Batteries International — Issue 124, Summer

Issue 124

Summer 2022

Clear and present danger

New threat to lead emerges as next gen flow battery economics stack up Lithium pack hikes set to stall EV 'clean revolution' Hoppecke's Zoellner: the EU may yet learn to love lead

European lead smelter deal about to have global impact Commodity price rises to hit all battery chemistries

Bringing the industry together

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CONTENTS COVER STORY: CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER New threat to lead emerges as economics of flow batteries stack up

51 51

Lead batteries have always held the high ground over lithium in terms of long duration storage but flow batteries are increasingly looking as a potential business contender. It’s time for some manufacturers to get worried. Very worried.

Redox flow batteries — with their high up-front costs but lower running expenses — may be more financially viable than expected. That said the price of the electrolyte is still a sticky point.

Meanwhile, US-headquartered iron flow battery storage company ESS intends to establish a commercial foothold in Europe and Asia too.

Time for deeper re-assessment of the levelized cost of RFB storage

54

Keeping the price of vanadium down — and steady too

56

ESS targets expansion in Europe and beyond

61

Flow battery news round-up

63

CellCube readies ‘gigawatt-sized VRFB pipeline’ for Southern Africa • China connects first phase of 200MW flow battery to grid • Invinity agrees vanadium storage deal with Hyosung Corporation • CellCube VRFB chosen for US microgrid project

EDITORIAL 6

Pyatt honoured 11

The EV revolution that stalled

PEOPLE NEWS

10

Hammond welcomes Bisaillon as Goodearl moves on • Stevenson named new Alpha/Beta member • Former Doe Run CEO Pyatt honoured • Pam O’Brien commended by BCI for dedication • Microporous appoints Bruno as sales and marketing VP • Lambert plans Wirtz retirement • Lucas Sadler moves to Energy Vault from Fluence • CBE honour for spectroscopy pioneer Grey • Electrovaya appoints Raj Das Gupta as CEO

Commendation for O’Brien 11

NEWS 14 Gridtential to develop pilot biplate line with Hammond and Wirtz • ABC, Monbat unveil bipolar mass production plans • Industry steps up calls to drop ‘lithium hazard’ classification • Monbat managers acquire shares to secure near 21% group stake • Ecobat silent on Stolberg future after sale to Trafigura Group • BCI calls for new standards for battery labels • Campine acquires Recyclex for €3.5m • ACE Green Recyling to produce US lead in 2023 says VP Ahmed • Banks in loans boost for Sunlight’s expansion plans • Metair expects strong lead sales despite Turkish economy woes • Pruitt reveals rise in BCI members’ battery sales • Remy Battery acquires ‘friendly family-run rival’ Challenger • Volt Resources $2m share placement plans for graphite restart in Ukraine • Battery industry leaders join forces to protect children • ILA to support Basel review of lead battery recycling standards • Lead industry welcomes Ghana action on batteries stewardship • GS Yuasa expands battery line • Exide Industries reveals site for ‘multi-gigawatt’ Li cells plant • Recycler Gravita invests in solar • Lawmakers praise Stryten Energy for support of US energy policy • Clarios, Natron Energy to team up for ‘world first’ in sodium ion production • ELBC to host second CBI Battery Academy seminar in Lyon • Amara Raja pledges ‘fast track’ for lithium project as firm joins CBI • Vernon clean-up saga enters next phase • EnerSys reports boost in annual sales • Banner marks 85 years in batteries business • New Italy AGM line for Ahlstrom-Munksjö

ENERGY STORAGE NEWS

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Battery shipping warning

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Allianz warns of EV batteries risk to safe shipping • Batteries insurance warranty scheme launched • Europe trails US, China in ESS growth, study reveals • EASE urges 14GW p/year ramp-up of energy storage for renewables • EU nations urged to fast-track storage and cut red tape • TotalEnergies commissions second BESS in French deal • Grid connection green light for Australian BESS • Britishvolt acquires EAS, agrees Bühler tech deal 2 • Batteries International • Summer 2022

Biplate line partnership

Analysis: Smelter deal impact 46

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CONTENTS ENERGY STORAGE NEWS

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CATL joins winners of EES awards in Germany • New CellCube unit in US targets VRFB business • Powin BESS system earmarked for Idaho Power project • California Li-tax law triggers battery materials supply alert • Energy Vault starts work on China gravity-based ESS • Freyr signs site lease deal for battery cells production in Finland • Umicore launches Korea R&D plant for cathode materials • Canadian Solar enters UK utility-scale ESS market • Miba acquires majority Voltlabor stake

LEAD PRICE ANALYSIS: CRU

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Hoppecke CEO on EU and lead 65

European smelter deal set to have global impacts

INTERVIEW 65 Marc Zoellner, CEO of Hoppecke, explains why the EU may be learning to love lead

LITHIUM: THE SHORTAGES AHEAD

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The International Energy Agency warns price increases in lithium are inevitable.

Recycling will be essential but in the longer term it’s mining that’s needed.

Charting lithium shortages 70

INTERVIEW 76 Wang Weidong, Beijing’s envoy to Germany, explains how China’s battery tigers are helping

EVENT REVIEWS

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EUROBAT Forum & Annual Convention, Brussels, Belgium

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Advanced Tech & Innovation Shows, Birmingham, UK

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China view on batteries

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EVENTS 84 Our complete listing of the battery and energy storage exhibitions, conferences and shows for the months ahead

BATTERY HEROES: LECLANCHÉ

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Event review: Advanced Tech 82

Georges Leclanché should be remembered for his invention of the first modern electrical batteries and forerunner of the modern dry cell battery.

THE LAST WORD

96

More tales of battery darkness: CBI and the exotic princesses • Won’t get fooled again! It’s Milan • New electrolyte discovered at flow battery forum • Ukraine engineer battles to Europe

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 John Shepherd john@batteriesinternational.com

Contributing editor Frank Millard Researcher, journalist Hillary Christie hillary@batteriesinternational.com

Last Word: going undercover 96

Production/design Antony Parselle aparselledesign@me.com International advertising representation advertising@batteriesinternational.com

Finance administrator Juanita Anderson juanita@batteriesinternational.com

The contents of this publication are protected by copyright. No unauthorized translation or reproduction is permitted.

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Batteries International • Summer 2022 • 5

EDITORIAL Mike Halls • editor@batteriesinternational.com

The revolution that stalled (or may just be about to) What if many of the assumptions people have made about the so-called EV revolution are based on false premises?

Let’s go through two of them.

Premise number 1: the price of lithium batteries will continue to fall until they are below the price of lead ones. This will underpin the EV revolution — cheaper batteries mean cheaper cars: consumers will vote with their feet.

The falling cost of lithium batteries has been one of the core principles behind the belief that EVs will overtake internal combustion vehicles.

There was good reason to think this realistic: from 2010 to 2020, the price of lithium ion battery packs fell by almost 90%. The average price of a lithium ion battery pack stood at an eye-watering $1,200/kWh in 2010. In 2020 it was around $105/kWh. But that’s taken a huge hit in the past year.

In 2021 Bloomberg New Energy Finance analysts warned that the higher costs of raw materials could push the average price of a lithium-ion battery pack up to $135/kWh. But that was before the supply chain problems around the world kicked off after the pandemic and, now the energy crisis caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

During the first quarter of 2022, the average cost of lithium ion battery cells shot up to $160/ kWh. One recent study estimated that this year, between March and June, global cell prices have risen by 20%-30%.

S&P Global Mobility predicts it could cost car manufacturers up to $8,000 more to make an EV battery pack by the end of 2022.

6 • Batteries International • Summer 2022

S&P Global Mobility predicts it could cost car manufacturers up to $8,000 more to make an EV battery pack by the end of 2022. Part of the first premise: cheaper batteries mean cheaper cars: consumers will vote with their feet is now the opposite.

More expensive batteries means dearer cars: consumers, already concerned that EVs are still more expensive than their ICE counterparts, will vote with their feet — in the other direction.

Premise number 2: EV adoption rates will rapidly climb once phase-out dates for manufacturing ICE cars come in. This is meant to be a corollary of the first. Unfortunately, it is equally flawed.

One British analyst recently said that in the UK, where the sale of new ICE cars will be discontinued by 2030 and hybrid vehicles by 2035, the second-hand car market will receive a huge and unexpected boost in the run-up to the end of the decade.

“At the top tier of the market,” he said, “there is marginal price sensitivity over high-end cars.

But when you come to the family saloon level and below, price increases of as little as a couple of thousand pounds will affect buyer decisions.

Affordability is key.”

A similar picture is seen in the US where first quarter 2022 sales of fully-electric vehicles reached 5% market share for the first time.

However, of the nearly half a million EVs sold in America last year, roughly 70% were Teslas.

The reality is that for most middle-class Americans EVs are still too high to be practical — and look set to stay that way.

This appears to be one of the major worries of its carmakers. “At the end of the day,” one consultant told Batteries International at BCI this May, “our nation’s automakers just want to sell cars. That’s what they do. They’re not politicians (or they shouldn’t be!) www.batteriesinternational.com

EDITORIAL

“They’re worried and acutely conscious of the disincentives that they see coming from the price hikes that they will have to impose on new vehicles — many of which have still yet to see the manufacturing line. More expensive battery packs are just bad news for them.

“Moreover, their enthusiasm for electrification of the nation’s fleet is decidedly lacklustre. They’re having to respond to legislative pressure on CO2 tailpipe emissions and state strictures on what cars we should be driving in a few years’ time.”

The consultant added that CEOs had been actively lobbying the federal and state governments for the last few years to slow down the pace of change.

Oddly enough another figure at the BCI conference said that there was mounting opposition — but behind the scenes— by electric utilities to the decarbonization of the vehicle sector. “They’re not anti-environmental in the slightest — most are embracing the low-cost renewable energy being generated by renewables.

They’re just worried about having to ramp production up by as much as a factor of five in the next seven years and beyond. www.batteriesinternational.com

“Any transition to EVs looks set to be bumpy to say the least.”

And they may have to. This year 12 states have announced that they are seeking to set a target date for the nationwide phase-out of ICE car sales. California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington are all pushing for a nationwide ban of gasoline and diesel-powered light-duty vehicles starting in 2035.

In the free-for-all that characterises state governments and individual cities in the US, there is even talk that California’s ICE ban will be accelerated to 2030 and, irrespective of that, the cities of Oakland, Culver City and Berkeley are already targeting a 2030 deadline.

Additionally, the premise that cheaper EV batteries are inevitable in the long run is flawed — at least for this coming generation. The shift away from fossil fuels to renewables has meant that global demand for raw battery materials — namely nickel, lithium, copper, and cobalt — will be increasing rather than otherwise.

Mike Halls, Editor Batteries International • Summer 2022 • 7

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PEOPLE NEWS

Hammond welcomes Bisaillon as Goodearl moves on

Brad Bisaillon has been appointed as vice president of sales for the Hammond Group, the company announced on June 14.

Meanwhile, Ray Goodearl has left as director of marketing and global accounts to become vice president of strategic accounts at Indic Group Holdings.

Bisaillon, who most recently held positions with American Battery Solutions, Nokian Heavy Tyres and Trojan Battery Company, will lead Hammond’s efforts to support global battery manufacturers in producing a new generation of advanced lead batteries, the firm said.

Goodearl is a well-known and popular figure in the power battery energy systems industry having spent most of his working life in the business. He joined Hammond three years ago from NorthStar Battery where he was a director of national accounts. Before that he was international vice president for sales and marketing at Superior Battery.

Goodearl said: “I’m very thankful for the time I had

at Hammond, the entire team was amazing to work with and we did great things for our customers.”

Hammond president and CEO Terry Murphy said Bisaillon, whose expertise spans power generation and energy storage in both the lead acid and lithium ion segments, would “strengthen relationships with our existing customers and develop new relationships with customers in emerging markets”.

Bisaillon said: “Advanced lead batteries, incorporating Hammond’s performance additives, along with many other significant changes in battery configurations, have dramatically improved charge acceptance and cycle life.

“The new generation of advanced lead batteries

that are being manufactured by our customers offer a more sensible and sustainable alternative to expensive, complex and difficult to integrate lithium-ion systems for the rapid expansion in the motive power, telecom, and energy storage sectors.”

Goodearl will continue to be an active member of the Data Book, Technical, and Product Information Committees within Battery Council International as will his work on the StartStop and Starter Battery Committees within SAE. In October 2021, Hammond named its new award-winning acid stratification reducing, battery life extending additive GravityGuard, after winning the BCI Innovation Award a month earlier.

Stevenson named new Alpha/Beta member The Alpha/Beta Society, an informal group of members who have made outstanding contributions to the development of the lead acid battery industry, has appointed Mark Stevenson as its 29th member, according to Juergen Garche, speaking at the AABC meetings in Mainz in June.

“Mark has had a long and highly impressive career spanning four decades of work in secondary lead — he is a world-leading expert in his field — and we are pleased that his achievements should be recognized.” he said.

Mark Stevenson, who is also the prime mover behind the Asian Battery Conference, is a well-known and well-liked figure in the battery industry with some four decades of experience. In an industry more focused on the manufacture of lead batteries, his expertise has been their successful destruction and recycling.

“I very much appreciate the honour that the Alpha Beta members

10 • Batteries International • Summer 2022

have bestowed on me,” said Stevenson. “This society has a huge and global range of expertise; it would be wonderful if we could pass the baton of their knowledge on to the next generation and mould this into a lead and battery college for the future.”

David Rand said: “As the cofounder of the Alpha-Beta Society, I am delighted to receive the very good news that Mark Stevenson has been inducted into this prestigious fraternity. Without doubt, Mark is an unrivalled expert in the metallurgy of lead and its use in lead-acid batteries. In addition, over the years, he has been the power behind the outstanding success of the Asian Battery Conference.

“I am sure that Mark will make sure that the Society will be a much -required resource in the future.”

The Alpha-Beta Society was cofounded by Ernst Voss (Varta) and David Rand (CSIRO) in 1989. The object was for lead battery scientists

to collaborate in grappling with the ever-emerging demands that new applications place upon the science of lead batteries.

An awards ceremony honouring Stevenson will take place at the ELBC congress in Lyon, France in September.

Mark Stevenson

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PEOPLE NEWS

Former Doe Run CEO Pyatt honoured Former president and CEO of The Doe Run Company, Jerry Pyatt, has been honoured with a professional distinction award by the Missouri University of Science & Technology, the firm announced on May 16.

Pyatt, who retired at the end of last December after a 43-year career in mining and metallurgy, was appointed as Doe Run COO in 2001, before becoming president and CEO in 2012.

In his decade as head of the company, Pyatt oversaw an operation that contributed more than $1 billion in annual economic impact to Missouri and included mining and milling, lead refining, alloying and fabrication and lead battery recycling, Doe Run said.

From left Jerry Pyatt Chancellor Mo Dehghani and John Komlos.

Photo courtesy Michael Pierce Missouri S&T

Missouri S&T grants a limited number of professional distinction awards annually to recognize those who have made important contributions to their profession. Pyatt was nominated by the university’s

department chair of mining and explosives engineering, Kwame Awuah-Offei and the award was presented by chancellor Mohammad Dehghani.

Dehghani said: “Doe Run understands the impor-

tance of educating the next generation of the workforce and has supported our students and faculty by providing state-of-the-art mining equipment and scholarships through the years.”

Pam O’Brien commended by BCI for dedication

Chris Pruitt surprises Pam O'Brien with WGBI recognition award

Battery Council International surprised a member of its top leadership team — Pam O’Brien — with an honour on May 1, in recognition of her “exemplary commitment and dedication”.

O’Brien, BCI’s senior vice president of operations, was publicly commended for her work at a special directors’ meeting, on the eve of the trade body’s annual convention in Florida.

BCI president Chris Pruitt praised her work in supporting efforts to establish Women in the Global Battery Industry (WGBI) — an organization of

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professionals, founded to promote and develop the growth of women in the battery industry.

Pruitt said: “Her commitment to this program has exceeded that asked of her and demonstrates Pam’s full and complete dedication and passion to the industry as a whole, and to the industry’s goal of supporting the careers of women in the battery industry and STEM careers.”

WGBI president and

chair of MAC Engineering, Julie McClure, who is a member of BCI’s board, proposed the commendation motion for O’Brien, who serves as WGBI’s director.

“Over the past year, Pam has moved mountains to take the WGBI from a concept presented to the BCI board by a small group of BCI members and staff to a fully-fledged and functional networking and professional collaboration group

of industry women,” McClure said.

On May 2, McClure revealed details of the newlyformed WGBI, which was launched in January.

McClure said WGBI had grown to include 168 professional members and seven academic members. Of these, 75 participated in the organization’s first webinar, featuring a presentation from Nancy Martin of NRM Consulting on career development.

Microporous appoints Bruno as sales and marketing VP Separator company Microporous announced the appointment of Rick Bruno as vice president of sales and marketing as of May 1.

The company said Bruno, who reports to CEO John Reeves, joins Microporous with more than 30 years of experience in general management and business development.

Bruno was vice president of sales and marketing for the past eight years at Tuffaloy Products in South Carolina.

He has also worked with Hollingsworth & Vose and Fiberweb.

Batteries International • Summer 2022 • 11

PEOPLE NEWS

Lambert plans Wirtz retirement Doug Lambert, Vice President of Sales and Technology for Wirtz Manufacturing, has confirmed the LinkedIn announcement earlier in July that he is planning to retire “in the next six to nine months”.

Lambert has been involved in the battery industry since February 1977.

Lambert (pictured), who is a well known, well liked and respected figure in the lead battery industry, as well as a popular conference speaker, says he does

not intend to retire completely. “I don’t intend to leave the business but will continue as a part-time consultant for Wirtz,” he says.

“This is an industry and a family that I’ve loved and cared for my entire working life. I am still passionate about the lead battery technology and believe that it still has a long future, I don’t ever want to walk away from it completely”.

“Wirtz and I have been planning this move since

the start of the year,” says Lambert, “and we intend to make the transition of my position as smooth as possible to my successor.”

Lambert has worked for Wirtz since 2011. Before that he spent 12 years as an independent lead battery consultant.

Lucas Sadler moves to Energy Vault from Fluence Energy Vault Holdings said on May 26 that it had appointed former Fluence executive, Lucas Sadler, as VP of sales and business development for Asia and the Pacific.

Sadler was most recently VP of sales for Australia and New Zealand for US-based battery storage firm Fluence.

Energy Vault said Sadler and his team will focus on building upon the company’s existing presence in the region.

Chief product officer for Energy Vault, Marco Terruzzin, said: “Lucas’ onthe-ground experience in the renewable energy and energy storage sectors in Australia further strengthens our relationships and reach in APAC, where large energy and mining companies have committed to decarbonization.”

Before Fluence, Sadler held senior sales, business development and management roles with companies

Electrovaya appoints Raj Das Gupta as CEO Electrovaya announced the appointment of Raj Das Gupta as CEO of the Ontario-headquartered company on May 24.

Das Gupta, who has been a member of the lithium ion battery maker’s man-

Raj Das Gupta

agement team since 2009, succeeds Electrovaya cofounder and chairman Sankar Das Gupta) who becomes executive chairman.

“I am delighted to announce the appointment of Raj as CEO,” Sankar Das Gupta said. “Raj is the ideal person to build shareholder value from our superior lithium ion battery technology.”

Electrovaya said Raj Das Gupta had been instrumental in developing the company’s “most critical technology and business relationships”, including its forklift battery systems and OEM partnerships.

12 • Batteries International • Summer 2022

such as Schneider Electric and Samsung.

Sadler has also worked as a director and board member of the Australian Solar Council and the Australian Energy Storage Council.

Energy Vault announced on May 5 that it had broken ground on its first gravity-based energy storage system in China — the 100MWh ‘EVx’ being built near Shanghai.

CBE honour for spectroscopy pioneer Grey

Leading battery scientist Clare Grey was awarded with the title of Commander of the Order of the British Empire in this year’s Queen’s Birthday Honours in recognition of her services to science.

Professor Grey, from the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry and Pembroke College, pioneered the optimization of lithium batteries with the help of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.

Grey has to a large extent created, by her own contributions, a flourishing new field of NMR with a great potential for future beneficial discoveries and applications.

NMR spectroscopy,

which proved to be a vital tool in the advancement and commercialization of lithium batteries in its early development for EV years, has recently been at the cutting edge of lead battery research in various collaborations with the US Argonne National Laboratory.

Grey said: “I am delighted that my contributions to the general field of energy materials have been honoured in this way.

“I hope that this recognition highlights how important fundamental science is to performing the underpinning work that will help the world transition to a more sustainable society.”

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www.cellusuede.com Batteries International • Summer 2022 • 13

NEWS

Gridtential to develop pilot biplate line with Hammond and Wirtz Gridtential Energy announced mid-July that it will partner Hammond Group and Wirtz Manufacturing to develop a pilot manufacturing line to produce the biplate at the heart of its bipolar battery at Hammond’s facilities in Indiana.

This, it says, will help simplify the production process for battery manufacturers trying to integrate the firm’s bipolar technology, known as Silicon Joule, into their manufacturing facilities.

“Together, the companies will develop and produce the biplate inside a Silicon Joule battery that greatly simplifies the production process for battery makers, combining time-consuming steps and saving the production cost of stacking and adding active materials,” said a Gridtential statement.

“Our 15 current development partners will be able buy biplates directly and incorporate them into their volume factory lines. The biplates will be the first readymade component for Silicon

Joule-enabled batteries.

“The partnerships with Hammond and Wirtz will merge three production steps our partners would have to take into a single, ready-made product.”

Terry Murphy, CEO of Hammond Group, said: “We’re very excited about the potential bipolar configurations have for the lead battery industry. Bipolar batteries made by Gridtential as well as ABC work.

This is a proven technology and huge leap forward bringing higher performance lead-based batteries to compete with lithium ion technologies.”

Gridtential CEO John Barton said: “Our readymade biplate solutions speed up the commercialization timeline for many of our partners, and we are targeting 2023 or 2024 for commercial production launch.”

Gridtential’s development partners have yet to solve the mass mechanization of its Silicon Joule, technol-

Barton: "Our ready-made biplate solutions speed up the commercialization timeline for many of our partners, and we are targeting 2023 or 2024 for commercial production launch.”

ogy, which deploys fragile silicon wafers into their high-volume lines.

In April 2021, Gridtential said it was ready to launch a series of AGM batteries produced on a prototype line at East Penn Manufacturing.

In November 2019 Gridtential said it was in the middle of what it called the ‘industrialization’ of its technology — effectively converting what can be done manually into automated processes to achieve the costs and process control such advanced batteries will need.

The first part, high-speed precision pasting onto a carrier rather than a grid, had then been accomplished using pasting tools developed by Wirtz Manufacturing.

In October 2019, the firm presented a manual assembly of the battery at Crown Battery to MAC Engineering, Sovema Group, TBS Engineering and Wirtz. The objective was to let mainstream equipment companies see first-hand the components and sequencing needed in planning a highspeed assembly line.

ABC, Monbat unveil bipolar mass production plans Advanced Battery Concepts and Monbat announced plans on June 9 to develop a commercial bipolar battery for mass production in an investment deal worth around €16 million ($17 million).

The partners said they were aiming to design a battery based on ABC’s GreenSeal technology for production at a future 1GWh Monbat facility to be built in Bulgaria.

The announcement came after ABC said in December 2018 it had given licensing rights for its GreenSeal technology to Monbat.

Under the latest agreement, in the first stage of their development program, ABC will produce the so-called ‘Alpha Samples’ of Block B batteries at its plant in Michigan.

14 • Batteries International • Summer 2022

Block B is a 48V, 32Ah industrial battery aimed at telecoms and BESS applications.

The batteries will be delivered to existing Monbat clients and special projects requiring BESS for on-site deployment — which the firms say will supply the data needed for future mass production.

Monbat says it has intensively tested prototype Block B batteries since 2019 in its certified testing laboratories.

Ed Shaffer, founder of ABC, said: “Monbat’s aggressive adoption of the GreenSeal technology for next generation products is important for more than just economic reasons.”

While the bottom-line results are important to Monbat’s business, additional benefits for both sides

include providing “environmentally, socially, and economically responsible” energy storage products and solutions, Shaffer said.

Monbat CEO Viktor Spiriev said the company was “determined to become the first massscale producer of bipolar leadacid batteries in the world”.

Monbat says it is the fourth largest lead-acid battery producer in Europe. The company has manufacturing facilities in Bulgaria and Tunisia and recycling plants in Romania, Serbia and Italy.

On May 2, ABC received Battery Council International’s 2022 innovation award in recognition of the company’s Home Emergency Energy Storage System, which builds on the firm’s GreenSeal technology.

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NEWS

Industry steps up calls to drop ‘lithium hazard’ classification Investments in both the lead and lithium battery sectors in Europe are now at risk, with a leading global chemicals producer warning that new draft proposals designating certain materials as ‘hazardous’ could choke-off financial backing at a crucial time for the EU. European battery industry chiefs urged EU leaders on July 4 to reject draft proposals that could mean the lithium used in electric vehicle batteries is designated as a hazardous material.

EUROBAT and Recharge — the European industry association for advanced rechargeable and lithium batteries — joined battery material producers in writing a letter to express “deep concern” about the proposals by the European Chemicals Agency’s Committee for Risk Assessment* (RAC). Those proposals suggest lithium carbonate, chloride and hydroxide should receive a ‘Category 1A’ (a known human carcinogen) classification.

In the letter to top EU commissioners including Frans Timmermans, EU executive vice-president for the Green New Deal and Maroš Šefcovic, vice president for strategic foresight, industry leaders said “the scientific evidence is too weak and does not justify such a severe classification, which would have a major impact on Europe’s industrial goals for electric vehicles, batteries, and critical raw materials”.

The letter called on the European Commission to reject a Category 1A classification for the three lithium salts

and urges a “re-evaluation at the scientific level”.

“An unjustified lithium salts classification will be a red flag that brings great uncertainty to companies looking to make long-term investments into European refining and recycling capacity, risking delays or different investment decisions towards competing markets,” the letter said.

The letter came after US-based speciality chemicals producer, Albemarle, told BI in June that the classification “would have a negative impact on the possibility of establishing lithium conversion plants in Europe”.

Albemarle said that if the proposals went ahead, “lithium carbonate and hydroxide could be processed outside of Europe and then imported, with negative effects on European strategic autonomy”.

“Inappropriate classification of the three lithium salts would create business uncertainty on which markets could be served, for which applications, but also on the industrial processes and which safety measures and plant requirements would apply, deterring investors from committing to Europe at a crucial time for the entire lithium value chain. Investors could therefore find other markets more attractive.”

“Similar limitations on investments would likely occur for the recycling of waste batteries and lithium-rich slag, due to regulatory uncertainty caused by this classification.”

Asked whether the proposals put the future of Albemarle’s Langelsheim plant in Germany at risk, the company said: “While the impact to our speciality customers is unclear at this point, we do not anticipate closure of Langelsheim.”

However, Albemarle said several of Langelsheim’s industrial customers do not use any other 1A substances and “would be forced to implement very strict rules to control the substance or look for alternatives, which are often not available or less performing”.

This would have a “direct impact on the plant revenue, which will already have to face higher operating costs compared to non-EU competitors due to the proposed classification”.

In March, a report published jointly

by EUROBAT and industries representing manufacturers of batteries, ceramic frits and complex inorganic colour pigments, lubricants and greases and vehicles, said the three lithium salts were “fundamental and irreplaceable building blocks for the shift to electric mobility, the integration of renewables in the energy mix and more generally the achievement of the Green Deal objectives”. *The RAC’s ‘Opinion proposing harmonised classification and labelling at EU level of lithium carbonate, lithium chloride and lithium hydroxide’ are being considered by EU member states, with responses expected to be made later in the year.

