power, a London-based VPP software supplier that has launched its platform in North America, estimates there will be more than 1,000GW of energy storage installed globally by 2040, up from just 9GW today. All of this storage could be used across the available markets and optimized to make as much revenue as possible for the battery owners, as well as increase grid stability and flexibility, the firm believes. It claims asset owners are missing out on up to 41% of potential revenue by not using their assets in more markets but relying instead on fixed frequency response services. “As renewable generation, energy storage and distributed energy resources continue to penetrate global electric grids, value is migrating away from the supply of power and towards the supply of flexibility,” says Jay Zoellner, CEO of Kiwi Power. Thomas Jennings, head of optimization at Kiwi, says it’s all there once asset owners are prepared to jump in. “Asset owners have to have confidence in the platform that’s going to dispatch their asset — whether it’s providing frequency services to the grid for a month, or solving a constraint at a particular point in time. “It can vary and that’s where optimization comes into it — there’s a multitude of different things that this amazing asset can do, but which is the most valuable? And that’s why you need a platform. “We look at the market and how it operates, and the vast majority of the market sits within frequency response. And that’s all very well, that’s where most batteries are — but you’ve got another 14 markets available. Why sit in frequency response when you can be in other www.batteriesinternational.com

For the challenges ahead...

THE GRID: ENERGY STORAGE IN TRANSITION markets? Can you achieve greater value than the one market everyone seems to be sitting in?”

A fledgling scene Ben Irons, co-founder of Habitat Energy, which offers an optimization and trading platform for grid-scale battery storage, said the market only began to open up in terms of grid battery storage in 2016, but they already have 200MW operational in the UK and Australia. “At about the same time the idea of aggregators, or people like us, who provide trading services, also started,” he said. “We have one of the biggest, if not the biggest, portfolios in the UK, and we haven’t been doing it for years but the truth is — no one has. “The very first battery that started doing arbitrage in the UK only started doing it last year, so it’s new to everyone, and that’s why for us it was easier to come along as a new entrant because we weren’t up against incumbents with 20 years’ experience. “It costs around £400,000 ($523,000) per MW to build a gridscale battery. The owner will need to be earning in the order of £40,000£50,000 per MW per year from the trading of those batteries and our view is that it’s possible in today’s markets, and those are the figures we give them. “Our PowerIQ platform is algorithmic, making forecasting and trading decisions; and we have a team in Oxford who are assessing and trading. It’s very complex and labour intensive so that’s why most battery owners are looking to third parties to get these services for them.” Irons says Habitat advises clients from the beginning of their asset’s life and has even on occasion advised against the battery they may already have acquired. “The warranty that a battery owner agrees with the maker of the battery is quite complicated and it’s not always obvious which warranties are going to be feasible for which application, so that’s something we like to get involved with,” says Irons. When it comes to battery chemistries Irons says Habitat is agnostic — although they won’t even consider lead-acid. “It’s not for this type of application. It’s obvious to everyone in the market that lead-acid is a completely different application, scale, everything — we don’t even mention them.” 78 • Batteries International • Autumn 2020

“The very first battery that started doing arbitrage in the UK only started doing it last year — so it’s new to everyone ... for us it was easier to come along, we weren’t up against incumbents with 20 years’ experience” — Ben Irons, Habitat Energy co-founder Enter Tesla One new entrant to European asset optimization is Tesla, with its Autobidder trading platform. Autobidder already operates at the 100MW/129MWh Hornsdale Power Reserve in South Australia, where its algorithms forecast price, load and generation as it operates in wholesale markets including ancillary services and capacity, day-ahead, real-time and continuous markets, but a tie-up with Harmony Energy is the first time it has entered Europe.

The deal coincides with an application by the Elon Musk firm to become a power generator in the UK, although it has not said what its intention is. Harmony Energy’s six Tesla Megapack 15MWh batteries were connected to the Southern Electric Power distribution network in the south of England in July, with Autobidder optimizing their charging and dispatch. “We wanted to outsource this trading because we didn’t have any experience in the area,” says Peter Kavanagh, Harmony Energy CEO. “We spoke to the larger players and we liked Tesla’s algorithm-based trading, and although I can’t say a lot about it as it’s sensitive — we are taking a degree of risk here — as we’ve been working with batteries for a long time it was a natural progression for us. The more people who get in to this space, the better. “We are guinea pigs here but they have a great team behind them — they work, work, work. The revenue stack will include frequency response, trading in the balancing mechanism, the capacity market, wholesale intraday markets and so on — we are not limited to anything, it’s just programmed around multiple income streams to maximize revenue.” Kavanagh does not understand why fossil fuels in the UK are still subsidized yet battery storage is not. “It should be a level playing field,” he says. “Energy storage is crucial in allowing us to get to zero carbon. Our batteries are positioned as close to the substation as possible to reduce the installation cost, and make sure electricity losses are minimized. “But it is important that they are used. If you’re not trading every day, it’s not worth it.”

Tesla’s Autobidder: a new entrant to European asset optimization

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THE GRID: ENERGY STORAGE IN TRANSITION As innovation happens and new technologies are developed, regulatory bodies are constantly having to play catch-up to avoid limiting new opportunities.

Rules must change to keep pace with grid storage developments Across the world, governments are beginning to offer financial help to tech innovators and also pull down regulatory barricades to smooth the energy transition. In Europe, the Commission’s Industry Research and Energy Committee recently adopted a report from Austrian MEP Claudia Gamon calling for the EC to reduce regulatory burdens, provide support for research, abolish certain network charges and cut red tape. The EC identified batteries as a ‘strategic value chain where the EU must step up investment and innovation to strengthen the industrial policy strategy’. “With electrification set to be one of the main pathways to decarbonization, batteries as electricity storage devices will become one of the key enablers of a low-carbon economy,” the EU says. In the UK, a decision by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy — BEIS — to eliminate the need for planning permission for batteries larger than 50MW has been seen as a major boost to battery makers and owners. Until the change was made, such projects fell under the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIP) regime in England and Wales, although in Wales that already applied only to storage above 350MW. It had meant that applications could take up to two years to be approved. Now, all energy storage technology applications except for pumped hydro will proceed under the Town and Country Planning Act — which means permission should be granted within weeks rather than one to two years. In Wales any size (except pumped hydro) can be waived

through by the relevant local planning authority. To date, the vast majority of battery storage projects deployed in England and Wales have been no bigger than 49MW to avoid this lengthy and costly procedure. “The previous cap was largely arbitrary and skewed the market,” said Frank Gordon, head of policy at the Association for Renewable Energy & Clean Technology (REA). “As energy storage built alongside new renewables projects is crucial to unlocking subsidy-free deployment, the old system acted as a major barrier to achieving our net zero target and building low-cost generation sites.” “This is a significant, positive and well timed decision from the government; encouraging larger storage projects to come forward will add more jobs and economic benefit to the green recovery,” said Madeleine Greenhalgh, policy lead with the Electricity Storage Network, a UK industry group representing storage manufacturers, suppliers, project developers and research organizations. “By recognizing the smaller planning impacts of storage projects, this change will save developers time and money and encourage more ambitious storage projects, which are vital to decarbonizing our electricity system. “The Electricity Storage Network has been advocating change to the planning regime for several years and we have been pleased to work with BEIS to make this significant change for the storage industry.” BEIS believes the planning change could result in a trebling of the number of batteries serving the electricity grid, which, it says, stands at 1GW.

“Establishing best practices for the interconnection of storage to the grid is critical to sustaining market growth and enabling significant clean energy deployment” — IREC president and CEO Larry Sherwood www.batteriesinternational.com

“There is 4GW of storage projects in planning, which could power a combined six million homes, in addition to the 1GW of battery storage already in operation,” it says. “The recent lifting of planning restrictions is another huge step in the right direction for the industry,” said Shahid Iqbal, COO with Limejump, the DER optimization platform firm. “The reduction of this planning barrier makes investment simpler, which in turn encourages more development and strengthens the overall technological case.” Ben Irons, co-founder of Habitat Energy, the UK grid-scale storage trading platform designer, says very few projects had been going through the NSIP process. “So this won’t increase the number of projects, but it does mean that a lot of the 50MW developments already in the pipeline may now look to increase their size up to 100MW or more, depending on investor appetite,” he says. “It’s certainly positive news for the industry.”

The US experience Change is also happening in the US and it can’t come too soon for some areas, such as California, which announced in August it was bracing itself for wildfire season and rotating power outages were conducted by the utility PG&E, affecting 210,000 people in the San Francisco bay area. “Rotating outages become necessary when CAISO (California Independent System Operator) is unable to meet minimum contingency reserve requirements and load interruption is imminent or in progress,” says PG&E. With more storage on the grid the need for these outages would diminish, and two events in July signalled changes that could pave the way for that to happen. The first was a decision that month by the US Court of Appeals to uphold a ruling known as Order 841 made by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in February 2018. Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 79

THE GRID: ENERGY STORAGE IN TRANSITION

California’s annual wildfires mean utility PG&E is forced to cut power for thousands of people

Brian Lydic, chief regulatory engineer with IREC

FERC’s intention was to remove barriers that blocked energy storage firms from participating in wholesale electricity markets. This had been challenged by the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners and other groups. “This is an enormous step for energy storage, with the affirmation that energy storage connected at the distribution level must have the option to access wholesale markets, allowing homes and businesses to contribute to the resiliency, efficiency, sustainability and affordability of the grid,” says Kelly Speakes-Backman, CEO of the US Energy Storage Association. “This latest affirmation of Order 841 is especially important as it ensures energy storage can contribute all its values to the grid, regardless of its connection point. “As our electric system becomes more modernized and distributed, we are seeing the regulatory frameworks at both the wholesale and retail levels adjust to that reality.”

connected without upgrades, or if it’s safe and so on, before it can get permission to be operated and pass the commissioning test. “If you pass all the stages you can get interconnected, but if you fail you have to go to a further level of review, which varies from state to state. Even determining if it needs upgrades can take a year.” IREC is identifying what the major issues are with storage and how to prioritize them, always with the end goal — to unleash the flexibility that storage has, and allow customers that want to invest in these systems to be able to use them flexibly to meet the grid’s needs and increase the share of renewable energy on the system. “Standalone energy storage and solar-plus-storage systems provide significant potential for increased grid reliability and resilience. We look forward to applying our technical expertise to help address grid interconnection challenges,” says EPRI president Arshad Mansoor. “If we’re able to more efficiently connect energy storage to the grid, costs will plummet, making solarplus-storage systems more affordable and accessible to families and businesses,” says SEIA vice president of markets & research Justin Baca. SEIA has set itself the goal of creating the framework to achieve 20% of US electricity generation by 2030.

