Lithium: The Next Frontier in Alternative Energy
“Brines are a generally cheaper resource than spodumene pegmatites. “This is not true in all cases and in China virtually all Lithium production is spodumene-based,” said Evans. “I believe that when the major demand actually develops we will need a whole variety of sources and some will be more expensive than others. However, this is not an issue as in a lithium-ion battery wherein the cost of lithium in the unit is between 1 & 3% of the total cost.”
Another problem pointed out by Lithium’s opponents is that serial production of Li-ion batteries requires a great deal of rare elements other than Lithium, such as lanthanum and cobalt. The availability of these elements may be limited and future Lithium-Ion battery production may suffer from a crippling bottleneck as a result.
Experts tend to agree that Lithium-Ion batteries’ heavy reliance on these rare elements may become problematic in the long term, but point to ongoing efforts to replace rare elements used to manufacture batteries with more common ones. “The nickel metal hydride batteries used in the current Toyota Prius, for example, use large amounts of the rare earth element lanthanum,” said Dr. Hykawy. “And the standard lithium battery of today, in your cell phone or laptop computer, uses cobalt along with its lithium. But the automotive companies have been developing better and cheaper lithium batteries that use more common materials. Some of these combine lithium and manganese, or lithium and iron, or the best of the bunch, lithium and vanadium. All of these alternative chemistries use materials that are more common than lanthanum or cobalt, safer and less expensive.”
Dr. Cairns is equally optimistic – “Heavy dependence on cobalt could be a problem, but this is an active research topic, and I expect that it will be solved in the next few years.”
Ultimately, the strongest argument in favor of Lithium may be that it is one of the very few truly viable alternative energy solutions available to us today, even though it would not completely alleviate global dependence on oil and natural gas. “The only other electrical energy storage technology that makes sense to us is the use of ultracapacitors, a solid state electricity storage device made using ceramics,” said Dr. Hykawy. “None of this eliminates our dependence on oil and gas. The best way to generate electricity for baseload demand in electric cars, and believe me we have given due consideration to geothermal, solar and wind, is nuclear energy. But we need safe and cheap nuclear power, such as what could be provided by pebble bed modular reactors.”
Dr. Hykawy wonders whether, since the US has allowed China and other nations to take the lead in this area, if the US should develop a plan to provide the technology and infrastructure behind a gradual switch to electric vehicles. “The main alternatives to oil are solar and wind,” said Dr. Cairns, “Biofuels may be developed to the point that they could help in a minor way. Better batteries can help us to use the electricity generated by solar and wind in our transportation system, leaving oil for heating and aircraft.”
In the end, a switch from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles powered by lithium-ion batteries may be the first step towards finding a real alternative to fossil fuels, but before it is taken, some research still needs to be conducted to determine whether an increase in lithium-ion battery production is sustainable in the long term.
