Dateline: 17 November 2029

Five years ago, it was lithium that was in high demand for lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, to store excess solar power and keep 5G towers working during blackouts. But now it’s graphite that’s the hot commodity, as graphene supercapacitors take over.

Lithium was the king of battery metals, alongside nickel and manganese, even as cobalt was taken out of the mix. The new generation of LFP batteries proved to be cheaper, safer, and powerful enough for electric cars, and ideal for daily storage of surplus solar energy. Battery companies and mining houses joined forces to exploit new sources of lithium, both to ensure security of supply and also to wrest control of lithium processing from China.

While graphite was an important component of lithium batteries, it wasn’t the top priority. Until the rise of graphene supercapacitors. Supercapacitors store energy electronically, without any chemistry, and can be charged and discharged in seconds or minutes, over and over. Which makes them ideal for high-cycling applications, like grid balancing and high-performance cars. And graphene gives supercapacitors ultra capacity.

Now production costs of supercaps made with graphene and reduced graphene oxide have declined, just like lithium-ion did, and backup systems and solar installations are choosing supercaps over batteries — they cost the same and last for 30 years! It’s just a matter of time before electric car makers switch too. Why deal with the weight and complex chemicals of batteries, when you can use solid-state supercapacitors that charge in minutes and last a lifetime?

As battery giants like BYD and CATL scramble to change their production lines to support supercaps, the mining companies who placed big bets on lithium are ruefully eying graphite as the latest mineral driving the electric future. For without high-quality graphite, making graphene supercapacitors at scale becomes a near impossible task.

• First published on Mindbullets 16 November 2023

Lithium survives battery breakthroughs

Can anything break lithium’s stranglehold on energy storage?

Dateline: 15 July 2024

Over the past decade, there has been a new battery "breakthrough” announced every couple of months, but we’re still waiting for any of them to emerge from the labs and dethrone lithium as king of the battery technologies.

Prototypes and conceptual chemical models have been demonstrated, some in dramatic fashion, but when it comes to commercial applications, like electric cars and household power, we’re all still relying on lithium in its various guises. Lithium-ion, lithium-sulphur, lithium iron phosphate, and lithium metal all rely on lithium to provide the capacity to store and release electrons on demand.

We all know the downside of lithium batteries; they can catch fire if they short-circuit or overcharge, and eventually run out of charging capacity. But pound for pound they have the best energy density, and incremental innovations over the years have made them the industry standard for everything from phones to cars to smart homes and microgrids.

Scientists, researchers and inventors have tried various combinations of nickel, aluminium, silver and graphene, to name but a few, in an effort to find a cheaper, safer material than lithium, but so far, the alternatives have all failed — either on performance or economics. Vanadium flow batteries are great for solar grid storage, but not much use in a car; bipolar polymer packs are cheap but don’t have the power to accelerate out of a curve. Solid state batteries are safe, but oh so pricey!

Since Tesla tweaked their batteries to last 20 years despite daily charging and ramped up production to benefit from huge economies of scale, there’s just no beating lithium for pure bang for the buck. Which is probably why it’s the hottest metal since gold and platinum — and likely to stay that way.

• First published on Mindbullets 16 July 2020

• Despite appearances to the contrary, Futureworld cannot and does not predict the future. The Mindbullets scenarios are fictitious and designed purely to explore possible futures, and challenge and stimulate strategic thinking.