262: No More Lithium Batteries? Looks Good on Paper!

 On todays Still to be Determined, we’re gonna be talking about movement away from lithium and paper batteries. Yes. These two things, I mean, it’s batteries everywhere we look. You can’t get away from batteries?

No,

I guess. I guess it’s because Matt thinks we get a charge out of them. Welcome everybody

to Still to be Determined. This is of course, the follow up podcast to Undecided with Matt Ferrell. I am not Matt Ferrell. I am Sean Ferrell. You can tell us a part if you’re watching us on YouTube. I am the one with the super gnarly beard. You’re the evil Matt. I’m the evil Matt. I’m Sean Ferrell. I’m a writer.

I write some sci-fi and I write some stuff for kids and I’m just generally curious about technology. And luckily for me, my brother is that Matt of Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and it’s impact on our lives. And Matthew, how are you today?

I’m doing well, and I like that you brought up all the batteries we’re about to talk about because.

I’m getting a little battery out right now, putting out a lot of battery videos ’cause there was like a glut of topics I wanted to cover. Not planning ahead of like, that means I’m gonna be talking about batteries for like four or five videos in a row. Mm-hmm.

Which means I am too, which is explains why I feel like I’ve been a victim of assault and battery.

Oh

yeah. There you go. Normally on this program, we start off by talking about our previous program, but we’re playing a bit of catch up. Those of you who are astute and have been paying attention may have noticed that last week. Well, we didn’t show up. Why was that? Well, somebody named Sean had a sinus infection.

Not to brag, but I could barely get outta bed,

so we took the week off. I took antibiotics and now we’re ready to go. So we’re gonna do a little bit of catch up. We’re gonna talk about Matt’s two most recent, which both have to do with batteries, totally different battery tech, totally different vision and place in the market, but both very interesting.

We’re gonna be taking a look at his episode from two weeks ago, why this paper battery is better than you think. And also his video from last week about why the biggest battery company is betting against lithium. First, we’ll start with the paper battery tech. Run through again where you think or where they think, yeah, yeah, there might be applications for this.

Because it is, I mean, it is one of those things that I’m just like the sci-fi writer brain of me is just like, yeah, absolutely. This is cool. The idea of printing out a battery, you know, putting it behind a wall or putting it into something that normally wouldn’t have a battery. But that’s fantasy version of this technology.

This is not where they probably see it going. So where did they see this going? You’re talking about the paper battery tech,

right? Yes, yes. For paper battery tech, they did float. Like if you look at some of, through some of their marketing. Float EVs out there. I think that’s either a ways off or may not happen personally.

Right. So they’re focused now on like small devices, inerative things, that kind of stuff right now. But this is the kind of stuff that could end up in pretty much anything, any kind of consumer electronics. It could end up as a alternative to a battery for your car, for, not for the ev, but like, you know, like the 12 volt battery kind of a system.

It could do stuff like that. Uh, but the, their whole vision is creating a battery that could be fully compostable at the end of its life, um, including the casing. Right now, their initial version is still using the aluminum casing that a typical battery has. So you still have to get the insides out to compost it, but like .

Their vision is to try to make this as recyclable as possible, right? Because like right now, a lot of our batteries get tossed in the trash, right? They don’t end up in a recycling facility, and so it’s like making a battery that literally could be thrown in the trash and it’s not gonna matter too much.

It could be compost, broken down. That’s their vision is trying to solve that piece of the puzzle.

That’s the, I think the, the rub here is that you hear about this tech and you immediately go into weird fantasy land, or at least I do, of like the weirdness of like, oh, paper batteries. What would that be in, would it mean you would get a cardboard box that would have something in it that would run off of a battery in the box itself?

And it’s not that. No’s, the environmental factor. It is the looking down the road at, I mean, I can’t even imagine how many car batteries exist. I mean, it just, yeah,

just, well, I mean, oh God, it’s just, I brought it up in the video, but like. My, my smart home, I have little motion sensors around my house and stuff like that, and they all run on these like little coin cell, like CR 20, 40 eights or whatever the, the numbers are.