Monbat managers acquire shares to secure near 21% group stake The senior management team of Monbat has secured a 20.78% stake in the lead batteries group and pledged to further develop operations, Monbat announced in a June 28 regulatory filing.

The six-member management team buy-in acquired shares, for an undisclosed sum, that were disposed of by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and

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CEECAT Capital.

EBRD and CEECAT sold their shares in Prista HoldCo Cooperative, which had held the 20.78% stake in Monbat, to HoldCo Investment — which is indirectly owned via EKIP Monbat by the six managers.

A Monbat spokesperson told BI the six who share the stake equally are CEO Viktor Spiriev, board chairman Chavdar Danev, COO Peter Boy-

adjiev, procurator and Montana plant manager Peter Hristov, sales director starter battery division Vili Kamenov, and industrial battery division manager Bozhidar Nekeziev.

Monbat’s majority shareholders, who hold a 49% stake, continue to be Atanas Bobokov and Plamen Bobokov, the spokesperson said.

CEO Spiriev said: “Taking the next step and

now being further vested as shareholders, the management of Monbat is fully committed to the future development of the group.

“During our involvement as management, Monbat has become one of the five largest manufacturers of lead acid batteries in Europe, and has also launched and expanded operations in Romania, Serbia, Italy, Germany and Tunisia.”

Batteries International • Summer 2022 • 15

NEWS

Ecobat silent on Stolberg future after sale to Trafigura Group Nyrstar, the new operator of German lead production plant Stolberg, told BI on July 21 there would be a “continuous assessment” of the potential for future investment in the site — but declined to be drawn on the plant’s future.

Nyrstar’s parent company, the Trafigura Group, announced earlier in the month it had entered into a binding agreement to acquire Ecobat Resources Stolberg (ERS), which owns the Stolberg multi-metals processing plant.

Stolberg will be operated and managed by Nyrstar, a multi-metals mining and smelting company, which is a market leader in the production of zinc and lead metal.

But a Nyrstar spokesperson declined to discuss plans

for the primary lead smelter site, which has been out of action since declaring force majeure last year after devasting floods in Europe.

Asked if there will be new investment in the site, particularly in terms of lead and lithium battery recycling, the spokesperson said: “The first priority will be the execution of the current business strategy for the Stolberg business.

“Going forward, we will assess on a continuous basis how this might evolve as we optimize opportunities and leverage synergies between the Nyrstar businesses.”

Stolberg has only produced about 100 kt/a for the past few years of full production, as it has been focused on optimizing the type of throughput rather than maxing out on tonnage, said lead com-

Campine acquires Recyclex for €3.5m Belgian metals recycling and speciality chemicals group Campine acquired French lead recycler Recyclex on July 7 for around €3.5 million ($3.5 million).

The move came after the Paris Commercial Court approved Campine’s offer to take over Recyclex’s lead battery recycling plants in Escaudoeuvres and Villefranche-sur-Saône, as well as the plastics recycling company C2P — a Recyclex subsidiary also operating at Villefranche.

Campine’s bid was one of several announced on April 15 for parts of Recyclex, after the French group failed to organize an amicable debt restructuring process under an assets disposal program launched in May 2021.

None of Recyclex’s debt liabilities have been transferred to Campine and a ‘Recyclex SA’ entity will continue to exist under insolvency proceedings in a

bid to agree a debt restructuring process — which the entity has said is still “very uncertain”.

Campine also plans to invest between €8 million and €10 million across all three factories over the next four years. Recyclex posted annual sales for 2021 of around €88 million for the assets acquired by Campine.

The two lead battery recycling sites employ around 60 and have a recycling capacity of some 90,000 tonnes of used batteries and 11,000 tonnes of polypropylene plastic waste.

The acquisition is a substantial upstream expansion of Campine’s battery recycling scope and adds recycled plastics as an additional material output, the company said.

Campine CEO Wim De Vos said: “This is a huge step for us. Campine is now really a multi-material recycling enterprise.”

16 • Batteries International • Summer 2022

mentator Farid Ahmed.

“It refurbished and expanded its silver plant a few years ago and wants to get as much by-product value out of that, which means taking more complex feed which doesn’t work through the whole smelting process so quickly.”

Financial details of the acquisition, which is expected to be completed in the third quarter of this year, were not disclosed.

Nyrstar and Trafigura have a long history of rarely giving out information about their activities, be this commercially sensitive or not.

ERS was founded in 1848 and has one of the largest and most modern primary lead smelters in the world, according to Ecobat.

The facility has the capacity to produce 155,000 tonnes of lead and more than 100 different specifications of market-leading lead alloys and produce 130,000 tonnes of sulphuric acid.

Ecobat CEO Marcus Randolph said the sale was “consistent with our strategy to concentrate on our core business of battery recycling and represents a significant step in the rationalization of our portfolio”.

BCI calls for new standards for battery labels Battery Council International urged US environment chiefs on July 11 to strengthen battery collection and recycling processes and to raise the standards of labelling for all battery chemistry products.

BCI’s call came in response to a June 9 request for information from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on how to develop best practices for battery collection, recycling and labelling.

BCI has long campaigned for better practices governing the labelling and collection of lead and lithium batteries. The addition of lithium batteries into a lead battery breaker causes potential fatal explosions when sulfuric acid mixes with lithium.

However, BCI warned it would be “counterproductive to adopt guidelines or requirements that could interrupt

the existing, extremely successful, and industryfunded retail collection network for lead batteries”.

BCI said improved labelling would reduce the cross-contamination in recycling that leads to safety hazards, increased processing costs, and reduces the quality of recovered materials.

The trade body said all batteries, regardless of chemistry, should have labels “with a consistent and simple marking to encourage and aid recycling”.

On the lead battery industry’s recycling record, the EPA acknowledged that lead acid batteries “are manufactured with antimony, a critical mineral, and are currently recycled at a high rate” The EPA stressed that its focus was on improvements for battery chemistries that have a lower recovery level of critical minerals.

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NEWS

ACE Green Recyling to produce US lead in 2023 says VP Ahmed

Lead analyst Farid Ahmed, the newly-appointed vice president of global strategy and business development for ACE Green Recycling, has told BI the company is on track to produce refined lead in the US towards the end of next year.

Some industry commentators say that the hydrometallurgical process for battery recycling is fraught with potential commercial and

technical difficulties, making such projects unfeasible (see Batteries International issue No.121).

However, the lead and lithium batteries recycling company ACE expects production to start at the plant it is building in Texas around the fourth-quarter of 2023, says Ahmed (pictured) — until recently an analyst with Wood Mackenzie.

And Ahmed said he looked

forward to making a “bigger contribution to the sustainability and perpetuity of the lead industry while also gaining a footing in the lithium-ion sector”.

ACE unveiled plans on May 10 to build and operate what it claims will be an “electric-powered, emissionfree” lead and lithium batteries recycling facility in Texas.

To date, the US-registered company has been cautious about releasing details of the technology it has developed, which Ahmed said is with good reason. ACE lists five battery recycling projects on its website, including Texas, as “coming soon” but is starting to disclose information such as the projected annual recycling capacities of 100,000 tonnes of lead batteries and 20,000 tonnes of Li-ion batteries at its Texas facility.

“There is a delicate balance between having your IP and processes fully protected by patents and discussing processes openly,” Ahmed said.

“I have known the company for more than a year and I have seen their very detailed

Banks in loans boost for Sunlight’s expansion plans The Sunlight Group has received €275 million ($286 million) funding from Greek banks to support its expansion of lead and lithium production and R&D, the company announced on June 24.

Sunlight said the financial backing was in the form of seven-year loans and would form part of plans unveiled on May 11.

The loans will support plant upgrades and an

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expansion of production capacity and assembly lines in the company’s Xanthi facilities in Greece, Italy and in the US to boost output of both lithium ion and lead batteries and energy storage systems.

Sunlight said the loans would also enhance production of innovative motive power lead acid battery cells, with the installation of the latest automated production

and assembly equipment.

The €275 million loan agreements comprise a €125 million syndicated loan from Eurobank and Alpha Bank (€62.5 million each) and a €150 million loan from the National Bank of Greece.

The announcement followed Sunlight’s pledge in September 2021 to spend €50 million to expand its lead and lithium manufacturing unit in Xanthi.

process mass balance models and scrutinising all that gave me the confidence to accept the offer to join the company. Its technology is built on sound foundations.”

ACE developed what it described as a small commercial plant in India, near Delhi, where Ahmed said customers saw the lead recycling facility in operation.

“With the lead recycling process having been proven, the equipment has now been disassembled and a lithium recycling plant is being built there to demonstrate and optimise that technology,” Ahmed said.

Meanwhile, Ahmed said the firm is constructing equipment for two major Asian lead recyclers, which is due for delivery in August and slated to be producing lead by late September.

ACE recently established a UK entity, through which Ahmed works and which will focus on EMEA and global markets as the company develops partnerships in lithium battery recycling.

Ahmed has worked in and around the metals industry since graduating with a degree in Metallurgy in the mid-1980s and has specialized in lead since 1992.

He worked in R&D of platinum group metals for Johnson Matthey in the late 1980s and moved into lead in the early 1990s, working initially as a production metallurgist at Britannia Refined Metals before moving into the commercial sector of that company.

From the mid-2000s, he worked as a consultant to the lead industry, spanning the whole vertical sector from raw materials, production and processing to specialist sales, product development and market analysis.

He joined Wood Mackenzie in 2015.

Batteries International • Summer 2022 • 19

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NEWS

Metair expects strong lead sales despite Turkish economy woes Lead and lithium group Metair reported strong production and sales of automotive batteries across the countries that mostly comprise its battery businesses, in a voluntary half-year update issued on July 20.

But the company told the Johannesburg Stock Exchange its formal interim results announcement will be delayed until around September 14.

This is because the firm will review figures in relation to its Mutlu Akü batteries operation in Turkey — which has been designated a hyperinflationary economy by the International Monetary Fund and leading accounting firms.

Mutlu Akü accounted for nearly ZAR4 billion ($237 million) of Metair’s turnover in the financial year ended December 31, 2021. The company said this represented about 31% of group turnover while 55% “was directly linked to hard currencies (US dollars or euros)

through direct export and OEM sales, growing both volumes and price in the first half of 2022”.

Metair said it was reviewing the impact on its results of International Accounting Standard 29, which provides guidance on financial reporting on currencies of hyperinflationary economies.

However, Metair said its energy storage division, which includes Mutlu Akü, Rombat in Romania and First National Battery in South Africa, continued to perform well despite tough operating conditions including high energy and labour costs in Europe and Turkey.

Demand for lead acid batteries remained strong in all markets, especially in Turkey, despite the hyperinflationary economy classification for accounting periods ending on or after June 30, the company said.

Cumulative inflation rates in Turkey over a three-year period exceeded 100% as at April 2022,

Remy Battery acquires ‘friendly family-run rival’ Challenger The Remy Battery Company has acquired Challenger Battery Service in a deal signed on May 31, the US-based family-run businesses announced.

Mike Moeller, Remy Battery’s president, said the firms “have always been friendly competitors, working together in time of need and respecting each other’s business”.

Remy Battery, which was established in 1931, specializes in predominantly lead batteries, cables, and battery accessories. Batteries specialist Challenger was established in 1952.

Remy Battery said the acquisition fitted into the company’s strategy of providing services at a community level. The deal allows “a long-standing local family-owned business in Waukesha, Wisconsin, to continue to service their community, which will now be led by another long-standing family-owned company that maintains the same values”.

Remy has two locations in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, one in Wisconsin and Milwaukee, and now the Challenger site.

22 • Batteries International • Summer 2022

Metair said.

Export sales are earned in hard currency and provide a natural hedge to limit the impact of foreign exchange volatility and inflationary pressures, Metair said.

Meanwhile, Mutlu Akü will be the driving force behind an expected overall group production total of around four million automotive batteries produced in the first half of 2022, Metair said.

The Turkish operation increased its export volumes by more than 40%, compared to the sixmonth period ended June 30, 2021, despite a 10-

day labour wage strike at Mutlu Akü during June, which has been settled.

Production from Rombat is expected to be at least 10% lower than the year-ago period, mainly because of “dampened consumer confidence” from the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

In results for the past full year reported on March 17, the company posted increases in revenue and operating profit as its businesses, which include automotive components, generated a 23% increase in overall revenue from the previous year to ZAR12.62 billion.

Pruitt reveals rise in BCI members’ battery sales BCI members have reported total passenger car battery sales of nearly 99 million in 2021, East Penn Manufacturing CEO Chris Pruitt announced on May 2.

Pruitt told BCI’s annual convention in Florida — where he was re-elected as president of the US trade body for a second term of office — that the sales (OE and replacement) were a 43% increase over 2020, with AGM batteries up more than 28%. Other group sizes are in greater demand, he said.

“The past year was a year of recovery — from the pandemic and its economic impact,” Pruitt said.

“Our industry has fared better than most, thanks in large part to our strong domestic manufacturing base, and our strong domestic supply chain — including

the key lead suppliers and recyclers.”

Meanwhile, Pruitt said BCI was pushing ahead for yet tighter blood levels for the industry.

“We want to reach a maximum universal 20μg/dL of lead in workers by 2025.”

Pruitt said that when this level is compared to the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) recommendation of 50μg/dL, it showed “how powerful a lead we are taking”.

In terms of federal legislative lobbying, Pruitt said BCI continued to actively engage with legislators on Capitol Hill.

“We are excited by the fact that the federal government has recognized that battery manufacturing is key to America’s success to achieve energy independence,” he said.

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NEWS

Lead industry welcomes Ghana action on batteries stewardship The ILA said on May 3 it welcomed new procedures published by Ghana’s government to improve battery recycling operations in the West African nation.

The new standard operating procedures (SOPs) were developed in cooperation with organizations including the ILA, Battery Council International, EUROBAT and with the Sustainable Recycling Industries and the Material Stewardship Program of the global lead and lead battery industries.

Lydia Essuah, director of policy, planning, monitoring and evaluation at Ghana’s Ministry for Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, said: “We will make low-quality battery recycling a thing of the past in Ghana. Lead acid battery recycling is a lucrative industry, so we expect all recyclers to meet the technical guidelines.”

Selina Amoah, a deputy director at Ghana’s Environmental Protection Agency, said the SOPs and technical guidelines had been drawn up to ensure they could be widely understood and implemented.

The SOPs would also serve “as an additional tool for regulators to promote sound practices in the sector, which will lead to reduction in the risks to the environment and public health”, Amoah said.

‘Facing challenges’ According to the ILA, improper recycling of lead acid batteries remains a problem in many low- and middleincome countries, causing pollution, with potentially serious impacts on the environment and human health.

ILA regulatory affairs director Steve Binks said: “We are positive about the developments and hope that the transition to a sound battery recycling industry will continue. Other countries face similar challenges, and we hope that the SOPs will not only be used in Ghana, but also shared with, and applied in other settings.”

The SOPs, which are available online, were developed over 18 months in a project coordinated

by Sustainable Recycling Industries and experts from the Mountain Research Institute, the Ghana National Cleaner Production Center and the Oeko-Institut — guided by the Ghana’s EPA, Factory Inspectorate Department and other regional and international experts.

In 2020, a global alliance of lead and battery associations condemned all informal lead battery recycling in response to a report launched by the international children’s charity Unicef, on July 30, which said a third of the world’s children were victims of lead poisoning.

Unicef said in an interview with the Ghana News Agency in November 2021 that it would begin testing people — with a focus on children — for blood levels in the country.

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NEWS

Volt Resources $2m share placement plans for graphite restart in Ukraine Australia-based Volt Resources said on June 30 it had received firm commitments to raise $2 million in a share placement to help restart graphite production in Ukraine — and to continue producing lithium ion battery anode, alkaline and lead battery product samples for customer testing.

The funds would go to Ukraine’s Zavalievsky graphite mine, about 280km south of Kyiv, a processing plant and boost the export of graphite products to customers in Europe, Volt said.

The placement will also support the preparation of feasibility studies for a small-scale battery anode material production facility in the US, and a larger such facility that can be used as a “template design” for facilities in the US and Europe.

Volt has a 70% stake in the ZG Group in Ukraine and is focused on the exploration and development of its wholly-owned graphite and gold projects in Tanzania and Guinea.

Operations at Zavalievsky were suspended

after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Volt confirmed in a regulatory filing on March 1.

Managing director Trevor Matthews said on June 30 the decision to recommence the graphite mine and processing operations was “a positive step forward for the Zavalievsky management and staff, local communities and businesses that depend on the graphite business for their livelihoods”.

Volt reported on February 3 that it was evaluating the electrochemical per-

formance of its ultra-high purity non-spherical material for use as an expander in lead acid batteries. The company said work was being performed “under the close oversight” of a potential off-take partner — an unnamed lead battery company.

Volt says the development of non-spherical graphite products for the alkaline and lead battery markets will improve the economics of the firm’s planned battery anode material facilities in the US and Europe.

Battery industry leaders join forces to protect children Four battery associations representing the entire lead battery value chain are joining the Protecting Every Child’s Potential (PECP) initiative. This was founded in October 2020 by battery manufacturer Clarios, Unicef and Pure Earth, a US non-profit organization to help protect children’s health from lead exposure globally.

The International Lead Association, Battery Council International, Association of Battery Recyclers and EUROBAT are joining PECP as part of their joint Material Stewardship Project.

All four associations will work to help ensure children in low and middleincome countries— where regulatory controls are often absent — are not exposed to lead.

They will provide assistance, including pro bono technical support, to help regulators and businesses in low and middle-income countries to adopt global best practices — building on existing projects around the world supported by the ILA and BCI. The associations have already established a global

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programme to create a sustainable future by championing best practices in lead mining, lead production, lead battery manufacturing and recycling, and by encouraging responsible practices through supply chain management and product stewardship.

BCI executive vice president Roger Miksad said:

“We believe the learnings of the North American industry can be adapted and shared with others through knowledge transfer to improve on-the-ground conditions in many targeted communities.”

ILA managing director Andy Bush said PECP was aligned closely with the association’s own mate-

rial stewardship activities, “promoting the adoption of safe and responsible battery recycling in all regions of the world”.

EUROBAT executive director Rene Schroeder said PCP “brings the industry’s efforts for sound battery recycling to the next level and we are thrilled to be a part of the campaign”.

ILA to support Basel review of lead battery recycling standards The ILA is to join an international review of battery recycling standards under the Basel Convention.

ILA’s special adviser, Brian Wilson, attended the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) of the Basel Convention in Geneva, which met from June 6-17 to discuss the need to update existing technical guidelines for the safe and environmentally sound recycling of used lead batteries.

At the COP, which was attended by more than 1,500 delegates from 200 countries, it was agreed

that a special technical group would be set up to review and update the guidelines.

The group will also review the need to introduce and prepare guidelines for responsibly recycling other battery technologies.

The Basel Convention’s secretariat approved the ILA’s request to nominate Wilson to provide technical assistance to the group.

Speaking after the meeting, Wilson said: “There was universal support for the request to update the technical guidance for lead battery recycling.

The technical contact group also noted differ-

ences between batteries in terms of their management, recycling and safe disposal including the fact that technologies for disposing of, or recycling lithium ion batteries are still emerging.”

Steve Binks, ILA regulatory affairs director, said the trade body’s work with the group was “an important part of our commitment to safe and responsible battery recycling in low and middle-income countries”.

“The Basel technical guidelines are the recognized standard and ILA will now contribute to updating them.”

Batteries International • Summer 2022 • 25

NEWS

GS Yuasa expands battery line GS Yuasa said on June 15 it had launched a new EFB automotive battery as the Japan-headquartered firm moves to expand its European supply coverage to more than 500,000 vehicles.

The new YBX7012 startstop product marks an expansion of its YBX EFB range.

The company said the 12V L1 DIN case type battery provides 50Ah and 540A (EN) and is aimed at

petrol and hybrid vehicles with a one litre engine.

Jon Pritchard, general manager of GS Yuasa Battery Europe’s automotive, motorcycle and industrial components division said: “Our OE quality Yuasa YBX automotive range is the UK market-leader and already provides the widest coverage of any brand on the market.

“For our customers, and the workshops they supply, this means they are able to

fit batteries to more makes and models than ever before, especially as vehicles with advanced emission reduction systems, such as start-stop, become more prevalent in the park. The 7012 EFB alone will increase UK park coverage by around 50,000 vehicles.”

The announcement came after the company broke ground at the site of a new HQ and distribution centre in the UK on March 23.

Recycler Gravita invests in solar Lead recycler Gravita India has installed solar energy systems with a total electricity generating capacity of 1,300kW across its manufacturing facilities in the country.

Gravita said on May 27 the total investment for the projects was Rs60 million ($772,000) and underlined the company’s commitment to achieving carbon neutrality throughout its operations.

The solar installations will

provide up to 8% of Gravita’s energy needs and reduce carbon emissions by around 1,550 tonnes per year, the company claimed.

On May 12, Gravita revealed plans to use a byproduct of a new waste rubber recycling operation at its plant in Ghana as potential fuel for its lead and aluminium recycling business.

Gravita said in a regulatory filing that its Recylers Ghana subsidiary had started commercial produc-

tion and recycling of waste rubber in the West African nation — and that it would use pyrolysis oil generated during the process as an alternative source of energy to support its lead and aluminium recycling there.

The company did not give details of how it would further refine the pyrolysis oil from the Ghana rubber recycling operation, which has an annual capacity of around 6,000 tonnes annually.

Lawmakers praise Stryten Energy for support of US energy policy Stryten Energy has been praised for its “cuttingedge” role in support of US energy policy, during a tour of the company’s Kansas plant on June 20 by congressman Tracey Mann.

Stryten announced in March that it had formed two new divisions — Motive Power and Essential Power — focused on developing and producing multiple battery technologies, including lead, for the energy storage market.

Mann, who represents the district that is home to Stryten’s Salina plant, said: “Now more than ever, the US must utilize an ‘all of the above’ energy strategy that prioritizes American

energy independence.”

“Stryten Energy is committed to solving the world’s most pressing energy challenges and enhancing America’s energy freedom — it is an honour to have such a forwardthinking and cutting-edge business in the Big First District.”

The Salina manufacturing facility, one of 12 Stryten sites across the continental US, produces transportation batteries that are sent directly to aftermarket retail locations and battery distributors.

Stryten’s vice president for corporate communications, Melissa Floyd, said: “Domestic manufacturers like

26 • Batteries International • Summer 2022

Stryten are working hard to meet the current demand for energy storage in the US and we appreciate Representative Mann’s support for an energy strategy that prioritizes American energy independence.”

Mann’s visit followed an April 22 tour of the plant made by fellow Kansas lawmaker Sharice Davids.

Representative Davids, a key negotiator for the House of Representatives as Congress finalized a bipartisan supply chain package, said: “Stryten is a great example of the energy and supply chain solutions we should continue to grow here at home,” Davids said.

Exide Industries reveals site for ‘multi-gigawatt’ Li cells plant Lead-acid batteries group Exide Industries has named the site in India where its Exide Energy Solutions (EES) subsidiary will build a multi-gigawatt lithium ion cells manufacturing plant.

Exide said EES entered into an agreement on July 26 for the 80-acre site at the Hi-tech, Defence & Aerospace Park, in Karnataka state, where it will build the plant in collaboration with China’s SVOLT Energy Technology.

Exide indicated earlier this year that it might be about to invest in the region of Rs6,000 crore — Rs60,000,000,000 ($793 million) — in building the greenfield facility.

EES has now executed a lease cum sale agreement with the Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Board for the site, Exide said in a regulatory filing on July 27.

The filing did not disclose financial details or say when work on the project might start but said the new plant would cater for “new-age electric mobility and stationary application businesses” in India.

India’s Ministry of Corporate Affairs issued a certificate of incorporation on March 24 for the EES subsidiary, which will coordinate development of the Karnataka plant and run future operations at the site.

Exide has said previously that SVOLT, which has its headquarters in China’s Jiangsu province, would support the setting up of the Karnataka plant on a turnkey basis.

In August 2021, SVOLT closed a series ‘B’ financing of Rmb10.28 billion (about $1.6 billion), following a series ‘A’ financing of Rmb3.5 billion at the end of February 2021.

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Clarios, Natron Energy to team up for ‘world first’ in sodium ion production Lead batteries giant Clarios and Natron Energy announced on May 4 they were teaming up to manufacture what they said would be the world’s first mass-produced sodium ion batteries.

Clarios’ Meadowbrook facility in Michigan will become “the world’s largest sodium ion battery plant when mass production begins in 2023” — placing the US at the forefront of sodium ion battery manufacturing, the firms said.

Natron will install new cell assembly equipment at Meadowbrook, with support from the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects AgencyEnergy (ARPA-E), but details were not disclosed.

The companies said the similarity in manufacturing requirements will enable them to use part of

the Meadowbrook lithium ion facility for sodium ion production at a lower cost and faster time to market compared to building a new factory.

Meadowbrook was built as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment program and has produced automotive lithium ion cells for the past decade.

Under the terms of the firms’ collaboration agreement, electrodes and large format cells based on Natron’s proprietary Prussian blue electrode sodium ion chemistry will be manufactured in an existing Clarios plant in Michigan.

Clarios’ vice president of technology, Craig Rigby, said: “As a world leader in battery technology, Clarios is invested in sharing its experience in the emerging battery space and to provide expertise in scale manufacturing

Amara Raja pledges ‘fast track’ for lithium project as firm joins CBI India’s Amara Raja Batteries has pledged to “fast track” its development of a customer qualification plant for lithium cells while also building on its lead battery foundations.

The announcement came after the company became the latest member of the Consortium for Battery Innovation.

CEO and MD Jayadev Galla said in a regulatory filing about the company’s activities to the National Stock Exchange of India on May 20: “We are steadfast in our long-term strategy of energy and mobility leadership, and are building upon our strength to expand our global footprint for the lead acid battery business, while at the

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same time making good progress in the viable new energy technologies space.”

Executive director of the Andhra Pradesh battery maker’s lead acid business, Harshavardhana Gourineni, said the company had successfully overcome temporary hurdles in the supply chain in the past year and is now “well set to make the most of new opportunities”.

Amara Raja has been involved in the development and production of improving lead battery technologies since it was established in 1985.

The company announced in February 2021 that it would begin work on developing lithium ion cells.

for advanced technologies.”

In September 2020, Natron said it had achieved an Underwriters Laboratories (UL) listing for its BlueTray 4000 battery design, which uses Prussian blue chemistry and which was released in 2021 targeting the telecoms

and data centres market.

Last November, Clarios signed a deal with the American KULR Technology Group “to develop the manufacturing and re-use of lithium ion batteries and their chemical elements in the US”.

UK launches critical minerals supply plan The UK has joined a growing list of nations to issue a critical minerals alert, warning on July 22 that its plans to become a ‘giga batteries’ producer supplying electric vehicles and energy storage systems could stall because of expected shortages of raw materials.

Business, energy and industry minister Kwasi Kwarteng said in a new policy paper launching the UK’s first ‘critical minerals strategy: “Global demand growth for certain minerals, driven in many cases by decarbonization targets, could outstrip supply chain capacity, which will struggle to expand quickly enough owing to long lead times for mine development and mineral processing.”

Kwarteng cited data from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence indicating that “rising demand has caused lithium prices to increase nearly 400% year-on-year as of May 2022”.

Cobalt, lithium and vanadium are already on a list of UK-designated critical minerals published by the government in late 2021 and now nickel has been put on a “watchlist”, Kwarteng said.

designed microgrid battery prototype.

