The highway from Dubai International Airport to the Emirate of Ras al-Khaimah (RAK) passes a desalination plant near the border with Sharjah, which is already large and is in the process of being extended. The immediate and obvious product is fresh water; the need for it is visible every mile of the journey, with new offices, homes, hotels, leisure facilities and commercial buildings reaching into the sky in every direction. But it has a very useful byproduct: Sodium Chloride salt, which is the basis of chemical industries across the world and has the potential to be a key raw material in energy storage – of which more anon.
I was there to attend an International Workshop on Advanced Materials (IWAM) at the Movenpick Resort Hotel on the recently-created Marjan Island.
RAK is not blessed with the hydrocarbon deposits of its larger and better-known neighbours. The Emirate’s ruler, His Highness Sheik Saud Bin Saqr Al Qasami (pictured left, greeting me on the steps of the Palace), is keen that it should develop as a place for business and manufacturing, and as a centre of excellence for technology.
Energy management
The modern world runs on energy, whether generated by fossil
fuels or by other means. The biggest challenge for the most widely adopted
alternative power sources – wind and solar – is that they don’t work when the
air is still and the sun isn’t shining. On the other hand, when the wind is
blowing strongly and the sun shines brightly, they can produce more power than
can be used, leaving loads of useful power to go to waste.
Management of energy is becoming more and more important. Four
speakers at the Workshop addressed the subject of batteries for energy storage.
Lithium-ion (Li-ion) technology is familiar and is at
commercial scale but there is no getting away from the fact that it uses
materials that are expensive and increasingly hard to find, in commercial
quantities. There are also question marks about other metals used in Li-ion
batteries – cobalt, in particular. As well as being expensive and relatively
rare, working conditions in cobalt mines have attracted negative publicity. Two
of the speakers – Pieremanuele Canepa, of the Department of Materials Science and
Engineering at the National University of Singapore, and Rafaele J Clement, of
the Materials Department at University of California, Santa Barbara – gave
presentations on the potential for Sodium-ion (Na-ion) batteries, of which more
in a moment.
Li-ion: Second Life is a two-edged sword
“Lithium is a rare earth element but it
is everywhere – it’s even found in seawater,” Gerbrand Ceder, Samsung
distinguished Professor in Engineering at the National Academy of Engineering,
University of California, Berkeley he said. “Concentrated deposits were first
discovered in South America; we’re now moving on to the less concentrated.”
He focused on the use of Nickel and Cobalt, the other two main components of current generation of Li-ion batteries. As the use of electricity grows and the need for storage capacity increases with it, to TeraWatt hour (TWh) levels of need, the existing Li-ion industry will face a serious challenge to scale up to meet demand with the existing use of Nickel (Ni) and Cobalt (Co) in cathodes. A new and emerging technology uses disordered rocksalt cathodes (DRX), which can be synthesised with any metal – thus reducing or even eliminating dependence on Ni and Co.
“The industry has talked about recycling
Li-ion batteries but we now know that a 10-year-old battery still has 80%
capacity. They are too valuable to shred; the challenge is to make more of the
valuable Li-ion,” he explained.
DRX technology means that Titanium (Ti)
and Manganese (Mn), which are cheaper and more plentiful than Ni and Co, can be
used in their stead. The industry has been striving to reduce disorder but it
is that very characteristic that makes Ti and Mn cathodes work. It also reduces
oxygen release.
While the Li-on industry has struggled to
sustain its rapid rate growth, Prof Ceder believes that situation will be
temporary – but that the world will never have enough Cobalt and Nickel mining,
which is already huge, would have to triple in size to meet projected demand –
and Indonesia, one of the countries currently sourcing NI, is restricting
exports. “A lot of these countries want to keep their raw metals and build
upgrading capabilities themselves,” he observed.
DRX technology was discovered in 2014.
Li-ion technology has been around since 1991 and is established at commercial
scale. Industry has resistance to change and would probably prefer the
established, reliable sources but reliability won’t go on for ever. The scale
of demand by 2040 is such that industrial minds are very likely to be
concentrated and more efficient production of alternatives will be developed
quite quickly – although DRX-cathode batteries may not appear in cars; they may
be more useful in other applications. Watch this space.
Energy management: introducing Na-ion
While renewable energy generation sources, such as wind and
solar power, are gaining share seemingly by leaps and bounds, their problem is
that they don’t work when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining – a
particular issue in higher latitudes, such as in the UK. At other times, the
wind (for example) can blow rather hard; so hard, in fact, that turbines have
to be switched off and disconnected from the Grid, to stop it being overloaded.
If the industry is not to follow the destructive route of building fossil fuel surge
capacity, its challenge is to design and deliver a system that can be scaled up
and enable excess production to be harvested and stored, for use when wind and
sun are not available.
