Filed under: Emerging Technologies, EV/Plug-in
Forget peak oil. Are we facing peak lithium?
Lithium ion battery technology is all the rage when talking about future vehicle propulsion systems. Everybody wants lithium ion batteries because so far they are the only electro-chemical batteries devised that come close to providing the energy density necessary to be truly useful for passenger vehicles. There are lots of promising variations that may be able to improve the lifespan and chargeability of such cells, but one question has remained unasked. At least until now. The ability of the electrical grid to support large scale use of EVs is an open question, although some recent studies seem to indicate that having vehicles charged mostly at night, might be beneficial. The new question is "Where do we get the lithium?"
In a story in the Toronto Star, William Tahil, research director with Meridian International Research asserts that there isn't enough lithium available to mine to support the world's 900 million vehicles. Evidently most of the known supplies of lithium are in South America, in Argentina, Chile and Bolivia, potentially making them the new OPEC. Bolivia alone may have fifty percent of the world's metal lithium reserves. Production of 60 million PHEVs with smaller lithium batteries than would be needed for a full EV would require 420,000 tonnes of lithium every year, which is six times the current production level. So it looks like any potential savings from mass producing lithium batteries, could easily get negated and then some just by increasing demand driving up raw material costs.
Tahil proposes that battery research should be more focused on technology that uses more common metals like nickel and zinc. The article mentions sodium nickel chloride (Zebra) batteries and zinc air batteries. The Zebra batteries apparently tolerate cold and hot temperatures well, something lithium batteries generally don't. It looks like we need to start looking past lithium even before it gets established.
Related:
[Source: Toronto Star]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Howard Lee Harkness 2:31PM (1/30/2007)
Lithium does not have a history of heavy demand or extremely high price, so it would be expected that current production is not adequate for a large increase in demand.
I would be willing to bet money that substantial additional reserves will be found if the price gets high enough. It's not exactly a rare element, and I would be really surprised if nature packed half of the world's supply in Bolivia.
Worst case, sodium is chemically similar to lithium (although with a weight penalty), and I would expect that a sodium-based battery could be built using very similar technology, possibly even with similar cost/performance. There is certainly no shortage of sodium...
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Tim 3:59PM (1/30/2007)
I would be more comfortable if the US had a very large indigenous supply of lithium. We don't. We do however have lots of salt. Hopefully by the time (or if) this becomes a problem super capacitor or other battery chemistry will be available. Keep researching!!
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Tim 4:53PM (1/30/2007)
Here is an interesting paper from Germany dated 8/11/06 regarding Zebra batteries that were extensively tested for traction use. http://www-users.rwth-aachen.de/Babak.Parkhideh/ZEBRA_Aug17.pdf. Zebras have high power, high energy, long life, all at a fraction of the cost of L-ion. Worth reading and may be a better candidate price vs. capability than even the new L-ions. Cost comparison per kWh is £70-200 for Zebra, 250-1000 for L-Ion and 250-350 for NiMh. This sounds pretty good to me.
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Clay 12:48AM (1/31/2007)
unfortunately, if zebra batteries were put into a roadster it would do 0-60 in something like 20 seconds :(
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Bob Seeley 4:28AM (1/31/2007)
If EESTOR has anything to say about it, this is all simply academic.
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Phil L. 9:07AM (1/31/2007)
I wish EESTOR would say more about what they've done. Whenever a company reassures us that their technology is so good that they can't tell us about it, I presume it doesn't work...
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Damion 5:46PM (1/31/2007)
Clay can you explain why it would take 20 seconds?
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Chris M 10:16PM (1/31/2007)
Sodium nickle chloride "Zebra" batteries have a high energy density but a low power density, they could give an EV long range, but not good acceleration or a high top speed.
Lead acid batteries have low energy density but high power density, giving amazing acceleration to electric drag racers but having a short range.
LiIon provides both high power density and fairly high energy density, making them nearly ideal for high performance electric cars.
In all cases, both total available power and total energy can be increased by increasing the battery pack size, with the penalty of additional cost and weight.
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Jameson 10:18PM (1/31/2007)
Considering only 7.5 million vehicles were sold in the US in 2004, the 60 million PHEV's per year is quite an exaggeration.
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Sam Abuelsamid 6:29AM (2/01/2007)
Jameson, the US market has been running at a 16-17 million vehicle annual sales pace for more than a decade. Sixty million worldwide is about right. You are probably thinking of cars only. The US market has been more than 50% trucks for several years
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Tim 9:54AM (2/01/2007)
Chris M- That's why it is best to use Zebras (which are much cheaper than L-Ion) in concert with Ultracaps which have a far greater energy density.
http://www.evworld.com/view.cfm?page=article&storyid=1138 Would you like a little peanut butter with your chocolate?
