Energy accounts for around 60% of total global greenhouse gas emissions. Increasing energy efficiency, developing sustainable energy storage options and the use of renewable energy is crucial to creating more sustainable communities and businesses and resilience to environmental issues like climate change.
The rapid growth in electric vehicles and renewable energy storage solutions is creating a global need for more efficient, cheaper, higher-capacity, and more sustainable energy storage options.
It is estimated that a twelve-fold increase in battery capacity is needed to meet the demand for electric vehicles and renewable energy storage by 2025 alone. While a large part of this growth has been enabled through the performance of lithium-ion batteries, issues around the cost, capacity, safety and sustainability of current lithium-ion batteries will increasingly limit this growth.
There is thus a need for advanced materials for lithium-ion batteries that deliver superior performance and safety at lower cost while at the same time reducing environmental impact.
With its new BATMn reactor in Victoria (Australia), Calix is developing high performance, affordable, and more recyclable lithium-ion hybrid batteries based on nano-active electrode materials.
BATMn will be a key provider of next-generation electrode materials for the recently announced CRC-P for Advanced Hybrid Batteries which Calix leads in collaboration the Institute for Frontier Materials and BAT-TRI Hub at Deakin University and specialist chemicals manufacturer Boron Molecular Ltd Pty.
Calix has also been invited to join the $150m Future Batteries Industries Co-operative Research Centre (“FBI-CRC”) as a key participant, given the role its technology could play not only in developing advanced battery materials, but also in improving extractive mineral techniques such as Lithium from Spodumene ore.
Its commissioning has proven Calix’s proprietary technology can be run entirely by electricity. This has wide-reaching implications for the application of Calix’s technology in other industrial applications, such as lime and cement manufacture, paving the way to an entirely zero emissions process where the electricity for heating is sourced from renewables.
Over the next three years, Calix will be using the BATMn reactor for the development of low-cost, safe, and easier to recycle electrode materials for lithium ion battery technology.
Additionally, longer term research and development programs are underway focused on the development of high performance nano-active materials for next-generation, solid-state and post lithium electrochemical energy storage technologies through Calix’s involvement in the storEnergy and POLYSTORAGE consortiums, involving many of Australia, and Europe’s, leading universities, research institutes and industrial partners.