Cobalt with a wicked cost doomed to disappear? A “new battery” saves society

When physicist John Goodenough, then a professor at Oxford University, developed the first rechargeable lithium-ion battery in 1980, he needed cobalt. Experiments had already proven that cobalt has a high energy density and is ideal for small batteries that require high output.

Therefore, Goodenough heated the ore containing cobalt to a very high temperature to create cobalt himself. Cobalt is now used in most lithium-ion batteries, but mining it comes at a considerable price.

This silvery metal is expensive, but that's not all. There is an "evil cost". The Democratic Republic of the Congo has a long history of human rights violations, including the use of children in mining.

Efforts to Reduce Cobalt Use

Electronics and electric vehicle (EV) makers don't want to pay big bucks to be complicit in these atrocities. For these reasons, the company has tried to reduce the amount of cobalt it uses in its batteries.

For example, Panasonic, which supplies batteries to Tesla, announced at the end of May 2018 that it was developing batteries that do not require cobalt. And it can help the company. Researchers such as Goodenough are already developing rechargeable batteries that don't require cobalt.

In a lithium-ion battery, the positive electrode of the battery is composed of a lithium-containing transition metal composite oxide such as lithium cobalt oxide, and the negative electrode is composed of graphite-based carbon. The battery in the device you're reading this article has has the same structure.

Battery cathodes used in EVs typically have a higher percentage of nickel than smaller devices. This reduces the strain on the cobalt supply chain, but increases processing costs. It's also slightly more likely to catch fire on an airplane, much like Samsung's infamous Galaxy Note 7.

Related Article: 5 Reasons Why Lithium Ion Batteries Explode

Prices Quadruple in Two Years

Battery researchers like Goodenough are turning to alternatives to cobalt, such as manganese and iron.

"Cobalt is expensive, so people will do their best to avoid it," says Goodenough, who is 96 and still works as an engineering professor at the University of Texas. Cobalt prices have quadrupled in the last two years.

Portable electronic devices now use most of the cobalt. But EV batteries require about 1,000 times more cobalt than mobile phones. For reasons such as climate change, more and more people are trading in cars with engines to buy EVs. Such a trend, which may be good for the planet, has resulted in a skyrocketing price for cobalt.

Cobalt is a byproduct of the production of other metals such as nickel and copper. But it is also found alone in the earth's crust, mainly in mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In 2016, The Washington Post examined the previously opaque cobalt supply chain, revealing child labor practices and a lack of necessary equipment.

Of course, there are other ways to avoid the dangers of mining. It's called "recycling". However, because lithium-ion batteries have such a long lifespan, ``the number of people who will buy lithium-ion batteries in the next decade will exceed the number of people who will give them away,'' says an energy researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor Elsa Olivetti explains.

"All-solid-state batteries" attracting attention from researchers

Olivetti published a paper in October 2017 stating that the demand for the next two years will be met, especially in the current situation where the number of electric vehicles is increasing. concludes that "the supply of cobalt needs to be increased immediately." Despite advances in both cathode development and cobalt procurement over the past eight months, "the general conclusion that we all have to think better about cobalt will not change," the paper said. ing.