IREC project launch The second, and arguably further reaching, event was the launch of a project funded by the Department of Energy body IREC (Interstate Regional Energy Council). The project sets out to help storage firms overcome the widely varying regulatory and technical barriers to get their products connected to the grid. Current regulations are far from clear, says IREC president and CEO Larry Sherwood, which means the full benefits of storage are not being realized. “Establishing best practices for the interconnection of storage to the grid is critical to sustaining market growth and enabling significant clean energy deployment,” he says. 80 • Batteries International • Autumn 2020

The project, which includes other agencies such as the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Energy Storage Association (ESA), will first identify specific barriers and then develop a solution fit for national application. “Many US states do not have rules governing the process of connecting energy storage (standalone or solarplus-storage) to the grid,” says IREC communications director Gwendolyn Brown. “This can result in significant project delays or rejections of legitimate projects that hinder the growth of energy storage. “This is just one of many challenges companies and customers face in getting new storage projects approved and it’s one issue we anticipate the partners will work on.” Brian Lydric, chief regulatory engineer with IREC, says the process of allowing storage services to interconnect with the grid is different across the country, and can differ even between utilities in the same state. “Each state has a public utility commission (PUC) that will regulate individual utilities but not necessarily all the utilities in the state,” he says. “A developer applies to the utility and there are a number of steps to review the project that are laid out in PUC rules, and then the utility determines whether it can be inter-

“As energy storage built alongside new renewables projects is crucial to unlocking subsidy-free deployment, the old system acted as a major barrier to achieving our net zero target and building low-cost generation sites” — Frank Gordon, head of policy at the Association for Renewable Energy & Clean Technology www.batteriesinternational.com

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EVENT REVIEW: 17 ELBC A new template for international lead conferences is being shaped following the success of last month’s 17th European Lead Battery Conference — the first in its history to be conducted as a virtual, online set of meetings.

Virtual ELBC points way to possible new conference prototypes for the future A new template for international lead conferences is being shaped following the success of September’s 17th European Lead Battery Conference — the first in its history to be conducted as a virtual, online set of meetings. The conference, which ran from September 22-24, was followed by a wave of approval from delegates who said they admired the professionalism of the organizers’ product, the technical content of the presentations and ELBC’s ability to bring the industry together. But it also showed a new way forward for industry gatherings even when the international impositions caused by the coronavirus epidemic have been lifted.

“We see several new positive results of the conference for future events,” said Andy Bush, head of the International Lead Association and organizer of the event. “One is the way that we were able to reach out to a much larger audience than a traditional event,” he says. “University academics, research institutions and those in related industries such as automotive, for example, wouldn’t necessarily have the budget or want to spend it to participate in the full event but were prepared to join us online without the burden of flights, hotels and other expenses. “We were pleased to see a leap in the number of attendees like these — it adds another dimension in allowing

“There was a feeling of solidarity by even having such a virtual gathering ... 17ELBC must be regarded as a success, if a success in a rather unexpected fashion being more or less a first for our industry”

us to fulfil part of the mission of the ILA, which is to promote the positive role lead can play in society and in particular, the energy storage industry.” Bush said that the recordings of the technical presentations, which could be viewed a week before the event went live and three weeks afterwards, enabled it to broadcast the many innovations in lead battery technology more efficiently. “This is a format where we can see many other potential avenues to explore,” he says. “Some of the workshops that the CBI holds, for example, could well be adapted to this. It could be possible to combine actual and virtual presentations in the same conference.” Hywel Jarman, communications director at ILA, said: “We should now expect some aspect of future conferences to have something equivalent to a live TV stream for attendees that can’t be physically present — it’s almost certainly going

Lights! Camera! Action! 82 • Batteries International • Autumn 2020

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EVENT REVIEW: 17 ELBC to be a mix of a physical and a virtual conference.” Attendance was far better than many had expected given that the Covid crisis had forced a rapid change of ILA’s plans early in the summer and a travel lockdown across Europe. There were more than 50 exhibitors, some 600 delegates and strong representations by gold sponsor ENTEK, and silver sponsors Batek, CMW Tec, Microporous,

Sorfin, Sovema and Wirtz. “From a technical viewpoint it was quite some achievement,” says Steve Barnes, a vice president at Hammond Expanders. “The quality of the presentations was high as were the live sessions discussing issues raised. But the most important thing was that it brought the industry together. “There was a feeling of solidarity by even having such a virtual gathering. 17ELBC must be regarded as a success, if a success in a rather

Clarios CEO Wallace discusses battery future and need for ‘moral mission’

Appearing live to answer questions after his pre-recorded presentation at the first virtual 17ELBC, the new Clarios CEO spoke with optimism about the future of the industry but also the urgency of eradicating illegal lead battery recycling around the world and maintaining material stewardship. With population likely to grow by another two billion people by 2050, Wallace said the growing car parc would require another 200 million batteries — and as every car on the road requires a lead battery, this was a good sign for the future. “Lead batteries remain essential in all types of new vehicles and they have a proven reliability, but every energy source has its trade-offs – it is essential to place the right battery with the right application.” Wallace has placed illegal recycling and material stewardship at the top of his agenda with Clarios. He says battery collections

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are on the increase in the North America, Mexico, Brazil and Colombia. “A closed loop circular economy is vital for batteries and this has been discussed at Davos and at the Global Battery Alliance, with whom we are working closely. It’s a moral mission, a responsibility,” he said in the live Q&A following his presentation. This July Clarios Foundation, UNICEF and Pure Earth announced a global partnership to protect children from lead exposure. Rich Fuller, CEO of Pure Earth, expanded on the situation in a later ELBC presentation released

unexpected fashion being more or less a first for our industry.” Barnes’ sentiments were echoed by Claudia Lorenzini, vice president for sales and marketing at Microporous. “The technical presentations were probably the best we’ve had at a conference for some time,” she says. “They were condensed and weren’t padded out with the regular presentations from suppliers endorsing their firm or products. “The live sessions were excellent

that day, which discussed the economic benefits lead reduction unleashed. Wallace was asked whether Covid was likely to have a long-term impact on the automotive industry. He said he didn’t think so: “As we keep advancing our chemistry there are so many new electric features in cars it means a growth industry for the lead battery industry. “There is no better example of a better functioning, circular economy in the world than the lead battery industry.” However one thing the industry didn’t do was communicate this, he said, and this was one of the biggest challenges. Again this was a theme picked up by Hywel Jarman, communications director at the ILA, in a later presentation which encouraged the industry to look outside of its regular information channels and spread its message through social media. Wallace said: “Everywhere we go people see the end for lead batteries in the future. Some people have a belief that EVs don’t have a lead battery in them and all of them do — which I think is something important that we need to continue to promote.” “I joined Clarios just after the Covid outbreak started and it made me proud how our company and supply chains responded. It also emphasized how important our contribution is and the importance of keeping the economy going. “There were no significant supply chain disruptions and the aftermarket business has been very resilient. We will go forward wiser and more in tune with the world. “The future is in our hands — it’s what we choose to do with it that matters.”

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EVENT REVIEW: 17 ELBC THE THREAT OF LITHIUM-ION As in all conferences over the past decade or so, the threat of lithiumion came up in most presentations. Most presenters remained positive about lead — that there would be room for both chemistries, and that the problems of lithium-ion — its safety issues, cost and recycling incapability — would keep it in check. “But there’s an ever mounting army of lead battery manufacturers adding lithium ion to their product offering ranges,” said one delegate. “We can no longer pretend that this isn’t happening.” There is a growing number of lead-acid battery and equipment manufacturers following the likes of Clarios, Exide Technologies, Systems Sunlight, Trojan, East Penn, ENTEK and Leoch to add the chemistry to its portfolio. Nick Starita of Hollingsworth & Vose said a lot of the lead acid battery manufacturers were having to move into lithium-ion because in certain markets — like grid and energy storage — lead was simply not getting a look-in with recent installations. Gerhard Scheithauer, sales manager at BM Rosendahl, told Battery Street Journal the company had had to respond to the projected increase in demand for lithium-ion batteries. “We’ve made e-mobility manufacturing solutions for automotive Li-ion batteries such as a new laser welding unit, a cell-stacking machine and a gluing machine,” he said. “A new production hall completed in spring 2019 is dedicated solely to Li-ion research and development. “We’ve made good deals with lead acid that will take us through

the next 10 years, but we’ve been looking into opportunities with lithium-ion. It’s always difficult moving into new tech, but that’s the nature of business.” Up to 40% of new data centres in the US were now opting for lithium-ion batteries as back-up, said Starita. “Data, 5G and the Internet of Things are all positive for lead, but it will be challenged by short back-up times and the high penetration of lithium because of real estate costs and high energy density,” he said. “In some cases there’s room for both technologies and in others lead has some work to do to prove itself as best energy storage solution, particularly to participate in the growing grid storage applications. “This is going to be a tough market to penetrate and today the vast majority of grid installations are lithium because they are price competitive, and have space, weight and life advantages.” However in motive and stationary power the picture was promising. Although in both areas demand has fallen this year because of Covid-19, it is expected to pick up in 2021 although not quite reach 2019 levels. “The impact of the pandemic on UPS batteries was minimal because most applications were considered essential,” he said. “And if we learned anything during the pandemic it’s that the lead battery is essential technology in motive power, e-commerce and retail food distribution favouring electric lift trucks. “We may actually look back at sales trends a few years from now and not even notice the global pandemic in the data.”

“We may even actually look back at sales trends a few years from now and not even notice the global pandemic in the data!” – BM Rosendahl’s Gerhard Scheithauer

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Dong Li: provided an insider’s view of China’s lead battery industry

too. I found the comments by Dong Li, Stuart Mackenzie and many of the others well worth listening to. In all the presentation of the whole event was very professional. It’s been a difficult year for all of us; it was important for us all to show that we were still there and still working.” One unexpected consequence of the mixed format chosen was that speakers had to keep to their time slots. It’s been a perennial problem for conference chairs and in the live sessions there was the ability for the technicians in the UK to mute the studios at home or in Aachen, Germany when there were overruns, Moreover, because technical presentations had been broadcast before the conference (finally tying speakers to a time slot) with a live dialogue later, the standard of questioning for the live discussion on the second and third days of ELBC were better prepared. Another unexpected consequence was that delegates were able to digest the technical programme well in advance — there was no bombardment of information that happens at regular conferences — the subject matter becomes more digestible by breaking it up by viewing beforehand in chunks. Attendees were far less enthused by the exhibition side of things — see separate stories in this review. This is something that future organizers will almost inevitably struggle to compensate for, and Bush acknowledges may be something virtual events can never give. “Networking is as important a component of a conference as is the technical program,” one exhibitor told Batteries International. With the corona virus pandemic still on the increase around the world,

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EVENT REVIEW: 17 ELBC CONFERENCE NEWS A wave of specialized industry news is often released at ELBC and the fact that this was a virtual conference and exhibition was no exception. Hammond Expanders announced that it had been obtained IATF16949 certification, which is an automotive quality management system that provides for continual improvement in the way the firm works. Digatron released details of its new all-in-one DCA testing product. Since Dynamic Charge Acceptance is one of the pillars that advanced batteries need to boost, clearly this was a welcome product.

Digatron unveils all-in-one solution for DCA testing

Meanwhile Steve Mate, head of Co-Efficient Precision Engineering, revealed the company’s new bench top thickness gauge, Mate Gauge S, touted as the ‘smallest, lightest and most affordable’.

