INSIGHT
LITHIUM SHOWS
NO SIGNS OF SLOWING
A lithium deposit in Namibia.
Global interest in lithium has not abated, writes Umar Ali, GlobalData’s
mining technology writer.
I
nterest in lithium has skyrocketed on the back of
huge demand created by the battery industry. While
lithium demand shows no signs of slowing down,
battery technology is changing at an enormous pace.
Projects around the world are exploring alternatives to
lithium, promising that a breakthrough is just around
the corner.
The question is: should miners be going all in for lithium?
Thailand-based renewable energy company Energy
Absolute announced plans in 2018 to build a 50GWh
lithium-ion battery plant, which is expected to be fully
completed by July 2020. India is also boosting its production
of lithium batteries by investing USD4-billion in four lithium
production plants.
This increased demand has caused mining companies
to invest heavily in lithium mining projects around the
world, hoping to capitalise on a global shift to renewable
technologies. Since 2017, six lithium mines have opened in
Australia, and some of the world’s largest lithium mines are
being developed to ensure a constant supply of the metal in
the future.
However, these investments take time and money, and while
these mines are being developed, battery technology is
advancing in ways that may leave the lithium market behind.
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African Mining March 2020
Other battery technologies are being developed that eschew
conventional minerals entirely, using more readily-available
materials to power batteries. One example of this is hydrogen
fuel cells, which use an incredibly abundant (albeit volatile) gas
and have an energy-to-weight ratio that is ten times greater
than their lithium-ion counterparts.
However, Bo Nomark, industrial strategy executive at European
innovation company InnoEnergy, told GlobalData that the most
exciting development is the high activity and buzz around
development of cost/performance in batteries. In the last five
years the cost of batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) has dropped
by a factor of three, while power density has increased by the
same factor.
The development will not go as fast in the next five years,
but we expect to see a significant improvement in cost and
performance with the current technologies. Furthermore, there
are new technologies under development promising even
higher performance.
The most talked about technology is solid state batteries, which
have the potential to improve the cost performance of lithium
batteries far beyond today’s technologies. Taking all possibilities
into account, it is not unlikely that before 2030 we will see
another improvement in cost and energy density with a factor
of three.
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