The firms announced a partnership to work on the project in February last year.

Novonix has developed the battery to support Emera’s residential BlockEnergy microgrid system, which was launched in Florida in October 2020 as the “first utility-owned community microgrid platform”.

The microgrid connects homes in a shared energy network, enabling rooftop solar power to be stored and distributed to the entire community through smart distributed controls.

Working with research partner, the US Sandia National Laboratory, the companies say testing of the new battery should be completed later this year.

Novonix co-founder and CEO Chris Burns said work on the project opens the gateway to exciting new possibilities for a cleaner, more reliable power grid with renewables being produced, stored and consumed within local communities.

Novonix was created from work by Jeff Dahn’s research group at Dalhousie University that focuses on lithium ion battery research and works exclusively with Tesla.

However, a Novonix spokesperson would not say whether the new battery is lithium based and said testing procedures would not be revealed at this stage.

Emera and Novonix Deliver microgrid battery prototype Emera Technologies and Canada-based Novonix Battery Technology Solutions announced on June 6 the delivery of a custom-

Batteries International • Summer 2022 • 29

NEWS

Vernon clean-up saga enters next phase A ‘Superfund’ listing request — to potentially unlock millions of dollars in federal funding to support clean-up activities at the former Exide Technologies recycling facility in Vernon — was issued by the California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA) on July 1.

CalEPA is calling for the site and its surroundings to be added to US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ‘National Priorities List’, which is also known as the Superfund.

California governor Gavin Newsom said the move was designed to “aggressively pursue federal funds” available under the Biden administration’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which was passed by Congress earlier this year. This provides $1.5 billion to revitalize brown-

fields across the US plus additional funds to protect human health and the environment.

CalEPA secretary Jared Blumenfeld said: “Vernon is one of the most contaminated lead sites in the country.

A Superfund listing would bring federal resources and expertise to the table that have frankly been missing for too long.”

California has allocated $700 million for the facility and residential clean-up to date and has remediated nearly 4,000 properties, CalEPA said.

Work by California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) at the former Exide site is scheduled to continue until the autumn of 2025, at which point 6,000 properties and additional facilities will

have been cleaned up.

However, the DTSC estimates completion will cost an additional $150 million, for which there is no funding in place, CalEPA said.

Meanwhile, industrial properties surrounding the facility have yet to be investigated and their cleanup costs are unknown, the agency said.

The Vernon site, five miles south of downtown Los Angeles, has been shuttered since 2014. It had been operated by Exide as a lead battery recycling and smelting facility for almost a century, producing around 110,000 tonnes of lead a year.

The DTSC said last January that it had hit its target of removing the soil from 3,200 properties in the area around the old Exide facility by the end of 2021.

Banner marks 85 years in batteries business Banner Batterien has marked 85 years in the battery manufacturing business with an anniversary celebration for staff.

More than 500 employees, including some 200 from the company’s 13 sales organisations, joined the event at Banner’s headquarters in Leonding, the firm announced on June 14.

The anniversary celebration was the first major

gathering of staff since the lifting of pandemic restrictions and a number of long-serving members of the workforce were honoured during the event.

Banner’s roots branch back to when company founder, Artur Bawart, launched a small business in the 1930s and Banner became involved in the battery business in 1937.

Today, the firm is Austria’s only car battery pro-

ducer and counts itself as being among the industry’s five largest manufacturers in Europe.

The company owners and cousins are commercial CEO Andreas Bawart and Technical CEO Thomas Bawart.

On May 24, Banner reported an uptick in sales to €286 million ($307 million) in annual results after what it said was a challenging year.

New Italy AGM line for Ahlstrom-Munksjö Fibre-based materials producer Ahlstrom-Munksjö said on April 7 it had started production of an absorbent glass mat line in Italy.

The Finland-headquartered firm said the line is at its plant in Turin, where it has invested in additional manufacturing capacity for filtration and energy storage

materials — although it did not give investment or production details.

The AGM line will serve applications where glass microfiber media is required, supporting AhlstromMunksjö’s expansion into industrial filtration as well as in supplying the lead batteries market, the company

30 • Batteries International • Summer 2022

said.

Giuseppe Costa, vice president of filtration and performance solutions for Asia and EMEA, said the launch signalled a “a strong step into the energy storage market by bringing on-stream a platform which will be fully qualified for the manufacture of AGM media”.

EnerSys reports boost in annual sales EnerSys reported a 13% increase in sales in annual results posted on May 25.

The lead and lithium batteries producer said net sales for the full year ended March were $3.36 billion compared to just under $3 billion in the year ago period.

EnerSys said the rise was due to a 10% increase in organic volume resulting primarily from strong demand and a 3% increase in pricing.

Sales in the motive power segment amounted to $1.4 billion — an increase of 17% over the previous year. Sales of energy systems, which combines enclosures, power conversion, power distribution and energy storage, increased by more than 11% to $1.5 billion.

Adjusted Ebitda was $340 million compared to $345 million previously, against a backdrop of inflation and supply chain disruptions.

CEO David Shaffer said key milestones achieved in fiscal 2022 included the launch and UL safety listing of EnerSys’ NexSys lithium ion batteries.

Shaffer said the company had also exceeded its capacity goal for its proprietary TPPL technology, where demand, he said, “continues to outpace our ability to supply”.

“We expect to benefit further from the strength of this demand as we make progress toward increasing capacity by an additional $200 million in fiscal 2023.”

On March 9, the EnerSys board announced a $150 million stock repurchase authorization, ahead of launching the company’s inaugural sustainability report on April 29.

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NEWS Birla Carbon announces ‘milestone’ investment in capacity expansion Carbon additives company Birla Carbon announced on May 31 it was investing in a combined production capacity expansion of 200 kilotonnes across key markets.

Birla said the expansion would cover markets in Europe, India, and China in support of rubber and speciality applications.

The expansions should be finished by 2024.

The expansion plans follow the company’s May 16 announcement that its prices for all carbon black products manufactured in North America would increase by 15% from July 1.

Group director Santrupt Misra said the unspecified investment marked “another milestone in the transformational journey” of the company.

“Birla Carbon will continue to focus on building new capabilities and enhancing the availability of carbon black across key regions, further consolidating its global leadership.

“Whether it is unique, highly specialized processes to tailor materials for speciality applications, security of supply, or consistent quality… the new capacity will enable us to sustainably serve growth in a range of segments including tyres, rubber goods, plastics, coatings, and other speciality markets.”

In July, the company launched an online ‘virtual showroom’ — highlighting the diverse industrial usage of carbon black including in battery technology.

Birla has developed a range of performance conductive additives that are designed to improve the energy density, power density, and charging

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speed of lithium and lead acid batteries.

The company uses a virtual car to showcase the value and widespread usage of carbon black by examining its usage in the intricate parts of the vehicle.

Birla said the virtual showroom marks its foray into digital innovation to explain the usage of carbon black products, not just in battery technology but also in mechanical rubber goods, coatings, inks, plastics, and tyres.

The initiative followed the company’s announcement on July 14 that it had raised

$50 million in the form of a ‘green loan’ to refinance a part of the capital expenditure incurred for tackling emissions at its North Bend plant in the US. Remy Battery gets ISO 9001:2015 certification Remy Battery Company, the Milwaukee-based battery firm in the US, announced on July 18 that it had been awarded ISO 9001:2015 certification.

ISO 9001:2015 is a globally recognized quality management standard developed and published by

the ISO Organization.

The standard is based on several principles, including having a strong customer focus, the involvement of high-level company management, an outlined approach to processes, and ongoing improvement of this very approach.

“Remy Battery’s dedication to work towards ISO 9001:2015 accreditation demonstrates our commitment to our company policy of continually improving procedures, products, and services,” says Mike Moeller, president of the firm.

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Batteries International • Summer 2022 • 31

ENERGY STORAGE NEWS

Allianz warns of EV batteries risk to safe shipping A new report released on May 10 warns that the lithium-powered so-called ‘green energy’ revolution is increasingly hazardous for shipping safety — with EV battery fires contributing to clean-up costs and causing environmental concerns.

According to the Safety & Shipping Review 2022, published by corporate insurance carrier Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty (AGCS), the rise in popularity of EVs represents “a significant difference in risk profile for shippers when compared with traditional vehicles”.

Following more than 70 reported fires on container ships alone in the past five years, the report says a major rethink of vessel designs, fire detection and fire-fighting capabilities may also be required.

The report cites the incident last February, when a fire broke out aboard the car carrier Felicity Ace in the Atlantic.

The vessel sank in March with 4,000 vehicles, including EVs, worth an estimated $400 million-$500 million on board, while being towed to rescue, the report says.

“Given the vessel sank, the exact cause of the fire may never be known.

However, it is thought the presence of lithium ion batteries on board aggravated conditions.

“EV lithium ion batteries could potentially ignite if damaged, are susceptible to cargo shift in rough seas if not adequately secured and can also combust with an increase in temperature from a nearby fire or even during on board charging,” the report says.

“Fires require a large volume of water to extinguish

and cool the surrounding area, which can, in turn, endanger the stability of the ship. Crews will need to be specially trained and equipped with appropriate detectors and fire extinguishing equipment.”

Captain Rahul Khanna, AGCS’ global head of marine risk consulting, says in the report: “The costs of responding to incidents and clean-up are now typically many multiples of the ship’s value.

“Larger vessels mean larger losses. An incident involving a container ship or car carrier can now cost as much as $1 billion, once salvage and environmental considerations are factored in. A major incident involving two mega container/passenger vessels in an environmentally-sensitive region could cost in excess of $4bn.

“We now have ships that are almost too large for the crew to fight fires effectively. There needs to be an urgent review of fire detection and fighting pro-

The smoke-engulfed Felicity Ace Photo: Allianz

tections and equipment on board large container ships.”

Cargo mis-declaration is another problem, the report says, citing an incident in August 2021 when a container full of discarded lithium batteries caught fire in the US while being transported by road to the Port of Virginia, where it was due to be loaded on to a container ship.

The cargo had been wrongly declared as ‘computer parts’ and the US Coast Guard said that the

incident could have been catastrophic had the containers caught fire after being loaded aboard the ship.

Cargo vessels accounted for half of all 27 vessels lost around the world in 2021, according to AGCS. The sister publication of BI, Energy Storage Journal reported on March 3 that China had called on the International Maritime Organization to consider a shake-up of maritime safety rules for EVs being shipped by sea.

Batteries insurance warranty scheme launched Batteries insurance and warranties company Altelium has teamed up with Tokio Marine Kiln (TMK), an international insurance underwriting business, to launch what the partners say is a world-first warranty programme for battery energy storage systems.

Warranties are issued based on battery properties, behaviours and data analytics. An online platform is used to gather the information, including data capture, performance and risk

32 • Batteries International • Summer 2022

assessment, to the pricing of the premium.

The companies say such warranties can be used to support the use and tradein of second life batteries, and so lowering technology and operational risk.

Purchasing warranties enables battery manufacturers “to free up trapped capital”, allowing greater resources to be focused on growth, UK-based Altelium said.

Altelium co-founder Ed Grimston said the aim was to “help accelerate the transition to

renewables by providing real-time, data-driven insurance solutions for first and second-life BESS and EVs”.

TMK head of innovation Tom Hoad said: “Providing insured warranties for BESS will unlock the deployment of large-scale capital investment.

“We are all aware of the urgent need to improve energy security and slash carbon emissions. Partnering with start-ups like Altelium helps us support this.”

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Europe trails US, China in ESS growth, study reveals European investment in energy storage systems has stalled — and the region is lagging behind the US and China in terms of market growth in the sector, according to a new study.

Cumulative storage deployments worldwide are expected to reach 500GW by 2031, says Wood Mackenzie’s Global Energy Storage Outlook, published in July.

But the study says Europe demand is lagging behind as the region’s gridscale market “struggles to stabilize”, with only 159GWh forecast for the region by 2031, compared to 422GWh for China and 600GWh for the US. One commentator blames the over-regulation of the European Commission, the civil service arm of the EU, as the reason for the slower rates of adoption: “In the US commercial imperatives, which are mostly understood by federal states, underpins

the growth. In China the central government’s grip on the economy means it can impose its will across the nation.

“But in Europe, decisionmaking by committee and by politicians with little commercial experience has caused the region to talk big, put too many rules into place and then lag behind the others. If there is any good to come from the Russian invasion of Ukraine it has stirred up a greater sense of urgency about energy storage across the EU.” Dan Shreve, global head of energy storage at Wood Mackenzie, said: “Growth has stalled in Europe as regulatory barriers fail to improve storage project economics. In addition, limited access to power markets and a lack of revenue stacking opportunities, combined with a lack of capacity market auctions, has lowered investment for grid-scale storage assets in Europe.”

EASE urges 14GW p/year ramp-up of energy storage for renewables Europe needs a ramp up of energy storage capacity at the rate of at least 14GW per year within the next nine years — or the bloc will be unable to integrate energy supplies from the rapid expansion of renewables and miss climate goals, says a study released in June by the European Association for Storage of Energy (EASE).

Existing European Commission assumptions on energy storage need to be revised, according to EASE’s Energy Storage Targets report* — which estimates a ‘no-regret storage requirement’ of about 200GW by 2030 and 600GW by 2050, including 435GW from power-to-X-to-power solutions for energy shifting and storage for varying

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durations.

“Establishing these 2030 and 2050 values as energy storage targets at EU level, with a dedicated energy storage strategy, will provide a clear signal to the energy storage industry and investors to begin building the infrastructure needed to drive large-scale deployment in parallel with supporting renewables integration,” the report says.

According to EASE, most recent Commission studies, published in March 2020, estimated 456GW of flexibility would be needed by 2030, but EASE said this is based on “outdated climate targets” and should be reviewed as the EU starts to cut back on fossil fuel imports such as those from Russia.

However, the study said Germany’s energy storage market is continuing to grow and is set to become the third biggest energy storage market by 2030 after the US and China — with 32GWh forecasted for the country, 61% of which derived from residential storage.

The study notes that the European Commission’s REPowerEU plan — aimed at severing dependence on Russian gas before 2030 — will boost the EU energy storage market further as it pushes for a higher share of renewable supply in EU member states.

Europe has already seen a 12 GWh increase since the plan was launched this May, which set out a 600GW target for the solar PV market and pledged to ease permitting processes for storage and PV systems.

Shreve said: “While REPowerEU does not set out a specific target for energy storage, higher renewable supply targets will drive demand for flexible power solutions, including energy storage assets.”

Meanwhile, the US remains the energy storage market leader, with average annual installations of 54GWh through to 2031, 83% of which will be grid-

scale, the study says.

But Wood Mackenzie’s US outlook shows 2022 and 2023 demand downgrades of 34% and 27% respectively because of what the company says are disruptions within the grid-scale and distributed segments from an anti-dumping and countervailing duties (AD/ CVD) tariff suit from the second quarter of this year.

“The US solar and storage market was hit hard by the AD/CVD tariff petition, with approximately 35% of 2022 hybrid gridscale installations delayed,” Shreve said.

On China, the study highlights the country’s “continued dominance” in the Asia Pacific market, with more than 400GWh of demand forecast through to 2031.

Shreve said this has mainly been driven by China’s 14th ‘Five-Year New Energy Storage Development Implementation Plan’, which reiterated the central importance of energy storage in national decarbonization plans.

China’s plan proposes that by 2025 energy storage will enter the large-scale development stage, with system costs falling by more than 30% through improved technology performance.

EU nations urged to fast-track storage and cut red tape The European Commission said on May 18 that battery storage and renewables projects should be fast-tracked and planning red tape slashed, as Europe scrambles to combat a looming energy crisis.

The Commission recommended that EU countries speed up approvals for the planning, construction and operation of plants producing

electricity from renewables — together with energy storage facilities — and ensure such projects “qualify for the most favourable procedure available in planning and permit-granting procedures”.

All such projects should be “presumed as being in the overriding public interest and in the interest of public safety”, the Commission said.

Batteries International • Summer 2022 • 35

ENERGY STORAGE NEWS

Canadian Solar enters UK Umicore launches utility-scale ESS market Korea R&D plant for Canadian Solar has entered the UK’s utility scale energy storage market after signing agreements for four battery storage projects, the company said on May 9.

The agreements with Pulse Clean Energy, include converting four diesel generation sites into grid-scale battery storage facilities, together with engineering, procurement and construction services for the more than 100MWh of projects.

Pulse, which launched earlier this year, said the sites are in South Wales, Warwickshire and northeast England.

The companies did not disclose financial details or specify the battery technology involved, but3:13:17 saidPM Final Ad.pdf 1 9/17/2019 the deal marked the start

of a long-term partnership between the companies.

In addition to providing the battery storage systems and construction services, Canadian Solar will maintain and operate the projects under a 10-year long-term service agreement.

As of January 31, 2022, Canadian Solar’s energy storage portfolio included 300MWh of projects under a long-term service agreement, 2,043MWh of projects under construction and a remaining pipeline of over 4GWh. Canadian Solar’s Energy Storage Team says it continues to expand its regional footprint, executing storage projects and deploying resources in Canada, the US, UK Australia, and China.

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cathode materials

Materials technology and recycling group Umicore has formally opened a new global research and development center for cathode materials in South Korea, the company announced on May 10.

Umicore said the 30,000m2 (330,000 square feet) center, built next to the company’s existing R&D and cathode materials production plants in Cheonan, became fully operational in early April, providing services for the energy storage, automotive and portable electronics sectors.

The centre also houses a new battery cells and testing laboratory.

Product research at the centre will continue to focus on next-generation battery materials, including high-nickel NMC, low cobalt NMC, manganese-rich

chemistries as well as solidstate battery materials technology, Umicore said.

Umicore’s executive vice president for energy and surface technologies, Ralph Kiessling, said: “This will enable us to continue to develop cathode materials that exceed customer expectations in terms of quality, reliability, safety and innovation.”

In May 2021, Umicore and BASF said they had signed a cross-licence agreement to develop cathode materials and precursors in a wide range of battery chemistries based on nickel and manganese.

The chemistries named as in line for development were nickel manganese cobalt, nickel cobalt aluminium, nickel manganese cobalt aluminium and high manganese.

Miba acquires majority Voltlabor stake Automotive and energy systems company Miba has acquired an undisclosed majority stake in battery systems producer Voltlabor, the Austrian companies announced on May 23.

The deal builds on the 25.1% stake Miba acquired in 2019 and Voltlabor will be renamed Miba Battery Systems.

Voltlabor develops and produces battery systems incorporating a novel temperature management system for sectors including energy storage and e-mobility.

Miba is building a 3,900 square metre (42,000 square feet) ‘VOLTFactory’ battery

production plant in Bad Leonfelden, Austria and says other such plants are planned to meet enormous demand.

Miba CEO Peter Mitterbauer said acquiring a majority stake in Voltlabor was an important milestone in his company’s corporate strategy.

“We want to grow to sales of €1.5 billion ($1.6 billion) by 2027 with technologies for end applications for the efficient generation, transmission, storage and use of energy.

Batteries as storage for energy are an important pillar in this context and an optimal addition to the Miba product portfolio.”

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36 • Batteries International • Summer 2022

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ENERGY STORAGE NEWS

New CellCube unit in US targets VRFB business CellCube brand owner Enerox said on May 5 it had launched a subsidiary in Colorado to take advantage of “exploding demand” for long duration energy storage systems in the US market.

The Austria-based vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) company said it would target a range of services including support for renewable energy supply and microgrid applications.

CEO of CellCube Austria and US, Alexander Schoenfeldt, said: “Being a global leader in this space, we are very enthusiastic about our new presence in North America, as it will allow us to build and use local supply chains and engage with our business and R&D

partners in the US more easily.”

CellCube was among the group of companies that formed the Long Duration Energy Storage Council in November 2021, with the stated aim of achieving grid net-zero by 2040.

Last February, Enerox signed an expanded fiveyear supply agreement with electrolyte supplier, US Vanadium, for three million litres per year, together with a price cap over the five-year term.

Schoenfeld said then that the agreement was part of the company’s “go-to-market in North America” strategy using electrolyte that had been regionally processed within North America, “ensuring longterm deliverability at a competitive price”.

Energy Vault starts work on China gravity-based ESS Energy Vault Holdings has broken ground on its first gravity-based energy storage system in China, the company announced on May 5.

Energy Vault said the 100MWh ‘EVx’ is being built next to a wind farm and national grid site in Rudong, near Shanghai, in partnership with Atlas Renewable and China Tianying (CNTY).

The launch of work in Rudong follows a $50 million licensing agreement between Energy Vault, USbased Atlas Renewable — which supports companies in project dealings with Chinese institutions and regulatory authorities — and CNTY, a Chinese environmental services firm.

Energy Vault uses a block tower system to store and release renewable energy from wind and solar operations. It uses surplus renew-

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able energy to store power by constructing the tower with a crane. When demand rises, the crane unstacks the tower, producing kinetic energy by dropping the blocks so that they can turn generators and create electricity.

Company chairman, cofounder and CEO Robert Piconi said: “Our first commercial EVx deployment in China is a significant milestone.

“China is rapidly expanding its use of renewable energy coupled with annual energy storage mandates in order to meet its decarbonization goals. We are very pleased that EVx and our energy management software platform have already received local regulatory endorsement and is being deployed now as a critical enabling technology to support China’s energy transition and carbon neutrality goals.”

Powin BESS system earmarked for Idaho Power project Energy storage company Powin is set to provide 120MW/524MWh of battery storage, to come online next summer in the US state of Idaho, Idaho Power announced on May 2.

The lithium iron phosphate ‘stack’ batteries are set to be the first utility-scale storage systems in Idaho. They would help maintain reliable service during periods of high use, while furthering the company’s goal of providing 100% clean energy by 2045.

Proposals for the Powin storage projects were filed in April with the Idaho Public Utilities Commission, which will determine whether the

project is in the public interest.

If the project is approved, the batteries should come online by June 2023 across several locations.

Idaho Power senior vice president and chief operating officer Adam Richins said: “Not only are we adding capacity to serve our customers, but we are taking advantage of advancements in technology that will be key to our future.

“Battery storage enables us to use existing generation sources efficiently while setting the stage for more clean energy in the coming years.”

California Li-tax law triggers battery materials supply alert California is to slap a tax on lithium production in the state to generate cash to spend on environmental remediation projects — amid warnings the move could disrupt the battery materials supply chain and hit the state’s investments in energy storage and electric vehicle production.

The Lithium Extraction Tax Law — part of a package of budget proposals signed off by state governor Gavin Newsom — will comprise a tax of $400 per tonne for the first 20,000 tonnes of lithium produced annually, $600 per tonne for the next 10,000 tonnes and $800 per tonne with output of 30,000 tonnes or more.

The law comes into effect on January 1, 2023 and would affect projects such as lithium production in California’s so-called ‘lithium valley’ Salton Sea region.

According to the bill, the aim is “to promote a robust California-based lithium extraction industry that considers the needs of the

local communities where the lithium extraction occurs, while recognizing the significant benefit of having a domestic supply of lithium for the state’s goals for reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases”.

However, Controlled Thermal Resources, whose ‘Hell’s Kitchen Project’ at Salton Sea is set to recover lithium from geothermal brines using renewable energy and steam to produce battery grade lithium products, said the tax as it stands would “severely impact the development of ‘Lithium Valley’.

CTR said: “Supporting a tax that ensures lithium imports from China are less expensive for auto manufacturers will devastate this promising Californian industry before it has begun.”

Eric Spomer, the CEO of privately held EnergySource Minerals, reportedly told Reuters: “This tax would stifle our industry before it even begins. We’re willing to pay and contribute to the local community, but it has to be a rational tax.”

Batteries International • Summer 2022 • 37

COMPANY FOCUS: WAMGROUP WAM mixers for lithium battery production

Supporting cathode powder production The need for lithium-ion battery cathode materials to power the growth of e-mobility and renewable power The growth of e-mobility and renewable power will require many lithium-ion batteries. To feed this growing demand, cathode materials production needs to follow suit.

Meanwhile, efforts to improve battery performance will require higherquality cathode materials.

Quality is not the only concern for cathode powder producers. They must also consider the need to make lithium-ion batteries sustainable and cost-effective. Cathode powder production equipment must therefore ensure the supply of consistently high-quality cathode materials.

Cathode powder production equipment: the mixer The first step in the cathode powder production process is the mixing of raw materials to create precursor materials, which are then further refined to produce the final cathode active material. This initial mixing step usually takes place in a mixer, such as the WBH single-shaft ploughshare mixer from MAP, a WAMGROUP division.

38 • Batteries International • Summer 2022

MAP has supplied over 900 mixers to produce lithium-ion battery cathode powders.

“This allows us to offer effective solutions tailor-made for customers’ individual market conditions, requirements, recipe and process,” explained Roberto Neviani, MAP mixers Division Manager.

MAP is also at the forefront of R&D in this field.

The WBH ploughshare mixer for battery cathode materials The WBH mixer is a product of this commitment to innovation. It utilizes the principal of mechanical fluidization to ensure effective blending of materials with different particle sizes and bulk densities, to high levels of precision, in the shortest possible timeframe (20-30 minutes). Other WBH mixer benefits include: • Low energy consumption: drive unit power is just 75kW for a 3000-liter mixer.

• Dustproof sealing prevents both ingress of contaminants and escape of any toxic particles.

• Low wear of mixing tools and mixing chamber.

• No increase of product temperature during mixing.

• Easy product sampling via a dedicated inspection panel; easy to clean and maintain.

In addition to the WBH ploughshare mixer, MAP also supplies the WBN ribbon blender for secondary mixing, as well as specialised bin activators and butterfly valves, designed specifically for lithium-ion battery production.

Prepared for the future WAMGROUP has already established a separate production line for MAP mixers to quickly meet the expected increase in demand. And with its huge bank of experience, technical knowhow and commitment to partnership and innovation, Roberto said WAMGROUP is “well positioned for the future”.

To find out more about how you can benefit from our mixing technology, connect with our global network today.

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ENERGY STORAGE NEWS

TotalEnergies commissions second BESS in French deal TotalEnergies has commissioned a 25MWh battery storage facility at its Carling industrial site in northeastern France, the group said on May 9.

The BESS comprises 11 lithium ion battery containers designed and assembled

by TotalEnergies’ subsidiary Saft.

The company has revealed plans to launch a third BESS facility in France by the end of 2022, as it finalizes its portfolio of projects awarded by the French Electricity Network (RTE).

Carling is the second BESS built under tenders awarded to TotalEnergies

by RTE. The energy company commissioned its first BESS for RTE, a 61MWh Dunkirk facility, last December.

Carling, which is also home to two combined cycle gas turbine power plants, will be used to stabilize the grid and to supply power during peaks in consumption, especially in winter.

Meanwhile, Saft said on May 11 that it had won a

contract to supply a 10MW BESS to provide capacity and firming and smoothing for what will be Côte d’Ivoire’s first solar plant.

The Boundiali plant BESS will comprise six of Saft’s lithium-based Intensium Max high energy containers, providing a total of 13.8 MWh of energy storage, together with power conversion and medium voltage power station systems.

TotalEnergies said the BESS is scheduled for commissioning in September 2022.

Britishvolt acquires EAS, agrees Bühler tech deal UK gigafactory developer Britishvolt announced on May 24 it had signed a sales purchase agreement to acquire German battery cells producer EAS Batteries from the Monbat group, in a cash and shares deal worth €36 million (about $38 million).

Monbat CEO Viktor Spiriev said his company would “continue to be part of the expected growth of the lithium ion industry through the minority stake that the group will hold in Britishvolt”.