New thickness gauge from CoEfficient Precision Engineering.

Sovema Group says investments in R&D over the past few months have resulted in a whole set of new equipment and upgrades to its machines, ranging from oxide production to battery finishing.

Sovema E|125 Enveloping and Stacking Machine

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Senior industry figures acted as moderators for the second and third day of live sessions at the satellite studio in Aachen, Germany

the future for next year’s conferences is uncertain. For at least another six to 12 months the world will have to live with further outbreaks of the virus that will make travel either hazardous or perceived to be hazardous. Press and political fantasies about a vaccine being weeks or months away may sell newspapers, attract web traffic and the like but the scientific expert advice is far more cautious. Expert opinion — almost an oxymoronic phrase in this age of change — seems to think that without a vaccine much of 2021 will be dominated by the impact of the virus. In the 1918-1919 pandemic four waves of infection were identified; the pattern could be repeated next year. The fate of the BCI annual meeting scheduled to be held in Naples, Florida at the end of April is still up in the air. Two alternatives seem to be emerging for BCI. The first would be to hold a virtual congress again in the spring. This has two disadvantages — although the BCI has some technical content it is primarily a venue for networking: quite literally the great and the good of the US battery industry meet up to exchange notes, gossip and plans. A virtual event holds little draw to delegates. Additionally, this would hit BCI’s pockets. The council uses revenue

from the annual event to fund much of its activities in the year ahead. The second alternative would be to postpone the event until later in the year when the event would be less likely to be compromised by the pandemic. Realistically this would have to be in September or October. This would more than likely clash with the Asian Battery Conference which is meant to be held in Kuching, Malaysia between August 31 and September 3. Delegates and exhibitors could be constrained by budgets and timing between the two events. Another question mark hangs over the late June PB2021 meeting held by the ILA. It is probably too early to speculate how that might be affected if the pandemic continues. One positive result of the positive uptake of 17ELBC is that the conference will not be a loss on the ILA’s books this year. The ILA, which is a not-for-profit organization, uses much of the revenues from the ELBC series to fund its activities. The organizing committee for the ELBC had hoped until the last moment in May that the coronavirus epidemic would be under control by September. Unfortunately, it soon became clear that wasn’t going to happen, so putting this conference together with such speed and such professionalism is a credit to the ILA and CBI team.

“We should now expect some aspect of future conferences to have something equivalent to a live TV stream for attendees that can’t be physically present — it’s almost certainly going to be a mix of a physical and a virtual conference” www.batteriesinternational.com

EVENT REVIEW: 17 ELBC VIEW FROM THE EXHIBITION FLOOR

Preparation, preparation, preparation. “Virtual trade shows can be a big disappointment if you don’t prepare properly” — SY Innovations’ Anton Gurevich Anton Gurevich’s video on the 17ELBC website got it 100% right: for an exhibition to succeed at a virtual show requires thought and preparation. If only some of the other exhibitors had heeded his advice. Wandering around the virtual exhibition hall proved a huge disappointment. Gurevich’s advice to try and leave the world of PDF hand-outs was ignored and his suggested emphasis on using the power of video presentations was largely disregarded. Which is more engaging? The ability to download a catalogue of products or something that is both

informative yet also piques the interest? And when the advice wasn’t ignored, the quality of the videos was either embarrassingly slick — where content had been ignored for whizzy music and special effects — or embarrassingly amateur. It was as if the whole exhibition was trying to prove the truth of the age-old remark that “the battery industry is an industry that doesn’t know how to market itself”. There were some notable exceptions. Who wouldn’t have wanted to speak to Kent Lancaster from Oak after seeing his four-second

interview, which just asked one question: “What are those three magic ways to save over a million dollars per year?” Likewise listening to the short and informative video by Sorfin’s Scott Fink about supply chain management when a crisis appears. It wasn’t a theoretical one, but actually how his firm dealt with a real-life situation. Some of the savvier exhibitors had already prepared their way through the use of social media such as LinkedIn or the conference’s own Twitter feed. Others clearly hadn’t been that savvy. Some booths had the barest of information. Is it, for example, good marketing to suggest that a link to your website will attract enough interest to start a meaningful dialogue? This very clearly was not an exhibition hall for window-shopping. The general perception was that many delegates attending the virtual show had prepared a list of exhibitors they wanted to speak to beforehand. This was the time to talk about real-life product information and to be able to compare it with other vendors. This meant that this was a double shame for those vendors who chose not to attend, and a shame for conference attendees who would have liked to take product dialogues further. It took a while to get used to the different areas, how to wander

Exhibition hall

Exhibitor’s stand

The main hall

Networking lounge

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Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 87

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EVENT REVIEW: 17 ELBC VIEW FROM THE EXHIBITION FLOOR around the slick exhibition hall and find ways to communicate without putting private messages to people in public chatrooms. “The ILA and the CBI have done a phenomenal job putting together the platform,” says Chris Hanes, group director of marketing & corporate growth at TBS Engineering. “For the first year it’s pretty impressive, and I think with feedback from the manufacturers, suppliers and general delegates it will enhance help to enhance the experience in the future. “As an industry that’s reliant on international travel, we all have to rethink how we engage with one another. It’s not going to replace the traditional as in this industry there’s still significant value in faceto-face interaction and building relationships.” Melissa Maggioni, manager at battery technology firm OM Impianti, says: “Today I spent part of the day connecting with other suppliers, even competitors. “I had the opportunity to talk with my customers during the lockdown period, but ELBC conferences are not just a matter of sales. “It’s a collective confrontation between people from many different countries, with different skills and business interest: a confrontation that enriches us every time, giving us new perspectives on our industry. “This is the reason why we decided to join: even virtual contact is important. Of course we miss the people contact, the coffees and lunches together, the toasts and the

“It’s a collective confrontation between people from many different countries, different skills and business interests ... it enriches us every time and gives us new perspectives on our industry” — Melissa Maggioni, OMI Impianti www.batteriesinternational.com

Who wouldn’t have wanted to speak to Kent Lancaster from Oak after seeing his four-second interview, which just asked one question: “What are those three magic ways to save over a million dollars per year?” laughs that accompany this kind of events. But this will come back soon: meanwhile we have to take care of our essential business, having the courage to invest for the recovery that will come soon.” Sovema’s international marketing manager Susanna Beltranne says: “The virtual stand offers some interesting opportunities, especially in terms of cost saving and analytics; however, we need more precise feedback from our visitors for a complete assessment, in comparison with a standard booth. “We know that the current global pandemic and travel restrictions do not allow a different way to connect. However, even if we are just halfway through the show, we can already say that this kind of event does not replace the vis-à-vis experience and the business relations reinforcing opportunities that are usually the main strengths of ELBC. “We have faced many technical and usability issues in getting in contact with our customers and prospective customers, besides a general need to get acquainted with the system and the software. “That said, we can provide some good feedback on the conference: the ability to access all the presentations on demand is a good way to incentivize attendance.” James Millins, commercial manager at Goonvean Fibres, warmed to the event after the first day. “The first day was very quiet and I struggled to see how it was going to compare to the real show, but I had a lot more interaction on the second day,” he said. “People are getting to grips with it. “You cannot replace the passing interactions and I haven’t had great success via the online booth. I would like to be able to see if anyone has downloaded our material or clicked on our website.” Inbatec managing director Christian Papmahl says the biggest challenge was not being able to see

people for much of the time. “To get someone to live chat is difficult, whether that’s because of technical difficulties or reluctance, I’m not sure,” he says. “This is a new and challenging experience, and I definitely couldn’t do it for the rest of my life. “What’s missing is the concentrated possibility to meet and chat. Having to facilitate through chat rooms and live chats is too sterile, too halted.” “We are impressed,” says Scott Fink, president of Sorfin Yoshimura. “But it absolutely cannot and will not replace the real thing once the virus is over. This platform is adequate at best to what we aim to achieve. “Nothing replaces the energy created when 1,000 of our peers are together under one roof exchanging ideas. That is where the real magic occurs.” Secondary lead expert and Asia Lead Battery Conference co-organizer Mark Stevenson also appreciated the work that had gone in. “I thought it was very good and professionally done,” he said, “and it certainly came through with clarity here on the other side of the world,” he says. “Well done. “However, you’re not going to do your shopping online for the rest of your life, nor would you have your holiday from home wearing one of those 3D masks — so it can never, ever replace the real thing and it’s not the future.”

“We are impressed but it absolutely cannot and will not replace the real thing once the virus is over. This platform is adequate at best to what we aim to achieve” — Scott Fink, Sorfin Yoshimura Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 89

FORTHCOMING EVENTS

Disruption to the events programme As the spring conference season approached for the battery and energy storage industry, hosts and organizers were struggling to decide whether to go ahead with events that have been in the diary for months, if not years. As this issue was released, and with the situation changing on an hourly basis, a variety of energy conferences and meetings had been postponed. While we have taken every effort to ensure these details are correct, please contact the conference organisers with any queries, or check websites below and throughout the listings.

Battery Show Europe October 15-17 Stuttgart, Germany Rescheduled for May 18-20, 2021 The Battery Show Europe, co-located with Electric & Hybrid Vehicle Technology Expo Europe, is the industry’s largest and fastest-growing trade fair for advanced battery and H/ EV technology. 400+ suppliers from across the battery supply chain, such as A123 Systems, CATL, Leclanché, Voltabox and Bosch Rexroth will display thousands of design, production and manufacturing solutions, including battery management systems, battery pack assemblers/ integrators, materials, components, research, testing and recycling. This free trade fair is an opportunity to source the latest energy storage solutions to reduce costs and improve the performance of battery applications. Contact Informa Tel: +44 (0) 20 7921 8166 Email: thebatteryshowcs@informa.com www.thebatteryshow.eu

European Fuel Cell Forum October 20-23 Luzern, Switzerland V Virtual Event + Onsite The 14th European SOFC & SOE Forum will focus on Solid Oxide Technologies: Fuel Cells (SOFC), Electrolysers (SOE) & Membrane Reactors (SOMR). The forum will be the largest European Event in this field. The European Fuel Cell Forum continues to be one of the most prominent meeting platforms for the exchange of scientific and technical information, as well as an ideal event for networking towards future solutions. The technical programme will range from fundamental science and new materials, through cell, stack, and system development, to the latest results from commercial deployment. There are also topics covering manufacturing, lifetime, characterisation, modeling and optimisation. Under the title “indus-

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trial achievements” product and novel concepts, P2X, chemical processing applications, standardisation, studies and others such as training and education are addressed. Contact www.efcf.com/2020

Advanced Automotive Batteries Conference Virtual — AABC US November 2-5 San Francisco, CA. USA V Virtual Event Connect virtually with a global audience of battery technologists from leading automotive OEMs and their key suppliers for a must-attend week exploring development trends and breakthrough technologies. Contact Cambridge Enertech Tel: +1 781 972 5400 www.advancedautobat.com/us/

