Discarded plastic bottles could become key components of li-ion batteries

Staff Writer | February 13, 2023 | 

Plastic bottles. (Reference image by Circe Denyer, Public Domain Pictures).

Researchers at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore have successfully upcycled waste polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic into polymer electrolytes, which are key components for safer lithium-ion batteries.


Their study, published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A, is the first known report of a working lithium-ion battery assembled using polymers upcycled from PET plastics, regularly used to make plastic bottles.

According to the scientists, plastic waste is conventionally recycled through mechanical and chemical processes, which have their drawbacks. For mechanical recycling, only a small proportion of recycled PET can eventually be used, as their physical properties degrade with each round of recycling due to polymer chain cleavage. Chemical recycling involves high energy usage, requires purified monomers and can be more costly compared to using virgin polymers.

PET plastics, which amounted to 31 million tonnes worldwide in 2019, possess existing features that make them suitable to be upcycled into polymer electrolytes (PEs). They are made up of rigid terephthalate components, which contribute to their excellent mechanical properties and can be tapped to enhance PEs’ mechanical robustness, which in turn facilitates device integration and fabrication.

They also possess easily breakable chemical bonds which allow these polymers to be repurposed into new chemical building blocks with ease. These can then be reconstituted into new polymers for fresh applications.

Waste PET bottles were used by the team to design polyurethane-based PEs. Compared to conventional liquid electrolytes currently used in LiBs, PEs are promising alternative components in batteries that have the potential to eliminate safety hazards such as the risks of electrolyte leakage, uncontrolled heating, volume expansion, dendrite growth and fire hazards.

After assessing the viability of the PET-derived polymers as solid polymer electrolytes, the team further evaluated their ionic conductivity and cycling performance when used as gel polymer electrolytes for LiBs.

In detail, they achieved a room temperature conductivity of 10-4 S/cm as a gel-polymer electrolyte (GPE), which is comparable to existing commercial systems containing liquid electrolytes.

The team also successfully assembled a working LiB using these polymers and showed that cells could be repeatedly charged and discharged up to 150 cycles.

The group believes that these batteries’ promising performance paves the way for a future powered by more sustainable energy, where PET plastic waste can be transformed into PE materials, creating a circular economy while combating the mounting plastic waste issue.

Cyber threats on the rise for resource industries

Employees at Agnico Eagle Mines' LaRonde complex, located in the Abitibi region of northwestern Quebec. Credit: Agnico Eagle Mines.

POSTED BY: HENRY LAZENBY 

FEBRUARY 10, 2023

Mining companies continue to embrace digital technology to improve productivity and safety, and to make the most of insights made possible by big data and increasingly connected equipment and operations. But in the wake of at least two high-profile incidents involving the mining industry in recent months, experts agree that mining companies are not well prepared to deal with escalating and evolving cyber threats. 

Cyber-attacks targeting miners seem to be on the rise. 

 Most recently, in December, Copper Mountain Mining (TSX: CMMC; ASX: C6C) put its Canadian treatment plant on a “preventative” shut down for six days after being hit by a ransomware attack. 

During the downtime the company continued delivering copper concentrate to the Port of Vancouver from mine inventory and has maintained its planned shipping schedule. 

On Jan. 1, the company resumed operations of the primary crusher, with mill operations (which were shut down preventatively following the attack) resuming shortly after.  On Jan. 4, the mill was at full production, and the operation was being stabilized with the remaining business systems fully restored, it said at the time. 

Throughout the outage, all environmental management systems at the mine were operational, and there were no environmental incidents or injuries to personnel. In October last year, a cyber gang also attacked a plant owned by Hamburg-based Aurubis, which recycles copper and produces about 1 million tonnes per annum of copper cathode. 

At the time, the company said its incident “was apparently part of a larger attack on the metals and mining industry.” 

Two months earlier, an environmental hacking group released documents from mining companies operating in Guatemala and Colombia. 

Recorded Future, a Massachusetts-based cybersecurity company, reports that ransomware attacks in North America on manufacturing organizations, “especially related to metal products,” were frequent in 2022. 

Dragos, a cybersecurity firm based in Houston, has stated that one criminal operation, LockBit, goes after mining and water treatment plants. 

Professional services firm EY has also picked up on the cybersecurity threat to miners. According to the 2022 EY Global Information Security survey, 54% of mining and metals companies suffered a significant cyber-attack. The survey also found that 55% of mining and metals executives are worried about their ability to manage a cyberattack. 