“We believe Britishvolt is the right partner that has the necessary resources to become a leader in providing lithium ion solutions for electrified transportation and energy storage.”

Britishvolt founder and CEO Orral Nadjari said

the acquisition would allow the company to scale up the final part of its ‘46xx cell’ development and commercialization program and “put this leading cell product in the hands of our automotive customers”.

“Our 46xx cell format, developed as part of our wider R&D program, gives Britishvolt a significant competitive advantage in the battery race.”

EAS has more than 25 years of experience in developing and producing large format cylindrical lithium-ion battery cells from 7.5Ah to 50Ah. Monbat, a predominantly lead battery manufacturer, acquired EAS in 2017. The sales and purchase agreement for Britishvolt to acquire EAS is subject to various commercial and

regulatory approvals.

Separately, Britishvolt said on June 7 that Swiss manufacturer Bühler is to supply the gigafactory developer with “low-carbon” battery mixing technology.

Britishvolt said its first gigaplant, in Northumberland, will use large scale Bühler production lines for the manufacture of electrode slurries for the first go-to-market phase of 4.8GWh, which will be expanded to 38 GWh towards the end of the decade.

This corresponds to enough battery cells for well in excess of 300,000 electric vehicles per year, Britishvolt said.

Britishvolt’s ramp-up and production lines are scheduled to be commissioned in September 2023 and spring 2024, respectively.

CATL joins winners of EES awards in Germany Chinese battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL) was among the winners of the 2022 annual innovation prize at the Electrical Energy Storage (EES) exhibition in Munich, Germany, the organizers announced on May 10.

CATL joined German inverter company STABL En-

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ergy and second-life electric vehicle batteries firm Voltfang in receiving the award in the electrical energy storage category.

EES said CATL’s EnerOne LFP battery storage system, the STABL SI 100 modular multi-level converter and the Voltfang industrial commercial storage system,

made from second-life car batteries, were all examples of innovative products within the storage industry.

The EES award was presented along with others for innovation from across the three other exhibitions held in conjunction with EES — Intersolar, Power2Drive and EM-Power.

Grid connection green light for Australian BESS Australian renewables company Maoneng Group has been given the green light to connect its 240MW/480MWh battery energy storage system to a grid substation in the state of Victoria.

The company said on May 18 that the Australian Energy Market Operator had given the go-ahead for grid connection of the lithium iron phosphate BESS, on the Mornington Peninsula, which is scheduled for completion in early 2024.

The facility will be connected to Australian energy firm AusNet’s Tyabb substation in the southern part of the state’s grid, although no connection date was announced.

Maoneng said the BESS, which represents “hundreds of millions of dollars of investment”, will draw and store energy from the grid during off-peak periods and dispatch energy during peak periods, generating power for the equivalent of 40,000 average homes.

Company co-founder and CEO Morris Zhou said battery storage was “vital to the clean energy transition… this project is progressing at a time when demand for renewable energy and associated storage capacity is increasing, and we are seeing a lot more interest in battery projects in Australia and internationally.”

In a related move on May 1, Maoneng unveiled details of a proposed energy hub comprising a 550MWac solar farm and 400MW/1,600MWh BESS in New South Wales.

Batteries International • Summer 2022 • 39

ENERGY STORAGE NEWS IN BRIEF Vistra switches on DeCordova BESS Texas-based energy company Vistra confirmed on May 23 that its battery energy storage facility at DeCordova, the largest of its kind in the state, had become operational.

Inverter and energy storage provider Sungrow supplied the lithium ion battery technology and inverters for the 260MW/260MWh BESS. Vistra said DeCordova, first announced in September 2020, is the second of seven new “zero-carbon projects” the company is bringing online in Texas over the next few years — representing a capital investment of nearly $1 billion by the company within Ercot (the Electric Reliability Council of Texas grid system).

Construction of the facility started in June 2021 and finished in less than a year.

Vistra president and chief financial officer Jim Burke said: “This battery system can provide instantaneous full power to the grid with the flip of a switch, but it is also co-located on the same site as our quick-start DeCordova natural gas-fuelled power plant.

“This pairing means we have a large, one-hour battery system with dispatchable, reliable generation, leading to continuity of operation and resiliency of the grid.”

According to Vistra, the energy storage facility comprises more than 3,000 individual battery modules that can store enough electricity to power around 130,000 average Texan homes during normal grid conditions.

The batteries capture excess electricity from the grid, primarily overnight during high wind-output hours, and can release the power when demand is highest.

On January 6 last year, Vistra switched on the largest lithium ion battery storage facility in the world, the 300MW/1,200MWh Moss Landing facility in California.

Invinity appoints advisers for US investments Vanadium redox flow technology company Invinity Energy Systems announced on May 18 it had appointed a corporate advisory team to expand its presence in US commercial and financial markets.

Invinity said EAS Advisors’ initial

40 • Batteries International • Summer 2022

focus would be on increasing the level of US investor activity for Invinity — working with the company’s joint brokers Canaccord Genuity and VSA Capital.

The move aims to capitalize on Invinity’s status as “one of very few energy storage companies with nonlithium batteries advanced enough that customers have connected them to the grid and are using them to earn revenue”, Invinity said.

CEO Larry Zulch said: “Invinity is well positioned to continue growing our leadership position in longduration non-lithium energy storage in three of the world’s most exciting markets — the UK, Australia and North America.”

Separately, Invinity said on April 22 that the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) had taken delivery of 48 Invinity VS3 modules for a tidal-plus-flow battery project in the Orkney Islands, in the north of Scotland.

The modules, assembled at Invinity’s Bathgate facility in Scotland, have a combined capacity of 1.8MWh. They are undergoing final installation and commissioning.

Invinity’s system will be used in combination with tidal power to support EMEC’s hydrogen production plant. The battery will smooth the power from the tidal generation to ensure the 670kW hydrogen electrolysers have a stable and continuous power load to optimize production, Invinity said.

Samsung SDI and Stellantis to invest $2.5bn in JV Italian-French auto firm Stellantis and Samsung SDI are to invest more than $2.5 billion in their joint venture lithium ion gigafactory in the US, the companies confirmed on May 24.

The partners announced the formation of the joint venture on October 18, 2021. They expect an initial annual production capacity at their facility in Indiana of 23GWh, with an aim to increase it up to 33GWh. Construction will start later this year with production beginning in the first quarter of 2025.

The new plant will use Samsung SDI’s PRiMX technology to produce electric vehicle battery cells and modules for the North American market.

In a related announcement on

June 2, Stellantis said it had signed a binding offtake agreement with Controlled Thermal Resources for supplies of battery grade lithium hydroxide for use in the production of North American EVs. CTR’s ‘Hell’s Kitchen Project’ in California’s Imperial County will recover lithium from geothermal brines using renewable energy and steam to produce battery grade lithium products in an integrated, closed-loop process, eliminating the need for evaporation brine ponds, open pit mines, and fossil-fuelled processing, Stellantis said.

SolarEdge opens Korea gigaplant SolarEdge Technologies announced the opening of a 2GWh battery cells manufacturing plant in South Korea on May 25 to meet growing demand for battery storage.

Israel-headquartered SolarEdge and its lithium ion batteries subsidiary, Kokam, said the Sella 2 facility, in Chungcheongbuk-Do, is producing test cells for certification, with rampup to happen the second half of his year.

Sella 2 will eventually enable SolarEdge to have its own supply of lithium ion batteries and the infrastructure to develop new battery cell chemistries and technologies, the company said.

The facility is planned to manufacture battery cells for SolarEdge’s residential solar-attached batteries, as well as battery cells for applications including stationary energy storage and UPS systems.

SolarEdge CEO Zvi Lando said the new facility “allows us to own key processes in the development and manufacturing of advanced energy storage solutions for our solar core business and additional applications, while further securing the resilience of our supply chain”.

Separately, SolarEdge confirmed on May 20 that it had agreed on a global patent licensing arrangement with China’s Huawei that ends lawsuits pending between the companies in Germany and China.

The agreement enables the companies to use each other’s patented technology “based on recognition of the companies’ overall innovation capability”, the firms said in a joint statement.

However, the companies said specific terms of the deal would remain confidential.

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ENERGY STORAGE NEWS IN BRIEF First phase of China 200MW flow battery on the grid The first phase of a planned 200MW/800MWh vanadium redox flow battery energy storage system has been connected to the grid in China, the China Energy Storage Alliance (CNESA) reported on July 19.

CNESA said the initial 100MW/400MWh system in Dalian achieved grid connection on May 24 after six years of planning, construction and commissioning, at a total investment cost of Rmb1.9 billion ($281 million).

The eventual total cost of the project will be around Rmb3.8 billion.

CNESA said Dalian Rongke Energy Storage Technology Development is providing the VRFB storage systems — using technology developed by the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In a related move, CNESA reported that China’s National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration set out plans on June 7 that allow “new energy storage technologies”

to play a greater role in the national electricity market.

The notice issued by the agencies offers financial incentives for “independent power storage sites” to feed power to the grid.

PGE unveils plans for 200MW Poland BESS Polish state energy firm PGE has received a preliminary licence from regulators to build a 200MW battery storage facility in the country as part of a commercial hybrid energy storage (CHEST) project, the company said on July 20.

PGE did not disclose investment costs or the proposed schedule for the lithium ion project — for which it said it is applying for funding in Europe and “looking for business partners to co-finance the investment”.

However, the company said the battery facility would have a nominal capacity of up to 205MW/820MWh and would be integrated with the 716MW Zarnowiec pumped storage power station in northern Poland, creating

a “921MW innovative hybrid installation with a capacity of over 4.6GWh”.

The facility will have the capacity to supply power to around 200,000 homes (with an average load of 5kW per household) for at least five hours, PGE said.

PGE said: “CHEST may also prove helpful in increasing the energy security of Poland and the Baltic States.

“It will also have an impact on the competitiveness of energy markets and the synchronization of the Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian power systems with the system of continental Europe through the Harmony Link project, which is an electricity interconnector between Lithuania and Poland. The link will connect the Lithuanian and Polish electricity system via a 330km submarine cable between the Zarnowiec and Dorbian substations in Lithuania.”

PGE chief executive officer Wojciech Dabrowski said the firm’s energy storage goal was to have 800MW of installed capacity in Poland by 2030.

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Batteries International • Summer 2022 • 41

ENERGY STORAGE NEWS IN BRIEF Kibo Energy plans long duration ESS for South Africa Kibo Energy unveiled plans on May 30 to develop more than 36,000MWh of long duration energy storage capacity in South Africa working with Hasta Trust.

Kibo will acquire a 51% stake in Hasta’s wholly-owned National Broadband Solutions (NBS), in exchange for granting NBS exclusive access to Kibo energy storage systems for market sectors of interest to the firm’s projects.

Kibo CEO Louis Coetzee said the move “aligns perfectly with the company’s strategy to become a significant presence in the long duration energy storage market and sets up an additional potential revenue stream for Kibo”.

The announcement came after Kibo, which is also focused on UK projects, signed an agreement on May 17 with vanadium redox flow battery brand, CellCube, to open a “gigawatt-sized pipeline” of energy storage in South Africa.

Nano One to acquire Johnson Matthey Battery Materials Canada Nano One said on May 25 it had agreed a C$10.25 million ($8 million) deal to acquire Johnson Matthey Battery Materials Canada.

The move comes after Johnson Matthey said last November that it intended to sell all, or parts of, its battery materials business.

JMBM Canada includes the 2,400 tonne per annum capacity lithium iron phosphate (LFP) production facility at Candiac in Quebec and a team with more than 360 years of collective experience including in-pilot to commercial-scale cathode production, Nano One said.

The transaction, which Nano One said is fully funded and on a cashfree, debt-free basis, subject to certain working capital adjustments, should close by the end of the year.

Nano One CEO Dan Blondal said: “Experienced employees are at the core of this deal and will help fasttrack Nano One’s learning curve.”

The Candiac production facility was acquired by Johnson Matthey in 2015 and has been in operation since 2012. It supplies LFP cathode material to the lithium ion battery sector for automotive and nonautomotive applications.

Liam Condon, CEO of Johnson

42 • Batteries International • Summer 2022

Matthey, said: “We have worked with Nano One on a number of projects over the last year and having seen their innovations, we believe they have the potential to develop the Candiac site in the best way possible.”

On February 15, Nano One said it had successfully completed the first phase of an advanced lithium ion battery cathode materials coating development agreement with Brazilbased niobium supplier CBMM. Kona Energy gets approval for UK 200MW BESS Planning permission has been granted to build a 200MW battery energy storage facility in the UK, developer Kona Energy announced on May 26.

A Kona spokesperson told BI the lithium iron phosphate facility in Heysham, Lancashire, would have a capacity of up to 400MWh and is expected to enter commercial operation in 2024.

Kona said the role of the facility would be increasingly important in providing local grid services in the form of inertia and reactive power support, following the scheduled closure of nuclear power plants in Heysham in 2024 and 2028.

Kona founder Andy Willis said: “Roughly £1 billion ($1.3 billion) was spent in the last year curtailing energy from wind farms and other generators, replacing that need elsewhere — usually from fossilfuelled stations.

“Tackling this enormous waste of money and energy is crucial. Further battery storage facilities will reduce this burden.”

Willis said the new BESS was important because the project is connecting to what the UK power industry refers to as the ‘B7a constraint boundary’.

The B7a is one of the most constrained areas in the UK, where wind farms and other low carbon technologies are regularly curtailed.

As these constraint costs rise, projects like this are essential to relieving network congestion and reducing unnecessary waste.

Minerals group ICL forms ESS unit Israel-based minerals company ICL said on May 27 it planned an expansion of its products and services with the launch of a new business unit focused on the energy storage market.

The dedicated energy storage solutions unit follows ICL’s entry into the lithium iron phosphate battery market in China last year.

ICL said it is looking to expand its presence beyond its existing speciality products used in cathode active materials and in bromide-based batteries.

ICL’s executive vice president and chief innovation and technology officer, Anantha Desikan (pictured), said the company was committed to expanding in the broader battery market in Europe and the US. “This new unit has established dedicated battery resources at three of our global R&D centers and research includes exploring battery end-of-life recycling,” Desikan said.

“We are also investigating ways to advance energy storage and battery performance, and we continue to explore capacity expansions, partnerships and other types of collaborations, as part of these efforts.”

Toyota Tsusho in pilot BESS plan with e-Zinc Toronto-based e-Zinc said on June 1 it had signed a demonstration project agreement with Toyota Tsusho Canada (TTCI) for further testing of its zinc-air battery storage systems.

The pilot project, expected to start in the spring of 2023, aims to validate e-Zinc’s capability to store 24 hours of energy, the company said.

The project will be based at Eurus Energy America Corporation’s Bull Creek wind facility in Texas.

Excess wind generation capacity will be stored in the storage system and then used to power buildings at Bull Creek.

The system is expected to store power for 24 hours, “an order of magnitude longer than typical batteries and better suited to the intermittency of wind generation than typical batteries”, e-Zinc said.

James Larsen, e-Zinc CEO, said: “This project sets the stage for TTCI to support e-Zinc with manufacturing and supply chain capabilities, sales, and distribution support, as well as project deployment and service for a variety of market applications.”

On April 7, e-Zinc announced it had secured $25 million in a series ‘A’ financing to start pilot production of its first commercial zinc-air energy storage systems.

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ENERGY STORAGE NEWS IN BRIEF KORE Power battery tech chosen for new BESS in UK KORE Power said on June 8 it had been selected to supply its battery technology for a 10MW/20MWh lithium ion BESS being developed in the UK by ABB. The US-based battery cell tech company will provide its Mark 1 storage modules equipped with high energy density NMC pouch technology for the facility, which will be installed at renewable energy company Ecotricity’s existing 6.9MW wind farm in Gloucestershire in 2023.

The BESS will use Ecotricity’s proprietary ‘Smart Grid’ platform to dispatch stored electricity according to system needs, KORE said.

Mark Meyrick, head of smart grids at Ecotricity, said: “We’ve been working towards our first grid scale battery as we’ve been developing our Smart Grid platform and we’re looking forward to taking this next step with ABB. “This project is a first for us and will enable us to manage demand for

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renewable energy, as well as develop a greater understanding of the deployment of storage for flexibility requirements.”

On March 23, KORE said it had acquired energy storage company Northern Reliability for an undisclosed sum — and had launched a new division called KORE Solutions.

Leclanché confirms liquidity funding Swiss energy storage group Leclanché has negotiated conditions with “different stakeholders” to secure Sfr15 million ($15.5 million) funding for near-term liquidity requirements and can remain a going concern until June 2023, the company said on June 6.

The announcement came after the company warned on February 24 that liquidity remained tight ahead of a merger of its e-mobility business with a US-listed special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).

Leclanché said then it had secured a Sfr20.4 million bridging loan

NE

W

from the SPAC’s largest shareholder, SEFAM, to run its operations ahead of the merger.

In terms of the merger, Leclanché said on June 6 that, in its view, the due diligence process had been completed and it expects to start the negotiation for the merger agreement.

In the interim, the company has started talks with other SPACs on its shortlist “to ensure a competitive bidding process”.

Meanwhile, “direct confidential discussions with a few major industrial companies for a strategic investment in Leclanché E-Mobility” are also underway, as the company works to “fully fund business requirements through 2024”.

However, the company warned “worldwide supply chains issues continue to impact near-term business delivery capability with intermittent production”.

In a related move, Leclanché said Jean-François Stenger had been promoted to the post of deputy chief financial officer and would be acting as CFO until further notice.

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Batteries International • Summer 2022 • 43

COMPANY FOCUS: DROSS ENGINEERING

50 years

Recycling equipment specialist Dross Engineering celebrates half-century of global service

of engineering excellence Not many companies can trace their roots back to events that shaped their country’s history — and one of the world’s iconic landmarks too — but France-based Dross Engineering can.

The origins of Dross date back to 1959, when the current president of the company, Jean Armabessaire, joined Aprosider — a subsidiary of the then Pompey steelworks in Nancy — where Armabessaire dealt, in particular, with refractory bricks intended for blast furnaces and the open-hearth Siemens-Martin furnace.

Pompey’s claim to fame was that it made the steel that was used to manufacture the Eiffel Tower.

In 1970, Armabessaire’s father, the owner of a recycling company, asked his son for a solution to recover aluminium from car engines without dismantling them by hand.

Given the temperature differences between iron or aluminium, the question arose about using a furnace and, one year later, that process was deployed to establish the first deironing furnace, where aluminium was successfully separated from iron.

Jean Armabessaire launched his company in 1972, supplying an initial 10 hearth furnaces to clients.

Now Dross is celebrating 50 years of service as a trusted manufacturer of furnaces and specialized equipment for the recycling of non-ferrous metals.

Today, the company is as vibrant and innovative as the early years, having switched its focus to engineering studies, technical designs and components manufacturing together with machine assembly and testing, which is conducted with industry partners.

For the past 20 years, Dross’ activity has focused exclusively on the recycling of non-ferrous metals and in particular the recycling of batteries. The company offers four distinct types of recycling lines at competitive prices and equipment for the management of zinc or cuprous aluminium scrap.

Dross employs a workforce of just

44 • Batteries International • Summer 2022

Breaker machine installed in Thailand

20, but it continues to have a global impact and a proud reputation for quality. The company is present on all continents and has delivered a total of 893 installations in France and 520 machine projects around the rest of the world over the past 50 years.

Dross has developed several processes and technology over the years, from the first dry hearth furnace to building the first energy recovery furnaces and the first tilting rotary furnace with gravity casting and breaking lines for old batteries using desulphurisation.

In 2022, Dross launched a new furnace for the recovery of lead from dross. The furnace operates in a reducing atmosphere using gravity casting. The company offers an electrically-heated version for the recovery of tin.

Most recently Dross was announced as the supplier of the foundry for a new lead recycling unit in Tunisia for battery maker Nour, which is now 60% owned by Monbat.

Jean Armabessaire says: “After 50 years of service to a myriad of industries, including the batteries sector, we look forward to developing the services that will be required to power global industries forward into the 22nd century.”

Kaldo new electric furnace

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ANALYSIS: CRU A restart of Germany’s Stolberg lead plant under new owner Trafigura could be delayed by Europe’s energy crisis, but when it does reopen, CRU lead analyst Neil Hawkes says a key decision will be whether to drip-feed lead into the European market or feed more to the US.

European smelter deal set to have global impact

Trafigura ended months of speculation about the future of the German lead production plant, Stolberg, when the multinational announced early in July it was buying the facility from Ecobat, in a deal that should be completed in the third-quarter of this year.

Once the acquisition of Ecobat Resources Stolberg (which owns the Stolberg multi-metals processing plant) is finalized, Stolberg will be operated by Trafigura’s multi-metals mining and smelting subsidiary Nyrstar — which has to date declined to be drawn on its ambitions for the site.

Nyrstar told Batteries Ingternational exclusively on July 21 that there would be a “continuous assessment” of the potential for future investment in the site, which has been out of action since declaring force majeure in July 2021 after the devasting floods in Europe.

When Nyrstar does formally take

up control, its “first priority will be the execution of the current business strategy for the Stolberg business”.

Nyrstar did not say what that strategy entails, but CRU lead analyst Neil Hawkes says Ecobat has clearly had to invest a great deal of money, time and effort into getting the smelter back to the point where it can be restarted.

“My understanding is they’ve completely relined the furnace, so when it does restart the going should be quite smooth,” says Hawkes.

“As I understand it, Stolberg was going to be ready for a restart by the end of July 2022, but it’s unlikely the restart of the smelter will happen before the acquisition is finalized.”

One interesting thing about Trafigura buying Stolberg is that they are first and foremost a trader that happens to produces metal rather than a producer that trades metal, says Hawkes.

Asset disposal plans Trafigura already has three zinc smelters through Nyrstar in Europe, plus the Port Pirie lead smelter in Australia, so the group is no stranger to the sector.

But what prompted Ecobat to sell?

Hawkes reckons that: “Stolberg was the easiest to sell first in any broader asset disposal plans of Ecobat’s private equity group owners, Golden Tree Asset Management, because it is the only primary smelter they have and is pretty much a standalone asset.

“It does not integrate too much with their other secondary lead operations around Europe, although my understanding is it did treat some of the battery paste from some of their dedicated secondary smelters.”

The ‘twist’ in the deal for Trafigura could be that Stolberg can treat some of the residues and slag that come from the group’s zinc smelters in Europe 46 • Batteries International • Summer 2022

However, the ‘twist’ in the deal for Trafigura could be that Stolberg can treat some of the residues and slag that come from the group’s zinc smelters in Europe.

“In that sense, it’s a good fit for Trafigura because they can integrate the Stolberg smelter more closely with their three zinc smelters,” says Hawkes.

Later down the line, this could see Trafigura become as much of a silver refiner as a lead refiner, basically treating complex mined lead/silver concentrates and looking to improve the recoveries of silver at the expense of lead.

Hawkes also points out that refined lead production at Stolberg had been in decline even before the plant was knocked out by the floods.

The nominal lead capacity at Stolberg is 140,000-150,000 tonnes a year, but Hawkes says that’s nominal capacity — “which they’ve not been anywhere near to for many years”.

CRU’s estimation is a lot closer to around 100,000-110,000 tonnes a year.

‘Smelters need energy too’ Nevertheless, he says “it’s still a big number and still one of the main reasons why the European lead market has been so tight over the last year”.

But with industry commentators hearing that Trafigura itself has been short in lead supply in Europe, why keep Stolberg in mothballs for any longer than necessary?

“As they’re also a trader, they’ve probably got half an eye on contract negotiations for the next year and trying to maintain some healthy premium,” Hawkes says.

“On top of that, energy prices are high and will probably rise even more during the autumn and winter in Europe as a result of the war in Ukraine.”

And while Stolberg is not as big a

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ANALYSIS: CRU

Nyrstar Port Pirie smelting operation

gas guzzler as a zinc or aluminium smelter, lead smelters need energy too — and the Russia-Ukraine hostilities have already set alarm bells ringing over stability of energy supplies across Europe.

“Germany has already moved to level two on the so-called ‘alert level’ of its emergency gas supply planning, so there is concern that if the government asks industrial users to start rationing it could all get incredibly messy,” says Hawkes.

“So, there is an argument — and I’m not saying it’s my view — that Trafigura might keep Stolberg shut for the rest of this year in the hope that the spike in energy prices starts to fall in the spring. But that’s a big assumption, because the view now is that the Ukraine war is entrenched and no one sees an end to it anytime soon.

“Even if some political solution emerges, Western sanctions are likely to remain in place for a long time.”

Meanwhile, Hawkes says the European market has grown accustomed to the cut-off in Russian lead supplies which have virtually dried up as a result of sanctions.

In 2021, about 50% of Russian refined lead exports went to Europe — around 55,000 tonnes last year according to CRU data — and a third of the remainder went to Asian

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Stolberg site photo from Ecobat

There is an argument — and I’m not saying it’s my view — that Trafigura might keep Stolberg shut for the rest of this year in the hope that the spike in energy prices starts to fall in the spring Batteries International • Summer 2022 • 47

ANALYSIS: CRU countries, which Hawkes says raises the question of whether more Russian lead is now heading east to Asia.

Key questions for Trafigura Does that imply batteries made with Russian lead could eventually find their way into the European and other Western markets, thereby skirting around EU sanctions?

“For sure that remains a possibility,” says Hawkes. “Once the lead has gone over the Russian border to China and countries in the Middle East or wherever, it could be converted into batteries and come in that way. Russia’s lead supply can’t be traced like that.

“We keep hearing that the Asian lead market is quite weak, flat and demand is not strong, so certainly Asia (including China) does not need to hang on to any more lead from Russia as those countries have plenty themselves.”

Meanwhile Europe, which did export some lead batteries to Russia before the invasion, is not doing that now — which frees up more batteries for the internal market.

Hawkes says: “In the future the key questions for Europe are when will Stolberg reopen and what will Trafigura do with the lead? Will they drip feed it into the European market and not impact premiums too much?

Or will they feed more of it to the US market, where there is a much stronger need for more lead and where Trafigura also has a presence?

“The other big question for Europe is what happens to lead and battery demand while the path we are set on today seems to be leading to slower economic growth, if not outright recession in many parts of Europe? That will clearly have an impact on sentiment and the broader metals markets.”

In terms of lead, Hawkes’ view is that we could see some impact in the OE battery automotive and industrial lead battery sectors as consumers cut back on spending and steer away from investing in new cars.

However, this means demand in the replacement battery market should hold up quite nicely as consumers continue using existing vehicles and simply replace lead batteries when required.

“That of course creates scrap, which goes into the secondary chain and does not drive new demand, but it certainly helps support lead in a way other metals are not supported — and that is why other metals industries

48 • Batteries International • Summer 2022

One interesting thing about Trafigura buying Stolberg is that they are first and foremost a trader that happens to produces metal rather than a producer that trades metal are starting to really worry about the impact on demand of a recession and high energy prices in Europe.”

And if energy prices do spike through the autumn or winter, that might turn attention back to zinc smelters and maybe associated lead smelters, Hawkes says.

Ecobat recently announced it was extending the traditional summer shutdowns of its two Italian secondary lead smelters from two weeks to the whole of August.

The company said this was because of the energy crises and other inflationary raw material costs. Hawkes believes low LME lead prices also influenced Ecobat’s decision.

Global lead outlook The company will now decide about whether the Italian plants will return to operation in September at the end of August. Hawkes thinks they will be back in operation in September but says there is no 100% guarantee.

“Italy tends to have higher energy costs and higher scrap prices than other parts of Europe, so that combination may also have influenced Ecobat’s decision, as well as making a statement to the wider market to the effect of ‘lead smelters are suffering too — it’s not just about zinc and aluminium smelters’.”

