World's First Zinc-Ion Battery Megafactory Opens For Business 67
Sweden's Enerpoly has opened the world's first zinc-ion battery megafactory near Stockholm, aiming for a 100 MWh annual capacity by 2026. "According to Enerpoly, this megafactory will serve Europe's needs for safe energy storage, and also utilize an all-European supply chain to boot," reports New Atlas. From the report: If you're wondering why Enerpoly is bothering with zinc-ion and not lithium-ion batteries, it's because the former is a better choice for storage in several ways:
- They use a water-based electrolyte, which makes them non-flammable, and reduces the risk of fires and explosions.
- They're less expensive, because zinc is far more abundant than lithium (which is difficult and expensive to extract), and easier to handle. They can also operate across a wider temperature range and require less maintenance, making them cheaper than lithium-ion options.
- They're more eco-friendly for the same reason. In contrast, extracting lithium currently requires extensive mining as well as the use of massive evaporation ponds before processing even begins.
- They're said to last a whole lot longer. According to the International Zinc Association, a nonprofit trade association which counts Enerpoly as a member, zinc-based batteries can last up to 20 years, while lithium batteries manage about 12 years. The downside? They have a lower energy density than something like a Tesla 4680 battery, making them ideal for applications like load shifting and grid resilience.
- They use a water-based electrolyte, which makes them non-flammable, and reduces the risk of fires and explosions.
- They're less expensive, because zinc is far more abundant than lithium (which is difficult and expensive to extract), and easier to handle. They can also operate across a wider temperature range and require less maintenance, making them cheaper than lithium-ion options.
- They're more eco-friendly for the same reason. In contrast, extracting lithium currently requires extensive mining as well as the use of massive evaporation ponds before processing even begins.
- They're said to last a whole lot longer. According to the International Zinc Association, a nonprofit trade association which counts Enerpoly as a member, zinc-based batteries can last up to 20 years, while lithium batteries manage about 12 years. The downside? They have a lower energy density than something like a Tesla 4680 battery, making them ideal for applications like load shifting and grid resilience.
Wide range of options is great for innovation. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
What is this, some DEI program?!?!? Go woke, go broke.. or something like that.
Your sarcasm makes me think you're a puppet of "big Zinc". Tell the International Zinc Association to do their own dirty work.
Re: (Score:2)
The poor Bolivians and Chileans were hoping to become the next petro states (ok, Lith states) because of their reserves, but here big Zinc comes and ruins their day. At least they avoided the whole oil war thing in the Andes
Re: (Score:3)
I agree, but I think your comment is also true for the superset of "energy story systems" and not just batteries (ie chemical energy storage systems). Obviously some types of non-battery energy storage have been around for a long time at industrial scale, eg pumped hydro, but there's plenty of promising new types too such as compressed air energy storage, and even for older tech such as pumped hydro, we've never really fully exploited it, because the value of doing so was not so high historically. With the
Re: (Score:1)
Historically, pumped storage was used to even out the mega Watt fluctuations that happen every second.
Mostly with the result that the storage needed refilling at night, and the base load plant - which produced to much at that time, where used for that.
Now we need/want to store massive amounts of excess energy produced by solar and wind. We simply need more plants. And the idea that there is "no suitable place for that" is nonsense. At least in Germany, Portugal, Spain.
Re: (Score:1)
Historically, pumped storage was used to even out the mega Watt fluctuations that happen every second.
Mostly with the result that the storage needed refilling at night, and the base load plant - which produced to much at that time, where used for that.
We've been doing this for our water supply for a long time, hence towers on hills
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That’s a fun analogy!
Some questions (Score:2)
1. Water-based electrolyte. What else is in the water? I mean, a flooded lead-acid battery also uses a water-based electrolyte, it's just got sulphuric acid added.
2. A battery is a store of energy. It doesn't go away by itself if something fails. What's the failure mode?
Re:Some questions (Score:4, Insightful)
"2. A battery is a store of energy. It doesn't go away by itself if something fails. What's the failure mode?"
I imagine the water would douse any flames and absorb the heat. Lead acids don't burst into flames after trauma, at worst they bubble and boil.
Re: (Score:2)
For lead-acids, that depends very much on what the acid comes into contact with afterwards! If it lands in quantity on aluminium, for instance, the reaction releases large amounts of hydrogen and heat which can very much lead to combustion.
Re: (Score:2)
Thats rather a secondary effect though, its not the battery itself burning.
