Advanced materials technology company, Sylvatex (SVX), announced a new proprietary waterless production method that delivers premium EV-grade cathode active materials (CAM) at lower costs and that allows for a broader material input supply base to enable demand growth.
They expect this simpler and more sustainable approach to CAM production can enable a 25% reduction in CAM cost, a 40% reduction in plant capital requirements, and up to an 80% reduction in energy usage.
SVX recently closed a Series A funding of $8.4 million, with Catalus Capital serving as the lead investor.
Global lithium-ion battery capacity is expected to rise up to ten-fold in the next decade. CAM is the most expensive component and the bottleneck in the production of lithium-ion batteries; the CAM market alone is projected to grow to $189 billion by 2032. Improvements to the manufacturing of CAM are critical to meeting the long-term demand for batteries and exceeding EV automakers’ cost reduction targets.
To meet increasing EV demands, about 100 additional CAM plants (or 5 million additional tons) will need to be in production by 2032. Today’s cathode production methods would require $200 billion in manufacturing capital deployed and twenty billion gallons of water consumed annually—the equivalent water use of 182,000 American homes. SVX’s new method eliminates water use while delivering substantial cost reductions and using 80% less energy.
ARPA-E funded Syvlvatex for $500k – Breakthrough Process to Manufacture Very Low-cost LFP Cathode for Li-ion Batteries
Sylvatex will use a low-cost, high-yield, and simplified continuous approach to synthesize lithium iron phosphate iron (LFP) based cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) where the reactants flow and mix continuously. Sylvatex’s proprietary nanomaterial platform has already demonstrated a significant breakthrough in synthesizing cathode materials for LIBs. This project will demonstrate the feasibility of producing LFP-based materials with a controlled continuous approach which could reduce energy consumption by 80%, waste by 60%, and cost by 60% relative to the incumbent commercial process. The
performance of the cathode materials will be validated in two common LIB design types.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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“twenty billion gallons of water consumed annually”
Water doesn’t actually get ‘consumed’, when it is used in an industrial process. It gets contaminated in a way that makes it difficult to get reused in that industrial process.
In the current methods of making cathodes for Lithium ion batteries, what is wrong with the output water?