On the global picture, the International Lead and Zinc Study Group said in April that world supply of refined lead metal exceeded demand last year — but Hawkes questions whether that will continue during this year.

“We are crunching our numbers now, so I can’t give an exact figure, but generally the surplus has shrunk globally this year because there was a strong rebound outside China which had big issues with Covid and further lockdowns in the second quarter of this year. These came on the back of the already weak picture there.”

This year’s refined lead market is therefore more finely balanced because of the surplus in China/Asia and shortages in the US and Europe, so the rest of the world has become very reliant on Chinese exports as we’ve gone through this year, Hawkes says.

Nevertheless, he says lead has a strong story to tell in terms of its availability, recyclability and environmental credentials.

“All of the scrap that is available to the market is getting recycled and secondary lead accounts for two-thirds or so of global refined lead production, so it’s a continuing green supply success story for lead.”

Lithium, by contrast, is not a very green story despite the hype over‘clean mobility, says Hawkes.

“The lithium battery is supposed to be part of the green story, yet they still need to keep digging up the ground for fresh raw materials to feed the huge surge in lithium battery demand, with battery recycling in its infancy.

“Lead battery recycling tends to go under investors’ radars as it quietly just meets a battery industry need for lead in a long established and efficient closed loop cycle.”

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ANALYSIS: VOLTA MATERIALS TECHNOLOGY Dr Thomas Pham and Dr James Chern, of Volta Materials Technology, present the results of research into using the company’s reactive polymer technology for explosion-proof lithium-ion batteries with high energy density.

Polymer technology rises to Li-battery safety challenge Volta Materials Technology’s (VMT) reactive polymers, which are LISA (lithium-ion battery safety assured), can be easily coated on to cathode active material pellets for explosion-free lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) with desirable high capacity and energy density.

LISA polymer possesses residual reactive functional groups for secondary polymerization initiated by the high temperature environment during the thermal runaway process in LIBs. This will reinforce the crosslinked network structure of the polymer coating on the cathode active material particle surface — in turn greatly reducing the probability of thermal runaway.

In this work, two series of pouch cells comprise NCM 622 and graphite as the major materials in the cathode and anode respectively.

The first series (5 cells) had a capacity of 32.44+–0.15 Ah and an energy density of 229.34+–0.16 Wh/kg.

The second series (6 cells) had a capacity of 34.61+–0.11 Ah and an energy density of 231.24+–0.24 Wh/kg.

Among these cells, one cell (34.57 Ah, 231.00 Wh/kg) and another cell (34.65 Ah, 231.20 Wh/kg) were stored at room temperature for periods of one month and two months, respectively, before undergoing nail punch testing.

In addition, one cell (34.65 Ah, 231.40 Wh/kg) was assembled using electrodes aged for one month and exposed to the atmosphere for one three-hour period during storage.

Before the nail punch test, the cells were fully charged from 2.8 to 4.3 V (state of charge = 100%) at 0.2C-rate.

Note that the pass rate for all 11 cells was 100%.

For example, the cell (34.67 Ah, 231.30 Wh/kg) passed the nail punch test (see top left of image shown below), evidenced by very stable temperature on the cell surface and voltage vs. time profiles during the test (bottom left of image).

However, the reference LIB that did

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not contain the LISA polymer (9.00 Ah, 229.2 Wh/kg) instantly caught fire and exploded while undergoing the nail punch test (top right of image).

Based on our experience, it is extremely difficult to impart satisfactory safety to NCM 622-based cells with energy density exceeding 230 Wh/kg without detriment to the cell cycle life.

For cycling performance at room temperature, the discharge capacity retention decreases slowly with increasing number of cycles, and it is 87.6% at the 1,000th cycle (bottom right of image).

The cell is expected to maintain a capacity retention close to 80% at

the 2,000th cycle by extrapolation.

This result strongly suggests that the LISA technology is capable of imparting high safety to NCM 622-based LIBs with an energy density around 230 Wh/kg, while maintaining satisfactory cycling performance at room temperature.

We therefore believe that VMT’s LISA technology is a promising candidate to ensure the highest safety for energy storage systems and electric vehicles, where high energy density is greatly in demand.

For further information about VMT please visit www.vmt.com.tw or email to jim@vmt.com.tw

VMT’s LISA technology is a promising candidate to ensure the highest safety for energy storage systems and electric vehicles, where high energy density is greatly in demand. www.vmt.com.tw | jim@vmt.com.tw Batteries International • Summer 2022 • 49

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COVER STORY: FLOW BATTERIES The lead battery business — and its counterpart lithium too — need to consider the implications of Europe’s desperate need for long duration energy storage.

That requirement is going to throw flow battery technology to the fore.

Clear and present danger Could the economic case for flow batteries now be compelling? Some in the energy storage industry — admittedly proponents of the technology — are now saying that it is.

They say that despite the high and volatile price of vanadium as an electrolyte, VRFB technology is cheaper in the long run than batteries (see related features in this section).

Others are saying that other chemistries such as ESS’s iron bromine flow batteries bring a cheap electrolyte to the table and will soon radically change any market for long duration storage.

And if that’s the case other sectors of the industry should be starting to get worried.

That means other technologies vying for attention and investment in the increasingly-crowded energy storage space — not least the lead battery industry — need to be on their guard.

Add to this the lead business is already under siege from the huge volumes of lithium cells now being sold and slowly replacing or usurping its traditional markets. (This is all the more worrying given the way, just a decade ago, how disparaging the lead battery industry was about the possibilities for lithium.)

Some of the language, perhaps a better word is hyperbole, being used in the industry is comparable to those of Elon Musk. But there is a rationale behind it. CellCube, for example, announced in May that it had signed a “gigawatt-sized pipeline” of energy storage projects for South Africa.

Many of the dreamers in the industry are talking about the creation of gigaflow-battery-factories. Although it is easy to dismiss this talk as the reveries of frustrated engineers, there is a hard economic base to this. It is perfectly possible to create a medium sized flow battery manufacturing facility for as little as $50 million.

Most of the manufacturing for such a plant requires little beyond regular process engineering — this is all a far cry from a gigafactory’s multi-billion dollar price tag and its need for hyperclean rooms, precision ovens, furnaces,

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Under siege: Other technologies vying for attention and investment in the increasingly-crowded energy storage space — not least the lead battery industry — need to be on their guard.

laser processing, finishing rooms, formation cells and all the high-tech wizardry needed to make a lithium battery.

Add to this the fact that flow batteries can be built using low-cost and readily available materials, are scalable and have the ability to partner with applications with power ratings of watts to megawatts.

In terms of the incremental cost of expanding storage capacity, reflected in the cost of tanks and electrolyte, flowbattery protagonists can point out that the overall cost of a long duration battery is lower than for other battery types.

The question from here on in will be: why choose an energy storage system based on, for example, lead batteries, which have to be replaced every few years, when LDES systems such as flow batteries do not?

That is the question that will have to be addressed by the lead battery industry, which can of course have a role to play in the energy storage technologies mix.

Clearly lead, lithium and others

will need to keep a careful eye on the upstart competitor looming in the rearview mirror because the energy storage landscape is changing fast.

The European Union is looking for new energy champions faster than it could possibly have imagined at the start of the year. It has been stung into action by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent threat of alreadyreduced gas supplies from Russia being halted completely ahead of winter.

“Long duration energy storage is high on the political agenda and as the European Commission has never really looked kindly on lead — mostly out of ignorance — flow batteries could be the next go-to option after lithium, says one commentator”.

Companies such as Redflow have been nipping at lead’s heels for years in the telecoms infrastructure space and have established a foothold for flow batteries there.

Just weeks ago, the US energy secretary toured the Oregon facility of iron flow battery company ESS, just hours after the Senate approved draft legislation earmarking billions of dollars to tackle climate change, with tax credits for investment in battery storage.

The CEO of vanadium energy storage business Bushveld Energy, Mikhail Nikomarov, who was among those taking part in the IFBF conference, said afterwards that the fact delegates spent time discussing issues such as future regulations and standardization in terms of stack sizing and battery design was “a sign of an industry maturing”.

“All of this is a massive step forward from five years ago,” Nikomarov said.

He is right — and battery technologies already competing in the energy storage landscape should prepare for battle.

“Long duration energy storage is high on the political agenda and as the European Commission has never really looked kindly on lead — mostly out of ignorance — flow batteries could be the next go-to option after lithium” Batteries International • Summer 2022 • 51

COVER STORY: FLOW BATTERIES | INTERVIEW: ANTHONY PRICE Flow Batteries Europe secretary general Anthony Price says the industry needs more entrepreneurial zeal to keep it in the spotlight and renew interest in the technology.

We need a flow batteries Musk!

There was a mood of optimism as delegates gathered for the International Flow Battery Forum in June — a feeling the industry was at last on the move and making headway.

Just weeks before, CellCube announced a ‘gigawatt’ pipeline agreement for Africa. There were other optimistic signs of action in the sector. (See our news pages at the end of this section.)

But this needed to be taken to the next level, “We need a flow batteries Musk!” said Flow Batteries Europe secretary general Anthony Price.

Elon Musk made his mark in battery storage three years ago, when Australia needed energy storage in size. “Musk just said ‘I’ll build you a 100MW battery; by such and such a date and did just that,” Price says.

“That project wasn’t easy but he had the opportunity, he went for it — and in doing so, he set a benchmark which effectively said to everyone: ‘Catch me if you can’.”

The IFBF conference itself, the 11th in-person conference in Brussels, was hosted by Flow Batteries Europe (FBE) — established by 16 flow battery stakeholders in April 2021 — and debated what comes next for the industry.

IFBF, which launched in 2010, is a conference series rather than a trade association.

In February, 11 European and national associations including FBE signed a letter calling on European legislators to support long duration energy storage as a key step toward achieving carbon neutrality and keeping energy prices stable and affordable.

FBE said the industry was ready to expand development of flow batteries, but needed “a signal” of support from legislators.

Price said the FBE welcomed the proposed EU Batteries Regulation and the Battery Passport — an electronic identifier of products to help ensure ethical and sustainability credentials — but excluding flow batteries from the key obligations of the Battery Passport could endanger the

52 • Batteries International • Summer 2022

Australia needed energy storage in size. “Musk just said ‘I’ll build you a 100MW battery; by such and such a date and did just that.” competitiveness of the battery value chain and derail decarbonisation goals.

All energy storage technologies need to be allowed to complete on a level playing field for the proposals to work, he said.

However, in terms of the Batteries Regulation, Price said it was written “without a sniff” of flow batteries in it, “almost to the point of excluding the technology”.

To make headway in Europe, Price said organizations need to show they are part of a group representing European business interests. FBE includes extra-European members who see opportunities to be involved in EU projects that can act as a precursor for other parts of the world.

To a certain extent, he says, it’s easier to argue your case with the European Commission, representing a bloc of 27 countries in one go, rather than holding one-to-one talks with nations.

The first objective with the Commission is to make sure flow battery research is given equal priority to other emerging energy technologies, he says. “This can very easily be overlooked either through

poor drafting of policy or deliberate or accidental omission.”

That said, Price says flow battery firms have had some “helpful” discussions with policy chiefs, both in terms of the Batteries Regulation and Batteries Passport. “The former Batteries Directive did need updating and it was obviously going to be looking at the role of lithium batteries and so most attention was given to that.”

But whatever form the Batteries Regulation takes when it finally becomes law, the flow battery industry will be up for having an early review, Price says.

The future of flow batteries discussed at the conference was set against the backdrop of Europe’s urgent need to establish secure energy supplies, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “We need huge amounts of long duration storage,” says Price and there’s a compelling argument for flow battery gigafactories — and that requires finance.

“Look at the amount of money that is swishing around ready to be invested in battery projects. There’s some £600 million ($750 million) across funds in the City of London that are looking for battery projects to invest in.

“The equipment needed to get a flow battery manufacturing facility up and running is comparatively easy when compared to its lithium counterpart.

“You need injection moulding machines, robots, presses, rollers and equipment to make carbon electrodes, buy some membranes or separators, then joining and welding gear to put these together in stacks, with some mechanical engineering to hold it together and then there’s the plumbing and wiring.

“It’s not difficult at all when you compare it to the clean rooms, ovens, furnaces, processing, finishing rooms, formation cells and all the rest of what is needed to make a lithium battery.”

“I don’t think you would need more than around £50 million to build an extensive flow battery manufacturing plant.”

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COVER STORY: FLOW BATTERIES | REDOX FLOW BATTERIES Redox flow batteries — with their high up-front costs but lower running expenses — may be more financially viable than expected. Kara Rodby, venture capital technical analyst at Volta Energy Technologies, shares details of her research into the subject.

Time for deeper re-assessment of the levelized cost of RFB storage Lithium ion batteries may be the chemistry of choice for most grid services, but that doesn’t mean that they will be a cost-competitive solution for all applications — particularly emerging longer-duration ones.

Among the various energy storage technologies under development, redox flow batteries are an emerging solution for long duration (that is four hours and longer), stationary applications as their system architecture offers a number of unique advantages.

A RFB generally uses the potential difference between two reduction/ oxidation reactions — known as redox — to drive chemical reactions, thus converting electrical energy to and from chemical energy.

In the RFB architecture in particular, electrolyte (the charge-storing capacity, usually in the liquid phase) is stored in tanks and pumped through the reactor where electrochemical reactions occur.

This open architecture — the physical

separation of the electrolyte and the reactor components — decouples energy and power. One can scale the energy capacity by increasing the tank size independently of the power rating (meaning the reactor size can stay fixed). This means RFCs can be designed for virtually any duration.

This process of scaling the electrolyte tanks to meet longer durations, while keeping all else fixed, is depicted pictorially in Figure 1 below.

This decoupling is a unique and distinct feature from many conventional battery technologies.

This facilitates a number of unique economic benefits, including the decrease of capital costs on a per unit energy basis at increasing durations and long-term cost savings through component-specific maintenance to extend the battery lifetime and remediate decay.

Capital cost is a very important metric for evaluating the economic

Figure 1: A representative schematic of capital cost as a function of characteristic discharge time (or duration) for RFBs and lithium batteries. As duration increases, the capital cost of decoupled battery architectures shifts to be dominated less by power costs and more by energy costs

54 • Batteries International • Summer 2022

feasibility of batteries, the most cited being the US Department of Energy’s target for viable grid storage of ≤150 $/kWh: the exact target varies by office within the DOE, and is often even below 100 $/kWh. This is because the capital cost is the primary barrier to adoption: grid-scale storage systems are large capital investments, so high capital costs hinder the ability to finance and install such systems.

The capital cost (Ccapital) of a battery is generally defined as the sum of the energy costs (Cenergy) and the power costs (Cpower), the latter of which is divided by the duration to give consistent units of dollars per unit energy:

For RFBs, the energy costs consist of the electrolyte comprising the active species, solvent, and supporting electrolyte) and tank, while the power costs encompass the stack primarily the reactor, the most important components of which are the membrane and electrodes.

Other balance-of-plant costs, for example, pumps, grid connections and additional costs such as labour, installation, profit margins and the like may or may not be included in these calculations, depending on the study.

These are usually represented as power-based costs — they have units of dollars per kW and thus are also divided by the battery duration if summed and included in capital cost calculations.

The equation obviously implies that energy and power costs can be decoupled, which is how the capital cost is reduced as a function of duration. This is true for RFBs, which is why they are particularly attractive for longer duration applications.

This is not the case for many conventional technologies: for example, in lithium batteries the

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COVER STORY: FLOW BATTERIES | REDOX FLOW BATTERIES electrode is part of determining both the power output (its electrochemical properties determine the rate of the electrochemical reactions) as well as the energy capacity (its morphology dictates how many ions can intercalate into it for storage).

Thus, there is little room to modulate the ratio of the energy or power ratings, as these are based on physical materials limitations. Rather, increasing duration must be achieved by adding entire modules (as shown pictorially in Figure 1), meaning the total capital cost is approximately fixed (on a per unit energy basis), even with varying duration.

While the capital cost savings at longer durations is a key selling point of RFBs over other battery technologies, there is still minimal deployment of RFBs on the grid.

Despite the large body of literature on RFBs (there are around 4,500 publications, with more than 600 of them a year) RFBs only account for a couple or percentage points of the energy storage systems that have been contracted, announced, or are under construction globally.

The low deployment rate is a result of the nascency of the technology, which creates a chicken-and-egg problem: no one wants to finance a seemingly risky project, but we also cannot de-risk a technology without financing initial demonstrations.

The lithium battery industry avoided this situation via higher revenue beachhead markets: by the time it was ever considered for the grid, Li-ion had already demonstrated improved performance (its roundtrip efficiency is now remarkably high, usually about 90%, compared to RFBs which are generally 80% or lower, depending on the chemistry). There were also lower costs from development and deployment in the relatively large industries of electronics and electric vehicles.

RFBs, however, are only attractive for the medium to long duration grid applications, for which demand is still low. Thus, they are struggling to compete on a cost basis at such low production volumes.

This situation is representative of a number of other nascent storage technologies (for example, metal air batteries). With a need to decarbonize the power sector rapidly to meet targets for 2030, 2050, and beyond, many of these nascent technologies will play a vital role in supporting the array of grid services that exist.

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A combination of the capital cost and the LCOS allows for a better comparison across the range of energy storage technologies with different performance attributes One crucial avenue needed to solve this problem is to develop new technoeconomic models and arguments to motivate the development and, especially, deployment of these more nascent technologies. For example, RFBs offer a lot of long-term operational benefits that save costs, and these are not covered in capital cost calculations.

While the capital cost benefits to RFBs are well-described in the open literature, there are further economic benefits in operation due to ease of maintenance of open systems that are often not captured in techno-economic discussions.

For example, crossover — defined as undesirable active species transport through the semi-permeable membrane that separates the positive and negative electrolytes in the reactor – is usually the most dominant form of capacity fade in RFBs and may halve the accessible capacity within 100-200 cycles.

While this is a relatively fast fade as compared to that typically experienced

by LIBs, the open architecture of RFBs allows for targeted, cost-efficient maintenance: in an RFB, one can access the electrolyte (the component affected by crossover) to repair or replace it directly, without altering the still-viable reactor.

This is unlike conventional closed systems such as lithium batteries that require “augmentation” — replacement or addition of entire new modules — and which wastes undecayed reactor components. The costs necessary to maintain performance over time impact the battery’s economic viability, but are not captured in the conventional capital cost estimations that are commonly used to compare and benchmark different technologies.

This is especially true for the vanadium RFB (VRFB), which is by far the most researched and deployed RFB chemistry.

VRFB is particularly favoured for its strong performance and resiliency in dealing with electrolyte degradation, which is facilitated by its design as a “symmetric” chemistry, where all active species are based on a single parent compound.

The benefit of this chemical configuration is that the inevitable crossover of active species becomes much less detrimental, as it will not lead to cross-contamination and these losses can be recovered via rebalancing: the transfer and recharging of partial or full volumes of electrolyte between the two reservoirs to balance the concentrations of active species.

Rebalancing allows for indefinite crossover remediation and, thus, lifetime utilization of the same, original electrolyte (assuming other forms electrolyte degradation are managed). Not many chemistries can be configured in a symmetric configuration, and while a handful of chemistries have been demonstrated symmetrically, vanadium remains the most promising and explored of them all.

The long-term cost benefits are primary motivators of RFB development, yet they are not captured in the vast majority of prior technoeconomic modelling literature which has primarily focused on articulating upfront capital costs.

This motivates the development of techno-economic models that consider the variable operating principles of different battery formats and chemistries. To this end, the central thread of this is a levelized cost of storage (LCOS) model that has been developed by this author to model lifetime RFB costs that incorporates capacity fade and recovery.

A combination of the capital cost and the LCOS allows for a better comparison across the range of energy storage technologies with different performance attributes, which can be used to assess and develop economically viable RFB systems.

While the VRFB system benefits from reduced maintenance costs, it suffers from a high upfront cost, due, in part, to the price of the active species.

The magnitude and uncertainty of vanadium prices are considered key impediments to broad deployment, which have motivated research into alternative chemistries based on lowercost and widely-available materials (see separate feature on the price of vanadium as the electrolyte).

Batteries International • Summer 2022 • 55

COVER STORY: FLOW BATTERIES | VRFB FLOW BATTERIES Vanadium redox flow batteries may be state-of-the-art in terms of being technology-ready but the price of the electrolyte is still a sticky point.

Kara Rodby details more of her research into the subject.

Keeping the price of vanadium down — and steady too

The current market price of vanadium translates to a total VRFB electrolyte cost of around $125/kWh. This is close to the price of some entire, state-of-the-art lithium ion battery pack.

Figure 1: Vanadium pentoxide and electrolyte prices in Europe from 1980 through 2021. Prices for ferrovanadium during this period follow nearly identical trends.

56 • Batteries International • Summer 2022

The cost of vanadium itself is a big contributor to the overall cost of any VRFB; the current market price of vanadium translates to a total VRFB electrolyte cost of around $125/kWh. This is close to the price of some entire, state-of-the-art lithium ion battery packs where volumes of mass manufacturing have driven prices down to new lows.

The volatility of the price is cause for further concern.

While historically the market price of vanadium, shown in Figure 1 as vanadium pentoxide (V2O5, a common vanadium product sold on the global market), has demonstrated notable volatility, the last five years have been particularly instable.

While the current price is challenging for competitive grid storage, it also represents a relatively low point for the last five years and may spike even higher in the future.

Such uncertainty makes investments in VRFBs less attractive.

While new chemistries are being proposed that utilize lower-cost and higher-abundance materials, many of these efforts are at earlier stages of technology readiness, as compared to the VRFB, and while the issues they face may be known, solutions have yet to be fully developed which prevents near-term deployment.

Recent studies show the costs to manufacture electrochemicalgrade, organic or organometallic active species can be substantial and have more complex decomposition processes that are difficult to remediate. Other research that uses stable, inorganic materials reveals chemistry-related issues such as competing parasitic reactions and, in the case of hybrid systems with deposition/dissolution reactions, difficulties preventing dendrite formation without severely limiting operating current densities.

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COVER STORY: FLOW BATTERIES | VRFB FLOW BATTERIES stationary energy storage, VRFBs could theoretically play an important role in integrating renewable energy into the grid. However, the price of vanadium and its volatility presents significant concerns regarding the deployment potential of VRFBs. Current supply landscape Vanadium is relatively abundant on the planet, according to the United States Geological Survey, and has multiple orders of magnitude greater global resources as compared to scarce materials such as platinum group metals.

The world production and resources of vanadium are similar to those for critical lithium battery materials (such as lithium, cobalt, and, to a lesser extent, nickel), though these elements are one or more orders of magnitude less abundant than elements such as sulfur, iron, zinc, copper, and manganese, which are the focus of many nextgeneration battery chemistries.

Vanadium production is concentrated in China (62%), Russia (21%), South Africa (10%), and Brazil (7%), With so few countries dictating the supply, the global vanadium market can experience strong price volatility in response to local changes. This price uncertainty makes it difficult for large-scale and capital-intensive VRFB systems to attract investment.

Since almost all countries must outsource their vanadium, sizable VRFB deployments would increase dependence on global supply chains.

For this reason, vanadium was declared one of 50 critical minerals deemed vital to the US security in 2022.

(The reason cited by the Department of the Interior was for its use as an alloying agent for iron and steel.)

Beyond the geographic concentration, looking within those few countries that produce vanadium, there is even more severe concentration of supply as the majority of production arises from only a few facilities. Any disruptions in the supply chain can intensify volatility in supply and price.

For example, the price spike that began in 2016 was partially a result of the bankruptcy-induced closure of Highveld Steel & Vanadium in South Africa in 2015 previously the world’s largest producer of vanadium slag from steel production, which caused an 11% decrease in global vanadium production.

This decrease in supply was compounded by other mine closures

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Figure 2: The three main production routes for vanadium pentoxide (V2O5)

in China due to increased enforcement of environmental regulations. Supply has remained depressed for years and only began to rebound in 2019, likely due to increasing primary production in Brazil led by Largo Incorporated.

Simultaneous to these supply constrictions were increases to demand in late 2018 due to revised Chinese rebar standards (regarding steel strength) that promote greater use of vanadium in high- strength steel alloys. The combination of circumstances ultimately led to the price spike in the final months of 2018.

The expansion of VRFB production and deployment depends on the ability to increase the production scale of vanadium.

At present, some 90% of vanadium production goes to steel manufacturing and this demand is likely to grow in the future given continued global economic development as well as a shift towards higher-strength steel in construction to reduce total material requirements.

While there are opportunities to substitute vanadium with other alloying elements (for example, manganese, molybdenum, niobium, titanium, and tungsten) — indeed,

some steel mills in China have switched from ferrovanadium to ferroniobium due to high vanadium prices — there is no evidence such substitutions will re-route significant vanadium supply away from steel demand in the near future.

Thus, any business-as-usual estimate would assume that steel will continue to drive the demand for vanadium at historic rates and only 10% of new vanadium production will be available for VRFBs. However, with growing energy and sustainability concerns, it is reasonable to believe that larger fractions of new vanadium production (say, as much as 50%) may be diverted to VRFBs, particularly if one can more rapidly scale supply.

Where vanadium comes from There are three pathways for vanadium production see Figure 2.

In the longer term, the largest potential to grow and stabilize vanadium production — contingent upon crucial technological advances in vanadium extraction and recovery from low-grade sources — likely lies in primary mining. Vanadium is relatively abundant globally. While vanadium mines have been proposed

Mines typically require between five to 10 years to come online due to the lengthy approvals process through relevant regulatory avenues, which vary based on location and can take up to 50 years in the worst cases.

Batteries International • Summer 2022 • 59

COVER STORY: FLOW BATTERIES | VRFB FLOW BATTERIES for decades, many have yet to be realized due to financing issues.

Opportunities for new primary vanadium mining ventures exist in a range of locations — most notably in Australia, the US, and China — which could facilitate substantial supply capacity.

Australia has substantial vanadium reserves, though no reported production in recent years, likely due to the lower vanadium concentrations present in their precursor supply: around 1% V2O5 content, as compared to around 2%-3% in South Africa and Brazil (where the overwhelming majority of primary production currently occurs).

Plans to develop three sizable vanadium mines in Australia, if completed, could collectively produce around 27,000 tonnes of V2O5 per year. This would represent an 18% increase to the current global

While this represents a marked growth of the supply chain, continuous growth for at least 10-30 years would require new mines of this scale to come online annually. This is challenging. production of vanadium.

While this represents a marked growth of the supply chain, continuous growth for at least 10-30 years would require new mines of this scale to come online annually. This is challenging. Further, these mines have operational lifetimes of between 10 to 50 when resources are depleted).

Mines typically require between five to 10 years to come online due to the lengthy approvals process through relevant regulatory avenues, which vary based on location and can take up to 50 years in the worst cases.

HERE COME THE MONEY-MEN

One method to reduce the burden of the vanadium price exists via a new market of electrolyte leasing, where a third-party company leases the vanadium — usually in the form of VRFB electrolyte — to a battery vendor or end-user.

This reduces the upfront capital cost of the battery while increasing long-term costs — a shift of capital expenses to operational expenses) by introducing some recurring fee which is attractive as it lowers the cost and risk of the required upfront investment for VRFB customers.

60 • Batteries International • Summer 2022

In some schemes, a portion of the financial burden of leasing is shifted from the lessor to third-party investors who can buy and trade vanadium — akin to markets for other physical holdings such as gold — though it is held and maintained by the lessor, who simultaneously rents it out as electrolyte to VRFB customers.

These markets are new and are largely unknown territory, though a few academic studies have demonstrated the techno-economic potential for leasing.