Re: (Score:3)
All I can find is that they use a zinc anode, a manganese cathode and a "water-based electrolyte." I'm guessing that means it's proprietary and they aren't saying. Typically such battery chemistries use a complex zinc salt, though there are groups trying zinc sulfate and potassium hydroxide. Notably, all the press releases say a lot about how safe zinc and manganese are and not a lot about the safety of the electrolyte; whether it's dumbing down or whether it's careful wording, I'm not sure.
For your seco
Re:Some questions (Score:5, Interesting)
There's so much more wrong with this hype piece than that.
* 100 MWh might be a good-sized battery factory in the mid 2010s. It's quite small now. I know, "start somewhere", but if they're going to try to make it sound big, put it into context.
* You can make li-ion nonflammable as well at the cost of a bit of energy density (and thus cost per kWh). Generally it's just a better idea to manage and contain risk.
* Batteries are not raw materials costs per kg; there's also large capital costs in manufacturing.And since these cells are just over a third the energy density, you ~3x the cell throughput in your factory and ~3x the raw materials.
* -10C to 50C is not some sort of impressive temperature range.
* I have no clue what they mean by "can operate with less maintenance". Exactly what "maintenance" do you think you have to do with li-ion cells?
* Lithium production does not require "extensive mining as well as the use of massive evaporation ponds", stop this nonsense. You EITHER mine - and it's nt even remotely extensive, as li-ion cells are only 2-3% lithium, and ore at Greenbushes (the largest mine) is up to 50% spodumene (lithium rock). OR you have "massive evaporation ponds", but then there's zero mining, and all you're doing is evaporating non-potable non-fossil (regularly replenished) saltwater, on the middle of a barren salt flat (and producing lots of other salts that are widely used as the same time),
* Mean time to failure for a Tesla Megapack is 15 years, so "can last up to 20 years" is hardly some super boast, especially for a new product with unknown real-world performance.
* The cathodes of grid batteries are *also* iron-based (iron phosphate), while the anodes are carbon. Again, lithium is just a couple percent of the cell, and it's not some super-exotic material.
Every time someone wants to have a go at a different chemistry they push the same sort of nonsense about li-ion batteries. Li-ion batteries gained their crown not because they're terrible, but because they're good really good compared to other rechargeable chemistries. And not just in portable applications. Something surely will unseat it eventually, but it's not going to be a pushover. And what unseats it might *still* be lithium-based (lithium-sulfur, lithium-air, etc) (though my hopes are we'll get a good reversible alumium chemistry, as alumium is light, common, cheap and energetic... the reversibility is not easy, though)
Re:Some questions (Score:4, Informative)
You missed one :)
The company says its batteries are suited for 2-10 hour durations, discharging energy over moderate periods.
In other words the maximum steady discharge rate is 0.5C, compared to li-ion discharge rates in the neighborhood of 1-5C. (For example for a 2400 mAh battery, 1 C is 2.4 A and 0.5 C is 1.2 A.) So if you're designing an application that uses these cells, it has to have enough cells to run for two hours. Otherwise you would be overtaxing the cells and suffering either inefficiency or damage.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
* Mean time to failure for a Tesla Megapack is 15 years, so "can last up to 20 years" is hardly some super boast, especially for a new product with unknown real-world performance.
According to Elon, not exactly a rock solid source known for its spotless record of saintly honesty.
Zinc-Ion (not iron) (Score:5, Informative)
Zinc-Ion (not iron)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Zinc-ion, not zinc-iron (Score:3)
Zinc as anode, manganese dioxide as cathode and an yet-undisclosed water-based electrolyte.
it's a tiny factory (Score:2)
100 MWh annually.
That would not satisfy the capacity for even one moderate size battery deployment at one site in California. There is a site going operational at 680 MW, with 4 hours of storage.
Re:it's a tiny factory (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
I thought it was pretty underwhelming for a "megafactory" too. AFAICT, the project you refer to is over 2,000MWHr or more than 20 years of the output of this factory. Pictures of the factory appear to show a fairly small industrial facility. Maybe "megafactory" is just what everyone calls an end-to-end battery plant these days?
Re: it's a tiny factory (Score:3)
Mega refers to megawatt capacity as opposed to a gigafactory which is gigawatt capacity.
Re:it's a tiny factory (Score:4, Insightful)
That isn't really the point -- it's is a new battery chemistry option with different discharge characteristics from lithium. I would imagine that they will start deploying in these into existing battery facilities and use them over a long discharge period; so they will be aiming at shifting solar to overnight rather than just to the evening.