India Energy Storage Week — IESW November 2 - 6 V Virtual Event IESW is a flagship international conference & expo by India Energy Storage Alliance (IESA) incorporated in 2019, which was earlier Energy Storage India (ESI). It is India’s premier B2B networking & business event focussed on renewable energy, advanced batteries, alternate energy storage solutions, electric vehicles, charging infrastructure and microgrids ecosystem creation. The annual conference and expo includes following tracks and parallel events. The forthcoming edition of IESW is expected to attract global participation with an intent to facilitate bi-lateral trade, which will invite 20+ countries, 50+ regulators & policy makers, 200+ industry leaders, 100+ partners & exhibitors and 1000+ delegates. Contact: Customized Energy Solutions www.indiaesa.info/events

Battery Tech Expo Nordic November 3 Gothenburg, Sweden Rescheduled for September 30, 2021 The Battery industry is on the cusp of a power revolution with big technology companies investing heavily in the next generation of battery development and energy storage. The Battery Tech Expo Nordic in Gothenburg — the hub of the high tech industrial sec¬tor will bring together profession¬als from across the advanced battery technology industry. The event will provide a unique op¬portunity to showcase the latest prod¬ucts, technologies and services cover¬ing the Battery Management Systems, EV Battery, Battery Storage, Battery Development/ Discovery, Commercial and Mobile Power Device sectors. Contact 10fourMedia David Reeks Tel: +44 1283 815719 Email: david.reeks@10fourmedia.co.uk www.batterytechexponordic.com

All Energy November 4-5 Glasgow, UK Rescheduled for May 12-13, 2021 All-Energy is the UK’s leading renewable energy and low carbon innovation event, showcasing the latest technologies and services for the energy supply chain and both private and public sector energy end users. All-Energy generates invaluable connections between the buyers and sellers of low carbon solutions across the UK marketplace. With over 75,000 unique web users, 4000 e-newsletter subscribers per month and 12,400 social media followers, All-Energy also delivers a multichannel platform for the industry with access to expert presentations, webinars, reports, interviews and blogs. Contact Reed Exhibitions www.all-energy.co.uk

Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 91

FORTHCOMING EVENTS The Business Booster — TBB.Connect! November 4-5 V Virtual Event Re-imaged in a digital context, TBB. Connect will bring together innovators and industry from all corners of the world — giving you the chance to create and trigger new sustainable business opportunities. Registrations are now open! Visit our TBB.Connect website for all the information on speakers, agenda and exhibitors.

ees South America November 16 – 18 São Paulo, Brazil Rescheduled for August 24 – 26, 2021

November 10-12 Ontario, Canada

Global Automotive Components and Suppliers Expo

Rescheduled for November 17-19, 2021

November 24-25 Stuttgart, Germany

Electricity Transformation Canada will be Canada’s largest renewable energy conference and exhibition, with the key areas of focus being wind energy, solar energy, and energy storage, while expanding to incorporate complementary technologies. Participants will include utilities, system operators, governments, end-use sectors undergoing electrification, and a variety of energy professionals.

November 11-12 V Virtual Event It is estimated that the electric vehicle battery market is now worth £5 billion inthe UK. With increasing government investment, now is the time for the industry to make existing technology even more efficient to attract further buy-in. International EV Batteries 2020 will address the latest engineering design processes and best practice in battery application for a more resilient and cost-effective battery. Discuss the best methods to manage battery use and application with representatives from OEMs, battery manufacturers, battery management systems providers and academic institutions. Contact IMECHE — Institution of Mechanical Engineers www.events.imeche.org/ ViewEvent?code=CMP7017

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V Virtual Event

Contact Dufresne Davide Bonomi Tel: +44 203 289 0312 davide@energystorageforum.com www.energystorageforum.com/residentialforum-program

Electricity Transformation Canada

International EV Batteries 2020

November 25-27 Sydney, Australia

We have decided to combine the 6th Residential Energy Storage Forum with our 13th Energy Storage World Forum to bring you an even bigger and better forum with over 25 end user speakers across two back-to-back events!

Contact InnoEnergy www.tbb.innoenergy.com

Contact Glenna Gosewich Show Director, Energy Events Tel: +1 (647) 560-7000 ggosewich@hannoverfairs.com

13th Energy Storage World Forum & 6th Residential Energy Storage Forum

Rescheduled for November 9-11, 2021

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. Covering the entire value chain of innovative battery and energy storage technologies – from components and production to specific user application - it is the ideal platform for all stakeholders in the rapidly growing energy storage market. The focus at ees is on energy storage solutions suited to energy systems with increasing amounts of renewable energy sources attracting investors, utilities, installers, manufacturers and project developers from all over the world. Contact Solar Promotion International Tel: +49 7231 58598-0 Email: info@solarpromotion.com www.intersolar.net.br/en/home/for-visitors/ about-intersolar/focus-ees-south-america. html

Tier 1, 2 and 3 automotive component manufacturers from around the world will be at the expo to display their very latest technologies and products. Plus numerous other exhibitors will be on hand to discuss how they can participate in cost reduction within supply chains, and how they can offer new, alternative, cost-effective manufacturing and supply solutions. Furthermore, international associations, pavilions and specialist components manufacturers will be participating from the Middle East, Asia, the Americas and Europe, so this is a truly global supplier-sourcing opportunity in one compact location. Contact UKi Media & Events www.globalautomotivecomponentsandsuppliersexpo.com/en/

Battery Cells & Systems Expo and Conference December 2-3 Coventry, UK Rescheduled for July 7-8, 2021 Battery Cells & Systems Expo will bring together automotive manufacturers, electric utilities, battery system integrators, cell manufacturers and the entire manufacturing supply chain. A truly unique showcase, companies from around the world will use the show to launch products and demonstrate their technology to an audience of over 4,000 professionals. Co-Located with Vehicle Electrification Expo and The Advanced Materi-

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FORTHCOMING EVENTS Advanced Automotive Batteries Conference Europe — AABC Europe Virtual

als Show, this will be a highly concentrated two days of networking, lead generation and education featuring the leaders and innovators responsible for shaping the future of this industry.

January 19-21, 2021 Wiesbaden, Germany

Contact Event Partners Tel: +44 1273 286 399 Email: alex.oliver@event-partners.org www.batterysystemsexpo.com

V Virtual Event As more European nations and international automotive OEMs invest in their commitment to vehicle electrification and eMobility, the 2021 AABC Europe event in Wiesbaden propels that momentum forward, presenting unparalleled coverage of the research and development that helps drive outcomes and supports the next generation of electric vehicle batteries. Take part in this game-changing event where battery technologists from leading automotive OEMs and their key suppliers explore development trends and breakthrough technologies

CUSTOMCELLS Hands-On Lithium-Ion Battery Seminar December 2-3 Itzehoe, Germany Rescheduled for December 2021, Date TBC The CUSTOMCELLS Seminar focuses on the industrial production of lithium-ion cells. In practical modules, starting with the raw materials, slurry and electrodes, through the production of pouch cells to electrochemical characterization, the cell design is carried out in a practical manner. The lecture program provides insights into the latest technology trends on the material, machine and processing side. Contact CUSTOMCELLS Mike Eisermann mike.eisermann@customcells.de www.customcells.org/services/workshopsseminars/

Future Battery Forum December 10-11 Berlin, Germany V Virtual Event + Onsite The management conference brings together the entire value system of battery technologies: Across various industries more than 300 users, battery system and cell manufacturers and their suppliers will spend two days exchanging information, making new contacts and enriching each other. The event is rounded off by the innovation exhibition with 30 inspiring showcases as a networking and break-out area. Contact IPM Tobias Schmidt Tel: +49 511 473 147 90 www.futurebattery.eu

ees India December 15-17 Mumbai, India Rescheduled for December 14-16, 2021 The market potential for electrical energy storage in India is expected to be tremendous in the future-expecially driven by incoming policies for the emobility industry. With the great suc-

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Mumbai, India

cess 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 innovative battery and energy storage technologies-from components and production to specific user applications. Contact Solar Promotion International Kristin A. Merz Tel: +49 7231 585 98 212 www.thesmartere.in/en/ees-india

Intersolar North America January 12-14, 2021 Long Beach, California, US Rescheduled for July 14-16, 2021 Intersolar North America and Energy Storage North America come together for the first time July 14-16, 2021, connecting installers, developers, utilities, technology providers, policy makers, and key stakeholders from around the world to advance the clean energy future. Attendees get in-depth technical training, hands-on product workshops, trends, and education from top experts. Experience the solar industry’s best practices for the design, installation, and maintenance of code-compliant PV and storage systems. Tour the expo floor to review the best-in-class companies and the top solutions, services, and products for the year ahead. Contact Diversified Communications https://www.intersolar.us

Contact Cambridge Enertech Tel: +1 781 972 5400 Email: ce@cambridgeenertech.com www.advancedautobat.com/europe

International Flow Battery Forum January 19-21, 2021 Dusseldorf, Germany The IFBF is the major international conference covering all aspects of flow battery research, development, technology, manufacturing and commercialization. The purpose of the forum is to raise the profile of flow batteries as a crucial technology within the electrical energy storage sector. We believe this is timely and relevant as the need to educate and inform a wide audience of the benefits, features and attributes of flow batteries. Contact Aud Heyden Tel: +44 (0) 1666 84 09 48 www.flowbatteryforum.com

ACI’s Battery Recycling Europe February 17-18, 2021 London, UK The conference will bring together Battery Recycling industry experts, collection scheme operators and battery manufacturers to learn, share and discuss the current and emerging topics in the Battery Recycling industry. ACI’s Battery Recycling Europe will also showcase future opportunities in the Battery Recycling Market and blend together inspirational keynotes, informative sessions, and wonderful networking opportunities. Contact ACI — Active Communications International www.wplgroup.com/aci/event/batteryrecycling-europe/

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FORTHCOMING EVENTS International Zinc & Zinc Oxide Conferences February 21-24, 2021 Arizona, US The 2021 International Zinc Oxide Industry Conference is being held in conjunction with the International Zinc Conference, providing a unique opportunity to learn about new research and market trends. Both conferences offer excellent opportunities for building business relationships and networking with colleagues. The conferences can be booked individually or as a package. Contact Zinc International Association https://www.zinc.org/2021-internationalzinc-zinc-oxide-conferences/

Energy Storage Summit February 23-24, 2021 London, UK The Energy Storage Summit, now in its 6th year is renowned for its quality, breadth and expertise, featuring an all-encompassing range of strategic and technical sessions on the adoption and deployment of storage. The Summit plays a pivotal role in the journey to propelling the industry into the next stage of its development, providing an unrivalled platform to develop the right partnerships and create business opportunities of all sizes. This eco-system event brings together the entire value chain including Utilities, Developers, EPCs, Investors, Manufacturers, Energy storage providers, local government and DNO’s making this one of the must–attend storage events for 2021. Contact Solar Media www.storagesummit.solarenergyevents.com

The Battery Technology Show February 23-24, 2021 Coventry, UK The Battery Technology Show will showcase the incredible developments happening across the battery and energy storage markets. If you are looking to keep up with the latest news in break-