While supply scale-up is necessary to augment VRFB deployment and will likely help stabilize the market, there are other potential more-immediate solutions to mitigate volatility of vanadium prices.

Vanadium, as per Figure 2, must be extracted from vanadium-bearing compounds, of which there are two categories.

The first is mined shale or sandstone hosted deposits, from which vanadium is currently recovered most often as vanadium titanomagnetite.

The second is from so-called secondary sources where vanadiumbearing waste products of carboniferous materials such as oil, oil shale, and tar sands contain the metal.

These are most typically found in residues from burning and refining oil.

The vanadium content of these materials can vary widely: generally, minerals from the earth up to 5 wt% V2O5, while slags and other waste streams are often more concentrated.

Because of the low grade of vanadium found in minerals, mining of vanadium is often performed indirectly as a compliment to other materials (for example iron for steel).

Other potential sources Perhaps the most promising avenue for near-term growth and diversification of the supply chain is through secondary-source vanadium. These precursors are attractive due to their higher vanadium content (5% V2O5) that makes vanadium extraction more economical.

Another potential route for vanadium production could lie in non-duplex steel-making processes.

Neometals, an Australian company, says it has developed a hydrometallurgical process to recover vanadium from mono-process slags.

The company has partnered with Scandinavian mineral development company Critical Metals, which has executed a 10-year supply agreement with Swedish steel giant SSAB to access approximately 2 Mt of stockpiled high-grade vanadiumbearing slag from three operating steel mills.

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COVER STORY: FLOW BATTERIES | ESS US-headquartered iron flow battery storage company ESS intends to establish a commercial foothold in Europe, and as Batteries International went to press in Asia too. John Shepherd reports.

ESS targets expansion in Europe and beyond Oregon iron flow battery energy storage company ESS believes there is no better time to be staking a claim to emerging business opportunities in Europe.

Just days after Russia invaded Ukraine, ESS announced on March 16 it was expanding its operations into Europe, to meet what it saw as strong demand for long duration energy storage.

ESS’ Europe director Alan Greenshields, whose appointment was announced as part of the expansion, is clear-eyed about the challenges in raising the profile and sales of flow batteries, but insists that all the signs are encouraging.

“Why, if flow batteries are such a good idea, is their market share currently about zero?” he says.

“It’s because it’s really not featured and people say lithium is the only thing that’s going to work because it’s proven in getting way down the cost curve.”

But as Greenshields says, it’s only been 15 years or so ago that lithium was getting the “it will never work and never be cheap enough” treatment.

In terms of flow batteries, he says the need has been recognized for a long time, but “like all things in this sector, there are only three things that matter: cost, cost and cost”.

Greenshields, who stepped down from the chairmanship of Innolith in 2020 and has held several boardlevel positions at battery technology companies, says he was previously a flow batteries sceptic, “because the numbers didn’t make any sense to me, particularly when you consider the fact that vanadium is expensive”.

But he says he saw the light after becoming convinced with what ESS was doing because the company was founded by people who “came out of the vanadium flow space to find a cheaper solution.”

ESS was founded in 2011 and

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formed a lab-scale battery before being awarded funding in 2012 by the US Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-e) to develop its iron, salt and water-based systems.

The company launched its ‘Energy Warehouse’ product line in 2017 followed by its next generation ‘Energy Center’ in 2021, which ESS says can be configured in different power capacities, starting at 3MW, with energy durations ranging from six to 16 hours.

Greenshields says that in addition to being “at least 10 times cheaper” than many other materials, the specific iron compound used, ferric chloride, has a low toxicity and environmental footprint “as well as being cheap”.

“We dissolve ferric chloride in water.

This means the electrolyte is in a pH range where it’s not an aggressive material. Then, if you want to build a cost optimized battery, you don’t want to have to use Teflon material and stainless steel and that’s also a feature of the ESS system — the electrolyte is so benign you can build the system out of standard materials.

“Then ESS figured out the things going on in the battery that were inhibiting cycle life and came up with a unique technical and solid fix for it.”

That fix is a device ESS called the

THE ENERGY COMMUNITY MODEL RESURGES Greenshields says there will be a move away from a centralized grid model for distributing power — microgrids will form around renewable generation and energy storage hubs. This will happen at an industrial level as well as a community one.

“We’ll see companies saying they will install their own battery and solar but might also buy a wind farm nearby and use this under normal circumstances to minimize their energy imports and shelter costs from volatility in the market,” he says.

The energy community model could serve small towns well, with residents drawing power from battery systems charged up by

renewables such as from nearby windfarms, rather than electricity generated from windfarms being sent directly to the grid and sent back out for use in communities at “massively elevated prices”, Greenshields says.

The model poses political rather than technical difficulties, he says.

“For it to happen, everyone in that town or village would have to sign up to say we’re no longer buying our power from the power utility. Instead, it would become something like a cooperative. But there would have to be a legal framework otherwise you would get a percentage of people who would be worried and reluctant to do it.”

Batteries International • Summer 2022 • 61

COVER STORY: FLOW BATTERIES | ESS proton pump — a catalytic device that maintains the state of charge and battery health.

“We now have a system for flow batteries where the mathematics start to work, because the electrolyte has a marginal cost of only $20 per kWh. So you have this cost degradation curve which means if you build a 10 or 12hour battery with this technology, the electrolyte cost is tiny,” Greenshields claims.

He bats away questions about the potential cost of replacing other key equipment, such as pumps. “Unlike batteries, if a pump fails it’s a $100 dollar item that can be quickly changed, and that’s how everything in conventional power stations works.

Components can be replaced.”

Greenshields says ESS offers an extended warranty for the first 10 years that includes not just this kind of maintenance, but also a performance guarantee underwritten by German multinational insurance specialist Munich Re. ESS commissioned an automated (but not fully automated) assembly facility in Wilsonville, Oregon in 2021, where Greenshields says standard industrial robots are manufacturing plastic and metal parts, without the need for dry rooms, clean rooms, coating machines and large capital expenditure numbers required for lithium.

Wilsonville will have expanded capacity by eight times by the end of this year — which Greenshields says will be the “blueprint for production” the company intends to establish in Australia next year, followed by similar production operations in Europe.

ESS commissioned a 50kW/400kWh Energy Warehouse system at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in San Diego in 2019. The flow battery is integrated into a microgrid with a CleanSpark microgrid controller and provides up to eight hours of storage to enable back-up capabilities for critical loads.

In August 2021, ESS announced its Energy Warehouse had been selected to be integrated with a solar system to provide backup power to a data destruction company in Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, 17 of the company’s Energy Warehouse systems, with a combined capacity of 8.5MWh, are to be deployed to support a solar farm in Spain under an agreement with Enel Green Power.

Greenshields believes Europe is “now

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“Long duration energy storage is the answer to how we are going to get our grids to net zero.”

Alan Greenshields, Europe director, ESS at the forefront” of where energy storage projects will be ramped up. He is also convinced that ESS’ flow battery technology will be part of that push.

“The US has been making steady progress on storage in places like California, but Europe now has to move at lightning speed. There was always a higher political commitment for storage and renewables here, but slower response times in terms of getting all EU states to agree on a project.”

But if there has been inertia in the political energy required to commit to powering the Europe of the future, it has been swept away by what has taken place in Ukraine, Greenshields says.

“Long duration energy storage is now back on the agenda and we have the breakthrough the world has been looking for in batteries.”

According to ESS, Europe is expected to require up to 20TWh of longduration energy storage if it is to meet UN climate change goals of Grid NetZero by 2040. “You’ll see most storage shifting to 12 hours and you’ll see a growth in corporate microgrids,” he says.

Greenshields says that in the light of Europe’s power supply concerns, energy generation and storage is now being recalculated in how many cubic metres of natural gas will this displace. “Solar and storage is a great displacement for natural gas,” he says.

“Following on from the debate about carbon, it’s been turbocharged by the political reality that Russia has started turning the gas off.”

Now countries just want to “put their heads down and get things done in a move to wind and solar with storage.”

Greenshields reckons that there is room for other technologies, such as green hydrogen. “You have lithium for short duration, long duration storage from ESS in the middle for intra-day and green hydrogen as the carbon free replacement for natural gas for strategic safety reserves.

His view is that those who want to use green hydrogen will nevertheless still need batteries but overall “we are now in an emerging but potentially massive market for batteries.

“ESS fulfils the original aspirations of flow batteries and the reason is simply cheap electrolyte. Cheap to produce and cheap to handle.

“Long duration energy storage is the answer to how we are going to get our grids to net zero.”

ESS MOVES INTO ASIA-PACIFIC TOO …

ESS announced on August 11 a strategic partnership with Energy Storage Industries Asia Pacific to distribute and manufacture iron flow batteries utilizing ESS technology in Australia, New Zealand and Oceania to meet demand for long-duration energy storage in the region.

Under the terms of the agreement, ESS will initially supply 70 complete 75kW/500kWh Energy Warehouse systems to Energy Storage Industries in 2022 and 2023.

Concurrently, ESI will construct a manufacturing facility in

Queensland, Australia, equipped to conduct final assembly of ESS systems from 2024 onward.

Systems manufactured at the Queensland facility will utilize “core component kits” supplied

by ESS including battery modules, proton pumps, and other unique components.

Core component kits will continue to be manufactured in Wilsonville, Oregon. The ESI manufacturing facility is designed to reach a production capacity of up to 400MW of energy storage annually.

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COVER STORY: FLOW BATTERIES | NEWS

CellCube readies ‘gigawatt-sized VRFB pipeline’ for Southern Africa If flow batteries needed a deal that would focus renewed interest in the technology and put it on the world’s energy storage map, they now have it.

The CEO of vanadium redox flow battery brand CellCube, Alexander Schönfeldt, has welcomed the signing of an agreement, announced on May 17, that will open, he reckons, a “gigawatt-sized pipeline” for his company into energy-starved Southern Africa.

Schönfeldt told Batteries International: “Indeed this is the first gigawatt announcement ever made for flow batteries.”

Under the terms of the deal between CellCube brand owner Enerox and London-listed renewables developer, Kibo Energy, CellCube’s energy storage systems will be deployed in selected “target sectors” of the region as part of a rolling five-year framework agreement.

The deployment will use a ‘proof of concepts’ model, which Schönfeldt says would see CellCube “slide into the growth scenario with a handful of demonstration pilots for the various sectors and usage cases and then scale up”.

“Kibo has shown that it understands the long duration energy storage space and the activity that is needed to unlock value in the nascent long-duration vanadium redox-flow application.”

Telecoms Financial details of the agreement have not been disclosed, but Kibo has been granted selective exclusive rights for marketing, sales, configuration and delivery within targeted countries that make up the Southern African Development Community (SADC), whose 16 member nations include South Africa.

Kibo says CellCube will be involved in behind-the-meter projects that are expected to include telecoms towers, gated communities, shopping centers, commercial parks and a renewable energy microgrid project. Orders for specific projects are expected to be placed by the end of June 2022.

Kibo says it will draw on its exist-

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ing project pipeline of up to 21,200 installations, ranging from small scale 40kWh to larger 2,000kWh systems per installation.

The agreement also holds out the option of CellCube setting up a flow batteries assembly operation in the region, with Kibo having first right of refusal for production output.

Kibo CEO Louis Coetzee says the growing SADC, “and particularly energy starved South Africa, makes the case for energy storage more viable”.

According to Schönfeldt, the differences between his firm’s technology and its lithium energy storage counterparts are “manifold”.

In an earlier interview about CellCube’s technology, Schönfeldt said: “The advantages are convincing, and every project in the stationary storage sector, which currently uses lithium batteries, should be re-examined for safety and sustainability.”

Comparison On cost, Schönfeldt acknowledges that vanadium redox flow batteries are perceived as being more expensive, but says while all alternative battery technologies are directly compared with lithium, overall costs relating to safety, environmental measures and disposal are “rarely taken into account in a direct technology comparison”.

He points out that a vanadium redox flow battery lasts at least “two to three times as long” as a lithium storage system and says the levelized cost of storage offers a better comparison to address costs in the right light.

“This key LCOS figure indicates the costs of the stored kWh over the service life of the storage system. Acquisition costs are thus relativized over the long service life of the storage system and with storage periods and applications of more than four to six hours, the vanadium redox flow battery is already competitive today.”

According to Schönfeldt, based on current cost forecasts, CellCube’s technology could replace lithium in the stationary energy storage sector in the long term.

In addition, he says the technology has exemplary recycling credentials.

CellCube claims that more than 90% of its energy storage system can be recycled, including the electrolyte solution — which the firm says only has to be produced once and is then “remanufactured” for use in a new storage system at the end of the battery’s life.

Water makes up most of this liquid, which is enriched with vanadium sulfate and other elements.

Recycled As the vanadium electrolyte of a redox flow battery is not used up over the system’s entire service life and does not degrade, so the storage capacity remains the same 20 years after day one of operation, Schönfeldt says.

“The lifecycle of the tank and the secondary safety container, which serves as protection against leaks, is well beyond 20 years,” he says. In terms of safety, Schönfeldt says vanadium redox systems are preferable because they are neither flammable or explosive.

“The high-quality raw materials of our energy cells, the so-called ‘stacks’, are tested by experts and disassembled and recycled depending on their condition,” he says.

“In agreement with our customers, systems are taken back after the end of the service life and can be re-renewed or refurbished on the market.”

In terms of future developments for CellCube, Schönfeldt says the firm’s current focus is on “megawatt-size large-scale batteries” in container form for industrial customers and energy providers.

The company is also working with large corporations on the “gigawatt storage devices of the future, so that extreme amounts of wind and solar power can be optimally transported via the power grid”.

“We are revising our very successful small and commercial storage systems in the kilowatt range and will then be able to offer them in mid-2023 with a new look, better efficiency and at interesting prices.”

CellCube is also looking at projects involving green hydrogen, hybrid (electricity/hydrogen) filling stations and shipping.

Batteries International • Summer 2022 • 63

COVER STORY: FLOW BATTERIES | NEWS CellCube VRFB chosen for US microgrid project US power grid systems firm G&W Electric is to use CellCube’s vanadium redox flow battery technology to support a microgrid under construction in Illinois, the companies announced on July 14.

CellCube brand owner Enerox said the firms have signed a partnership agreement for the project, which will also see G&W become a “value added reseller” for CellCube energy storage systems.

CellCube’s Release 4 VRFB system will provide more reliable and resilient power during seasonal peak demands, power quality issues and potential outages.

The 2MW/8MWh system will operate at up to 150% of its nominal power “to catch attractive power prices” in regional transmission organization’s PJM market, the partners said.

“The system has been designed to provide the overrated power up to 3MW for nearly two hours and at 100% load for up to four hours.”

The microgrid will integrate rooftop solar, support the battery’s continuous operation, and actively participate in power utility ComEd’s demand response program, by isolating itself from the grid to help reduce peak load demand.

According to the partners, the microgrid will eliminate its energy dependency during times when prices are high and provide more reliable and resilient power during seasonal peak demands and power outages.

Invinity agrees vanadium storage deal with Hyosung Corporation Invinity Energy Systems said on April 8 it had agreed to forge a partnership with Hyosung Heavy Industries — the power and industrial systems group of the Hyosung Corporation, one of Korea’s largest conglomerates.

The companies signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding for the partnership, including an exclusive relationship in South Korea, after concluding what Invinity said was a successful test and validation program with HHI. HHI said it had comprehensively tested a 200kWh energy storage system from Invinity, a company created through the 2020 merger of flow battery providers redT energy and Avalon Battery.

The ESS has been in operation since HHI bought it in 2020 and “has now been validated as suitable for addition to Hyosung’s growing portfolio of projects across the world”, HHI said.

HHI is a supplier of heavy electrical equipment and one of the Korean region’s

largest energy storage and renewable energy project developers, with around 2GWh of operational projects worldwide.

HHI will become the exclusive representative for Invinity’s VS3 products in Korea, with further nonexclusive rights to sell Invinity’s products in Hyosung’s other global markets.

Under the terms of the companies’ agreement, Hyosung could also manufacture “elements of Invinity’s VS3 products”.

On May 10, Invinity chief commercial officer Matt Harper told the UK’s House of Lords economic affairs committee’s enquiry into energy supply and investment the company was “trying to shift from using virgin material sources that requires digging holes in the ground to using those industrial waste streams”.

Harper said vanadium was more common than copper or nickel and “available everywhere”, but while Invinity had key suppliers, the company was also fo-

China connects first phase of 200MW flow battery to grid The first phase of a planned 200MW/800MWh vanadium redox flow battery energy storage system has been connected to the grid in China, the China Energy Storage Alliance (CNESA) reported on July 19.

CNESA said the initial 100MW/400MWh system in Dalian achieved grid connection on May 24 after six years of planning, construction and commissioning, at a total investment cost of Rmb1.9 billion ($281 million).

The eventual total cost of the project will be around Rmb3.8 billion.

CNESA said Dalian Rongke Energy Storage

64 • Batteries International • Summer 2022

Technology Development is providing the VRFB storage systems — using technology developed by the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In a related move, CNESA reported that China’s National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration set out plans on June 7 that allow “new energy storage technologies” to play a greater role in the national electricity market.

The notice issued by the agencies offers financial incentives for “independent power storage sites” to feed power to the grid.

cused on extracting vanadium at the lowest cost, which includes taking it from industrial waste – such as that produced by the oil and gas industry.

“When you refine heavy oil, you often get a very high percentage of vanadium as one of the wastes of that process.”

Canada fund graphene research in redox flow batteries On March 18, Calgary University announced that Edward Roberts, a Schulich School of Engineering professor would receive C$307,000 ($230,000) of funding to continue his work on graphene modification to improve electricity grid capacity as part of the ‘Alberta Innovates’ program.

This is part of a C$13 million clean energy investment by the provincial government of Alberta.

Roberts, who is also the associate research head in the university’s Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, recently discovered that a small change to a battery membrane could have a big impact on redox flow batteries.

Roberts modified the membrane with graphene, a carbon material measuring only one atom thick, improving the battery’s efficiency and power density.

Redflow hails milestone US project Australian flow battery maker Redflow said on February 28 it had completed a 2MWh zinc-bromine energy storage system in California — its biggest single deployment to date.

Redflow CEO Tim Harris said the California project — for Anaergia’s Rialto Bioenergy Facility — was “a very significant milestone”.

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INSIDE HOPPECKE As latest analysis shows the lead battery industry is a key economic driver for Europe, Hoppecke CEO Marc Zoellner tells John Shepherd about his company’s investment in a new batteries brand, a production line in Poland and why the EU may be…

Learning to love lead The ‘eurocrats’ who set the European Union’s energy and environmental policies in Brussels have not always looked kindly on lead batteries.

It is often overlooked that lead battery technology is, quite literally,

the driving force in the cars that transport politicians and other officials to and from their places of work in the various EU institutions each day. But you would not think that when lithium battery tech is all

“From our point of view, the back-up power market will outgrow other battery markets. Lead batteries are probably a blueprint for other technologies” Marc Zoellner, Hoppecke CEO www.batteriesinternational.com

that appears to be trumpeted across the EU corridors of power in citing ‘sustainable mobility’ achievements.

But is the EU now learning to love lead? It certainly should — in terms of economic value to the bloc alone.

The latest investment boost for the sector has come from Hoppecke, one of Europe’s oldest, independent lead battery manufacturers and its CEO, Marc Zoellner, is more than optimistic about the future of the technology within and beyond European shores.

In the spring, Hoppecke launched production of a new line of pure lead AGM batteries at a newly-built plant in Poznan, Poland. The pace of the project was impressive, considering the decision to build the facility was only taken less than two years ago.

Speaking to Batteries International for this interview just weeks before going to press, Zoellner said: “We are in the process of starting up production and beginning to deliver the first batteries to our customers.

“We are proud that we took the brave decision while still in the Covid period to build a new plant, despite the travel and other restrictions that were in place at that time.”

The target market for the new ‘grid | Xtreme VR’ batteries line — which Hoppecke says represents “the highest level of development of today’s lead acid storage technologies” — are UPS systems in data centres and for backup power in telecom applications. The batteries are designed as top and front terminal versions.

“The market we have identified is already growing, we can see that with the increased use of digital technologies, so our foresight and work is already paying off. Data centres and telecoms infrastructure in particular depend on high performance batteries and Poznan will supply those sectors,” Zoellner says.

“Digitalisation is one of the major trends that can have a positive impact on our industry and another big trend is the increasing need for the storage of data and communications, which

Batteries International • Summer 2022 • 65

INSIDE HOPPECKE DO IT CARL!’ — THE HOPPECKE LEGACY Earlier this year saw the launch of the Battery Council Internationalbacked Women in the Global Battery Industry — an organization of professionals founded to promote and develop the growth of women in the battery industry.

And it was the efforts of a woman nearly a century ago that led to the launch of one of Europe’s best known battery manufacturers, Hoppecke.

The company credits the start of its more than 90 years of history to a “strong woman” — Auguste Zoellner.

In 1927, Auguste urged her 62-year-old husband, Carl, who was a major merchant from Cologne, to channel his efforts into boosting the economic prospects of the region and in turn helping those affected by unemployment with the words: “Do it, Carl!”

Carl chose two fir trees as the company’s logo, with their trunks linked by a crossbeam to form the

letter ‘H’ and to show the connection to the region of Hoppecke, where the company was founded.

Four generations later and there is still a family member at the helm — Marc Zoellner. His great grandfather, grandfather and father were his predecessors, all as CEO and company shareholders.

“We are proud to be one of the remaining private battery companies in Europe. There were around 25 in the days of my predecessors, my father for example, but the sector is a smaller industry now,” Zoellner says.

“However, there are some privatelyowned battery companies and supplier companies around, so it really is still a strong industry and there are a lot of initiatives from those private companies that keep this industry thriving. We also have very good integration in working with the big internationals and other companies through associations like EUROBAT.”

In 1927, Auguste urged her 62-year-old husband, Carl, who was a major merchant from Cologne, to channel his efforts into boosting the economic prospects of the region and in turn helping those affected by unemployment with the words: “Do it, Carl!”

66 • Batteries International • Summer 2022

will become only more important in the future with the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and electromobility.

“We see big demand ahead for lead batteries such as ours in what is a growing market. AI is just at the starting point, there will be many applications and we want to serve a part of that market.

“All these will require an energy infrastructure that is safe and secure in ensuring the transmission and storage of date and that is just one area where batteries such as ours will be needed.”

“From our point of view, the back-up power market will outgrow other battery markets and that’s why we thought we should come out with a new product, offering better performance, a longer lifetime and better economics in terms of production and operation.”

Meanwhile, Zoellner says the company has developed a “whole new range of products” based on pure lead technology and is continuing to manufacture its standard battery products at its sites in the villages of Hoppecke and Bremecketal in western Germany.

Zoellner, who is also president of EUROBAT, the European association for manufacturers of automotive, industrial and energy storage batteries, is philosophical when asked about the EU’s apparent ‘problem’ with seeking to regulate against lead batteries while encouraging greater investment in lithium and other technologies.

“I think this perspective is changing.

The single biggest political importance in the EU today is the ‘Green Deal’ and its policy objectives (such as reducing climate change and enhancing circularity). The Green Deal requires increased reliance on renewables and the storage of electricity — and for that you need electrochemical storage.

“That in turn broadens the view from a policy perspective, because you are then not only looking at specific elements of materials, but at storage technologies themselves. In terms of lead batteries, you are looking at an industry that has been established for a very long time and one that manages the circular economy well. In fact, it has the highest recycling rate of a metal globally, so this technology has many good things to offer.

“I think that in the past, from a political point of view, lead was looked at more in terms of the materials it used and the potential hazards associated with that.

“But now, I think politicians and

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INSIDE HOPPECKE others are looking at lead batteries more as electrochemical storage facilities that do the job they are designed to do well. They also see these batteries as a probable blueprint for developing new technologies, too.

So, I personally, as an entrepreneur, see a bright future for lead batteries.”

Although predominantly a lead battery manufacturer, Hoppecke added lithium to its portfolio nearly 20 years ago to supply industrial trucks, rail and bus systems and largescale storage systems.

Three years ago, a sister company — Intilion — was formed in Paderborn, Germany, devoted to the lithium batteries market.

Intilion’s focus is on industrial battery storage systems for stationary applications such as peak-shaving, load levelling and grid support to support the increasing share of renewables as well as electric mobility.

Besides that, the Hoppecke group has developed high voltage battery systems for trains and other heavy duty applications.

“Just as we continue to innovate with lead batteries, we can also contribute to new applications for the integration of renewables through Intilion,” Zoellner says.

But Hoppecke’s core business remains focused on lead batteries which, as an independent report released in April noted, is worth an estimated €15 billion ($16 billion) of value added or gross domestic product a year to the European economy.

The report — Economic Contribution of the European Lead Battery Industry* — said the downstream industry activity driven by the use of lead batteries was worth €7.3 trillion of gross domestic product across retail, construction and healthcare.

And about €2 billion worth of country exports of lead acid batteries from the 27 EU member states are consumed by non-EU countries, such as the UK, Switzerland, and China, the report said.

Zoellner says: “As CEO of Hoppecke, I see this industry as one that has a bright future and one that contributes to the challenges the energy sector faces. The battery industry is one of movement, investment and innovation and is very much a living industry.” * Consulting firm EBP was commissioned to compile the report by the International Lead Association

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The way they were: Hoppecke in 1935

Hoppeke’s new facility in Poland

EUROPE’S LEAD BATTERY INDUSTRY — THE FIGURES The European lead battery industry (battery manufacturing, container and separator manufacturing, accessories, assembly equipment, recycling, primary lead producers and mining companies) directly employs approximately 31,700 workers.

In addition, it supports about 75,000 jobs in other companies supplying into this industry and 77,500 jobs from worker spending in different industries. Together, these total over 184,000 jobs. Beyond jobs, the European lead battery industry annually supports the

following 4: • €7.6 billion in labour income • €14.7 billion in GDP • €36.5 billion in output or overall economic impact, and • €1.9 billion in social security payments.

The industry also contributes to wider economic growth by enabling households and businesses to be more productive. Numerous downstream industries rely on lead batteries to operate, with the largest users being motor vehicle repair, construction, and transportation. (€1=$1.05)

Source: Report: Economic Contribution of the European Lead Battery Industry by EBP US

Batteries International • Summer 2022 • 67

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LITHIUM: THE SHORTAGES AHEAD Recycling will be essential to the EV battery supply chain, but as OEMs use lower-value materials to cut costs, this could force recyclers to ship black mass overseas for processing — racking up more air miles for so-called green batteries.

Recycling not the solution as black mass value falls Digging up more of the planet for raw materials is currently the only way to help satisfy soaring demand for electric vehicle batteries, according to recent analysis by Wood Mackenzie and the International Energy Agency.

Wood Mackenzie research analyst Max Reid told the June AABC conference in Mainz, Germany that existing lithium supply chains would not be able to meet demand and that battery makers and OEM are going

to be “hugely reliant on virgin materials” and will need to invest in new mines.

Reid said a ramping up of recycling could relieve some pressure from the supply deficit of battery raw materials, but with the recycling market still in its infancy in large parts of the world, recyclers too could start to come under pressure as ‘beyond lithium’ next-generation battery technologies are introduced.

We are seeing a natural progression from high-value cathode material to the use of lower-value cathode materials … a natural course for OEMs cutting costs Max Reid, research analyst, Wood Mackenzie 70 • Batteries International • Summer 2022

“Recyclers need to be aware that they might need to be retrofitting equipment and processes in five or 10 years’ time, for example with silicon anode technology coming in,” Reid said.