If they work in that kind of situation, I'd expect they will be planning a GWh scale factory afterwards.
Re: (Score:3)
If you read the companies press release, it's actually a "production innovation centre". In otherwords, it is design to produce small-scale, but commercial prototypes. I don't know why they also put "megafactory" into the press release.
Re: (Score:2)
Well Elno calls factories "gigafactories" so I suppose that makes a very small factory a "megafactory".
My garage is a kilofactory.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
100 MWh annually.
That would not satisfy the capacity for even one moderate size battery deployment at one site in California. There is a site going operational at 680 MW, with 4 hours of storage.
The world installs 10GWh of grid batteries annualy. At 100MHw/year, this new factory is providing about 1% of the needs of the entire PLANET. That's hard to describe as "tiny"!
Re: (Score:2)
Well, they exist are and are starting to go into grid based deployment. Still looking at day time energy shifting, like lithium. As far as I can see, sodium and lithium will be pretty direct competitors. We will see who wins.
Re:Whither Sodium? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's really not surprising that all around the world, different groups are pouring effort into different types of energy storage systems. Innovation is going to continue in this vein for decades to come, because the economic prize of developing solutions that offer even moderate gains over existing solutions in even one performance characteristic, are huge. Which solutions gain traction is not going to be readily foreseeable, because making promising solutions work at scale is hard, and life is full of surprises. Turns out NMC could be pushed more than anyone imagined, that LFP could be made to work, that fuel cells were much less viable than hoped for, etc.
And it makes zero sense to start wanging on about Europe, bureaucrats and decision-making in relation to all this. This is a global development effort.
Re: (Score:2)
A few months ago people were raving about Sodium batteries saying that it's hugely abundant and we can get it cheaply rom table salt or seawater directly, what's up with that?
People are still working hard on sodium ion batteries. There is some chemistry (mostly dealing with the intercalation) that is different from sodium ions, so while you can import some of lithium ion technology directly to sodium ion, there are also some differences.
We're not seeing them deployed at the moment because lithium ion batteries are so far down the learning curve (due to the push from cell phone and automobile applications). They are very good for applications where weight is critical. And there
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
I can't find anything to support that strange claim about EU "giving Sweden tax to pay for Germany and Norway", but your attempt at debunking it is is patently ignorant of reality. Norway is in ETA as well as a party to several EU-Norway agreements, and is bound by those to adopt most of EU legislation without getting a vote on it within EU structures. And when it comes to electricity distribution, Nordics have their own agreements that EU mostly just ad hoc adopted later. To the point where Nord Pool was u
Re: (Score:2)
EFTA, not ETA.
I agree with most of the rest of your analysis, which doesn't happen very often.
But I would add -- most countries are parties to thousands of treaties, from CITES to the Cotonou Agreement. All of these have the effect of somewhat reducing each country's freedom of action, and increasing the complexity for a country of taking action internationally. But the alternative is each country doing as it sees fit and then (literally) fighting it out with other countries when it doesn't like what they'r
Re: (Score:1)
I actually misspelled EEA. EFTA is the economic trade area for non-EU nations. But there are also bilateral agreements, mostly with EU, specifically on topic of trade.
Swiss for example are not in EEA, but have a bilateral agreement instead. This gives them more freedom to not adopt EU legislation while maintaining some access to common market, unlike Norway which as a member of EEA is bound to implement most (with some carved out caveats) EU directives into national law.
But because EU is not sovereign and n
Re: (Score:2)
Oh yes — Norway is part of both EFTA and the EEA. I assumed you meant the former, but the latter makes more sense in context.
Ultimately the only tool that has ever existed for treaty enforcement is expelling a country from the treaty’s coverage*, which can be a bit pyrrhic, esp for the EU post-Brexit, which is how Orban gets to do all the shit he does.
* Fines can be levied etc, but as you point out, sovereign nations don’t *have* to pay them. They often do, because they want to keep within
Re: (Score:2)
Norways ETA thing is a bit of a trap. As part of those trade agreements they have to conform to EU standards and rules but have little say in the matter. Norway is the state which has the best compliance with EU regulations, despite not actually being in the EU
Re: (Score:1)
I misspelled EEA above, and no, Norway does not have best compliance with EU regulations, because it exempts itself in things related to it's oil industry and its fisheries for starters.
Common fishery policy is one of the major projects of EU.