London, UK

94 • Batteries International • Autumn 2020

through 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. Contact Evolve Media Group www.batterytechnologyshow.com

India Smart Utility Week — ISUW 2021 March 2-6, 2021 New Delhi, India ISUW 2021 will bring together India’s leading electricity, gas and water utilities, policy makers, regulators, investors and world’s top-notch smart energy experts and researchers to discuss trends, share best practices and showcase next generation technologies and products in smart energy and smart cities domains. Contact India Smart Grid Forum — ISGW www.isgw.in

Battery Japan 2021 March 3-5, 2021 Tokyo, Japan Battery Japan is world’s leading international exhibition for rechargeable battery, showcasing various components, materials, devices, finished rechargeable batteries for rechargeable battery R&D and manufacturing. It is held twice a year in Tokyo (March) and Osaka (September). Contact Reed Exhibitions www.batteryjapan.jp/en-gb.html

International Battery Seminar and Exhibit March 8-11, 2021 Orlando, Florida US As the longest-running annual battery industry event in the world, this meeting has always been the preferred venue to announce significant developments, new products, and showcase the most advanced battery technology. Founded in 1983, the International Battery Seminar & Exhibit has established itself as the premier event showcasing the state of the art of worldwide energy storage technology developments for consumer, automotive, military, and industrial applications. Key thought leaders will assemble to not only provide broad perspectives, but also informed insights into significant advances in materials, product development, manufacturing, and application for all battery systems and enabling technologies. Contact Cambridge Enertech www.internationalbatteryseminar.com

Energy Storage Europe March 16-18 Dusseldorf, Germany Those who would like to get to know the entire world of energy storage, its leading technologies and key-figures, for those there is only one destination: Energy Storage Europe in Düsseldorf. The unrivalled focus on the topic of energy storage can only be found here in Düsseldorf. Only here the entire range of technologies in all its diversity can be discovered: electrical, thermal, chemical and mechanical solutions. Only here the energy storage of future energy systems can already be experienced today. Contact Messe Dusseldorf www.energy-storage-online.com

INTERBAT March 17-19, 2021 Moscow, Russia Russia’s premier battery event will be held again on March 17-19 in Moscow. For the 29th consecutive year, Russia’s battery storage association — better known as INTERBAT — has brought together Russian and international battery manufacturers and suppliers to meet in this the most prestigious specialized exhibition and trade fair. Contact Interbat www.interbat.ru

R-ZINC March 30-31, 2021 Bruxelles, Belgium 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 EverZinc www.r-zinc.com/en/

FENIBAT May 23 - 25, 2021 Londrina, Brazil The 5th FENIBAT will gather in Londrina, Paraná, Brazil, from May 23 to 25, 2021, the Brazilian and Latin American battery and lead recycling industry and its suppliers. Its objective is to disseminate new products, services and technologies from all countries of the world to the South American market, as well as the exchange of information and knowledge. Contact Jayme Gusmao Tel: +55 43 99937 4911 Email: gusmao@fenibat.com www.fenibat.com/en/home

www.batteriesinternational.com

A BRIEF HISTORY OF BATTERY TIME: 2000-2020 To the outsider the lead battery business seems to be a tranquil landscape where nothing seems to change very rapidly. But to those in the know, the history of the battery is more a series of torrid episodes resembling scenes from Peyton Place than Little House on the Prairie!It’s also a strange industry. Competitive to its core but gracious in helping competitors when circumstances change.

The World of Batteries The Coffee Break Guide (2000-2020)

2000 • Formation of EnerSys by acquisition of Yuasa by institutional investors. In January 2001 the name Yuasa is replaced with EnerSys. This is quickly followed by a merger with Hawker Group (2002) and the acquisition of Energy Storage Products Group of Invensys that year. • Hadi, the specialist battery machine manufacturer, announces that almost 100% of its production from its German and Austrian plants is destined for export. The firm had grown from its start in 1961 to become a leader in the niche areas of spine casting of positive tubular grids and paste-filling. Continued investment in drilling

96 • Batteries International • Autumn 2020

machinery, design programmes and milling machines continues. In 2007 a new CNC sheet metal workshop is installed. • Daramic, the international separator firm, establishes footprint in Asia with opening of manufacturing plant in Prachinburi, Thailand. As of 2020 it had five lines operational in the country. • Exide Technologies acquires GNB Technologies, an Australian company owned by Pacific Dunlop and a supplier of industrial and automotive batteries. Many say it will prove an acquisition too far. Chapter 11 bankruptcy awaits.

2001 • Russian scientists ‘work on developing a lead carbon battery comes to the start of commercialization and eventual creation of Axion Power. The PbC battery is similar to a standard one but uses a standard lead acid battery positive electrode and a supercapacitor negative electrode. The specific type of activated carbon it uses has an extremely high surface area and has been formulated for use in electrochemical applications. During charge and discharge, the positive electrode undergoes the same chemical reaction that occurs in a conventional lead acid battery. The main difference in the PbC battery is the replacement of the lead

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF BATTERY TIME: 2000-2020 (2007), Energia (2007). Forms joint venture with Assad (2008).

• FRÖTEK opens office in Manchester, UK.

• Trojan develops and launches its new line of spill-proof maintenancefree AGM batteries.

• Proposed 42V standard dominates debate on future of lead batteries. Arguments to resolve the issue versus 48V technology take almost two decades to be resolved. • Invensys acquires Mexican facility in Tijuana. 2002 • Johnson Controls acquires its Varta automotive battery division, based in Germany. Sales exceed $20 billion. • Former Exide Technologies bosses Arthur Hawkins and Douglas Pearson found guilty of fraud. • Exide Technologies files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after racking up a debt of $2.5 billion as a result of the recent acquisitions. It would be two years before the company would be free of the bankruptcy protection. 2003 • Jim Gilmour takes over as president of Farmer Mold & Machine Works. • Birth of Sorfin Yoshimura Qingdao in China. This is the first regional joint venture company for SY Group. SY had been formed in 1986 from a partnership between Tom Yoshimura, who started Yoshimura Products in 1981, and Paul Fink. • Chinese battery manufacturer BYD buys 77% stake in Xi’An Qinchuan Autostate car firm. 2004 • Richardson Molding acquires Hardigg Battery Products, giving it the largest product line in US SLI and industrial batteries. • EnerSys completes IPO. Acquires Fiamm Motive Power business (2005), Gaz Modular Energy, ATK and CFT (2006), Leclanché

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• Johnson Controls ventures into lithium hybrid vehicle batteries following an order from the US Advanced Battery Consortium.

• International expansion of FRÖTEK continues with work in Ukraine, China (2005), South Africa (2006), US (2009). • CSIRO researchers Nigel Haigh, Lan Lam, Christopher Phyland and David Rand awarded patent for the UltraBattery. This is a hybrid device that combines ultracapacitor technology with lead-acid battery technology in a single cell with a common electrolyte. The UltraBattery technology suffers less from the development of permanent (or hard) sulfation on the negative battery electrode – a problem commonly exhibited in conventional lead acid batteries. Another patent is awarded to Lan Lam and Jun Furukuwa in 2008 for the final development of the battery. 2005 • US firm Firefly Energy receives first of several US patents for its carbongraphite foam lead acid battery technology based on a material sciences innovation discovered by Caterpillar Inc. Unlike conventional lead acid batteries, this lasts longer, is smaller, weighs less because of the reduction of lead, sheds heat more effectively and can be re-charged faster. • TBS Engineering buys Daga from Daramic. • Fiamm establishes joint venture with Chen group in China. • Exide Technologies announces closure of UK automotive battery factory. • Källström, the Swedish battery filling company, moves from Malmö to its new base in Eslöv. • Johnson Controls acquires Delphi’s global automotive battery business.

In other news: 2001: Terrorists destroy twin Towers killing 2,977 people • 2004: George W. Bush re-elected President of USA • 2005: Angela Merkel first female Chancellor of Germany • 2006: Western black rhino declared extinct

negative electrode with an activated carbon electrode which, being a supercap, does not undergo a chemical reaction at all. Ultimately Axion Power struggled for a decade and a half but never succeeded in commercializing its product.

• Sovema acquires Accuma Engineering.

Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 97

A BRIEF HISTORY OF BATTERY TIME: 2000-2020 2006

2007

2010

• Daramic expands into China by forming a joint venture. The following year it acquires a plant in Tianjin, China.

• ENTEK sold to its senior manufacturing team.

• Firefly Energy, developer of an advanced lead battery, files for bankruptcy but is bought by Indian firm later that year. Although it announced a distribution agreement in Australia three years later little has been heard of it since.

• After an 18-month hiatus Batteries International is relaunched by new owner and life-long journalist Michael Halls. • Trojan Battery breaks ground on new plant in Sandersville, Georgia. • Johnson Controls and Saft agree to collaborate in a venture that falls apart acrimoniously five years later over “a fundamental disagreement” about the direction and scope of the JV.

• Spectrum/Rayovac reorganize in hunt for profitability. • The race into China hots up. Johnson Controls forms a joint venture with China’s Fengfan to make sealed lead acid batteries. This is the start of a huge investment made into the People’s Republic in future years, including troubled relations with government agencies in the early 2010s. • European Chemicals Agency announces REACH requirements as previous EU directives are bound into the one legislation.

In other news: 2007: Apple launches iPhone • 2008: Beijing olympics • 2009: Barack Obama 44th president of the USA

2008 • Sovema, Italian battery machine manufacturer, acquires Bitrode Corp, a leading manufacturer of battery testing equipment. It marks the first major move into the US market. • Greek battery giant Sunlight makes €50m investment in lead recycling plant. • GS Yuasa forms Thailand joint venture with Siam Motors. • Polypore International, owner of separator giant Daramic, acquires Microporous. It would take five years for the US Federal Trade Commission to rule that the acquisition had been uncompetitive. • Scott Fink and Taro Yoshimura become presidents of Sorfin Yoshimura NY and Tokyo respectively and transformation to the second generation formally takes place. 2009 • Zesar launches EVOLINE, low cost, high performance assembly line. The product is first fruit of involvement in 3D computer aided design work. • Eternity Technologies is founded as part of Al Dobowi Group. It is based in Ras Al Khaimah in the United Arab Emirates and is the region’s first modern battery manufacturer.