EY Canada cybersecurity leader Yogen Appalraju says a recent ransomware attack on an energy pipeline company again highlighted the vulnerability of asset-backed companies. 

“The attacker has really performed an attack to exfiltrate money out of the organization,” he said in an EY internal video interview filmed last year.  

It is reported that the attackers didn’t intend to shut down the pipeline operations. Still, when that organization was attacked, it felt that the attackers now knew about the pipeline and how to attack it. For safety reasons, they shut down the operations temporarily. “This could happen to a mining and metals organization as well,” Appalraju said. “And I would argue that mining and metal organizations should be prepared for such an attack, ensure they’ve got good visibility so that they can detect these attacks early and understand what’s happening, and make good decisions about whether it affects the operations or not, so you don’t have such an event happen.”   

Rising prevalence 

A 2022 analysis by Kaspersky ICS CERT found the internet itself posed the biggest threat to operations’ cybersecurity, with incidents rising in Canada in the second half of the year. 

According to Kaspersky, 40% of global industrial control system (ICS) computers were attacked with malware. The firm estimates that 10.1% of ICS computers in the U.S. and Canada have been hacked since the start of 2023. 

The company has tracked a fast spread of malware attacks on miners, specifically in Africa. “This is a high-growth threat landscape in Africa that no public or private sector entity, especially in critical sectors like energy and mining, can ignore,” Kaspersky said in a recent report. 

One infected USB drive or a single spear-phishing email is all it takes for cyber criminals to penetrate an isolated ICS network, Brandon Muller, Kaspersky tech expert and consultant in the Middle East and African region, said in a recent press release. 

“Traditional security is inadequate to protect industrial environments from rapidly evolving cyber threats,” he said. 

Kaspersky advises that ICS is a collection of personnel, hardware, and software that can affect or influence an industrial process’s safe, secure, and reliable operation. IT is one component of this environment, with operational technology (OT) another critical element.  

While traditional cybersecurity solutions focus on data-oriented businesses, ICS protection is geared towards OT security, which is all about cyber-physical companies such as utilities, mining, manufacturing, etc. 

 Proper cybersecurity precautions 

According to Muller, effective OT cybersecurity measures must therefore include industrial endpoint protection to prevent accidental infections and make access by bad actors more difficult. It also entails OT network monitoring and anomaly detection to identify malicious actions on the level of programmable logic controllers and dedicated expert services to investigate the infrastructure, conduct expert analytics, or mitigate the impact of an incident. 

“However, despite all the innovations in modern cybersecurity solutions, human error still plays a significant role in compromising ICS systems,” Muller suggests. “As such, it needs to be managed much more proactively than what is currently happening. This requires utility companies, mines, and others operating in the industrial environment to look at building a ‘Human Firewall.’” 

Beyond the Human Firewall, Kaspersky suggests there are sector-specific interventions to consider. For instance, modern electrical power systems are complex environments requiring protection, automation, and control solutions covering all areas of electric power facility operation. 

In addition to the technical challenges of securing this environment, organizational issues must also be considered. For instance, there’s a lack of guides defining actions to be taken when suspicious activity is detected within automated systems, and just as few documents and practices relating to investigating disturbances in technological environments, including malicious influence on control systems. 

The bottom line is that mines are also hotbeds for potential attacks, especially when Industry 4.0 digital technologies link critical operational systems to data analytics and cloud environments, but miners lack the in-house skills to protect their OT and ICS environments adequately. 

For these reasons, both Kaspersky and EY analysts agree that combining ICS cybersecurity solutions with ongoing user education and training are non-negotiables, especially when human lives are at risk. 

TC Energy says combination of factors caused Keystone pipeline leak

Amanda Stephenson, The Canadian Press

TC Energy Corp. has pegged the cost of cleanup and remediation of December's oil spill from its Keystone pipeline at an estimated US$480 million. 

The Keystone pipeline system suffered the worst oil spill in its history on Dec. 7, 2022 when oil leaked into a creek in Washington County, Kansas. 

The size of the spill was initially estimated at 14,000 barrels, though TC Energy revised that figure downwards Thursday to 12,937 barrels.

While most of the 4,324-kilometre pipeline system reopened a week after the spill, a 154-km section running from just south of Steele City, Nebraska to Cushing, Oklahoma remained shut down until the end of December.

On Thursday, the company put a price tag on the event for the first time, saying it is working with its insurers to maximize cost recoveries.

"This estimate may be adjusted as we continue to progress work on site," the company said in a news release.