It’s like these little coin cells, and depending on the, the device, sometimes they last for a year, sometimes two years, sometimes six months. But those batteries, it’s like I basically hoard them until I have enough to take them somewhere to recycle them, right? Most people pop ’em out, chuck ’em in the trash, right?

And so imagine coin cells. Like made by the company like that can do this, that is fully compostable. Like I could theoretically toss it into my compost bin and just let it break down. It’s like that. That’s awesome like that. That’s the kind of territory that’s really, really cool. Right.

There was a bit of conversation in the comments on this one that revolved rightly around the recyclability and the confusion amongst those who are not in the United States at the fact that you are like, you know, we got all these batteries and we got nothing to do with them. People like SVI showed up and said, you don’t have mandatory battery recycling bins in every business that sells batteries. This is standard in Europe since 1990.

I assume he means 1990. He just puts 90 I. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t think it’s, I don’t think it’s 1890. Svi, correct me if I’m wrong on that. I don’t think it’s 1890. He goes on to say, if your business sells batteries, you are required to have a collecting bin where customers will put their used batteries. Then you sell these to the recycling company of your choice.

Win-win for everyone. Gosh. Yeah. What must that be like?

Must, must be nice. I will say in the United States, we do have this, like if you go into a Best Buy store, right in the opening of the Best Buy store, they have these bins for recycling like this for batteries. But then if you read what they take, it’s specific batteries.

I. I can’t toss coin cell batteries into that bin. I can only toss things that are like a recycle, like a battery from a drill. You know, like the battery pack that comes off of that. Those kind of things are the kinds of things those take, they just don’t take loose AA sized batteries. Yeah. Or coin cell batteries.

So they do exist here, but it’s based on the business. If they wanna do it, if they don’t wanna do it. Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s really tough for a consumer to find someplace to do it.

And when you do find it, you find yourself in a position of having to haul the years worth of products that you’ve hoarded into a closet thinking I’ll figure out what to do with these later.

Yeah. Like I did where I realized that my local staples was taking computer and battery stuff as uh, recycling, and I think I made three trips. I don’t have a car, so I was walking down the street Uhhuh with tote bags full of electronic equipment, just e-waste. It probably looked like I was breaking into people’s homes.

But whatcha gonna do. There was also this comment, which I thought was very timely, considering when you drop this video. Sam jumped into the comments and said, I think what I hate most about April’s Fool’s Day is playing the game. Is it a cool new technology or is it a worthless prank? No, this was not a prank.

No. But yes, I, I am right there with you, Sam. I have long gotten past the, oh, it’s funny the way that corporations have gotten into April Fool’s Day. Because, uh, it’s messed things up. It’s messed things up. It’s added to the misinformation where people are like, yeah, these, these things must not be real.

Finally, there was this sentiment, which came up again and again in the comments and in my own heart.

Mm-hmm.

Studio and session jumped in to say, yep, looks good on paper. Bravo. Bravo there. On now to our discussion about Matt’s most recent, why the biggest battery company is betting against Lithium. Do you wanna give us a quick summary again of who this battery manufacturer is?

And when you say betting against lithium, that does not mean that they’ve scrapped their lithium production and have fully turned themselves into a sodium battery producer. It is that they are looking down the road at a branching off into New Tech? Yes. Do you wanna talk about that a bit?

Yeah. Uh, the company, CATL, which is the world’s largest battery manufacturer by a massive margin, is the one that’s betting big on sodium, and they’re opening and converting plants to doing this.

They see this as not necessarily the future for all batteries, but the future for a significant number of batteries. And the main reason that’s a driver behind this is accessibility to sodium is way easier than lithium. I mean, it’s not table salt, but it’s salt. Mm-hmm. It’s just salt. So when you have sodium, it makes it easier to make the batteries.

It also, in theory, you could argue maybe it’s easier to recycle, but I don’t think that’s the case. But it’s, it’s more about the accessibility and the cost. So they can make batteries that are really good batteries for less money, and they can sell it for a really good price. Uh, that’s why they’re doing it.