98 • Batteries International • Autumn 2020

2011 • David Wilson, head of the International Lead Association, steps down after 35 years. He leaves ILA work fully in 2016. Incoming managing director is Andy Bush. • Sovema moves into the lithium business with creation of business unit called Solith. • Birth of SY Europe focuses on growing sales, marketing and logistics competency in the EMEA region. This is followed by SY Brasil and SY India regional offices (2014) and SY Thailand (2015). • EnerSys hits the acquisition trail, once more acquiring ABSL Power Solutions (2011), Ergon Batteries (2011), GAIA Akkumulatorenwerke (2011), EnerSystems (2011), Energy Leader Batteries (2q012), Purcell Systems (2013), UTS Holdings (2014), ICS (2015), Enser (2016), Alpha Technologies (2018), and Northstar Battery Company (2019). • Daramic India relocates to new, larger facility in Bangalore, India. It had been acquired in 2008. • Penox makes first move into Asia and sets up commercial branch in South Korea. By 2015 the firm is producing and selling high grade lead oxides to Asia. In 2017 Penox acquires all the shares of Penox Korea. • Daramic establishes Xiangyang, China plant. • Johnson Controls forms a joint venture with Colombia’s MAC. 2012 • Johnson Power Solutions opens its first US battery recycling centre in Florence, South Carolina. • Emerson completes acquisition of Chloride Group, the end of one of the most famous brands in lead battery

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PROFILE: ADVANCED BATTERY CONCEPTS

GreenSeal® BiPolar Batteries Scale Manufacturing Readiness Michael Everett, Chief Operating Officer, Advanced Battery Concepts Moving technology from the research laboratory to the engineering test lab is difficult. Moving technology from the engineering test lab to the factory floor and into commercial production is another level of hard. But that is inevitably where new technology has to wind up to be of commercial value. Someone has to develop manufacturing methods for new technology with an eye on cost, reliability, quality and performance of the finished products. The lead battery industry has found itself wilting in the shadow of the much-celebrated lithium ion battery energy storage onslaught. We all know you should not believe everything you read and so it goes for lithium ion batteries, at the very least for product cost and recycling maturity if not other things. With a working active recycling method and with real cost transparency, lead batteries enjoy a huge market and deeply credible standing when held up against vaporous definitions of cost and recyclability of lithium technology in the face of unproven long-term performance. GreenSeal bipolar battery technology, invented, developed and offered by Advanced Battery Concepts, puts significant sunshine between the challenges facing the lithium business now and the future of the lead market. Stretching the practical and cost advantages lead already has and doubling down on that advantage by bringing better performance and superior manufacturability to lead acid batteries, the GreenSeal bipolar battery throws the gauntlet at the feet of the lithium industry. GreenSeal opens the door to lead battery OEMS to put real heat on the lithium sector and make it uncomfortable. GreenSeal also provides the progressive lead battery maker with the opportunity to be a recognized leader and propel the entire lead industry into the future. The lithium gang are going to have to do a lot better than they currently are against the forward progress of the GreenSeal-based lead industry if they want to keep their dream alive. And lead battery makers are going to

100 • Batteries International • Autumn 2020

have to pay attention and sharpen their minds and their pencils to compete with GreenSeal adopters inside their own industry. GreenSeal bipolar batteries bring a significant innovative twist to the comfortable traditional lead battery architecture, with familiar materials, common supply chain and a decided lack of immature to-be-proven technology, making GreenSeal ready for mass commercialization. GreenSeal now brings lead battery manufacturing beyond the decades-old fabrication methods and heads on into the 21st century with manufacturing techniques generally associated with power electronics and plastics molding industries. Hands off and lights out Manufacturing GreenSeal Batteries is being referred to as true advanced manufacturing on an absolute scale. Hands off and lights out factory operation are achievable objectives, thanks to manufacturing innovations that are as capable and sophisticated as they are simple and elegant. Robotic handling, plastic molding, solder stenciling, foil making and solder heating are all it takes to provide the composite current collector structures for pasting. And who but ABC would have thought to paste on the glass mat separator rather than the current collector to attain precision in placement, thickness and efficiency of active material use? Transfer pasting brings superior precision in paste thickness, paste weight control and paste contact with the foil current collectors. At the manufacturing system level, using advanced vision systems and AI techniques applied to this highly mature lead acid industry, component and assembly quality is as-

sured in the most critical and demanding operations that influence the performance of the battery. Those techniques are executed with relative ease and seamless interface to the entire GreenSeal bipolar battery fabrication process. Cured battery stacks are treated to the state of the art in battery assembly, GreenSeal RapidSeal™, with its superior one-step process of over-molding. No case, no cover, just raw plastic and in situ injection molded encasement real time, round the clock on the production line. No seams to leak, no walls to bend and deflect and no intercell welding operations means a clean, efficient casing process that is lightyears ahead of traditional casing methods. A single fill port for all cells in a battery in a closed loop liquid and gas management system provides incredibly efficient and clean filling and formation of lead batteries with superior thermal management. Water baths and ambient temperature controls are no longer needed to keep full control of battery temperature under high rates of formation. GreenSeal breaks the bottleneck of formation and brings proven and demonstrable reduction in floor space and environmental controls with a commensurate rise in quality results that the industry could only dream about before GreenSeal. In total, the GreenSeal BiPolar battery technology and manufacturing system brings factory and product improvements that are revolutionary for the lead industry. GreenSeal touches every core process step in the manufacture of lead batteries and improves each by multiples or orders of magnitude. At ABC headquarters, bringing GreenSeal manufacturing technology

Manufacturing GreenSeal Batteries is true advanced manufacturing on an absolute scale. Hands off and lights out factory operation are achievable objectives, thanks to manufacturing innovations as capable and sophisticated as they are simple and elegant. www.batteriesinternational.com

PROFILE: ADVANCED BATTERY CONCEPTS to the industry has been a focus for the past three years. In that time, the company has built a low volume demonstration line and has now completely designed a middle volume production line for the licensees of the technology to enable them to get into the commercial manufacturing of their own GreenSeal Batteries. Core GreenSeal processes A few core GreenSeal processes coupled with industrialized traditional manufacturing methods for materials and completed batteries comprise the entire process. ABC has moved to develop equipment capable of executing those core processes with a high degree of automation and simplicity to enable integration into either a greenfield factory or an existing manufacturing environment. Lower cap ex cost, lower labor content requirements and higher quality and performance products are all achieved with the GreenSeal manufacturing system. â&#x20AC;˘ Electrode assembly comprises preparation of the plastic bipolar electrode frame ready to receive paste. Replaces traditional grid casting/punching with a component having much lower lead content and much better electrochemical uniformity. The heart and soul of the bipolar electrode is the joining of the lead foils on opposing surfaces. This is done efficiently, automatically and with automotive level quality using a peg soldering and platen process. â&#x20AC;˘ Transfer pasting efficiently applies paste into a precision nest and transfers it to the bipolar electrode. Paste thickness and weight control have never been so precise and all with zero paste waste. â&#x20AC;˘ Battery assembly is a snap with over-molded encasement in an offthe-shelf industrial vertical injection molding system, capable of processing up to 1M batteries annually for a single system. By popular demand, Advanced Battery Concepts has designed and developed a commercially available set of core GreenSeal manufacturing equipment capable of producing quality GreenSeal bipolar batteries. That equipment is ready for placement in an operating lead battery factory or on a greenfield site. The system will capably produce a bipolar battery electrode up to 370mm x

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" !

370mm square and can achieve an energy throughput of 625 MWh annually. It is a middle volume core GreenSeal production line integrated and ready to go. The system design takes advantage of the experience of building batteries on the low volume line inside ABC and has integrated with advanced automation manufacturing equipment and technology widely deployed in industry worldwide. The result is a lead battery production line that is innovative, highly automated, self-controlled and monitored, affordable and efficient. Advanced Battery Concepts is tak-

ing orders for the equipment and within standard equipment lead times can place equipment in lead factories around the world. GreenSeal bipolar batteries take lead acid battery technology to the next level. GreenSeal Mid Volume Line manufacturing equipment enables production of GreenSeal bipolar batteries with high quality and efficient operation and takes lead battery manufacturing to a new high point of capability and efficiency. Together the combination allows the lead battery maker to build a much better lead battery and run a much better lead battery business.

Batteries International â&#x20AC;˘ Autumn 2020 â&#x20AC;˘ 101

A BRIEF HISTORY OF BATTERY TIME: 2000-2020 history but one that had lost its way a quarter of a century before. • Exide Technologies’ recycling plant in Frisco, Texas is closed, followed by Vernon, California the year after. The issue of lead contamination of the surrounding areas continued to be a problem for Exide until it was sold this year. It also closes its plant in New Zealand. 2013 • Exide Technologies files for bankruptcy protection a second time. As with first Chapter 11, it will take two years before it is able to trade again. • After 22 years of struggling, bipolar start-up Atraverda goes into receivership. • At the end of the year Seven Mile Capital Partners buys Microporous from Polypore/Daramic for $120 million. A new management team is set up early in 2014. • Charlesbank Capital Partners makes initial investment in Trojan Battery. The firm had been in the Godber family since its foundation in 1925. • Ador Digatron joint venture goes ahead between German headquartered Digatron and Ador, a well respected Indian firm and a further move by Digatron to expand its presence in Asia. • Hammond releases K2 range of expanders, offering a step change in lead acid battery performance, particularly in terms of cyclability in partial state of charge and offering performance benefits that can be adjusted to varying temperature ranges and demands. Initially most suited for stop-start and micro-hybrid applications. • Atomized Products Group sets up new $4.3 million operation in Chesapeake in US state of Virginia.

batteries without the use of smelting. Commercialization of the technology stalls later on. After the initial public offering peak of $21 a share, the price trades close to $1. 2015 • Bipolar batteries make a spectacular return to the limelight with two firms, in particular Advanced Battery Concepts and Gridtential, providing viable alternatives to regular lead batteries. ABC develops GreenSeal technology, a full suite of patented technologies and simplified production processes, to enable the construction of reduced lead content, high performance, lower cost lead batteries in existing formats for today’s and newly enabled future markets. Commercial adoption follows. Gridtential introduces its Silicon Joule technology. This is a substrate that replaces the grid in a battery, resulting in a large reduction in the amount of lead required and better performance. Like ABC’s bipolar batteries most of the regular production of the battery can be built on existing plate-making lines, modified assembly lines and existing formation/finishing lines. • Zesar invests in new factory in Manisa, near Turkey’s port city of Izmir. Later expanded to another factory. Plans are to double the firm’s manufacturing area to 10,000m2. • ALABC restructuring approved by its members and ILA. • Asahi Kasei acquires Polypore International, the parent company to Daramic and affiliates. • Death of DeLight Breidegam, charismatic founder of East Penn Manufacturing and creator of largest family owned battery business in the US.

• South Africa’s Metair buys 100% of Turkey’s Mutlu Holding and a 75% stake in Mutlu Akü, the lead battery maker. It was already lining up taking a stake in German battery manufacturer Moll (2015), which gives it a part stake in Chaowei, a Chinese battery firm.

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• C&D Technologies’ CEO plans revamp aimed to restore lead battery reputation the firm had in the 1990s and 2000s. 2016

Ann Noll

• End of a legend. Ann Noll, one of the great institutions of Battery Council International, retires after 37 years with the council. Greatly missed by North American battery firms as well as worldwide. • Tactical tax reasons are involved in the creation of Johnson Controls International based in Ireland and formed through a merger of Johnson Controls and Tyco International. • Four lead association bodies BCI, ILA, EUROBAT and ABR agree to kickstart a global pro-lead battery campaign. This is the first attempt at full coordination between the organizations. • BCI launches innovation award. Hammond wins award for further development of its K2 range of expanders and opening up its E=MC2 laboratory to serve the battery industry. • Cellusuede moves into new base and 125,000sq ft factory at Rockford in US state of Illinois. • Ecoult, the East Penn subsidiary, installs UltraBattery in smart grid test bed in Dublin. • Founder of ALABC Michael Mayer dies.