TC Energy also released the results of its investigation into the cause of the leak. The company said Thursday the spill was due to a combination of factors, including bending stress on the pipe and a welding flaw.

It said the weld flaw led to a crack that grew over time as a result of bending stress fatigue, leading to the leak. The cause of the bending stress remains under investigation.

The company added a metallurgical analysis identified no issues with the strength or material properties of the pipe or manufactured fitting, and the pipeline was operating within its operational design and within the pipeline design maximum operating pressure.

Recovery and remediation efforts at the site continue, TC Energy said, and the company is also conducting additional in-line inspections as well as an analysis of other segments of pipe with potentially similar conditions.

Pipelines are widely considered by experts to be a safer mode of crude transport than either rail or truck. Still, the risk of a spill has long been a factor cited by environmentalists and others who have opposed North American pipeline construction projects in recent years.

Fears about potential pipeline leaks (as well as concerns about climate change) helped stoke opposition to TC Energy's proposed Keystone XL extension. That project would have cut across Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska but ultimately had its permit cancelled by U.S. President Joe Biden in 2021.

A report released last year from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GOA), a congressional watchdog agency, said Keystone's accident history has been similar to other crude oil pipelines since 2010, but the severity of spills has worsened in recent years.

In 2017, a Keystone leak resulted in an approximately 6,600-barrel spill in North Dakota, while in 2019, the pipeline spilled about 4,500 barrels of oil in South Dakota.

In both those spills, the GOA report identified "construction issues'' leading to the material failure of pipe or welding material as a leading factor.

Qatar is said to prepare imminent bid for Manchester United FC

Dinesh Nair, David Hellier and Aaron Kirchfeld, Bloomberg News

Manchester United players kneel prior to the start of the English Premier League soccer match between Leeds United and Manchester United at Elland Road, Leeds, England, Sunday, Feb.12, 2023. (AP Photo/Jon Super)

Qatari investors are set to make an offer for Manchester United Plc in the coming days, people familiar with the matter said, in a move that would cement the country’s desire to become a major player in global sports.

The Qatari consortium is preparing to submit an initial bid for the English Premier League football club by the end of the week, the people said. Officials at sovereign wealth fund the Qatar Investment Authority are helping with preparations for a bid alongside local family offices, one of the people said, asking not to be identified discussing confidential information. 

New York bank Raine Group is advising Manchester United’s owners, the U.S.-based Glazer family.

Manchester United has been the subject of increasing takeover speculation since the summer, when Bloomberg News reported the Glazer family was open to selling a stake. So far, only British billionaire Jim Ratcliffe has officially declared his interest and is working with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. on a potential offer. 

Bloomberg News reported in January that state-backed Qatari investors were weighing an investment in Manchester United. 

Qatar Sports Investments, a separate entity to QIA, already owns French super-club Paris Saint-Germain FC. Regulations from European football’s governing body, UEFA, state that teams with the same majority owner can’t both compete in the region’s major tournaments, including the showpiece Champions League. QSI chairman Nasser Al-Khelaifi is also a member of the UEFA Executive Committee that adopts its regulations. 

Read more: English Football’s Dancing to a Subprime Beat—Matthew Brooker

Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the ruling emir of Qatar, is a Manchester United fan and unlikely to want to let slip the chance to own what is widely regarded as one of the world’s biggest sports brands. 

Deliberations are ongoing and no final decisions have been taken about which Qatari entities will ultimately provide capital for the Manchester United bid, the people said. A spokesperson for QIA declined to comment, while a representative for QSI wasn’t immediately available for comment.

Adam Sommerfeld, a sport investment specialist at Certus Capital, has estimated that any offer for Manchester United would need to exceed £4 billion ($4.8 billion) to be successful. That would make it one of the largest ever deals involving a sporting franchise. 

Qatar spent more than $200 billion during the past decade redeveloping the country’s infrastructure to host the FIFA World Cup. Alongside building new stadiums and entire municipalities, it also bought sports assets. As well as the takeover of PSG, QSI has a stake Portuguese football club SC Braga.

Record 4,800-kilometre voyage for Canadian gas offers relief for Asia

Geoffrey Morgan, Bloomberg News

A stream of natural gas that’s being unleashed from British Columbia’s vast reservoirs is blazing a record-setting path through global markets, providing hope for Canada’s beleaguered drillers and relief for energy-hungry economies around the world.

