"Keep the Lead In"
By Jack Lifton
28 Jun 2007 at 04:44 PM GMT-04:00
D ETROIT (ResourceInvestor.com) -- Investors in natural resources need to keep the metal lead in their portfolios because every motor vehicle powered all or in part (hybrid) by an internal combustion engine (ICE) relies on the unique ability of modern lead acid batteries to provide and recover rapidly from a very large and very rapid current drain to start that engine. There seems to be a great misunderstanding about the technology for the batteries in a gas (or diesel) electric hybrid, and I want to clear that up today for RI readers.
Today’s number one selling hybrid car, the gas-electric Toyota Prius, has just passed the one million mark in sales. Every single one of those Priuses comes equipped with, uses, and has always used a medium-sized, heavy-duty sealed lead acid battery to deliver the starter current required to put its gasoline engine into operation.
Recently, RI carried a story entitled “Lead Prices Hit Record High Due to Lower Exports From China.” The story pointed out, and you may have overlooked the point that “the stable development of the lead acid storage industry would push up China’s domestic lead consumption by 10.2 % annually from 2007 to 2010, hitting 3.32 million tonnes in 2010.” Uh-oh!
Before I explain the “Uh-oh!” above, I want to tell you that in the last 50 years, the performance of the lead acid battery per unit weight has more than doubled even as the weight of lead required for its operation has been reduced by 30% (see PDF here). It is unlikely we are going to see any further gains lead acid battery performance in the next decade not least because research and development for rechargeable batteries has shifted today to non-lead based technologies such as nickel metal hydride and lithium-ion.
The unambiguous goal of developing rechargeable storage batteries for vehicles using a non-lead acid technology such as nickel metal hydride or lithium-ion is to increase the amount of energy that can be stored in a battery of a given weight and can be delivered to drive motors. In addition, the rate at which the electricity can be drawn is directly correlated with the performance that can be expected from the vehicle being powered.
Together these two factors, energy density and discharge rate give you the vehicles’ performance maximums. It is, of course, a given that the batteries must also, like the standard setting lead acid units, be able to be discharged and recharged rapidly and often to be considered for vehicle use. The performance of the petroleum hydrocarbon fueled internal combustion engine measured by such factors as range at cruising speed and top speed set the performance goals for vehicles powered all or in part by batteries driving electric motors.
I have written here before about the natural resource availability limitations on the production of lithium-ion batteries, and on the same issue, but to a lesser, and I think entirely manageable degree, for nickel metal hydride batteries. There are also natural resource limitation issues for nickel metal hydride batteries with regard to the rare earth metals needed for their production, but again this limitation may have manageable solutions.
There is another major limitation, however, to the exclusive use of either of the above mentioned battery technologies for propelling a hybrid vehicle, and this one has today only one manageable solution: the lead acid battery.
When you wish to start a gasoline or diesel engine, or, for that matter, an electric car, you must first overcome inertia. The car is not in motion, and it prefers to remain that way. You can think of this inertia as the weight of the car. You must also overcome the friction between the tires and the pavement and the frictional forces resisting the movement of the cars many sliding or rotating parts.
In a car powered by an internal combustion engine or a hybrid the starter, the battery must deliver enough inertia overcoming momentum to rotate the crankshaft until the exploding fuel provides enough force to allow the engine to bring itself back to position for another power stroke and the automobile can run off the energy provided from the fuel explosion without any further need for electrical energy from the battery other than to fire the spark plugs if needed This function is taken over from the battery immediately by the on-board generator (alternator) provided for that purpose.
Starting an all-electric car may be just as onerous since the initial energy to turn the shaft(s) of the electric motor(s) to overcome the inertia of the vehicles weight and friction is of the same order of magnitude.
Those of you still awake are wondering what this has to do with battery types. The answer is that neither the nickel metal hydride nor the lithium-ion batteries available today or in the known future can deliver starting current for a vehicle without being damaged beyond repair. Even in “normal operation” neither of these battery systems can be discharged beyond between 20% and 40% of their capacity and maintain their recharging time regime. In fact, all hybrids in mass production today have rather elaborate on board computational electronics just to ensure that whenever a battery of either type reaches a maximum discharge level it is recharged while the gasoline engine runs the car.
Even more critical is the fact that large nickel metal hydride battery packs used in vehicles are no where near as sophisticated, or in any form that an engineer would call final for pre-production, in their construction, as lead acid batteries. The nickel metal hydride battery using cars’ onboard computational electronics are also set to prevent a sudden large current drain, which could short out the battery or cause it to overheat and rupture or melt. In all such cases, the battery would be rendered inoperable.