2014 • Aqua Metals demonstrates a novel way of recycling lead acid

• GS Yuasa acquires Turkish battery firm and boosts stake in Malaysia, expands further in Indonesia.

DeLight Breidegam

• A watershed moment for lead battery research when Argonne National Laboratory, RSR Technologies and East Penn Manufacturing agree to

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF BATTERY TIME: 2000-2020 work together under a standard US government cooperative research and development agreement. RSR and East Penn to use Argonne’s state-of-the-art analytic technologies to accelerate lead battery research. These same technologies have already been used by lithium battery researchers in previous years. Tests undertaken will investigate the fundamental transport processes in lead batteries, using a variety of characterization techniques available at Argonne. Scientists at Argonne who will be assigned to the project have extensive experience in synchrotron X-ray techniques, in particular for characterizing materials under controlled electrochemical conditions. 2017 • ENTEK International, battery separator designer and producer, signs an agreement with Separindo, the Indonesia-based polyethylene battery separator producer and Japanese glass company NSG Group, to make and sell PE separators across Asia. Breaks ground on new plant for this in 2019. • BCI leads the way with pushing for lower blood lead levels for workers in battery plant. • Doe Run announces plans to expand lead mining on back of higher lead prices. • Monbat buys Italian recycling firm Piombifera Italiana. • Penox opens new product development centre in Germany. • Chinese e-bike lead battery maker Danneng Power International expands output with $870m sales.

• SY Innovations formed, designed to support SY Group and explore new markets, products and sales/marketing techniques. • Gridtential wins BCI award for its bipolar battery solution but automation problems on the production line dog adoption despite backing from well-known battery manufacturers.

Detchko Pavlov

• Death of Detchko Pavlov, Bulgarian academician and probably the greatest expert on the lead battery that has ever lived. Over his lifetime his research contributed to much of our present understanding of how lead batteries work. He is particularly remembered for the generosity of spirit in sharing this knowledge around the world. • Exide Technologies waives the right to use Exide brand name in perpetuity to Indian battery giant Exide Industries. This follows a 20-year dispute over the issue. • Daramic greenfield plant in Gujarat, India finished and operational.

• Canada’s Discover Energy buys Korean lead manufacturing business iQ Power Asia. • India’s Exide Industries moves into lithium with Leclanché in joint venture.

• EnerSys buys Canada’s Alpha Technologies for $750m in push into energy storage markets.

• Furukuwa Battery partners Vietnam’s Pinaco in UltraBattery manufacturing deal. Furukuwa already had operations in China, India, Indonesia and Thailand.

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• Solar power company Mobisol partners African lead battery firms for storage component to its offering.

2018

• EC fines lead cartel Recyclex, Campine, Ecobat Technologies for fixing lead prices.

• Black Diamond Structures opens battery testing for nanomaterials technology facility in Texas.

• Duracell unveils new lead battery, citing cost benefits against lithium.

• Innovative New Zealand lead battery pioneer ArcActive partners East Penn.

• Batek Makina opens 43,000 sq ft plant in Dilovasi in Turkey.

• Belectric, a UK lead acid/lithium battery firm, is bought by German utility Innogy SE (previously RWE).

• Hollingsworth and Vose invested in capacity expansion in raw material and global separator production to support the AGM market.

• NorthStar wins BCI award for its remote monitoring technology. This allows battery users to review the battery’s health and status at any time from anywhere. The embedded battery sensor communicates with both site technicians and power systems to ensure correct installation and settings. The device was launched for the telecom sector, but will be expanded to new segments.

• BM Rosendahl opens development centre.

• Exide Industries opens $100m plant in Bengal.

• Chinese battery firm Leoch makes undisclosed investment in UK firm DBS Energy.

• C&D Technologies, a portfolio company of KPS Capital Partners, acquires Trojan Battery Company. • Proposal for new body to replace ALABC mooted at Vienna ELBC. The Consortium for Battery Innovation emerged the following year.

• Amara Raja, Gravita sign recycling deal. JCI, which has worked with Amara Raja for 20 years, formalized an agreement between the two this year. • Narada inaugurates first of five gridscale lead carbon ESS in Germany.

• Korean lead battery maker AtlasBX gets go-ahead to build lead battery plant in US. • Trojan Battery sold to C&D Technologies as last remaining link with Godber family cut. 2019 • RSR Technologies wins BCI award with possibly the most important advance in lead research this side of the century. RSR, working with East Penn

Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 103

A BRIEF HISTORY OF BATTERY TIME: 2000-2020 In other news: 2010: Haiti is struck by a devastating earthquake • 2012: The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee • 2015: The Paris Climate Chenge Agreement • 2019: Donald Trump withdraws from it • 2020: The corona virus pandemic 104 • Batteries International • Autumn 2020

• Exide Industries moves into e-rickshaw battery manufacturing. • Water Gremlin moves back to full production after agency shut-down. • Upside Group switches on 25MWh lead carbon system in Germany. 2020 • Hammond Group completes the first step to employee ownership. Manufacturing and the US Argonne National Laboratory, used Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source synchrotron to look at, in real time, the crystalliza“Innovation is the thing that gives you the opportunity. It’s the promise our atomic future.” level tion of lead plates atofthe during the charging and discharging process. The results of the research enable the firm to develop its alloy, known as Supersoft-Hycycle, which enhances lead battery performance. Tim Ellis, president of RSR Technologies, said: “With this 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 SupersoftHycycle 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. Sally Breidegam Miksiewicz

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• Covid-19 claims first lead battery insolvency victim, Moll, but outlook for the firm brightens later. • Exide Technologies (and four subsidiaries) files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to facilitate the sale of its North American assets. In July Exide sells its North American assets to Atlas Holdings.

Batteries International • Spring 2018 • 55

• Microporous forms joint partnership with Chinese firm Zisun, the largest fully integrated producer of glass micro-fibres and media in Asia, allowing Microporous to add AGM separators to its product range. • Specialist battery machine maker Wirtz Manufacturing invests in nickel-zinc battery maker ZAF Energy Systems. • Johnson Controls Power Solutions — the former battery division of JCI bought by Brookfield Business Partners for $13 billion — launched itself with the name Clarios. • Lead batteries in India lose subsidies under new FAME-II regulations. • East Penn takes stake in lithium battery maker Navitas.

• German formation firm using acid recirculation technology Inbatec and Kustan become equal and independent subsidiary of new firm RedDotPlastics. • ArcActive wins BCI innovation award with technology to replace negative battery electrode with nonwoven carbon fabric that achieves high DCA with minimal loss. Later in the year ArcActive is very close to full commercialization of the product. • Neutron diffraction is used for the first time in a project to improve lead battery performance, says Consortium for Battery Innovation. The project, launched in Spain under the CBI’s technical programme, uses hi-tech neutron diffraction techniques to explore the fundamental processes that occur inside lead batteries as they charge and discharge. Exide Technologies and the Institute of Materials Science of Aragon work with the CBI on the project. “This project, the first to be launched in Europe, demonstrates the kind of cutting-edge research now being undertaken by the advanced lead battery industry,” says CBI director Alistair Davidson. “Neutron diffraction probes deeper than X-rays and can provide another perspective into improving the performance of lead batteries. The analysis we’re conducting in Spain will help us develop new high-performing lead batteries.”

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CONFERENCE IN PRINT: TPPL Melchor Fernández discusses the role of expanders in improving battery performance. This, the first of two articles, explains the basics of how expander mixes need to be tailored to specific battery applications.

Expander mix formulations and their effects on battery performance The development and worldwide growth of the new micro-hybrid vehicles with start/stop technology has mandated a series of changes in the lead battery. One of the critical adjustments has been the need for new expander formulations and materials that are deployed in the negative active mass. In start/stop technology the battery functions primarily in a partial state of charge (around 70%-90%) which creates unique problems in battery performance. One of the primary concerns is the accelerated rate of lead sulphation, particularly on the negative plates given there is no complete discharge and recharge. This first section of a two-part paper looks at the issues facing startstop battery applications and shows how the right negative expander blend can mitigate those issues for both AGM and EFB batteries.

The basics of expanders Expander mix formulations include the three classic main components, namely barium sulphate, organic expander and carbon. They are added to the negative active material during the mixing process. Barium sulphate: Barium sulphate

crystals are isomorphs with respect to the lead sulphate ones and consequently they act as nucleation sites for the lead sulphate crystals generated during the discharge. Their function is especially important during high rate discharges (cranking), in which a high amount of Pb+2 ions are generated that can led to oversaturation in the pores with a decrease of the discharge voltage. Pb+2 ions react afterwards with the sulphate ions SO42- of the electrolyte generating lead sulphate that

106 • Batteries International • Autumn 2020

precipitates over the SO4Ba crystals eliminating the oversaturation of Pb+2 ions in solution. Organic expander: This is a deriva-

tive of the wood pulp process obtained through the fermentation of the lignin liquor. From fermentation a series of oxylignines such as Vanisperse A and HT are obtained. Their function in the battery is to increase the specific surface area of the negative active material by being adsorbed on charge in the pores over the fresh lead and avoiding the deposition of the reduced lead into a coarse structure. Typically, negative AM SSA is increased from 0.3m2/g to 0.6m2/g. Carbon: This imparts a light grey co-

lour to the negative plate that helps to distinguish it from the positive and provides extra conductivity to the heavily sulphated AM to recover from deep discharges.

Mixes for varying battery applications Different battery applications require the use of various expander mixes with different formulations adequate for the different requirements of the battery. Expander formulations can be divided into the three classic battery uses, namely SLI, UPS and cycling.

One of the critical adjustments has been the need for new expander formulations and materials that are deployed in the negative active mass.