Tourmaline Oil Corp., Canada’s largest natural gas producer, has started shipping the fuel on a roundabout, 3,000-mile journey from northeast British Columbia to Chicago and then southbound to an LNG-chilling facility on the Gulf Coast in Texas. From there, it’s being shipped to ports in Asia or Europe on voyages that can range from 5,000 to 17,000 nautical miles, depending on the route. 

The arrangement promises higher prices for Tourmaline’s gas and a new source of the fuel for European and Asian buyers who are scouring the globe for supplies as Russia’s war in Ukraine exacerbates a global energy crunch.

The gas’s journey is believed to be the longest path from a natural gas well to a liquefaction facility in the world. It’s also the first significant amount of Canadian gas to be contracted for markets beyond North America, a milestone for an industry that has struggled with heavily discounted prices because of a lack of domestic LNG facilities.

Tourmaline’s 15-year agreement to supply 140 million cubic feet of gas per day to Cheniere Energy Inc. took effect in January, enabling the company to send the equivalent of one ship per month from North America to Asian markets, where gas prices are roughly 10 times higher than in the Canadian spot market.

Tourmaline is being paid around US$20 per thousand cubic feet for its gas, minus 86 cents for pipeline transportation costs and undisclosed liquefaction and shipping costs. The current price of natural gas at Canada’s AECO hub is $2.05.

“We’re really happy to be receiving the price that we’re receiving,” said Jamie Heard, manager of capital markets at Tourmaline. 

With local gas prices languishing and domestic LNG projects stalled, multiple Canadian producers have cast about for export options. ARC Resources Ltd. and Seven Generations Energy, which are now combined, have also signed supply agreements with U.S. Gulf Coast liquefaction terminals, but those supply deals don’t begin until 2025. ARC didn’t respond to requests for comment. 

Fortis Inc.’s British Columbia subsidiary operates a small LNG facility near Vancouver that supplies the fuel to the province’s coastal ferries and has shipped occasional, small batches from its own supplies in shipping containers to China. A company spokesperson said its last shipment was in January 2021.

Tourmaline’s long journey to market illustrates Canada’s “missed opportunity” in helping meet global LNG demand, said Cameron Gingrich, managing partner of markets and strategy at Incorrys, a gas consulting company in Calgary.

“It’s got to be a little disappointing for the Canadian industry,” Gingrich said in an interview.

Still, there is some hope for the industry in the decade ahead. Incorrys estimates the country’s LNG exports will rise from zero this year to 4 billion cubic feet per day when the Shell Plc-led LNG Canada project is built and expanded. A smaller LNG project called Woodfibre is also under construction.

“Canada is definitely late to the LNG party,” Raymond James analyst Jeremy McCrea said in an interview.

TC Energy pipe to LNG site sees costs soar to 

$14.5B

Derek Decloet, Bloomberg New

TC ENERGY CORP (TRP:CT)

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The price tag for TC Energy Corp.’s Coastal GasLink project has jumped to $14.5 billion (US$10.9 billion) — more than double the original estimate — as labor woes plague a pipeline that will supply Canada’s first major liquefied natural gas export plant.

The cost may rise an additional $1.2 billion beyond that estimate if more delays extend construction into 2024, the Canadian pipeline operator said Wednesday. The company indicated it might increase the size of a planned $5 billion asset-sale program to help pay for added costs, based on “strong market interest.” 

TC Energy dropped 5.6 per cent to $54.11 in Toronto, the biggest one-day decline since November. The shares are down 16 per cent in the past 12 months, the second-worst performance in the 39-company S&P/TSX Energy Index. 

The company said in November that Coastal GasLink’s costs would be much higher than anticipated, but it didn’t provide a number at the time. 

The new cost estimate is slightly higher than expected, and TC Energy’s warning of another possible increase “will be an overhang for the stock,” RBC Capital Markets analyst Robert Kwan said in a note. 

The pipeline, which will feed the Shell Plc-led LNG Canada plant on the British Columbia coast, has been delayed by a series of challenges including Covid-19, skilled-worker shortages and protests by environmentalists. Right now, the project is 83 per cent complete and the company is targeting “mechanical completion” by the end of this year, TC Energy said.

“We are disappointed with the increase in the Coastal GasLink Project costs,” Chief Executive Officer Francois Poirier said in a statement. “We continue to be laser-focused on safely completing this critical piece of energy infrastructure at the lowest possible cost.” 

Calgary-based TC Energy will take a impairment charge on its Coastal GasLink investment when it reports fourth-quarter results.