Barker's Battery Blog: Lithium: The Key Resource

Tuesday, 22 December 2009

Lithium: The Key Resource

As we fast move towards an economy dominated by electric vehicles powered by Li-ion battery technology, the cost and abundance of lithium will become a major political and commercial issue. Some recent reports have questioned the long term viability of lithium.

A report by the Technology Review summarizes the latest position. The Review expects demand for the metal to double in the next 10 years, and Bolivia, with an untapped resource estimated at nine million tons by the U.S. Geological Survey, is being called a potential "Saudi Arabia of lithium."

More information (with great pictures) may be found here:

The Lithium Rush

Companies involved in energy storage will need to continually adopt to these new market conditions, and the exploration of novel technologies not based on lithium will need to be examined.

Jerry

2 comments:

Mershopi17 November 2022 at 11:54
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Laura German17 November 2022 at 11:58
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Barker's Battery Blog

Jerry Barker is currently co-founder and Chief Scientist of Faradion Limited, a UK-based start-up company specializing in next generation Na-ion battery technology. The company has state-of-the-art R&D labs and prototype manufacturing facilities in the UK. Check out the company website here:

http://www.faradion.co.uk/

In May 2019, Jerry was appointed Honorary Professor within the School of Chemistry at the University of St. Andrews.

Jerry Barker also runs an independent technology consultant, specializing in the energy storage sector. He may be contacted here:

jerrybarker@gmail.com

Jerry has worked in the UK, Denmark and the US and has managed materials research labs in Europe and North America. He is currently located in the UK where he has consulted for, and advised a number of battery R&D companies, varying in size from small university startup to global multinational. He has also consulted and advised on solar photovoltaics (PV) where he is widely regarded as a world expert on the electrodeposition of thin film semiconductors for PV and other applications. In his early career Jerry spent time at UCSB where he collaborated with the Nobel prize winners Alan Heeger and Hideki Shirakawa on alkali metal doped polyacetylene.

Jerry has published extensively in the energy storage area (h-index = 56, total number of citations >11,000) and is a named inventor on more than 120 issued US patents. He has appeared as a patent litigation expert witness in Europe and in North America. He has also acted as the due diligence technical expert for a number of VC-backed startup companies. Additional information on Jerry's background may be found at the website:

http://www.jerrybarker.co.uk/

Jerry currently acts as an Expert Panel member for the UK's Faraday Institution and as a Board Member of the UK LiBATT consortium.

The articles and comments posted on this blog will simply be Jerry's own personal opinions. Much of the emphasis will be placed on the recent news stories involving Energy Storage Systems - especially Lithium metal anode, Lithium-ion and Sodium-ion Batteries - and Thin-film Photovoltaics.

Please feel free to add useful comments and suggestions - these will help to keep the discussions alive. I will try to respond to these postings as they are made.

Jerry