The right chemistry

The energy storage sector always has relied on lead-acid and lithium-ion batteries, but evolving technology has exposed performance gaps over the past few years.

Lead-acid batteries have been known to fall short on capacity, power and life as more consumers seek longer run times in smaller packages. Lithium-ion packs have proven to be costly, requiring a minimum of $200 per kilowatt hour, mostly stemming from the advanced operations needed to make these batteries. Moreover, lithium-ion battery fires have raised questions about their safety.

A new alternative

With the total market for batteries in the energy storage sector expected to reach 2.5 Terawatt-hours by 2030, there is room for more players to fill the gap left by lead-acid and lithium-ion batteries, giving rise to unique chemistries such as nickel-zinc.

Craig Wilkins, president and CEO of Joplin, Missouri-based nickel-zinc battery producer Battery Grade Materials (BGM), says, “Zinc batteries are the best story around energy storage and sustainability,” adding that zinc is one of those unique materials where the benefits outweigh the challenges.

Speaking at the International Zinc Association’s Zinc Conference in March in Scottsdale, Arizona, Wilkins noted that zinc is a low-cost resource, is globally abundant, has high energy density that is perfect for battery performance grades, is safe and, most importantly, easily and cost-effectively recycled through low-energy processes.

This led AEsir Technologies, another Joplin-based company where Wilkins also is chief financial officer, to carve out BGM to develop nickel-zinc battery technology that uses recycled materials. Wilkins says the realization came when “we were about to announce our first gigafactory in the United States and faced the challenge of procuring raw materials at the levels we were going to need to supply the factory’s production.”

He adds that nickel metal hydride, which forms the base chemistry of these batteries, was never at the commercial scale AEsir intended it to be, which resulted in very few suppliers. “BGM was really spun out with the vision of supporting AEsir and its licensee partners with the raw materials needed to construct nickel-zinc batteries,” he says.

BGM also is developing low-carbon technologies and processes to recycle zinc and nickel for its batteries.

“We want to make our product sustainable and that not only includes buying raw material that comes from sustainable mining but also staying away from high-heat smelting processes that consume a lot of energy,” Wilkins says. “We have taken a new approach in metallurgical processes to reduce that carbon footprint because our end customers, who consist of data centers and telecom companies, demand it.”

Competing chemistries

Still, lithium-ion and lead-acid batteries are formidable competitors. The former’s demand not only is growing in the end-consumer segment but also for electric vehicles (EVs).

Wilkins concedes that these chemistries have been wildly successful and remain the most used battery packs for the energy storage sector. “However,” he continues, “we believe there’s no one perfect battery for every application, especially with technology evolving at such a fast pace.”

Wilkins says lithium is the correct battery to use if one wants the power to go from zero mph to 60 mph in 3.2 seconds. It also is a great technology for use in cellphones. But because lithium batteries are commercially viable and technologically advanced, companies have tried to put them everywhere—even in applications where other chemistries are more viable.

“There’s no one perfect battery for every application,” Wilkins says. “While lithium might be great for many applications, companies forget that, like other metals, it is a finite resource. As the market demand grows, there will be a scarcity of reserves. That is where we want to be a better purveyor of resource allocation for certain battery technologies that fit in one spot and not the other.”

This is where he says nickel-zinc batteries could be the disruptor. “We have lead-acid batteries on one end of the batteries spectrum and lithium-ion on the other. Nickel-zinc fits right in the middle,” Wilkins says. “It is a great industrial battery that does not create fire issues, has a lower cost of producing than the other two chemistries and can carry twice the energy density and last thrice as long.”

Accepting the alternative

The acceptance of nickel-zinc batteries also has come with a set of challenges.

“Everyone has known for a long time that nickel-zinc is a high-powered battery, but it had life cycle issues because of the type of zinc anodes being used for the zinc chemistry,” Wilkins says. “No one dedicated efforts on fixing this flaw, and AEsir was founded to find an answer to this issue.”

He adds that as a zinc-based batteries company, AEsir dedicated three years to perfecting its zinc anode chemistries before moving to nickel.

Today, the company is tackling the challenge of unsustainable mining, which Wilkins says is a more pressing long-term issue that can affect supply chains.

“The supply chain issues over the past two years really relate to the COVID-19 pandemic,” he says. “At that time, for example, the supply time for LG Chem to ship batteries to data centers went from three months to nine months, but those lag times are reducing. Lead-acid batteries that were on a six-month backlog are now at two months. These issues were more related to labor than raw supply issues.”

However, with the number of battery gigafactories planned over the next two years, he says the amount of raw materials consumption coming out of the earth is going to create supply chain issues.

“Everyone right now is going to the easiest resource, and that is chopping up the earth to get as much metal out of the ground for significant kickbacks,” Wilkins says. “Eventually there will be a public outcry against these practices, which is why it is necessary to seek that balance now rather than later.”

The need for batteries is set to grow exponentially over the next few years, and the industry needs to be ready for it. “Our long-term objective should be to seamlessly transition into the electron economy and, to achieve great innovation in this space, we must have a catalyst,” he says.

Wilkins says the energy storage space can be that catalyst, adding, “Energy storage is not only going to be here for a long time, but we will see exponential growth regardless of electric cars taking that 50 percent of the automotive industry; there is just that much demand coming from other sectors.”

Recycling’s role

Recycling will play an important role in the battery space, regardless of chemistry, though Wilkins says he hopes to see a reduction in the carbon footprint of the high-heat smelters that are traditionally used for lead recycling as more battery chemistries come into play.

He says recycling, or urban mining, as many call it, is going to be the most critical area to extract metals and reprocess them to battery-grade material. “I don’t want to just recycle material but rather reprocess material that is battery grade, simply because, as battery makers and recyclers, we are required by end consumers to ensure that material used in batteries will come back into the battery supply chain rather than being used elsewhere,” Wilkins says.

He adds that if a company can cost-effectively pull battery-grade material through a closed-loop recycling system, it will support the envisioned growth in this sector.

Radhika Ojha is senior editor reporting on the copper, lead and zinc markets at Davis Index and can be reached at radhika.ojha@davisindex.com.