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Clay 1:42PM (2/03/2007)
Damion: I take Chris M's comment as my answer.
On a different note (sort of), i realy do hope that sodium battery technology develops to the same standards as Lithium. it would be so great if ultracapacitors were developed to ev standards as well.
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Wayne Brown 11:51PM (2/05/2007)
Mr. Tahil’s basis for this article is built upon a statement in a paper he authored & remains at his company’s website:
http://www.meridian-int-res.com/Projects/L...m_Problem_2.pdf
On page 12 of this report he states; “Existing LiIon/LiMP “Energy Batteries” for EVs require about 0.3kg of Lithium metal equivalent per kWh, in the form of Lithium Carbonate.” He then continues in this paper & his ‘Peak Lithium’ EV World article to state that it takes 1.4kg/kWh of Lithium Carbonate Li2CO3 to build each kilowatt hour of an EV battery. This premise is completely in error & I show why below.
Saft, which is one of best known, most respected & oldest Lithium Ion battery manufacturers in the world publishes the ‘lithium content’ of their Li-Ion batteries.
Let’s take a look at some Saft Li-Ion rechargeable batteries that use lithium carbonate in their makeup. One can open the following Link & navigate down to their ‘Lithium – ion batteries’ to confirm the figures I post below:
http://www.saftbatteries.com//140-general/80-20_download.asp
If you click on the ‘MP 176065’ as provided in the following link:
http://www.saftbatteries.com//130-Catalogu...F/mp_176065.pdf
You will see that this Li-ion battery is rated as follows:
Nominal voltage: 3.75 Volts
Capacity: 6.8 Ah
Lithium equivalent content: 2.0 g
Nominal energy: 26 Wh
Now let’s do the math for everyone to see:
1kWh or 1,000Wh / 26Wh = 38.46 of these batteries to make 1kWh
38.46 Saft MP 176065 batteries X 2.0g Lithium equivalent each = 76.92g of lithium equivalent
If you add up the molecular weight of lithium carbonate (Li2CO3) & then figure what the percentage of lithium is, you find that lithium makes up 18.8% or .188 of Li2CO3.
76.92 / .188 = 409.15g of Lithium Carbonate in 1kWh of this Saft Li-ion battery.
This is only 0.409kg/kWh --- NOT 1.4kg/kWh, Mr. Tahil’s basis for this article.
0.409kg/kWh is extremely close to the figure (0.431) that the UN & the US-DOT & several Li-Ion battery companies tell us we need to use when determining the lithium content of a Li-ion battery. They are having us figure a little high for transportation safety reasons.
Go ahead and open the other data sheets for the other Saft Li-ion batteries & do the analysis on each battery displaying the Lithium contents. They all fall in at around 0.409kg to 0.426kg per kWh which is extremely close to the 0.431kg/kWh as stated in an above commentary.
This means that we can build in excess of 1.5 Billion PHEV20 (more than 2 X all the world’s current vehicles) & use only 5,799,918 tonnes of Li2CO3. The USGS tells us in a 2000 study that we have 12,000,000 tonnes of Li2CO3 …. HOWEVER, Lithium can be & is being recycled from Li-Ion batteries. See TOXCO @:
http://www.toxco.com/processes.html
As can be seen, lithium is quite recyclable so, in reality we won’t even begin to approach using up half the world’s reserves by the time we have gotten around to building 1.5 billion PHEV vehicles; if we EVER make that many. It is estimated that the whole world only has 0.6 billion vehicles today.
Wayne Brown --- http://privatenrg.com
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Tim 10:38AM (2/06/2007)
Wayne Brown- Very good points!! Thank you for your analysis. Maybe we should quit playing Chicken Little and start freeing ourselves of foreign oil. I do, however think it's wise to seek other options such as Zebras and Ultracaps for both cost and security reasons. Then again, it's really all just academic if EEStore is correct. Wouldn't you agree? Time will tell.
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Wayne Brown 11:20PM (2/12/2007)
Hi Tim
Yes, I would agree; if EESTOR's EESU hypercapacitor goes into production as described in the patents, many other energy storage types of technology will begin to pale.
Interestingly, BASF has a some technology that makes EESTOR's claims not look so unbelievable.
Take a look at BASF patent applicatioin # 20050220993 at:
http://tinyurl.com/3ay3al
BASF is quite credible & they are claiming up to 5.5kWh/liter w/ a 200VDC barium titanate 'hyper-cap.'