BYD, which is like the second largest battery manufacturer in the world. Also betting on this and doing the exact same thing that CATL is doing. So when you have two of the largest Chinese, are these Chinese

corporations,

both Chinese? Yeah. So when you have two massive organizations doing this, it’s a sign that they look at this as the future.

And a lot of people have been saying, sodium is the future of batteries. Full stop. Because it’s everywhere. So true. You can get salt outta the ocean. You can get salt. Think of all the supply of salt that we have.

It’s like people do that. The comments were pointing out the desalination Yep. Technology, like in parts of the Middle East where that is the future of their water supply probably will produce so much excess salt that Well, that’s one of the concerns.

Yeah. With desalination, it’s like, well, what do you do with all that extra salt if they’re just pumping into the ocean? There’s a problem with doing that is that the mass, the the, the massive amount of salt that you’re pumping in, depending on how you do it, doesn’t get mixed into the ocean. Right. And just, uh, diluted.

And then you’re over sometimes will sink sating section bottom

right?

Yes. And it will kill the sea life. Right? So it’s like you have to handle it well. Well, what if we could actually put this to use in energy storage instead of dumping it back in the ocean, we filtered out, take it and use it for other methods, which would be energy storage.

It’s like, it’s kind of like two birds, one stone. Kinda a great, great approach.

So there were lots of people jumping into the comments on this one, like a Abel who said, if we use sodium ion for stationary batteries on mass, it would free up lithium for transport batteries. Size is not a problem for stationary.

They just sit at a site for years. Is this part of the thinking and the short term with the long term being, figuring out how to make the sodium smaller so that it would actually work for the transport or. Do you think that this falls into the category of the right tool for the right job? And maybe we just have two battery types, one of which is larger and massive, but more useful for the long-term storage from say, solar site or a wind turbine?

Well, right now it’s absolutely this. It’s the right tool for the right job. It’s like a stationary energy storage is where CATL and BYD are looking for immediate needs competing with like Tesla mega packs. It’s the no-brainer right now. Uh, but they do see a vision where they could potentially get this into cars down the road.

So, uh, no pun intended, but that, that is the, the goal ultimately. But it comes down to the, like, what’s the energy density of the batteries that they can get? Can it be competitive to a car? Can they make a battery lightweight enough to make sense? That’s not here yet, but it’s theoretically possible. They just have to get there.

Does this fall into, uh, I shared a video with you recently, which was about electric vehicle manufacturing in China, Chinese car manufacturers, and I believe it was BYU. And I believe, and I believe you talked about them in your video, but the, the video I shared with you went into it was looking at the car manufacturing angle, not the battery angle, and it talked about the price point of these cars.

Yeah, and I’m wondering if any of this new battery tech is involved in the price point of these cars, which some of them, the comparison was being made against Tesla, which is viewed as a semi luxury level purchase. And these cars are the economy tiers below that where they are underselling Tesla by quite a big margin.

And I’m wondering if battery tech behind the car is part of the way that they’re able to lower the price in this way if they’re not relying on lithium. Do you know anything about that?

You’re opening a can of worms. Uh, part of it is ’cause a lot of, uh, the batteries that are put in these economy cars are lithium iron phosphate, LFP batteries, which are cheaper than nickel, manganese, cobalt, lithium batteries.

So NMC. So most EVs typically have NMC. A larger growing number of them have LFP. They’re not as energy dense, which makes means they’re heavier, but their batteries are way cheaper to make than NMC. So even Tesla is using LFP in some of their cars. So some of their model threes and things like that are, that are built in China are already using LFP batteries in them.

So this is a technique and a tactic that a lot of EV companies are using ’cause it’s so much cheaper to make. Yeah. There’s also an argument that you can make about the way China handles their corporations. That also is the way they get the prices down, which is they manipulate the market to make their cars cheaper than they otherwise would be,

’cause they’re being backed by the Chinese government. So it’s like there’s that angle too that you can’t ignore. But if you try to piece it apart, the LFP is one angle in, and the other angle that China’s using is a little bit of manipulation of how they back their companies, so Right. It’s, it’s kind of topic.