Re: (Score:1)
The EU does not tax anything.
The member countries do.
There are no taxes on electricity imports/or tariffs.
Zinc price impact? (Score:2)
Good question what this might do for global zinc market. Can think of a couple companies that are very sensitive to price changes there.
Re: (Score:3)
Probably not much. We already produce orders of magnitude more zinc than lithium. So, even if this Zn ion batteries became as ubiquitous as lithium, it will still only be the minority consumer for Zn.
Re: (Score:1)
Nothing meaningful. This chemistry is going nowhere fast (hence these sort of medium sized production facilities being hailed as "megafactories"), and even if it was and we were getting CATL scale of buildup in this chemistry, we produce a hilarious amount of zinc already for sacrificial galvanic anode uses (this is what makes your car not rust like old cars used to rust, not to mention all the ships) and alloying it to make things like brass and bronze.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: Eurocentrism (Score:2)
While the rhetoric is generally xenophobic, area-centric supply chains are also about security of the chain from global disruption and sabotage. They also represent green tech by reducing shipping distances for parts. Those are just the major advantages that a limited-area supply chain represents. Short chains are always worth winning for. How you advertise that fact can be atrociously racist or very economically and environmentally friendly. All in the messaging.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, quite.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Lower enery density makes them "ideal"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Surely the point is that lower energy density is less important in some contexts, not that lower energy density makes them ideal?
Re: Lower enery density makes them "ideal"? (Score:2)
I believe they meant ideal in combination with the prior list of advantages. But I agree it is poorly worded.
Re: (Score:2)
I realise I might be descending into pointless pedantry here (but this is /. :) ) But the low energy density isn't a positive thing even in combination with the other factors. It's *just* the other factors that make these batteries attractive for this purpose.
Lithium lifespan only 12 years? (Score:2)
According to the International Zinc Association, a nonprofit trade association which counts Enerpoly as a member, zinc-based batteries can last up to 20 years, while lithium batteries manage about 12 years.
Ok, all those early Tesla Model S and Nissan Leaf and other cars seem to disagree. And if thinking about applications like load shifting (like Tesla Powerwall), where the batteries are probably in a climate controlled location (unlike a car) and you probably will not do deep discharges all the way to the
Re: (Score:2)
In a grid storage application, having 1 cycle average use makes a 12 Year lifetime plausible for Li-Ion.
Re: (Score:2)
Can you say what you mean by that? I don't follow it
Re: (Score:2)
A Li-ion Battery can have a lifetime anywhere between 1000 and 6000 cycles.
In a grid storage application, you typically have a full cycle per 24h, while in an electric car it is much less.
12 Years @ 1 cycle/day is about 4400 cycles.
Nickel-Iron for the long haul (Score:2)
Folks forget these because they truly have a lacklustre energy density, but the benefits are incredible longevity and safety and resilience. I was hoping that production of the old tech would advance a little and increase availability. Some of the ones in operation have been going 70+ years in railroad settings.
People don’t get it (Score:2)
For an EV, power tool, or laptop battery you want the battery to be extremely impact and vibration tolerant, have a high power density, have a high capacity density even at high discharge rates, among other qualities.
For grid backup power the battery can be incredibly fragile and delicate as it’s installed without motion, the density of power and capacity are entirely i
May be excellent for the home market (Score:2)
I have solar already, but I'm not willing to have a lithium-ion battery pack installed, those things are a bit too scary and my insurance may not approve anyway. But this new tech might just be the ticket for timeshifting my solar output. On a fixed install like this size (and weight) is less of a concern, but safety and price are paramount.
Opportunity? (Score:2)
If they don't mind a little copper mixed in, or can separate it out, now the US can recycle all its pennies [slashdot.org] ...
Wish they'd used a table instead of so many words. (Score:2)
Feels clearer and more precise to show numbers like they finally did at the end (20 vs. 12 years lifetime for cells). Though I'll admit some issues might be harder to visualize that way without confusing details ('safer').
Isn't the lithium fire issue from punctures? (Score:2)
Not sure how changing the electrolyte alters the fire hazard that lithium ion presents. Isn't the issue there about swelling and the many tiny layers eventually touching and discharging lots of energy... which then creates lots of heat.
Gel or water as the layer between wouldn't matter a ton, would it?
Zinc is less abundant than lithium (Score:2)
Downside? (Score:2)
The downside is that there is something they are ideal for?
I'm not sure that word means what you appear to think it means.