Ministers and others in power (I’m thinking of Ed Milliband):
please note. Fossil fuel surge capacity is destructive and expensive. How do
you think we got to the situation where the UK’s energy costs twice as much as
the European average?
Li-ion batteries use material in too short supply to provide
storage management solutions at the necessary Grid-level scale. The emerging
storage technology, which shows a lot of promise, uses Sodium ion (Na-ion),
rather than Lithium. It is found in the oceans and every large body of water
across the world. The salt deposits in Cheshire and Teesside were one of the
reasons why the Romans invaded Britain, in AD55 – nearly 2000 years ago – and
remain the basis of the UK chemical industry today. Desalination plants, such
as those found in the UAE, make salt as a by-product. Find a means of producing
Na-ion batteries at scale and the management challenge may be solved.
“Sodium is more abundant and more widespread than Lithium –
but the ions are bigger. This means that Na-ion battery cells will be lower
voltage and also heavier than Li-ion,” said Dr Raphaele J Clement, Assistant
Professor, Materials Department, University of California, Santa Barbara. They
are also currently made using an energy-intensive ball milling process. Despite
those downsides, Earth-abundant elements and materials are required because
demand for transition metals is forecast to reach around seven million tonnes a
year by 2060. Li-ion on its own cannot supply power generation and energy
storage for 60 million vehicles a year.
“Na-ion batteries won’t be suitable for cars because they need
lightness. They don’t have the same energy density as Li-ion but they offer
possibilities for renewable energy management,” she said. Large Na-ion plants,
on the beach near offshore wind farms, could store excess energy generated at
off-peak and extra windy times, and harvest solar energy during the day for use
at night. Heavier weight and lower energy density would be less of a handicap
with large, stationary units.
“There are two main aspects,” said Dr Pieremanuele Canepa, Assistant Professor, Materials Science and Engineering, National University of Singapore. “One is definitely grid applications. Think in terms of micro grids, supplementing the grid, or even balancing the grid, with balanced integrators. Imagine you have a sudden surge of current and you need to deliver then the battery can kick in right away.” There are, currently, no demonstration or commercial plants currently in existence but Prof Canepa said there are three or four companies around the world that are investing in research and development – one of them in the UK.
Faradion (https://faradion.co.uk/; https://x.com/faradion_uk) based in Sheffield, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of India’s Reliance Industries, so it has realistic backing. Faradion delivered and installed a battery pack to a trial site in the Yarra Valley, New South Wales, Australia, and a company called AceOn was awarded a £1 million grant by Innovate UK to accelerate development work on its mobile solar energy storage unit, which uses Faradion Na-ion batteries in its projects in sub-Saharan Africa.
They still have a role even in transport, as they are
lighter and more energy-dense than lead-acid. Furthermore, the demand for
renewable energy even just from transport means that the UK will require around
40% more generating capacity by 2040. While it won’t all come from renewables –
as the Establishment finally seems to be realising – a fair chunk will, so
there is going to be a big need for efficient storage and management solutions.
Larger-scale applications, including strategic transport such
as ships and trains as well as energy management at grid level, are most
obviously suitable for Na-ion solutions. But China battery manufacturer CATL,
which supplies Tesla, has announced that it is moving into Na-ion battery
production and JAC Motors, another Chinese automotive company, has produced a
car called the Hua Xianzi (Flower Fairy), a compact vehicle fitted with a 25kwH
Na-ion battery from HiNa Battery Technologies, that can travel up to 250 km on
a single charge.
Na-ion might not be ideal for everyday transport but it is
not completely excluded. The car may renew its role as the Machine That Changed
the World, for a second century.
Solar power: the source of the future?
PV (photovoltaic) applications are forecast to provide up to
50% of energy by 2060. The gap to there may seem large at the moment but the
use of materials like Germanium in solar pv panels reduces what is called the
‘bandgap’; this means that connectivity within the solar cell is improved,
meaning less wastage.
Professor Andrew B Holmes, Melbourne Laureate Professor
Emeritus, University of Melbourne, Australia, is an expert on Thin Film Organic
and Perovskite Solar Cells. Perovskites are materials with a particular crystal
structure that was first discovered in Tsarist Russia in 1839, in a mineral
called Perovskite. Their two positively charged ions (A and B) are of different
sizes; the third ion (X) is negatively charged and bonds to both the positives.
Perovskite solar cells include a hybrid organic-inorganic material, usually
lead or tin halide-based, in the light-harvesting layer. Perovskite materials
are cheap to produce and simple to manufacture, which has obvious attractions to
any country or organisation seeking low-cost energy generation. The latest
developments including improved stability and advances in efficiencies of over
20%, in laboratory conditions.
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