Continuing a common theme among some presenters at The Battery Show North America, the CEO and founder of Pure Lithium, which is betting on lithium vanadium, framed the company’s efforts as a way to end China’s dominance in the battery market.
“The U.S. is facing an existential crisis, and that is the extinction of the U.S. automotive industry,” Emilie Bodoin said. “But unlike the dinosaurs, we can see this comet coming. We’re literally in a cold war with China over supply chain.”
Pure Lithium may not be the only company pursuing lithium metal technology as an alternative to lithium ion batteries, but it is a vertically integrated one that is able to handle everything from material sourcing to manufacturing the lithium anodes and vanadium cathodes that power its products.
Bodoin, who founded the company with noted battery expert Donald Sadoway – who also started liquid battery company Ambri – said Pure Lithium has already secured enough material to power 50 million EVs.
She asserted that the battery industry is overdue for a new chemistry, as the only two that have been commercialized for gigawatt scale are lead acid and lithium ion. She said that replacing graphite – 77% of which comes from China – cuts the weight and volume of a battery by 50%. “So, we have at least twice the capacity, half of the weight, and our battery eliminates graphite, nickel, cobalt, and dependence on China.”
The hurdle the company faced was how to manufacture lithium vanadium cells. Others have tried using molten salt electrolysis, Bodoin said, but that has drawbacks such as releasing chlorine gas and halide salts due to its pure lithium chloride feedstock. It results in an ingot, which also proved problematic because it couldn’t be extruded to be thin enough to be effective.
Pure Lithium’s solution? Electrodeposition, which is how copper, nickel and other metals are made. “We take a proprietary membrane that blocks water and conducts lithium, and we take lithium brine, aqueous sources of lithium, and we put it into our reactor, and we electroplate a perfect lithium metal electrode that's lithium on copper that can go directly into the battery in one step,” she said.
Bodoin claims the result is drastically reduced cost, even compared to lithium-ion tech. Lithium metal from extrusion is about $3,650 per kWh. Lithium-ion batteries in America are about $100/kWh. Pure Lithium’s electrodeposition process makes the batteries for $15/kWh. Bodoin also said the company cut the time from acquiring minerals to completing the battery from about 547 days to just 48 hours. She said that translates to big cost and greenhouse-gas reductions for the process.
Bodoin’s most emphatic point, perhaps, was the safety advantages of Pure Lithium’s technology. Compared to the NMC chemistry of most lithium-ion batteries, lithium vanadium batteries don’t face the same thermal runaway problems. “Vanadium oxide itself is stable up to 1,800 degrees C,” she said. “That’s enough of a temperature difference that means we don’t have to worry about that,” even though some additive materials lower that threshold to 700 C.
Earlier this year, Yahoo News reported that Pure Lithium entered an agreement with E3 Lithium out of Alberta to complete design and preproduction work to create an “economic assessment of a commercial lithium metal battery.”
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