Bottled Lightning


Bottled Lightning: Superbatteries, Electric Cars, and the New Lithium Economy
By Seth Fletcher

:Main Points

A majority of the world reserves of lithium can be found in South America in Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. Here, the "Lithium Triangle" is home to a large number of salt flats that are rich with lithium- Salar de Uyuni (Bolivia), Salar de Atacama (Chile), and Salar del Hombre Puerto (Argentina). Estimated global lithium reserves and resources are 29.9 million tons and the current 
world lithium demand is 16,000 metric tons.

Nevada has lithium rich clay residing under more than 80% of the state's federal land. The McDermitt Caldera is one such example of an ancient volcano that collapsed on itself and is home to plenty of 
lithium, gallium, uranium, gold, etc. Western Lithium mines heavily here.

The future of batteries for electric cars is exciting. The threshold that the US Advanced Battery
 Consortium set was $200/kWh for a battery to be affordable. According to Electrek, the Tesla Model 3 will beat this threshold by targeting a battery cost of $150/kWh.



For a brief introduction on how batteries work and the historical debate between Luigi Galvani and Alessandro Volta, watch this Ted-Ed video

For a video on Tesla and Batteries, watch a lecture by Jeff Dahn, the inventor of the NMC (lithium-nickel-manganese-cobalt oxide)  battery cathode! This is used at a rate of 6,000 metric tons per year (1/10 Li-Ion cells have this materials).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Consider a Spherical Cow

Image
Consider a Spherical Cow: A Course in Environmental Problem Solving by John Harte Main Points: What is the "spherical cow" joke ? The phrase comes from a joke about theoreticians I first heard as a graduate student. Milk production at a dairy farm was low so the farmer wrote to the local university, asking help from academia. A multidisciplinary team of professors was assembled, headed by a theoretical physicist, and two weeks of intensive on-site investigation took place. The scholars then returned to the university, notebooks crammed with data, where the task of writing the report was left to the team leader. Shortly thereafter the farmer received the write-up and opened it to read on the first line: "Consider a spherical cow..." The Approach : The spherical cow approach to problem solving involves the stripping away of unnecessary detail, so that only the essentials remain. Of course, approaching the complex world from the spherical cow perspective...
Read more

The Quest

Image
The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World By Daniel Yergin Main Points: The book is split up into 5 sections detailing Modern Oil Market, Maintaining the Supply, the Age of Electricity, Climate Change, and the Rebirth of Renewables. The Modern Oil Markets center around developments of the key choke points for world oil supply: the Bosporus, the Malacca Strait, the Strait of Hormuz, the Suez Canal, the Strait of Bab El-Mandeb, and the Danish Straits. A significant amount of attention is placed up on the New Great Game between the United States and Russia over control of key oil regions in Central Asia. Yergin notably talks about the Baku oil fields and the Kashagan fields of Kazakhstan and the roles that both US/Russia play in negotiating pipelines to move both west to the Black Sea/Mediterranean Sea or north to Moscow. The Age of Electricity talks about two key innovations that were critical to the development of the modern grid. First was the establish...
Read more

Taming the Sun

Image
Taming the Sun: Innovation to Harness Solar Energy and Power the Planet by Varun Sivaram Main Points: The History of Solar Energy has its origins in the Chinese Yong Sui, Augustin Mouchet who in 1874 built a solar engine using concentrated solar power, Bequerel who in 1839 started employing the solar voltaic effect, Einstein's Annus Mirabilus in 1905 where he published the first paper on the effect, Bell Labs who in 1953 helped develop the first commercial solar cell in remote locations to power relaying stations/switches for AT&T Bell, and the Big Oil industry that helped also invest in the technology through the 90's into the 21st century. The purpose of the book is to understand the potential for solar, why we have not adopted the technology widely, and what it will take to get there. Sivaram notes a "Capital Gap" of $2.5 trillion in investment that will need to take place by 2040. He also believes in a hybrid system in developing countries that sti...
Read more