It is even worse for the lithium-ion battery in the case of a sudden large current drain. These batteries are built with many “plates” close together to take advantage of a higher operating voltage to maximize their power storage capacity. Complex webs of fine conductors connected to ever larger collector buss bars eventually deliver electricity to the car’s motors, but it is necessary to manage the heat generated and to limit the rate of power drain to avoid catastrophic failure.
In addition the lithium-ion battery has a limited life span, even if it has never been charged, and the maximum extent of that life can only be achieved by careful management of storage and operating environment temperature. An older battery will not last as long as a newer battery solely due to its age.
This serious drawback for vehicle operations, which is in stark contrast to nickel metal hydride batteries or lead acid batteries is a critical shortcoming that any future developments will have to show they have clearly and unambiguously overcome. This can only be proven by long term reliability tests of mass-produced lithium-ion batteries; this is a very expensive test, and no one is admitting it is underway for fear of a preproduction model failure that would produce very bad press.
The interested reader should go to Wikipedia’s article on the Lithium-ion battery and especially study the section there entitled “2.2 Disadvantages.”
Finally, now we come to a discussion of lead and why I said, “Uh-oh.”
In 2006, according to the USGS, the world production of new lead was 3,360,000 metric tonnes. China in 2006 produced one-third of the world’s new lead metal; the U.S. produced 12.5%, and Canada produced just 2.5%.
American consumption of lead was three times the amount of new lead mined in the U.S., and most of the difference was made up by secondary (from scrap) recovery of lead, which in industrialized countries is the major source of lead. It, secondary lead, is a growing resource in China, but China has not been industrialized long enough to have the inventory of scrap batteries that we have in the U.S. or in Europe.
The RI article I mentioned at the start of this story contains a prediction that Chinese domestic lead consumption in 2010 will be 3.32 million tonnes.
This is due overwhelmingly to the explosive growth of the motor vehicle industry, including electric powered bicycles, which are a major industry in China.
In any case this means that China alone will consume in 2010 nearly 100% of the amount of new lead produced globally in 2007. [HMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]
In the U.S. the lead acid battery accounted for 88% of lead consumption in 2006.
American car makers in 2010 will still be making cars, 100% of which will require a lead acid starting battery. The same will be true of all of the world’s car makers, but almost all of the percentage increase in the production of cars and trucks will now come from China, India, and East Europe.
China, the huge appetite of which for lead for batteries is apparent will probably not be exporting lead in 2010. India produces hardly any lead and little comes from east Europe. These three markets then will be competing for both new and recycled lead for building tens of millions of cars per year by 2010 and soon thereafter. The Chinese managed, in a very short time, to become a major player in the U.S. ferrous scrap industry, and I expect no less from China as it competes globally for lead scrap.
Even though this has been overlooked by the financial analysts who have joined the Cult of Lithium, the yearly production of lead acid batteries is and will remain, for the foreseeable future, at a level of as much as 100 times the production of all other mobile power batteries, such as nickel metal hydride and lithium-ion, put together.
There has been much consolidation in the lead acid battery business in the US during the last decade. Today the OEM automotive and replacement lead acid battery business is dominated by Exide [NASD: XIDE] and Johnson Controls [NYSE:JCI]. JCI bills itself as the world’s largest maker of lead acid batteries for automotive use The company is also hedging its bets by doing development work on lithium-ion batteries for GM with a (in this case, French) technology partner, SAFT.
Other companies are also researching lithium-ion battery development, but none of them even comes close to JCI in size other than Japan’s PHEV, a joint venture between Panasonic and Toyota, which is 60% owned by Toyota. Most of the remaining and current research on nickel metal hydride batteries is done in Japan, and, perhaps, China. Some work is also done in the U.S. on improving nickel metal hydride batteries by Great Western Technologies, Inc, which I have written about here before.
Every car and truck made in the U.S. must have a lead acid starting battery. And lead acid batteries, uniquely capable, among current technologies, of deep discharge and recovery, are the only ones that can power such industrial machines as fork lift trucks, airline ground equipment, underground mining vehicles, and golf carts.
To summarize: The use of lead for batteries in China, and soon in India and Eastern Europe, is rocketing up. China has already reduced exports of lead and, I predict, will restrict them further in the near future. American lead mining has been curtailed by activist environmentalism, which is also pressuring America’s very large lead recycling industry to shut down rather than improve health and safety. Lead prices have hit record highs to no one’s surprise in the global lead acid battery industry, which has a great future, because it will simply pass on increased lead prices to its customers who, for the foreseeable future, have no other place to go.
Keep the lead in (your portfolio). |