“At the moment it is less clear what the economics are and recycling is not really viable in general, but in the future we can expect recycling to become part of the ecosystem.”

However, Reid raised the prospect of battery materials clocking up thousands of air miles by being shipped around the world for reprocessing before being returned for use in new batteries — further denting EVs’ environmental credentials.

“There is huge potential for recycling, but we see a tough situation for recyclers in terms of the proportion of metals contained in battery packs,” Reid said.”

“We are seeing what is a natural progression from high-value cathode material to the use of lower-value cathode materials, containing iron and manganese, which is a natural course for OEMs to follow to produce lower cost EVs for the mass market.

There are also technologies like sodium ion opening up toward 2035, for the stationary storage market too.”

What’s in the black mass?

So while recyclers will face consistent levels of material arriving as feedstock, the value per kilogramme is decreasing. This in turn could lead to some recyclers simply shredding battery packs and shipping the black mass off for processing elsewhere, such as in Asia.

“It will be difficult to know what is in that black mass and we don’t want materials that already have so many air miles returned to markets for use in new batteries,” said Reid.

EV models could themselves be changed to accommodate new and more efficient battery designs, but new designs from OEMs are probably

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LITHIUM: THE SHORTAGES AHEAD five to seven years down the line and “that’s kind of far too late” to dampen demand for raw materials, Reid said.

He said the electrification of the transportation sector had caused a boom in demand for lithium ion batteries, with global cumulative lithium ion battery capacity set to rise more than five-fold to 5,500GWh between 2021 and 2030.

The sheer rate of growth needed for raw materials for EVs and energy storage in the first half of the century was unprecedented, especially in the mining sector, Reid said.

According to the Wood Mackenzie analysis, demand for key battery raw materials currently stands at 97 kilotonnes (kt) for lithium, 186kt cobalt and 3,014kt nickel. By 2030, these are expected to grow to 318kt, 264kt and 4,273kt, respectively.

Little value in recycling Supply from recycled materials, though paling in comparison, is expected to reach 130kt for lithium, 112kt cobalt and 377kt nickel, respectively, by the end of the decade, the analysis says.

“At present, the challenges of recycled battery raw materials seem insurmountable. Most of the discussion has been around the collection and recycling of end-of-life EVs, but the process is plagued with challenges,” Wood Mackenzie says.

The analysis includes a stark assessment of current recycling options: First, the cathode, which contains critical metals in the EV pack, “is overpackaged with pack materials such as casings, interconnects, cooling channels and others — and the result is a tedious recycling process with little value”.

Second, EV packs have long warranties and lifetimes, meaning the recovery of critical metals from them will be a long-term affair. In addition, the emergence of second-use applications, such as residential or industrial energy storage systems, will also keep end-of-life EVs from entering the recycling system.

As such, Wood Mackenzie says recycling production scrap will be the main source of recycled material this decade.

Meanwhile, China, Europe and North America will see huge increases in battery and cathode manufacturing to meet demand for batteries.

Globally, Wood Mackenzie expects battery manufacturing capacity to grow 3.5 times to more than

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4,621GWh by 2030, “with China leading way ahead”, presenting “an increasing market for production scrap”.

Battery research lead at UK-headquartered consulting company Rho Motion, Ulderico Ulissi, told AABC that as battery designs evolve, their individual characteristics could impact recycling methods.

He urged a full, independent assessment to be conducted into the value of end-of-life EV batteries, saying existing data was insufficient.

As battery designs evolve, their individual characteristics could impact recycling methods.

Ulderico Ulissi, Battery research lead, Rho Motion ‘CLIMATE PLEDGES’ REQUIRE 50 NEW MINES, SAYS IEA Around 50 new mines will need to be built around the world to satisfy soaraway demand for EV battery materials expected within the next eight years, according to new analysis — Global supply chains of EV batteries — published by the International Energy Agency in July.

The Paris-based agency bases its calculation on the fact that the supply of some minerals, such as lithium, will need to rise by up to one-third by 2030 to satisfy pledges and announcements for EV batteries made by governments and accounted for in the IEA’s ‘advanced pledges scenario’ (APS) published last October.

According to the APS, which takes account of all climate commitments made by governments as of last October, demand for EV batteries will increase from around 340GWh at present to more than 3,500GWh by 2030.

Lithium, says the IEA, is the commodity with the largest projected demand-supply gap and demand is forecast to increase sixfold to 500kt by 2030 — “requiring the equivalent of 50 new average-sized mines”.

In addition to the dozens of mining projects needed to enter the market and reach capacity on schedule, the IEA says tens of new mineral processing and precursor plants will have to be commissioned.

“And to translate this into EV deployment, tens of cathode and anode plants, gigafactories and EV

production plants are required.”

However, the supply of raw materials still threatens to be the Achilles’ heel of the EV dream, because the longest lead times in the battery supply chain process by far are for the extraction of raw materials.

According to the IEA, after an extractable resource is identified through exploration, it can take from four to more than 20 years for a mine to start commercial production.

Four to 16 years can be required for the necessary feasibility studies, and engineering and construction work.

In addition, long lead times are often needed to secure financing and permits for which the latter can take up to a decade.

The IEA says there is some evidence that, over the years, the time required to bring mines online has increased and “this can be partially attributed to longer permitting and feasibility study lead times”.

Then once a mine is commercially operational, it often requires around 10 years before reaching nameplate production capacity.

Given “sufficient investment”, the IEA believes downstream stages of the EV battery supply chain can ramp up to meet even rapid increases in demand by 2030.

However, it warns upstream mineral extraction can cause major bottlenecks unless adequate investments are delivered well in advance.

Batteries International • Summer 2022 • 73

LITHIUM: THE SHORTAGES AHEAD As EV battery makers scramble to source new supplies of raw materials and step up research into cheaper chemistry options, the International Energy Agency warns price increases are inevitable.

Another 15% hike in battery pack prices ‘may be on way’ Despite the recent commodity price surge, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says lithium battery prices still declined in 2021, with annual battery price data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance recording a sales-weighted average price of $132/kWh, down 6% from 2020.

This was much less than the 13% decrease from 2019 to 2020, but the IEA says in its Global supply chains of EV batteries analysis, published in July, that several factors partially insulated the average battery price from the commodity price rises last year.

First, the rising prices incentivised chemistry substitutions, which made many automakers switch to lower cost cathode chemistries with less commodity price exposure, such as lithium ion phosphate, which saw a significant increase in adoption compared to nickelrich chemistries.

Second, commodity prices were relatively low for the first half of 2021, which helped the average price decline.

Third, the use of higher nickel chemistries such as NMC811 (where there are eight parts of nickel, one of manganese and one of cobalt) reduced the use of cobalt, which the IEA says is the most expensive metal constituent in batteries per kg (around 5% of NMC811 cell price based on the 2021 average price), also offsetting some costs, particularly in the first half of 2021.

The critical advantage of Na ion over Li ion is that it relies on abundant and low-cost minerals. The cathode material for the CATL battery consists of low-cost elements sodium, iron, nitrogen and carbon.

SODIUM-ION TECHNOLOGY: THE WAY AHEAD While researchers across the world are working to develop battery chemistries that do not use lithium, the IEA says the closest most viable option today is sodium-ion technology. China batteries giant CATL is among those developing the technology and plans to form a basic industrial supply chain by 2023.

The critical advantage of Na ion over Li ion is that it relies on abundant and low-cost minerals.

The cathode material for the CATL sodium-ion battery is Prussian White, this is made of low-cost elements sodium, iron, nitrogen and carbon. Sodium-ion batteries cannot use graphite anodes, so instead uses hard carbon. In addition, less copper is required as sodium-ion batteries can use aluminium anode current collectors, unlike Li-ion.

The performance of sodium-

74 • Batteries International • Summer 2022

ion batteries is already looking impressive. CATL says the energy density of its own battery cell is up to 160Wh/kg, and the battery can charge in 15 minutes to 80% SOC at room temperature. Moreover, in a low-temperature environment of -20°C, the sodium-ion battery has a capacity retention rate of more than 90%, and its system integration efficiency can reach more than 80%.

But while Na ion has advanced beyond the research stage with a demonstration of commercially viable performance, there are no supply chains today for its cathode and anode materials, says the IEA. “The main uncertainties around the deployment of Na ion is the scalability of the production processes for these materials and the time required to develop an industrial scale supply chain.

The IEA believes that a “key reason is the impact of rising commodity prices has yet to fully materialize” — because while automakers increasingly use contracts in which material costs are linked with commodity prices for high volume battery orders, there is a time lag.

“Therefore, these automakers did not feel the result of the exceptional commodity price rises from the last three months of 2021 until the firstquarter of 2022.

The IEA estimates that if metal prices are to remain at levels experienced in the first three months of 2022 throughout the rest of the year, then battery pack prices might increase by up to 15% from the 2021 weighted average price, all else being equal.

Limited deployment OEMs could mitigate the impact by substituting other more cost-effective chemistries, but such price increases would still pose major challenges for automakers, increasing battery costs, reducing manufacturer margins and raising costs for consumers.

Meanwhile, the IEA says the future of battery chemistries is not set in stone and that they will become more diversified by 2030 as manufacturers select chemistries to serve specific vehicle characteristics.

Premium vehicles can be expected to use the highest energy density batteries available, likely higher nickel content chemistries such as NCA95, NMCA (where aluminium is included) and NMC9.5.5, or potentially those with even higher energy density, such as lithium nickel oxide (LNO) or lithiummanganese-rich NMC (LMR-NMC).

However, the IEA says again that this will only be possible if “research challenges can be solved and a commercially viable cycle life is achieved”.

For lower end, high volume and principally urban vehicles, LFP (lithium iron phosphate) is forecast to be the primary chemistry because cost will be the key consideration rather than driving range. The IEA says due to high commodity prices for nickel and cobalt

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LITHIUM: THE SHORTAGES AHEAD and the expiry of key patents, LFP is set for major growth in volume models in Europe and the US. For mid-range vehicles, the IEA says manganese-rich chemistry (lithium nickel manganese oxide — LNMO) is a strong contender because it has a higher energy density than LFP, yet does not reach the levels of the highnickel chemistries. But while the larger proportion of manganese in LNMO reduces material costs and commodity exposure considerably, compared to high-nickel chemistries, LNMO is still under development.

For medium and heavy-duty vehicles, LFP will account for the vast majority of installations as cost and reliability will be more important for the early applications of electric trucks, according to the IEA. LFP has the best cycle life of the leading chemistries which suits frequent, short trips and being recharged often.

However, longer range electric trucks are likely to use nickel-based chemistries with the highest energy density, but their deployment before 2030 is limited.

“Electric car sales powered through 2021 and have remained strong so far in 2022, but ensuring future growth will demand greater efforts to diversify battery manufacturing and critical mineral supplies to reduce the risks of bottlenecks and price rises,” the agency says.

In the short term, the greatest obstacles to continued strong EV sales will be soaring prices for some critical minerals essential for battery manufacturing, as well as supply chain disruptions caused by Russia’s attack on Ukraine and by continued Covid-19 lockdowns in some parts of China.

And even if those challenges are addressed, the IEA points out that much more work needs to be done by countries to roll out enough charging infrastructure to both encourage and cope with EV sales growth.

Battery metals prices, 2015-July 2022

Battery metals demand, 2017-2021

Range of typical lead times to initial production for selected steps in EV battery supply chain

Sources: IEA analysis based on S&P Global

NEXT STEP CHANGE: THE ALL-SOLID STATE-BATTERY According to the IEA, all-solid-state batteries (ASSBs) are the “anticipated next step-change improvement in battery performance”, because they can enable the use of a lithium metal anode. This can result in battery energy densities around 70% higher than the current “best” Li ion batteries with graphite anodes, dramatically improving driving range capability, opening other applications and

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eventually driving down costs.

Nissan is starting pilot production in 2024 and aims to produce EVs with ASSBs in 2028, having just opened a prototype production facility in Japan, the IEA says. Other initiatives include a joint venture of QuantumScape and Volkswagen, which plans a pilot production line to start in 2024.

However, the IEA analysis cautions that “despite the activity and

announcements, major technical challenges remain to be solved before ASSBs can make significant impacts”.

Current state-of-the-art performance often relies on impractical pressures to solve the contact problem, or on currently unscalable, expensive production processes to reach viable performance. But ASSBs are not expected to have a significant impact until after 2030, the IEA says.

Batteries International • Summer 2022 • 75

THE CHINA PERSPECTIVE Despite the EU’s oft-stated goal of building a battery cells manufacturing network to challenge Asia’s dominance, a senior Beijing envoy to Germany tells Batteries International, China is happy to play a key supporting role in shaping Europe’s batteries future.

How China’s battery tigers are helping Europe’s nascent battery industry roar Many of the draft rules soon to become EU law under the Batteries Regulation are part of an undisguised effort on the part of the bloc’s leaders to dethrone Asia from its dominance in the batteries market.

Measures imposing tough ‘green criteria’ seeking to make European battery products an international standard and setting carbon emission limits on production are part of the arsenal of policies the bloc has crafted, in an attempt to allow Europe’s own gigarevolution to pick up speed and so challenge dominance from battery makers in countries such as China and South Korea.

But while the policy-making rumbled on, Asia’s battery tigers prowled into town. The ‘competitors’ are no

longer across the other side of the world — they’re busy at work in EU member states.

And in exclusive interview with Batteries International, the commercial counsellor at China’s embassy in Berlin, Wang Weidong, says his nation is happy to be supporting Europe’s green energy agenda.

As far as the Batteries Regulation is concerned, Wang says Chinese battery companies believe the new rules will have a positive impact in “promoting green, low-carbon and sustainable development” of the battery industry and tackling climate change.

Key players in China’s battery industry are among others, such as South Korea, who have been busy setting up shop in the EU — in partnership with

“It is conceivable that Sino-European exchanges in the methodology of battery products will be undertaken and a cooperation mechanism will be established … “This should facilitate mutual market access, create a win-win situation and make constructive progress towards global climate protection” — Wang Weidong 76 • Batteries International • Summer 2022

European peers — and in some cases benefiting from generous EU financial incentives.

Wang says data from the federal government-backed Germany Trade and Invest (GTAI) shows that around 5,700 Chinese firms across a variety of sectors were active in Germany in 2021, which in turn employed a total of more than 103,000.

And despite what Wang said were difficult economic conditions, GTAI data on foreign direct investment for Germany in 2020 indicated some 170 greenfield investment projects from China — a 10% increase over the previous year.

Those investors include Chinese battery manufacturing majors Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL) and SVOLT Energy Technology. “They specialize in electromobility and are building battery manufacturing factories in Germany,” Wang says.

Meanwhile another Chinese battery titan, Narada Power, ploughs ahead with its range of projects in support of strengthening Germany’s power grid.

Wang says all three companies “are examples of China’s integration into the world economy and the result of the globalization of the (batteries) value chain.

“With China’s opening-up process and economic growth, Chinese companies are increasingly expanding their global presence,” he says. “Decisions to enter the German and European markets are made by Chinese investors based on business interests, just like German companies in China.”

And now that Chinese battery companies and others have become interwoven into the commercial fabric of Europe’s industrial landscape, Wang hopes Chinese companies “will be offered fair competitive conditions here and that they can be treated equally with local companies”.

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THE CHINA PERSPECTIVE In terms of the growth and technological impact of Chinese battery businesses in Europe, Wang says that while Narada has been involved in lead acid and lithium ion battery technology for more than 20 years, “lithium batteries have gradually become the core product” of the firm’s product portfolio in recent years.

Since 2017, Narada has been working with German partner companies to develop and deploy battery energy storage projects with a total capacity of 75MW/125MWh. These lead carbon ESS projects have been implemented in five phases, each with an output of 15MW/25MWh. Narada has also established a European Energy Storage Service Center in Germany from which it offers services to European customers.

In addition, Wang says the company has provided batteries for frequency control storage projects with a capacity of 50MWh commissioned in Ireland, while a grid peak regulation 300MWh storage project is scheduled for delivery in Italy by the end of 2022, according to Wang.

In future, Narada’s focus will be on the “core business of intelligent energy storage and on lithium batteries”.

CATL also sees “great development potential” for lithium battery technology. “Breakthroughs in their performance, such as energy density, range, safety, service life and charging have been achieved.”

“At the same time, new products and business models are appearing from CATL such as cell-to-pack and cell-tochassis, such as CTP,” Wang says.

“The innovation of battery industry depends on the development of key technologies, but market acceptance

also plays a crucial role.”

In early April, Contemporary Amperex Technology Thuringia (CATT), the group’s first manufacturing plant built outside China, received approval for an initial plant capacity of 8GWh per year.

Wang says: “The construction of the plant, which is also CATL’s first battery factory in Germany, is in the final phase and the installation of the machines are in full swing, so that the first cells can roll off the assembly line at the end of 2022.”

Anja Siegesmund Thuringia minister of environment energy and nature conservation and Matthias Zentgraf CATL Europe president

CATL’s Thuringia plant in Germany: ready for action by the end of the year

HOW REALPOLITIK ENERGIZED THE GREEN ENERGY AGENDA Since the launch of the European Battery Alliance in 2017, the European Commission has trumpeted calls to make the bloc a world leader in sustainable battery production.

In doing so, Europe has not been shy in dishing out billions of euros to build a home-grown battery cells manufacturing network in its quest to slap down Asia’s dominance in the market.

However, politics make strange bedfellows. While the EU sought to invest in building its own batteries empire, it was revealed in July 2018

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that Germany would unlock the coffers of an economic aid fund — to support CATL’s construction of a battery cells factory in the country.

The agreement was announced during talks between Germany’s then chancellor Angela Merkel and Chinese premier Li Keqiang.

Officials said the financial support was allowed under EU guidelines for regional investment.

It’s also been barely two years since European Commission vice president and champion of the Battery Alliance, Maroš Šefcovic, said in a speech to a Nordic Battery Scene webinar that

reducing Europe’s “overdependence on third countries, both for batteries and the raw materials needed to make them, is crucial to boosting our strategic autonomy and resilience in this area”.

In that June 2020 speech, Šefcovic bemoaned the fact that “73% of the batteries bought in the EU are made in China, and only 6% in Europe”.

Today, those remarks can perhaps be better revised to say: “We don’t mind buying batteries from Chinese companies, so long as they’re made in Europe.”

Realpolitik in action, no doubt.

Batteries International • Summer 2022 • 77

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THE CHINA PERSPECTIVE With a total investment of €1.8 billion (about $1.9 billion), CATL intends to expand production capacity to 14GWh and create 2,000 jobs in Germany. “CATL is therefore bringing its state-of-the-art technologies to Europe,” says Wang.

According to Wang, the spirit of industrial cooperation in the batteries sector should also be a model for governments to work together in using technology to tackle climate change.

“It affects us all and can only be mastered through our joint efforts.

China has committed to peak carbon emissions by 2030 and become carbon neutral by 2060. Germany and Europe have also set themselves an ambitious goal for climate neutrality,” he says.

“To achieve that goal, both Europe and China are trying to expand renewable energies. Energy storage is an essential technical component for the energy transition. The low-carbon transformation and the innovations in climate protection technologies, which include energy storage, therefore hold great potential for cooperation between China and Germany.”

Wang says Chinese president Xi Jinping and German chancellor Olaf Scholz agreed during a video conference on May 9 that both sides would “deepen cooperation on climate protection and energy transformation”.

The incoming Battery Regulation “clarifies binding requirements on carbon footprints, due diligence, material recycling targets, labelling and information management,” he says.

“With the rapid technological innovation in this industry and the globalization of the supply chain, it is desirable that international coordination of the production standards in the battery industry be strengthened.

“China and Europe are the world’s most important regions of production and consumer markets for new energy vehicles and power batteries,” says Wang. “German electric vehicles equipped with Chinese power batteries are sold all over the world.”

Wang also hints at a desire to work closely with Europe in advances in next generation battery technology, saying it is “conceivable that Sino-European exchanges in the methodology of battery products will be undertaken and a cooperation mechanism will be established.

“This should facilitate mutual market access, create a win-win situation and make constructive progress towards global climate protection.”

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However, Wang says that as world economies seek to pick up pace in the aftermath of the pandemic there are still challenges ahead. He acknowledges that for all China’s economic and industrial might, it too is not immune from global events.

“There are disruptions in the global supply and transport chains, which can be observed in many countries.

The reasons for this situation are manifold: bottlenecks in container shipping, rising commodity prices and so on,” he says.

What Wang terms as the “current Ukraine crisis” has, he says, “further aggravated the situation.

“China is now also being negatively affected. For example, like in Germany, in China there is a shortage of chips for the automotive industry.”

Wang is also open about the impact of a fresh outbreak of Covid cases in China in recent months that has led to some companies temporary halting production.

But, conscious of China’s role as a global player in the materials supply chain for a range of industries, Wang says the government issued new Covid-19 prevention guidelines, designed to enable businesses to “resume work to secure and stabilize industrial supply chains.

“In 2021, China’s exports increased by 21.2% year-on-year. In doing so, China has helped meet the manufacturing and living needs of other parts of the world and helped to sustain the global industrial and supply chain. We will continue these efforts in the future.”

ASIA’S BATTERY DRIVE INTO EASTERN EUROPE

A number of Asian battery players are making inroads into the European battery cells manufacturing market.

In December 2020, the Hungarian government said Chinese lithium battery components company Shenzhen Kedali Industry would open a manufacturing base in the north of the country.

In July 2021, the European Commission approved a proposed €90 million ($94 million) subsidy

by Hungary for construction of a second electric vehicle battery plant in the country by South Korea’s SK Innovation.

The announcement came after SKI secured a $500 million ‘green loan’ from the Export-Import Bank

of Korea towards construction of the facility — and unveiled plans to start building a third battery plant in Hungary.

On March 18 this year, the European Commission approved a €95 million package of aid offered by Poland’s government to support the LG Chem group’s expansion of its EV battery cells production plant in the country.

Commission executive vice president Margrethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy, said an investigation into the incentives offered confirmed that the expansion “will contribute to job creation and to the economic development of a disadvantaged region, without unduly distorting competition”.

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EVENT REVIEW: EUROBAT EUROBAT Forum 2022 and Annual Convention • June 23-24, Brussels, Belgium

EUROBAT’s Battery Innovation Roadmap made the case for a ‘level playing field’ of investment in technologies to power Europe up to 2030 and beyond. Political leaders were warned not to cherry pick favourites.

Energizing Europe’s future

Zoellner: “Europe is facing new geopolitical realities”

EUROBAT’s annual meeting and forum started, as ever, well. It’s hard to remember a time that it didn’t.

Once the annual meetings were over on the Thursday afternoon, it was almost straightaway to predinner drinks and a very fine meal at Brussels’s Trainworld — a fascinating former railway station converted into a museum and full of current and previous trains and carriages.

The next day started well too.

EUROBAT president and CEO of Hoppecke Batterien, Marc Zoellner, opened the forum calling for the role of batteries to be further elaborated in the European Commission’s

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‘REPowerEU’ plan — aimed at severing dependence on Russian gas before 2030.

Zoellner said the new geopolitical realities facing the continent also warranted an update of the Battery Action Plan, launched by the European Battery Alliance in 2017, with a review of policies covering mining, battery materials, battery manufacturing and recycling.

“Batteries have never been more important. They are a key enabler of the mobility transformation and, given the energy situation, they also play a key role as solution for the storage of wind and solar energy,” he said.

The highlight of the morning’s talk was the address by Clarios’ EMEA vice-president for industry and government affairs Christian Rosenkranz who unveiled the ‘EUROBAT 2030 Battery Innovation Roadmap 2.0’. Fundamentally the roadmap set out the case for all battery chemistries to be deployed to help Europe meet its climate and energy sustainability goals.

It also included a further plaintive cry from industry for European R&D public funding activities to be “spread more equally among the different technologies”, by targeting applied research on different applications.

“Today, battery technologies are still competing or are complementary in different market segments and Europe will benefit if it leaves the door open for all technologies to be able to maximize their market innovations,” the roadmap said.

The roadmap is an update of an original publication (from June 2020) to account for the latest technological developments and changes in EU policies, primarily the proposal for a European Batteries Regulation, which is expected to come into force next year.

Industry chiefs say the new roadmap reflects the technological realities and potential of the best available battery technologies and how they can contribute to the EU’s policy objectives.

Rosenkranz, who is also chairman of the Consortium for Battery Innovation, said developing all chemistries “will maximize the contribution of our industry” to meet EU zero-pollution targets and support the European Green Deal and other initiatives.

While lithium and lead-based batteries will remain the dominant battery technologies by 2030, the roadmap acknowledged that the European Commission’s ‘REPowerEU’ plan could be expected

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EVENT REVIEW: EUROBAT to have an “additional high impact on energy storage demand” that could not be covered by any single technology.

The document cautioned that application-specific developments would further push the boundaries for established technologies, in particular for lithium and lead-based technologies.

Nevertheless, the paper said leadbased batteries would maintain their position with single digit market growth every year until 2030, while lithium ion represented the fastest growing market with double-digit annual growth up to 2030.

Rosenkranz, however, said: “Lead is not going to be redundant.”

In motive power and off-road industrial vehicles, for example, “the mainstream technology in 2030 is still going to be lead based, even though lithium is growing fast”.

The innovation potential of the mainstream established technologies will be driven by new technology branches in lead, such as pure lead, lead-carbon and bipolar, according to the roadmap.

Lithium ion batteries are expected

Rosenkranz: “the mainstream technology in 2030 is still going to be lead based”

to forge ahead because of the “diversity in technologies”, but there are still a “large variety” of key performance indicators to improve.

The roadmap concluded that the development of lithium ion technologies suitable for industrial and automotive applications is also “still a challenge” in terms of material research, process, production, development, recycling, safety and transportation, the paper said.

Meanwhile, the document

reiterated warnings to EU leaders that “putting too much emphasis” on one technology would represent a strategic risk for Europe’s global competitiveness, negatively affect buying power for millions of the bloc’s citizens and damage EU industrial knowledge across key markets.

The next EUROBAT Forum and Annual Convention will be held in Madrid, Spain on June 6-7, 2023

EUROBAT ’22 NEWS IN BRIEF New technologies skills challenge Petr Dolejší, director of mobility and sustainable transport at ACEA — the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association — said that Europe was still putting together the pieces of a ‘sustainability puzzle’, noting that decarbonization ambitions could only be achieved once all other elements were in place.

Lead ‘packs €15bn economic punch’ Derek Cutler, chief economist at economic research and analysis firm EBP-US, presented the detailed findings of analysis published in April that showed the lead battery industry is worth an estimated €15 billion ($16 billion) of value added or gross domestic product a year to the European economy.

The report — ‘Economic Contribution of the European Lead Battery Industry’ — said the downstream industry activity driven by the use of lead batteries is worth €7.3 trillion of gross domestic product across retail, construction and healthcare.

According to the report, nearly €40

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million is invested in R&D annually by the lead battery industry — further boosting growth and productivity.

In addition, the report confirmed that new lead batteries, which are all recycled when collected in Europe, typically include up to 80% recycled content.

‘Localized supply chains for OEMs’ Wolfgang Bernhart, senior partner at consultants Roland Berger, underlined the need for OEMs to secure stable supplies of raw/refined battery materials. Failure to do so could jeopardize their EV business models, Bernhart said in his presentation.

Greater localization of the supply chain could reduce cost, risk, political exposure and reduce the CO2 footprint of material supplies.

Gigafactories need legal ‘coherency’ Violaine Verougstraete, chemicals management director for Eurometaux, told the forum that despite European Union support to build a network of battery cells gigafactories across the bloc, there remained a need for coherence, predictability and efficacy in environmental legislation.