It’s not easy

or fun to pin down, is what you’re trying

to say. No,

no. There was also this comment just from the environmental perspective from Outcast who says, even at 160 watt hours per kilogram that destroys lead acid batteries at 35 watt hours per kilogram, if we can get rid of lead acid batteries in combustion vehicles, USPS and data centers, that will be a huge step forward to a cleaner world.

So yeah, a nice succinct summary followed up by Pumpkin live. Who points out what all of us were thinking. Yes, puns per video density is getting ridiculous. Yeah. Yes it is.

I was proud of this one, Sean.

Yeah, I bet you were. There was also from high tech redneck who attracted a good number of people in response to his username to say this username doesn’t check out, but.

High tech redneck. I mean, I believe them. High tech jumps in to say the biggest difference between lithium and sodium that I found while getting ready to build an off-grid system. Sodium works far better in cold conditions, so it may not have quite the capacity per kilogram or volume that Lithium has, but the cold weather performance is a game changer for northern people like myself.

You wanna talk a little bit about that? There was some people who were saying things like, where I live, it gets down to easily in the winter negative 20 Celsius. Yeah. So zero Fahrenheit. And pointing out, yeah, the lithium batteries aren’t doing what I want, but the sodium can in those kinds of

temperatures.

Yeah.

Yeah. All battery chemistries have different operating temperature ranges that they’re good at, and NMC, LFP, you’re talking about temperatures that are sometimes having to be above freezing. Sometimes they can go a little bit below freezing, but when you get to like zero, forget about it. It’s like that you can get energy out.

You can’t get energy in because you’d have to warm the battery up to be able to make it function. Um, so what high tech redneck is talking about is exactly that. So if you can have a battery that could work down to zero degrees or negative 10 degrees and still take a charge, maybe it’s slower than normal, but can still take a charge without having to warm it up, that battery chemistry, suddenly you have a Oh wow.

This could work all through Canada and the northeast of the United States and Yeah, like over here in Europe, it opens up a whole market where it makes a lot of sense. So, yeah,

that’s a really good call out that, that he’s making. Yeah. Somebody else in the comments pointed out that it’s, uh, a little, it’s a little dispiriting when you are trying to build that off-grid system and you realize you’re gonna have to use some of your energy to actually heat your battery shed.

So, well, I, I’ve got this in my backyard, Sean. I’ve got a shed that I’ve put some, uh, eco flow. Batteries in there that are LFP batteries, they’re in there and I have some solar panels on it, so it’s a little off grid shed and the dead of winter. It’s not charging because it’s too cold. The batteries are frozen solid and they don’t really do anything.

I’m not using the shed, so I personally don’t care in the middle of winter. Right. That it’s having trouble charging. Uh, right. It’s would be,

it would be charging up your like lawnmower and stuff like that. Lawnmower.

Yeah, so I’m using it in spring through fall. So in the middle of winter I don’t care too much, but in the spring through fall I want it to work and it works great.

But in the middle of winter, those batteries. I’d have to warm up the shed a little bit. Yeah. Just to get ’em a little toasty. Uh,

which would do ever go out there and just hold them to try and help them

sitting there at the corner. It’s okay. I know, I know you’re cold.

Finally, Joe Poe jumped into the comments to say maybe that these sodium batteries can be recycled by being spread on McDonald’s fries.

I like that idea. And I’m sorry, I’m gonna slaughter this name. Auruleovitar came into the comments to point out that you’d said, take this with a few grains of sodium. Okay. And then his tongue exploded. So thank you everybody for your comments on that one. As always. What did you think about this? Various, uh, I was gonna say this tech, but these tech breakthroughs, the paper batteries and the sodium.

Let us know in the comments. Don’t forget commenting, liking, subscribing. These are all very easy ways for you to support the podcast. And if you’d like to support us directly, you can of course click join on YouTube or go to still tbd fm. Click the join button there. Both those ways allow you to throw coins at our heads.

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