SLI (starting lighting and ignition):

In this type of service, the most important function is the cranking of the internal combustion engine that is characterized by the use of high currents of the order of 500A-700A. These high currents tend to produce an oversaturation of Pb+2 ions in the pores that decease the discharge voltage by concentration polarization. To deal with it is necessary to have at the same time enough inner SSA and nucleating sites in the pores, a situation that require the use of relative high levels of barium sulphate and organic expander at the same time. A typical SLI expander formulation has 60% barium sulphate, 25% organic expander and 15% carbon. The loading on mixing is typically 1.0%-1.2% with respect to oxide. UPS (floating use): This application

is characterized by having the battery under almost permanent charge between mains failure. Charging voltage on floating use is quite low — of the order of 2.18V/cell-2.21V/cell, with a low overvoltage of the order of 60mV with respect to the open circuit. Beside this, these batteries are not intended to be high rate discharged. An organic expander has a strong effect on the negative plate polarization a condition that together with quite low charging overvoltage, can led to have low floating currents. To deal with it these formulations include a low percentage of organic expander: 85% barium sulphate, 5% organic expander and 10% carbon. Cycling applications: Cycling ap-

plications cover different uses. In some, the battery receives regular daily charges. In others such as in PV use, daily charges can be no longer

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CONFERENCE IN PRINT: TPPL assured. Especially harmful are the second ones because the battery is forced to work under partial state of charge conditions almost in a permanent way, and consequently acid stratification can develop with their associated sulphation problems. Under cycling applications, cranking operations at high current are generally not needed, and consequently the organic expander amount is low. However, discharge currents can be quite different as well as deep of discharges, hence the amount of barium sulphate is high close to 90%. Finally, the amount of carbon is rather low. A typical cycling formulation includes 85%-90% barium sulphate, 5% organic expander and 5%-10% carbon

Batteries for start/stop applications The work of the lead acid battery under start/stop use is characterized by a series of distinctive facts that make them more prone to develop several problems that can severely limit their expected life and eventually lead to battery to failure. These are. • high number of cranking operations • Continuous shallow cycling before each cranking • Work under partial state of charge • Possibility of developing acid stratification ª High degree of negative active material sulphation. Acid stratification Among them, the one that can affect more directly the performance of the negative plate is the possibility of developing acid stratification that in turn causes the development of high degrees of negative active material sulphation. When acid stratification develops in effect there are two different electrochemical systems in all the cells of the battery. This is so because of the different acid density in the upper and bottom part of the cell. As the open circuit voltage is dependent on the acid density, the upper and bottom part have different OCV, lower in the upper part and higher at the bottom. Both parts are shortcircuited by the supporting grid. Two short-circuited cells with different OCV cannot exist. There is

108 • Batteries International • Autumn 2020

a natural tendency for them to homogenize, and the way to homogenize is depicted in the following graph. The bottom part will experience a slight discharge and the upper part a slight charge according to the reactions. Discharge Pb > Pb+2 + 2eCharge Pb+2 +2e- >Pb

The two electrons released in the bottom part by the discharge reaction are conducted to the upper part by the connecting grid and once in the upper part they promote the reduction of the Pb+2 ions to metallic lead. +2 In the bottom part the Pb generated ions react with the sulphate ions of the electrolyte generating Lead sulphate, tending to equilibrate in some way the densities of both upper and lower parts. Nevertheless as the falling tendency to the bottom of the sulphate ions continue, this equilibration scheme is continuously taking place and hence the tendency to generate progressively higher levels of lead sulphate continues at a low but sustained way. These reactions are shown in figure 1 above. The currents involved are low — in the order of µA — but they occur all the time as long as acid stratification develops, being the final result a high degree of sulphation sometimes above 60%-

Figure 1

70% in the bottom part. At the end acid stratification phenomena develops into what is known as mass lead sulphate stratification.

Lead sulphate recrystallization The negative plate goes through a recrystallization process, that convert the initially small crystals to larger ones quite stable and difficult to be reduced back to lead. This phenomenon is depicted in figure 2 below. During the discharge of the battery, the newly generated lead sulphate tends to precipitate over the already existing lead sulphate crystals, gener ating big crystals that are stable and difficult to be reduced back to metal lic lead. This phenomenon has been mainly observed in the negative plate and seems to be related with the lower possibilities for the new generated

Figure 2: a) Lead sulphate precipitates at the negative electrode during battery

discharge. According to the mechanism of Ostwald ripening (dissolution and reprecipitation) new crystals form on the old ones under conservation of volume and reduction of surface (b) and (c). In the experiment of Yamaguchi et al, sulphuric acid with rather low concentrations (0.05 mol l-1) was used to accelerate the process for in situ observation.

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CONFERENCE IN PRINT: TPPL lead sulphate to precipitate as new crystals because of the lower available SSA area of the NAM. Both sulphation and recrystallization process are steadily taking place developing at the end high amounts of lead sulphate crystals — the most part of them of large size and difficult to be reduced back to metallic lead. The generation of acid stratification and its elimination by the equilibrium reaction, can be seen in figure 3. During the battery cycling and as a consequence of the battery cycling, progressively high levels of acid stratification develops. In the example of the schema it amounts to 54 mills. During the later resting period and due to the re-equilibrium reaction, the stratification is almost completely eliminated, but at the expense of generating a little more lead sulphate. As the discharge and resting processes continues, the amount of lead sulphate steadily increases if recovering recharges are not provided.

Battery sulphation: influence of operating conditions The generation of high levels of negative plate sulphation, is not only due to the development of acid stratification (though that is the main cause). The battery operating conditions and mainly the different discharge rates that the battery support, can promote also high sulphation levels and more specifically a different distribution of the lead sulphate. In the application in micro-hybrid vehicles, the battery is submitted to different levels of discharge. When the internal combustion engine stops, the battery needs to continue supporting the electric energy for the different electrical appliances. In a typical 30-60s ICE braking, discharge currents can be in the range of 30A-50A. This represent a DOD of between 0.5A-0.8A that is repeated on each of the vehicle stops. During the next cranking operation discharge currents can be in the range 300A–500A. These high currents are mainly provided by the upper and external part of the plates, which can originate a different lead sulphate distribution, as can be seen in the following microphotographs. In the previous figures it can be seen for one side the different lead sulphate distribution according to

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Figure 3

Figure 4

the discharge currents and for other ABOUT THE AUTHOR side the effect of high conductive carbon addition to the negative ac tive material. The first part of figure 4 depicts the distribution of lead sulphate for a VRLA battery of spiral design that has been submitted to a Power Assist Cycling with discharge currents in the range of 5C2. For batteries that incorporate the standard non-conductive carbon, the lead sulphate is accumulated in the outer part of the plate and more specifically in the upper part. The preferential accumulation in the outer face represent a serious hindrance for the diffusion of the acid to the interior of the plate to sustain the discharge reaction. The second part of figure 4 shows Melchor Fernández, is a that when the battery incorporates chemical engineer who had high conductive carbon in the negative AM the distribution changes. worked in R&D Laboratory of Lead sulphate is evenly distributed Exide Technologies, Spain his over the entire thickness of the plate. professional life. He is retired and This new distribution does not repreworks as a battery consultant sent any hindrance to the acid diffuprincipally as chief scientist at sion to the interior of the plate and Atomized Products Group consequently battery failure by negative plate limitation is delayed.

Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 109

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d r o w t s a l e Th Zooming ... without the bookcase In the virtual world, how the industry sees you is of vital importance — but the choice of how you preent yourself is up to you. Mediocre mind? Or intellectual powerhouse? With a camera pointed full at your face in any zoom call, which is your best side? More importantly what kind of backdrop do you want to show your potential customers, clients? First of all, forget all that bookish nonsense. We can all see that’s completely contrived. What down-to-earth batteryman has time to read some filthiness by French philosophers or some drivel by Dickens or smart-alec stuff from Twain? • CEOs — no need for books (what possible advice could a book give you?) but put a selection of Batteries International behind you. A sure indication of being both well informed and erudite. • Marketing managers No need for books here (nobody believes you read them, anyway), just hang a whiteboard behind you and have a few sales charts. Top tip. Make sure the arrow on the chart points up. • Teckies — no need for books (we know you don’t understand normal language) but how about a photo of a cuddly kitten? Let the world know that somewhere deep inside you, there’s a human being wanting to come out. • Consultants — again what possible use do you have for books? So nothing complicated here, just pin a calendar up behind your desk and scatter a few calculators on the desk (calculating your hourly rate and expenses is a full time job). • Market analysts We do think the odd book helps here — perhaps a few bluffers’ guides to economics and maths — but use a few bottles of gin (empty) to prop them up. Hide the crystal ball and the astrological charts.

Glasses are for amateurs, mugs for pros That early morning conference pick-me-up — whisky, vodka (or plum brandy if you’re a proper European) — must always be poured into a regular coffee mug before the session starts. Set yourself practical limits — expert conference pros call it ‘pacing yourself’ — one mug of ‘coffee’ per each presentation should be enough for a busy morning’s event. Choose a mug that has a work message on it — something inspirational. “Batterymen are always positive”. Neat spirits aren’t recommended — sorry water them down a little. But just a little. Raw spirits hitting the back of the throat and the related rasping sound is a give-away from conference amateurs. Don’t fill coffee mugs up to the brim. Leave a reasonable half inch (10mm) of room. Yes, the best whiskies like to breathe a bit.

So what’s this social media MAlarkEY then? Let’s face it, the lead battery industry is not known for its technological savvy. It was best summed up years ago when we heard what approximated to this: “If God had wanted me to send messages on the world-wide-interweb he wouldn’t have given me a fax machine.” Fact: We know of one company that only recently would only accept confirmation of orders by fax. More recently we heard about the executive who bragged about lockdown: “Yes, I do lots of zoom calls … my kids set them up for me.” Perhaps that’s why the most visited booth at the exhibition was the Help Desk!

111 • Batteries International • Autumn 2020

Only amateurs don’t pace their ‘coffees’

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The last word The pros and cons of virtual conferences

Pros Cons Extra time with your family

Extra time with your family

Extra time to dedicate to work

Saving money

It’s company money, who cares?

No tiresome hassle at airports, air travel

No airmiles, duty frees, brekkie G&Ts in lounge

Easier social distancing

No late night networking drinking

No long expense accounts to fill in

Huh? They bring out my creative juices!

Comfort of being at home

What’s wrong with 5* hotels anyway?

Who wants a gala dinner anyway? Not Yuasa! Hard not to remember that balmy evening at the Malta ELBC under the stars at the gala dinner. But let’s not forget there is competition for that fine dining dollar. Step forward Yuasa. In a marketing extravaganza, Yuasa have launched a free snack pack scheme for the trade. “Workshops and technicians can now get their hands on a pack full of tasty treats every time they purchase Yuasa batteries from participating distributors,” the firm boasts. “Available now from participating Yuasa distributors nationwide, each Yuasabranded snack pack contains a feast of confectionary favourites including a can of soft drink, packet of crisps, chocolate bar and bag of sweets.” Hmmm... I think I prefer Malta.

Who needs fine dining when you can have a packet of crisps? www.batteriesinternational.com

ELBC 2022:

where to next? This magazine’s resolute conviction is that at some point in the next few years ELBC meetings will be held at UK popular resort Southend-on-Sea. The reasons? Proximity to London, Maura’s predilection for whelks, Davidson’s and Bush’s passion for baked oysters à la reine and not forgetting Binks’s love of long pier walks, the scenic mud flats and the fine tourist attractions — betting odds are now building for other locations. Steve Barnes — notable winner of guessing the location of 17ELBC — was adamant that Austria would win again. “Austria is a very famous capital city. It worked for me then, I’m going for it again.” Mike Dunn, co-winner of the Vienna Gaming Syndicate in 2018 that predicted Milan, reckoned that Covid would be a decisive factor for 2022. “I’m going for Mars,” he said. “It’s a safe destination — nobody’ll ever catch a pandemic there.” As ever the ILA remained tightlipped over the next destination. “Revealing all? It’s more than Andy’s life is worth,” said the McDermott with a steely smile.

Southend-on-Sea in 2022? Batteries International • Autumn 2020 • 112