r/science • u/Sort_of_Frightening • Sep 10 '23

Chemistry Lithium discovery in U.S. volcano could be biggest deposit ever found

https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/lithium-discovery-in-us-volcano-could-be-biggest-deposit-ever-found/4018032.article
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u/PsyOmega Sep 10 '23

Na-ion cell production ramped last year. Products are due out soon.

The downside is that capacity is lower per lb than Li-ion

The upside is that they aren't fire risks.

Na-Ion cars will be sold in regions like china or europe first.

The american car market demands range and low cost above all else.

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u/StateChemist Sep 10 '23

Weight is a major issue for vehicle batteries.

Yet there is going to be considerable demand for large scale stationary batteries as well.

Room for more than one tech to solve more than one problem.

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u/[deleted] Sep 10 '23

Yup. Could definitely have shorter range vehicles for people with shorter commutes and larger range for those who need it for a premium.

Would be great if the implementation is actually swappable. Same physical footprint just different intervals.

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u/Jeffalltogether Sep 10 '23

i've seen replaceable batteries for motorcycles / mopeds. where you would just swap out your dead batteries for fresh ones at charging stations. they could probably do something similar for cars

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u/[deleted] Sep 10 '23

My understanding is that the weight of the batteries makes that prohibitive. Maybe with enough adoption then economy of scale can make it worth it, but at the time it wasn’t viable.

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u/Same-Strategy3069 Sep 10 '23

I drive max 50 miles a day and have two cars. I would be fine with 100 miles a charge for 1 and a longer range hybrid for the other. I want an all electric 7 seater with a 100 mile range.

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u/[deleted] Sep 10 '23

I have an EV. The issue with your statement isn’t entirely the range, but also the charging rate. Faster chargers also decrease battery life.

I have an ioniq5 and my commute is just 14 miles round trip, three days a week. I can easily just drop charge/level 1 charge it every other day to keep it under 80%.

If you have a 50 mile commute and need to charge it daily, there could be an issue if you end up going somewhere after work and only have 8 hours or so of charging. Though if it’s intermittent, then using a level 2/3 charger every now and then isn’t s big deal.

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u/vkashen Sep 10 '23

Yep, while the size and weight (and obviously energy density) is definitely a concern in cars, it's important but less so in stationary storage like powerwalls, and facilities that will be storing excess energy from alternative energy sources.

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u/vkashen Sep 10 '23

As a firefighter, MVAs that involve EVs are always a big concern for us. There are two big issues:

  1. You can douse a fire, but the battery, if ruptured, can spontaneously ignite again even hours after the scene is though to be clear (or, similar to vehicles with magnesium steering columns, they just burn and you can't douse it, you just have to let it burn for 6 or so hours).

  2. If we use the cutters in the wrong place we die. Typically the cables carrying the charge are labeled and/or color-coded, and we're trained on where to cut, not cut, and what to look for in most of the major EV manufacturers, but you never know when either a volley with less experience and training may make a mistake and even those of us who have been in the service for a long time can make a mistake; we're all human.

That said, I personally like that EVs are gaining in popularity and we need to do all we can to preserve the Earth for our children, families, etc., but it's still so new that mistakes happen. And it's already a dangerous job, so we need to be extremely careful with EVs as you never know if there's a rupture and the battery may spontaneously ignite while we're doing an extrication. Technology is geat, but it does come with its complexities and dangers.

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u/1668553684 Sep 10 '23

Hey, hoping you can clear up something for me - I've read that EVs are much more dangerous when on fire, but that they're much less likely to catch fire in the first place compared to ICE cars - is this true?

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u/vkashen Sep 10 '23 edited Sep 11 '23

If the battery is ruptured and the substrate is exposed to atmo then it's "good luck trying to put it out," it's damn near impossible. There are a few techniques to try to coat the car/battery area with foam or just hitting it hard with the hose for an extremely long time, but it's still no guarantee. Plus, even if you do manage to extinguish the battery fire, once it dries it can spontaneously re-ignite a few minutes or even a few hours later as lithium-ion batteries simply do that when exposed to oxygen. It's a very different situation than an internal combustion engine and gasoline (of course quite dangerous too), and we have to be both careful and quick as you never know if there's a rupture or not, so it's extremely dangerous. I'll work the scene, but I'm far, far more careful to listen for sounds that may indicate this possibility.

As for "less likely to catch fire," well, that's a different set of variables. On one hand, there's no fuel tank to rupture so no gasoline all over the road and the car(s) and other flammable fluids, so a stray spark won't ignite the vehicles & people in that regard, but the big concern is that it's often difficult to know if the battery reqgion has ruptured and can ignite spontaneously at any moment and if it does, it's really, really bad. There is a lot of protection around the battery, though, to prevent ruptures, but nothing is perfect. And different manufacturers engineer their protection in different ways, so they are not all the same.

To be honest, I've yet to see statistics on the safety of an EV over a "normal" car, and as every MVA is different, there are so many variables that I wouldn't even want to hazard a guess as that's all it would be. But I will say that when an MVA involves an EV, it's "Watch out guys and be careful, it's an EV" is one of the first things we'll hear from the incident commander or dispatch, so in my mind, it's hard to know which is more dangerous. I definitely like not having to worry about gas all over the place that hasn't ignited, but I've seen EV packs ignite with incredible force, and even hours after the MVA, so personally I see it as a crapshoot.

tl;dr: I'm not certain as I haven't seen any statistics and EVs are still a small percentage of cars on the road, so I'm not sure. But I'm far, far more careful when I respond to an MVA involving an EV and it's not just a ding. If it's bad, and a rupture is possible, we're definitely more on edge.

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u/1668553684 Sep 10 '23

Thank you for the response! Everything here definitely makes a lot of sense.

One last thing, do you think that fighting EV fires will become easier as more people start driving EVs and we develop a better understanding of how to deal with EV fires (not only on a firefighting level, but also up to and including a manufacturing and safety standards level), or would you say that the problems with EV fires are sort of "immutable" characteristics of the materials used?

I.e. would you attribute some level of difficulty to the novelty of the technology?

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u/[deleted] Sep 10 '23

The american car market demands range and low cost above all else.

I'm part of the American car market. I want less range. Cut down the battery pack and make a cheap, lightweight commuter vehicle. About 100 miles or so should be fine.