If you run the numbers on the EESU 'hyper-cap,' EESTOR is only claiming 1.67kWh/liter.
Wayne -- http://privatenrg.com
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shane 3:18AM (3/01/2007)
Wayne,
You appear to have demonstrated an error in Tahils calculations but I'm confused by one of the final steps you make.
To get your estimate of 1.5 billion cars did you divide half of the known reserves by .409 kg OR did you start with 1.5 billion cars and estimate how much lithium was needed?
In either case you are assuming that you only need 1kWh... how big is your engine? If you have a 1kW engine (running at max power) then that thing is only going to run for 1 hour!
Tesla Motors [http://www.teslamotors.com/engineering/how_it_works.php]
states that their Power Electronics Module controls 200kW at peak acceleration... Your battery gives me 18 seconds of said acceleration. If the battery could even take that drain.
So, how much Li does each car need again?
"The Roadster contains 6,831 of them. They weigh about 1,000 pounds in total..."
[http://auto.howstuffworks.com/tesla-roadster.htm]
1 pound = 0.45359237 kilograms
=> 453.6 kg (but not all of this is Li)
Let's assume the 6,831 batteries are the same as the one you describe and contain 2 g of Li.
Thats, 13 kg of Li, that reduces your estimate of cars somewhat.
The Tesla engine is rated at 185kW (max at 13,000 rpm).
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Wayne Brown 10:16AM (3/15/2007)
Hi Shane,
The numbers I posted were for PHEV20. That would be Plug In Hybrid Electric Vehicle good for 20 miles of pure Electric operation. That is what was referenced in Tahil's article.
The class of PHEV20 he references in his paper has a 9 kWh (kilowatt hour) Li-Ion battery. He used this vehicle as an example because it has high potential for being the class of vehicle that much of the vehicle buying citizenship of the world might be able to afford. In concert with that thinking & for the sake of comparing apples to apples the following would apply:
9 kWh X 0.409 kg = 3.681 kg per PHEV20 battery
The paper states that we have 12,000,000 tonnes available in worldwide resources. We very likely have more but, we will stick with the paper's numbers.
1 metric tonne = 1,000 kg
12,000,000 tonnes X 1,000 kg = 12,000,000,000 kg
12,000,000,000 / 3.681 = 3,259,983,700 PHEV20
3.3 billion Possible
Even if we recycle nothing, we can build 1.5 billion of these PHEV20 per the paper's specs & still not use up half the world's reserves.
Again, we currently have a little more that 0.6 billion vehicles world-wide.
Lithium IS recyclable & expensive enough that there will be a solid market driven reason to recycle.
So, there is no way we will use up even half of the likely under-estimated world-wide resource even if we were to double the number of vehicles on the planet & make every single one of them a PHEV20.
Again, I was only referencing the PHEV20 as per the article.
If we took your 13kg per battery as you have figured for the Tesla then we could make 923,076,923 Teslas.
First, the cost of such a large array is going to be prohibitive for 99% of the world's pocket books but, we could still build more than 1.5 times more Teslas than the entire current world vehicle total.
All I really wanted to do was state clearly that there is very little need to be concerned with the world's Lithium supply peaking out very soon so, let's get on down with the road with a very promising, 'next-step' technology.
Best Regards,
Wayne -- http://privaternrg.com
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Wayne Brown 10:46AM (3/15/2007)
Hi Shane,
A small correction is needed above.
I looked up Tesla's battery capacity & it is actually 50kWh.
We need to redo your estimation of 13kg of Li per Tesla.
50 X 0.409kg/kWh = 20.45kg/Tesla Vehicle
So the above estimation of 923,076,923 Tesla vehicles should be 586,797,066; very close to the current total vehicle count world wide today.
Best Regards,
Wayne -- http://privatenrg.com
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RemyC 9:38AM (8/28/2007)
Interesting how all these oil, coal & nuclear lobby studies on the availability of lithium always omit to mention China, which has by far, the largest deposits... and since the Chinese are making deals with Native Americans to build electric cars on the Res... well... ouch! There goes Detroit.
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Kris 9:48AM (1/29/2008)
Hello Sam:
In response to your fear of "peak of lithium". Do your homework first. Let's start with Western Uranium Corp. (WUC - TSX VENTURE) - they have some 25bln lb of lithium deposits...and YES, it is in USA. At 400.000 tons required (as you stated)for batteries for some 6mln cars per year, WUC would be able to cover that requirement on its own for the next 30 years. Of course, it is obvious that one single mine will not be able to meet such a capacity. Thou, it just tells you that there is a lot of lithium not far away!
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