Thursday, April 24, 2025

 

Will Magnesium Disrupt the Electric Vehicle Industry?

  • Researchers are developing magnesium batteries to address the environmental and geopolitical issues associated with lithium-ion batteries, which currently dominate the electric vehicle market.

  • Magnesium offers advantages such as abundance, lower cost, and less complex supply chains compared to lithium.

  • Recent breakthroughs in magnesium battery technology, including advancements in electrolytes and anodes, show promise for a more sustainable and efficient energy storage solution.

On an international scale, researchers have been hard at work making magnesium batteries a feasible replacement for lithium-ion batteries and hydrogen fuel cells, in a development that could upend the electric vehicles industry on a worldwide scale. 

Currently, the global EV fleet runs on lithium-ion batteries, but these fundamental building blocks of the decarbonization movement carry some critical drawbacks. As it stands lithium production and refining for use in lithium-ion batteries and other applications is all but monopolized by China. China alone is responsible for more than more than 98% of the world’s lithium iron phosphate, and “the country dominates almost the entire value chain of lithium-ion batteries - from raw material extraction to battery production - and controls both national and international production capacities,” according to research from the Fraunhofer Research Institution for Battery Cell Production FFB. 

This supply chain concentration generates major risks for the global economy. China has already shown that it’s not afraid to cause global disruption of lithium supplies in response to the intensifying trade war and punitive tariffs being imposed by the Trump administration in the United States.

Moreover, the production of lithium – while broadly associated with clean energy – causes considerable environmental damage in the localities where it’s extracted. The process requires the use of chemicals and heavy metals that can leach into the soil and groundwater of surrounding communities, causing public health crises and threatening local wildlife. It’s also an incredibly thirsty business, requiring around 500,000 gallons of water per tonne of lithium extracted. 

“Like any mining process, it is invasive, it scars the landscape, it destroys the water table and it pollutes the earth and the local wells,” said Guillermo Gonzalez, a lithium battery expert from the University of Chile, in a 2009 interview. “This isn’t a green solution – it’s not a solution at all.”

To this end, researchers have been hard at work finding alternative solutions to lithium-ion batteries. Potential breakthroughs have ranged from hydrogen fuel cells to iron-air batteries to proton batteries. But new breakthroughs in the sector show that magnesium may hold the answer for a more sustainable EV battery. 

Historically, magnesium has not seemed to be a promising alternative as it’s an incredibly difficult material to work with. It’s highly reactive to oxygen, causing major challenges for its handling and regulating power surges within battery technologies. Plus, previous experiments have yielded far lower voltages than lithium. But researchers at the University of Waterloo may have cracked the code by designing an electrolyte that facilitates high efficiency within a magnesium anode.

“The electrolyte we developed allows us to deposit magnesium foils with extremely high efficiency and it is stable to a higher voltage than successfully tested before,” said  Chang Li, a postdoctoral fellow in the Nazar Group. “All we need now is the right cathode to bring it all together.”

Scientists at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) have also made recent breakthroughs in magnesium-air battery technology for enhanced energy density, safety and efficiency, and longevity, according to reporting from EcoNews. 

Together, these advances could have major disruptive potential, as magnesium is extremely abundant in the Earth’s crust and much less costly than lithium. It also is much less geopolitically fraught, as value chains are not as well (and unevenly) established. EcoNews also reports that these breakthroughs could not only oust lithium-ion batteries, but the potential of hydrogen fuel cells as well. “Hydrogen fuel cells have been hailed as an attractive alternative to lithium-ion batteries but are plagued by infrastructure, storage, and cost problems, they report. “Magnesium batteries, however, offer a more realistic and efficient solution. [...] Magnesium batteries utilize more standard materials and don’t need specialized infrastructure, making them simpler and less costly to realize on a large scale.”

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com

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