She cautioned against “burdensome reviews” being undertaken authorities of existing legislation, such as the European Chemicals Agency’s REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals) list.

Verougstraete also said that more than 30 gigafactory projects had begun or were planned across the EU and UK combined. Alas she did not say how many would be around 10 years’ hence.

Mandatory EU battery recycling Valerie Plainemaison, secretarygeneral of the European Waste Management Association, said proposed EU regulations for mandatory recycled content would be crucial to making a success of the incoming Batteries Regulation.

EU recycling capacity needs to be increased by 25 times until 2030 to manage the flow of end-of-life EV batteries, she said.

Mandatory recycled content proposals would also boost localized materials supply chains for European battery makers and reduce the bloc’s dependency on third countries for raw materials.

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EVENT REVIEW: ADVANCED TECH & INNOVATION SHOWS NEC, Birmingham, UK • June 29-30

Four events in one. This was held in two giant halls at the UK’s National Exhibition Centre. These were The Advanced Materials Show, Ceramics UK, Battery Cells & Systems Expo and Vehicle Electrification Expo.

Cross-fertilization of ideas: a conference road less travelled

Not just a good event, but a great event. That was the comment of one attendee at the launch event of these four co-located shows. Despite facing competition from a similar event in Europe, the well established The Battery Show held in Stuttgart on the same days and also a similar meeting in Australia, attendance was high.

Certainly, the statistics were good.

The four co-located shows welcomed 308 exhibiting companies, 3,142 attendees and

93 speakers across four conference tracks, said the organizers: “Over 84% of attendees at the show were decision-makers and influencers from their retrospective companies, which included 1,373 unique organizations in attendance from 40 countries over six continents.”

This is certainly no mean feat given that this was the first time the event had been held — and certainly indicative of a huge up-swell of interest into these interrelated meetings.

Battery Cells & Systems Expo is an international showcase of manufacturers, users and the entire supply chain working to increase battery performance, cost and safety. The show brings together automotive OEMs, electric utilities, battery cell manufacturers, system manufacturers and integrators along with the entire manufacturing supply chain.

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But it was also cleverly put together. Too much of modern electrochemical advances are isolated from their context in terms of material and engineering.

Ben Silverstone, head of the WMG Skills Group at the University of Warwick said: “My favourite part of the show has been having all the different elements in the same place: advanced batteries, EVs, ceramics and the like.

“It’s been really good to have those cross-fertilization discussions and linking up with people who we may not have had the opportunity to link up with if it had been a single industry-focused event.”

It was much more than an exhibition, however. There were four co-located conferences and related presentations going on.

Battery Cells & Systems Expo and Vehicle Electrification Expo conference was dedicated to battery development, broader electrification and manufacturing strategy, which welcomed expert speakers from McLaren Applied, Rimac Technology, Tevva, NPL among others.

The Advanced Materials Show and Ceramics UK conference blended programme featured twotracks tackling the challenges and opportunities in materials innovation and materials industrialization respectively, and welcomed expert speakers, for example, from Cerion, Tata Steele, Henry Royce Institute, and NovoMOF. “The exhibitors at the show showcased some incredible innovative technology,” said the organizers. “Keyence who are leaders in industrial automation and inspection systems displayed 3D microscopes, laser marking solutions and automated inspection solutions. The University of Wolverhampton brought the

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EVENT REVIEW: ADVANCED TECH & INNOVATION SHOWS Formula 3 car, the winning vehicle of the Championship F3 Cup UK 2021 season.

The show was host to key events across the two days, including the leaders in graphene — clearly one of the key ingredients in EV battery development and manufacturing — participating in five curated roundtable discussions, focusing on the barriers and opportunities in graphene production and application.

The show also had what the conference organizers called “a VIP campaign” — essentially an extra stream for participation and complete with complimentary refreshments. This included, for the chosen few, the opportunity to attend a special tour and reception at the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre in nearby Coventry.

For those of us lucky to attend the UKBIC tour, this provided a fascinating chance to speak individually about the approach of the centre to scaling up proven, at least in the lab, technologies and develop them into the stepping stones leading to commercial possibilities.

“I was impressed by some of the UKBIC facilities — in particular their testing methodology and equipment — but I was equally taken by the wealth and range of expertise of the staff,” one attendee said to Batteries International.

The VIP campaign, however, did not extend to the refreshments.

One Dutch and British pair were vociferous in their moaning that the sign saying drinks — complete with a picture of a glass of wine — only led them to the inevitable British cup of tea and biscuit!

The four conference sections in each corner of the auditorium were busy throughout the two days with, on occasion, there were audiences of over 100 people seated and standing room only.

Two sessions particularly stood out.

Dirk Spiers, perhaps the key figure in the development of a second life market for lithium batteries, hosted a lively discussion on the challenges of repurposing, repairing or recycling unfit-for-use EV batteries.

Withers & Rogers hosted an intellectual property seminar, detailing in very practical ways how one could leverage commercial benefit from innovations. This

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“It’s been wonderful to hear how all of the pieces of the puzzle are coming together for the future of sustainability of the materials industries”

included how to identify intellectual property in the business, how to protect IP assets, and how to use this to further one’s business goals.

Sarah Connolly, innovation lead at Innovate UK, part of UKRI summed up the show. “It’s been wonderful to hear how all of the pieces of the puzzle are coming together for the future of sustainability of the materials industries. I’ll definitely be coming back next year.”

Adam Moore, one of the organizers of the event, said: “The success of

the show at this its launch event is tribute to the excitement that’s being generated in the UK over battery development and the fact that this country is poised for huge growth in the years ahead.”

The next Battery, Cells and Systems Expo and Vehicle Electrification Expo is on June 28-29, 2023 and will be co-located with The Advanced Materials Show and The Advanced Ceramics Show at the NEC, Birmingham UK.

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FORTHCOMING EVENTS

Oslo, Norway

Oslo Battery Days

ees South America

Intersolar Mexico

August 22 – 23 Oslo, Norway

August 23 – 25 Sao Paulo, Brazil

September 6 – 8 Mexico City, Mexico

The 4th OBD Battery Conference will meet to discuss and provide a platform for technological innovations and business opportunities with the latest updates in that fields in Norway and abroad. The conference is held every second year and is the leading Battery conference in Norway, bringing together participants from leading private and public companies, start-ups, investors, academics and businesses that are interested in the battery revolution.

The special exhibition “ees South America” is the industry hotspot for suppliers, manufacturers, distributors and users of stationary and mobile electrical energy storage solutions.

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.

Intersolar Mexico serves as the industry’s go-to source for invaluable technology trends and premier B2B contacts in the promising Mexican solar market.

Representatives of leading companies and organizations in the solar market will comment on the development and prospects of both the solar thermal and photovoltaic sectors. Among the topics to be addressed are: project financing, energy storage, business models and innovations in distributed solar generation, the regulatory situation, decarbonization in the industrial sector.

Contact Schive AS Erik Schwings Hagelien Tel: +47 90 73 91 59 E: post@schive.no www.oslobatterydays.com

The Solar Show Africa August 23 – 24 Johannesburg, South Africa

Contact Solar Promotion www.intersolar.net.br/home

As Africa’s’ largest energy conference & exhibition, The Solar Show Africa brings together government ministries, utilities, power producers, municipalities, regulators, large energy users, project developers, investors and solution providers to allow new business opportunities and valuable connections to be made.

For 23 years, delegates have flocked to the conference to gain first-hand knowledge on upcoming projects, investment opportunities and innovations across the continent that will help utilities deliver energy.

PCIM Asia

Contact Terrapinn www.terrapinn.com/exhibition/solar-showafrica/index.stm

Contact Messe Frankfurt www.pcimasia-expo.cn.messefrankfurt. com/shanghai/en.html

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Contact Solar Promotion www.intersolar.mx

August 31 – September 2 Shanghai, China PCIM Asia offers a chance to see the latest developments in power electronics components and systems.

The strong link between conference and exhibition guarantees the high quality of the show. This unique combination fosters the fast and easy exchange between industry and science, for which PCIM Asia is famous.

Mexico City, Mexico

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FORTHCOMING EVENTS The Battery Show North America

Expo for Decarbonised Industries

September 13 – 15 Novi, Michigan, USA

September 20 – 22 Düsseldorf, Germany

The Battery Show brings together engineers, business leaders, top-industry companies, and innovative thinkers to discover ground-breaking products and create powerful solutions for the future. From raw materials to components, find what you need to power your next project.

Messe Düsseldorf’s program includes the world’s leading trade shows for the energy-intensive industries of glass, plastics and metals. The network of these three events already offers great potential for target-group-specific visitor promotion for decarbXpo: it comprises around 7,000 exhibitors and 339,000 visitors. New business potential and high-class decision-maker networking around three megatrends of the energy transition: Decarbonization, energy storage and hydrogen.

Contact Informa Markets www.thebatteryshow.com

International Congress for Battery Recycling — ICBR September 14 – 16 Salzburg, Austria ICBR 2022 is the international platform for reviewing the challenges faced by the Battery Recycling Industry on a global basis. For 26 consecutive years, ICBR has brought together the international community of experts and decision makers of the entire Battery Recycling value chain, including battery recyclers and manufacturers, collection organizations, OEM’s, policymakers, materials and services providers and many more.

Don’t miss this unique opportunity to get valuable industry insights and engage in the most inspiring discussions and unrivalled networking opportunities amongst the leading experts in the field of battery recycling!

Contact ICM AG E: info@icm.ch https://events.icm.ch/event/0ed92807-fd1d452a-8d20-d24ba90095aa/summary

Anaheim, USA

RE+ September 19 – 22 Anaheim, California. USA RE+ brings the modern energy industry together to foster a cleaner future for all. The largest and most comprehensive event in North America for the clean energy industry, RE+ is comprised of: Solar Power International (our flagship event), Energy Storage International, RE+ Power (including wind, and hydrogen and fuel cells), and RE+ Infrastructure (electric vehicles and microgrids) and brings together an extensive alliance of renewable energy leaders for multiple days of programming and networking opportunities.

RE+ sets the standard for clean energy events as the fastest growing and largest solar show in North America, as recognized by Trade Show Executive and Trade Show News Network.

RE+ has also been among the Gold 100 for ten years running and has previously been named “Best Use of Technology” and “Stickiest Show Floor”

by Trade Show Executive for the innovative ways in which attendees stay engaged -- the only solar and storage event to receive such a distinction.

Contact Solar Power Events E: registration@re-plus.com www.re-plus.com

Contact Messe Dusseldorf www.decarbxpo.com

World Energy Storage Day — WESD September 22 Join global thought leaders driving green energy and clean transportation and let’s together commemorate the movement that can transform the planet.

With a rising focus on the effective integration of renewable energy, the importance of electric vehicle and reliable, resilient energy supply, energy storage is becoming an increasingly important tool in the electricity ecosystem.

With Energy Storage rising to the forefront of industry developments, various global industry stakeholders, policy makers, think tanks and associations to acknowledge its importance across the globe commemorate World Energy Storage Day on 22nd September every year.

Contact www.energystorageday.org

Automotive Supplier Summit October 10 Wolfsburg, Germany Meet the key players of the automotive industry at the B2B Management Conference with accompanying exhibition in Wolfsburg - the home of the worlds biggest Automotive OEM. Discuss the current challenges of the automotive industry and the future of the automotive supply chain industry.

Take the chance to connect with experts and executives at B2B meetings, and in the exclusive tradeshow that accompanies the summit.

The Automotive Supplier Summit @ IZB2022 will take place as a hybrid event, both in Wolfsburg and online.

Wolfsburg, Germany

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Contact IPM AG www.automotivesuppliersummit.com

Batteries International • Summer 2022 • 85

FORTHCOMING EVENTS Energy Storage Canada

Future Battery Forum

October 11 – 12 Toronto, Canada

November 3 – 4 Berlin, Germany

Energy Storage Canada’s Annual Conference – Accelerating Canada’s Energy Transition is pleased to be back in person this year with virtual content from the event available to all attendees post conference.

Energy Storage Canada’s 2022 conference will concentrate on the acceleration of the implementation of energy storage as a means of realizing energy storage’s capacity to serve as a critical driver in Canada’s on-going energy transition.

Industry and policy leaders in Canada and around the world acknowledge the need for energy storage. Join us to learn more about how Canada’s energy industry is helping the country reach its Net Zero goals.

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.

Contact Energy Storage Canada E: information@energystoragecanada.org www.energystoragecanada.org

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, costeffective 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.

Batteries Event October 18 – 21 Lyon, France Batteries 2022 will cover all aspects of the battery circular economy, beginning from the production of the battery through raw materials, battery manufacturing, battery use and safety, management and applications, going through market trends, research and development, new technologies and finally closing the loop with a focus on recycling, second life and regulations.

Contact Avicenne Energy • www.batteriesevent.com

Contact IPM AG • www.futurebattery.eu

Global Automotive Components and Suppliers Expo November 8 – 10 Stuttgart, Germany

Contact UKi Media & Events www.globalautomotivecomponentsandsuppliersexpo.com/en/

Advanced Automotive Battery Conference USA — AABC USA December 5 – 8 San Diego, California, USA AABC was founded more than 20 years ago to review the status of automotive battery technology and provide informed glimpses into the future.

The 2022 program will uncover the underlying technical and business issues that will impact the pace and path of vehicle electrification worldwide.

Join us in San Diego to network with chief battery technologists from leading automotive OEMs, who will share their development trends and projected battery needs, as well as their key suppliers who will present their latest offerings and roadmaps for the future.

Contact Cambridge EnerTech E: ce@cambridgeenertech.com www.advancedautobat.com/us

The Smarter E India & Power 2 Drive — ees December 7 – 9 Gujarat, India With three parallel energy exhibitions, The smarter E India is India’s innovation hub for the new energy world. It presents cross-sector energy solutions and technologies and reflects the interaction of the solar, energy storage and electric mobility industry.

The smarter E India addresses all the key areas along the value chain and brings together local experts and international stakeholders in the energy future.

The smarter E India brings together the renowned Intersolar India, ees India and Power2Drive India. ees India is India’s leading electrical energy storage exhibition. ees India will focus on batteries, electrical energy storage technologies and systems attracting investors, utilities, installers, manufacturers and project developers from all over the world.

Contact Kristin Merz, Solar Promotion E: merz@solarpromotion.com www.thesmartere.in/home

Lyon, France

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Stuttgart, Germany

Gujarat, India

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FORTHCOMING EVENTS exhibition showcasing various new products and technologies of battery industry.

InterBattery 2023 attracts more than 400 exhibitors(domestic/overseas) and 1,200 booths including global top corporates of battery manufacturers such as Samsung SDI, LG Energy solution, SK On, CATL. CHARGE Your Business through InterBattery 2023!

Contact InterBattery Secretariat E: interbattery@coex.co.kr www.interbattery.or.kr/en/ Long Beach, USA

Tokyo, Japan

Intersolar North America

Battery Japan

February 14 – 16, 2023 Long Beach, California, USA

March 15 – 17, 2023 Tokyo, Japan

Dedicated to accelerating the energy transition #isnaesna23 will bring installers, developers, utilities, technology providers, policy makers, and key stakeholders from around the world together for three days of impactful learning, networking and business.

With a comprehensive conference programme, lively Solar Games competition, and immersive exhibit hall experience, #isnaesna23 will deliver energy professionals an unmatched opportunities to gain critical insights, make meaningful connections and source quality products.

Battery technologies are the key to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 as they will largely contribute to the popularisation of renewable energy and EVs. BATTERY JAPAN gathers a broad range of technologies, components, materials, and devices for rechargeable batteries development & production.

The show attracts professionals from all over the world.

Contact Diversified Communications www.intersolar.us

Intersolar Middle East March 14 – 16, 2023 Dubai, UAE

Contact RX Japan E: wsew.jp@rxglobal.com www.wsew.jp/hub/en-gb/about/bj.html

InterBattery March 15 – 17, 2023 Seoul, Korea First launched in 2013 in Seoul, Korea, InterBattery is Korea’s leading battery

International Battery Seminar and Exhibit March 20 – 23, 2023 Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA 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.

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.

Contact Cambridge EnerTech E: ce@cambridgeenertech.com www.internationalbatteryseminar.com

Middle East Energy (MEE), Intersolar, and ees, the leading energy exhibitions are joining hands to co-deliver an outstanding renewables and energy storage event at Middle East Energy.

Renewables and energy storage at MEE is the largest gathering of solar and renewable energy industry professionals in the Middle East & Africa, offering the most effective trade focused platform to international manufacturers and distributors looking to meet regional buyers.

Intersolar and ees conferences provide solar and energy industries with platforms for sharing information and strategies. In collaboration with speakers, participants and partners, we shape the energy supply of the future.

Contact Solar Promotion www.intersolar.ae/en/home

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Seoul, Korea

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LIST OF ADVERTISERS

Our advertisers enjoy their elite status with us! Join them!

Company

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Accurate Products

58

Accumalux

33

Advanced Battery Concepts

93

Atomized Products

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Batek Makina

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Battery Show U.S

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CAM srl

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Colorobbia Italia

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Dalton Engineering

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HADI Offerman

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Hammond Group, Inc

IFC, 1

IKA Works

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Inbatec MAC Engineering

68, 69 OBC, 78

Maccor

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Novanta Photonics

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Penox Group

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Sasha’s International, Inc

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Volta Materials Technology

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Contact Karen Hampton: karen@batteriesinternational.com or call +44 7792 852337

90 • Batteries International • Spring 2022

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UNSUNG HEROES: GEORGES LECLANCHÉ Georges Leclanché, the 19th century scientist and inventor is largely forgotten outside of France. But a billion flashlights across the world wouldn’t be shining without his invention, writes Dominic Cleary.

Turbulent chemistry for turbulent times So much in so little time. Georges Leclanché, creator of the dry cell battery, was only 43 when he died.

Yet his legacy — found in the multibillions of flashlight-style batteries scattered in homes across the world — has been global in impact.

Leclanché lived through a turbulent and desperate time for his native France — years of revolutions, anarchy, war and occupation. Twice during his life his family were political refugees forced to flee from their homes.

Leclanché was born in 1839 at Parmain to the north of Paris. His father, Léopold Leclanché, a prominent lawyer and a collaborator of the political revolutionary Ledru Rollin was forced to flee the country in June 1849.

A peaceful protest against the first president of the republic, the newly elected Louis-Napoléon, turned nasty. His enemies called it armed insurrection. Three years later Louis-Napoléon staged a coup d’état, re-added Bonaparte to his name and became king of France and better known as Napoléon III. At the age of nine, Georges Leclanché left his native France for the then calmer shores of England. His first interest in electricity and batteries were thus stimulated by the enormous impact Michael Faraday, the inventor of the electric dynamo and much more, had on the wave of interest in science that swept across Britain in the 1830s and 1840s.

It was only in 1856 that it was considered safe enough for the 17-yearold Leclanché to return to France; he studied metallurgy at the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures in Paris, graduating four years later as a qualified engineer.

His first job was a crucial one for the eventual development of his battery. Working for the train company, Compagnie des Chemins de fer de

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Leclanché died in September 1882. He was just 43 little knowing he had revolutionized the world l’Est, his job was to develop the rudimentary electrical systems used for signalling the length of the 500km line to Strasbourg. The problem for signalling in the formative days of the railways was more than just the ability to communicate in the early days of the Morse code — it was creating the infrastructure needed to transmit signals.

So it was here that Leclanché started his research into batteries.

Battery technology had come some way from Luigi Galvani’s discovery around 1783, the so-called ‘frog leg experiment’— from Galvani’s belief in a form of animal electricity, to the

search for a ‘galvanic cell’ based on chemical reactions. Leclanché’s first experiments looked at exploiting the oxidation properties of copper carbonate.

Leclanché’s research was interrupted by yet more political trouble in France. In 1863 a crisis emerged when Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte’s Second Empire came under threat from legislative elections that threatened to limit his powers. Troops went on the streets.

For the second time in his life he went into exile. This time to Brussels, where he lived close to Victor Hugo, the French playwright and family.

The exile was to last a further seven years until the end of the Second Empire.

Working in his shed, he continued to experiment and improve on his designs, moving from a battery using copper carbonate (which he patented in 1866), to one using manganese, which went on to be shown in 1867 at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, where it was awarded a bronze medal.

Until Leclanché, most batteries had been based on Alessandro Volta’s 1800 design. The most popular in Leclanché’s time was Planté’s lead acid battery. In 1860 this had been demonstrated using long foil strips, which were wound spirally with intermediate layers of cloth, then immersed in a solution of 10% sulphuric acid. This was capable of high power, but also heavy, and the chemicals dangerous.

Leclanché’s cell, called a “wet cell”, replaced Planté’s lead with zinc and a carbon-manganese dioxide mixture. He also replaced the sulphuric acid with much less toxic ammonium chloride. This meant the cell was lighter; its safety and lightness was considered perfect for use in signalling, requiring occasional short-burst use and little maintenance.

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UNSUNG HEROES: GEORGES LECLANCHÉ Leclanché’s first battery wasn’t the sealed flashlight-style unit we think of today. Instead, open-topped glass jars, about 20cm high, were used to contain the various chemicals.

The first batteries kept the elements separate using a porous pot, allowing the liquid electrolyte to pass through it. In 1871, the manganese dioxide/ carbon mixture was moulded into two blocks, held in place around the 4mm-5mm carbon plate by rubber bands. In a later development, the porous pot was replaced by a canvas container, and the zinc rod changed to a cylinder to increase the surface area and lower the internal resistance.

In 1867, only a year after patenting his invention, he was already so confident of its success that he quit his job to promote the battery.

He was helped both by his father’s legal advice, and assistance from a Belgian friend, Charles Mourlon.

Mourlon who helped him industrialise the product, put him in contact with the Belgian telegraph service, and after testing, they adopted the Leclanché battery for their network; the Dutch railways did the same, and a workshop was set up in Brussels to produce the batteries for them.

In 1871 the Mourlon-Leclanché factory was employing five workers, run from the ground floor of a small white-shuttered building in Brussels on rue d’Aerschot. That year political events at home allowed him to return to Paris with the restoration of what became known as the third republic and the end to the Franco-Prussian war that May. And in one of the ironic twists of history, this time it was Napoléon III’s turn for exile. Captured the September before in the ineptly handled Battle of Sedan against the Prussians, he was deposed in absentia. He died in England three years later.

Leclanché opened a studio at 9, rue de Laval in Paris and settled down. At this point love entered his life and in 1873 he married Gabrielle Clémentine-Lannes. Two children followed swiftly — Max-Georges in 1874 and Marianne en 1876.

The year of Marianne’s birth was an important one in the breakthrough of the development of his battery. He succeeded in gelifying the electrolyte through the addition of starch. This immediately made the battery easy to transport.

Leclanché formed a partnership with Ernest Barbier and a new Leclan-

92 • Batteries International • Summer 2022

In 1871, the manganese dioxide/carbon mixture was moulded into two blocks, held in place around the 4mm-5mm carbon plate by rubber bands. In a later development, the porous pot was replaced by a canvas container, and the zinc rod changed to a cylinder to increase the surface area and lower the internal resistance

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UNSUNG HEROES: GEORGES LECLANCHÉ Leclanché’s first exile followed a peaceful protest against the first president of the republic, the newly elected Louis-Napoléon. Three years later Louis-Napoléon staged a coup d’état, re-added Bonaparte to his name and became king of France and better known as Napoléon III ché-Barbier battery was announced.

Fate was on his side this time. It was perfectly timed to coincide with the arrival of the telephone — commercialization of which started in France the following year — as well as the steady boom in rail. Leclanche-Barbier were the only makers of batteries in France.

Around this time his health started to fail. The end came after a long illness and he died in September 1882.

He was just 43.

The story doesn’t end there.

His son Max followed in his footsteps, studying chemistry and gaining a doctorate in 1895. He continued researching and improving the battery, replacing what had been a porous ceramic pot with a hessian bag to hold the powdered coal and manganese dioxide mixture. Meanwhile his brother, Mauritius, took over directing the business, until his death in 1923. The company has changed hands and names many times since and is now part of Alcatel.

Leclanché lies buried in the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris. Perversely, even in death he was unable to escape the turbulent history of his times. Not far from his grave lies the remains of his father’s revolutionary friend Ledru Rollin which again is just yards away from the famous Mur des Fédérés where 147 revolutionary communards were shot just days before his return from Belgium.

WHAT MADE THE LECLANCHÉ BATTERY SO SUCCESSFUL? It certainly had drawbacks — it wasn’t rechargeable, it had a lower energy density than other battery designs, it didn’t perform well in temperatures below freezing point, and it could have a tendency to leakage.

But it was cheap. It became the first practical commercial battery product.

The Leclanché battery became hugely popular for a wide range of domestic uses, due to the low cost of manufacture, and especially the relative safety of the materials, making it. Boosted by the original large-scale production, its profile grew, and it evolved into a wide range of sizes

94 • Batteries International • Summer 2022

of strengths, from the original 1.5V through to 9V. Alexander Graham Bell’s preferred use of the battery for demonstrations of early telephones also helped.

Another early modification which improved safety and handling was an innovation by Carl Gassner, who swapped a paste for the liquid that had enabled the transfer of charge, not just in Leclanché’s, but batteries in general.

During the 20th century, it proved to be perfect for the growing domestic consumer market. The 1960 Eveready battery handbook devoted a few

pages to research on the Leclanché based cells, stating that a higher percentage of carbon gave higher currents, but with a lower capacity.

Research like this helped improve the performance by 700% between 1920 and 1990, so it was still finding use in a modified version inside the disposable Polaroid PolaPulse camera.

Though they have lost market share in recent years to newer types of longer-lasting alkaline batteries, his battery cells are still among the most popular consumer batteries we have today.

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d r o w t s a l The Yes, it’s Milan folks!

Batteries International can exclusively reveal the location of the 2024 ELBC event. Yes, it’s Milan.

And not Milan, Michigan — but Milan, Italy.

An aside, why do Americans want to confuse us with their strange geography? Just think of this year’s BCI muddle of Naples? Next they’ll want to hold it in Rome (Georgia).

When questioned the steely-eyed Maura McDermott, playing with her Martel ‘Skinner’ hunting knife in a friendly manner, said the ILA would not confirm or deny it.

She did whisper before leaving… “and don’t forget, I know which trailer park you live in”.

All were not convinced, however.

In the snowy wastes of northern England, a plaintive Steve Barnes crawled out of his igloo to mutter: “How can they be so sure? I still think Austria’s a good capital city for me — I’ll stick with my hunches.”

In search of the Women’s Group scoop

Ale’s well, that ends well Congratulations to newshound John Shepherd, and incoming editor to Batteries International, who managed to sneak himself into the WGBI meeting at BCI in May. The hirsuitically challenged John — whose shiny pate is indicative of great depths of thought — said it was easy to get past security to the event. “I simply found a friendly colleague and smuggled myself in — look no hands.”

Every good batteryman — or woman for that matter — is known to have a genetic imperative to find the perfect electrolyte, especially after a busy conference day.

So top marks to Pinflow co-founder Jirí Vrána who adapted his flow battery tank at the IFBF to serve up glasses of the finest Czech beer to delegates.

Jirí reckoned the Pilsner had an energy density of 400Wh per litre. Needless to say some managed to drink their week’s units in an evening.

96 • Batteries International • Summer 2022

Spirit of Ukraine energizes conference Hats off to Ukrainian Andrii Bondar who turned up at the International Flow Battery Conference in Brussels to promote his company and country.

Andrii, 28, is head of the chemical department at Kness in Vinnytsya, Ukraine, In a show of defiance and resilience, Andrii wore national dress for the IFBF event.

Slava Ukraini!

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