RE: This could be more good news :-)Oops,
soory, this could actually be bad news, they are talking about replacing Lithium Cobalt oxidase anodes with better performing and less polluting Lithium Titanate, and scaling this up from mobile phones to Hybrid cars, if they succeed that could hugely impact demand for cobalt, negatively,
see altairs website;
https://www.altairinc.com/framesets/devlpmt_unique_frmset.html
Battery Materials Programs
Battery program summary
To the right is an SEM image of micron-size, pure lithium titanate spinel.
Background:
Lithium ion batteries are rapidly replacing NiMH and Ni/Cd batteries in today's applications. Many industry experts are convinced that the lithium titanate spinel anode is the right battery material for high power applications. Li4Ti5O12 spinel exhibits "zero strain" lithium ion mobility in the spinel crystal lattice resulting in a very rugged battery material which allows for longer life.
Lithium cobalt oxide is currently used as cathode material in rechargeable lithium ion batteries. This material is a robust electrode grade powder, however it suffers from high cost and disposal concerns. An alternative that has been studied extensively is lithium manganate spinel which has similar electrochemical characteristics but does not suffer from these drawbacks. However, micron-sized lithium manganate suffers from rapid deterioration of the cubic structured spinel to a non-intercalating tetragonal structure.
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Objective:
Use our proprietary process to produce more environmentally friendly advanced electrode grade battery materials for secondary battery applications requiring significantly faster charging rates, higher capacity, longer cycle life, and longer shelf life. The proprietary nano-materials process enables production of such materials and can be tuned to optimize materials manufacturing to customer specifications.
Click the thumbnail images below to view the SEM and XRD images of Altair's unique electrode grade battery materials. The Altair research approach is rapid materials development of a wide range of particle sizes to optimize lithium ion intercalation.
Battery Program Summary
An environmentally friendly, high-power battery, suitable for hybrid vehicles will soon appear based on a secondary Li+ ion battery concept.
Value in use, from the consumers point of view, will favor a secondary Li+ ion battery concept for high capacity / high power batteries due to the long life and rugged nature of this battery type.
The practical specific energy of high power, high capacity, secondary Li+ ion batteries exceeds lead acid batteries. Altair projects a practical energy density of its novel lithium ion battery concept to be double that of the commonly used lead acid batteries.
The most suitable anode material is Li4Ti5O12 (spinel). Further, we have determined the optimum particle size for this material and have filed a patent for a process that allows for economical, large-scale production.
Lithium Manganate Spinel appears to be the right cathode material to match the perfomance of our selected anode material. Once developed, the pair of materials will allow the concept to be tested in an engineering prototype.