This is from the Financial Times which published a special section on batteries today. Note the production capacity of 30 mn batteries/yr.
Strong focus on new technologies
The big increase in mobile computing and communications is
helping to drive the demand for portable power, writes Peter
Marsh
In a gleaming $50m plant in
Northern Ireland, engineers are
preparing for full production later
this year of a new family of
lithium-polymer batteries which,
some believe, will bring huge
benefits to the world of consumer
electronics. The plant is operated
by Valence Technology, a Las
Vegas-based company which was started in 1989 and
which has so far consumed $250m in development
funds.
The factory underlines the focus on new technologies in
the world battery industry, a sector that supports a range
of other businesses by producing reliable sources of
portable power.
Among the many sectors that benefit from batteries are
electronics and the information and communication
technologies. While the array of new portable electronic
products, such as mobile telephones and notebook
computers, would not be possible without light, thin and
relatively inexpensive batteries, other types of energy
storage devices are essential in backing up the mains
electricity supply in most of the world's
telecommunications and data networks.
In such sectors - as in many of the more traditional
areas of battery use, such as in medical equipment,
power tools, vehicles and forklift trucks - the accent
increasingly is on providing larger amounts of power
more cheaply.
The interest in new forms of low-polluting,
electricity-driven cars which could transform motoring in
the next century, has also spurred work on new batteries
that could form part of the motive power systems for
such vehicles.
In these applications, the batteries would probably be
used in conjunction with high-efficiency petrol engines,
or other on-board sources of electricity such as fuel
cells, a power generation device fuelled by hydrogen and
oxygen.
With annual sales of just under $40bn, the world battery
industry can be divided into two segments: so-called
primary devices which have to be thrown away after use,
and secondary (rechargeable) batteries which can be
re-used.
In the first category are alkaline or zinc-based batteries
sold by large consumer-goods companies, including
Duracell (which is owned by Gillette) and Ralston Purina
of the US, and Matsushita of Japan.
Rechargeable batteries include the well-established
lead-acid batteries used in most cars, and the much
faster-growing types of devices used in products such as
mobile telephones and computers.
Rechargeable devices used in new types of electronics
goods need particularly high power levels. They use
relatively novel chemistries such as nickel-cadmium,
nickel metal hydride or lithium-ion. Sales of such
products add up to some $5bn a year, and are
dominated by Japanese companies including
Matsushita, Sony and Sanyo, with both Duracell and
Ralston having decided on strategic grounds to stay
anchored in the primary part of the industry.
The value of rechargeable batteries sold worldwide is
about twice as much as primary devices, mainly due to
the huge demand for car batteries, which are the biggest
selling battery type.
The basic idea behind a battery turning the energy
created during a chemical reaction to electricity, a
process which, when reversible, can be used in
recharging has been around for 200 years. But in the
past decade, the subject has been the subject of new
interest by battery researchers keen to improve on
device performance.
The combination of disciplines required in this area, plus
the need to bring a new battery device into production on
a highly automated basis, can stretch the skills of the
companies involved. "The battery industry is about
mixing physics, chemistry, metallurgy, and magic,"
says Bo Andersson, managing director of Catella
Generics, a battery consultancy based in Stockholm.
As a further point, many in the industry have also had to
learn to discount the inflated claims for battery
performance made by rival groups, or sometimes from
scientists in their own research laboratories. "When I
first entered the [energy] industry, I was told there were
liars, damned liars and battery researchers," says Firoz
Rasul, chief executive of Vancouver-based Ballard Power
Systems, a leading fuel cell maker.
Notwithstanding such comments, a number of innovative
battery companies have entered the industry in the past
few years in an effort to develop new, relatively exotic
chemistries.
Rechargeable lithium-based batteries have proved a
fertile area for new research, on the grounds that lithium
is easily oxidised. That makes it an extremely good
source of electrons and so ideal for use in batteries. The
downside is that lithium is highly unstable and can be
dangerous if not handled extremely carefully. This is why
lithium-ion devices, as well as being made according to
strict technical procedures, require special protective
circuitry to minimise the risks to consumers.
While Japanese companies have taken the lead in
making lithium-ion batteries, the development of which
has cost an estimated $2bn in the past decade, small
US groups such as Valence have entered the race to be
the first to produce commercial quantities of so-called
lithium-polymer devices. These use the same basic
chemistry as lithium-ion devices. But they should be
simpler and less costly to produce, and are also capable
of being made into ultra-thin batteries with a thickness
measured in millimetres a useful factor as the
electronics world continues to shrink.
Set up in 1989, Valence completed its main plant in
Mallusk, Northern Ireland, last year. Besides this factory
which employs 160, it has a technical centre at its US
headquarters, which has another 60 staff. But Valence
ran into technical problems putting the UK plant into
production. Lev Dawson, Valence's chairman, says
these difficulties have now been overcome.
While he is not forecasting how many batteries the
plant, which has an annual production capacity of 30m a
year, will be making this year, he says: "We are way
ahead of anyone else in our production plans."
The company has worked with Delphi, the US car
components group which is being spun-off from General
Motors, on some of its battery developments. Delphi is
believed to be keen to use parts of Valence's technology
in novel vehicle batteries over the next decade.
Mr Dawson, whose company has 250 patents on
lithium-polymer batteries, with another 200 pending,
says that once lithium-polymer technology gets into
production, "there will be nothing to rival it for decades".
Similarly confident is Ultralife, another US battery
company developing new lithium-polymer devices. It has
spent $20m on a plant in New York state to bring these
to full-scale production.
Joe Barrella, Ultralife's president, says lithium-polymer
devices, as well as producing more power than rival
batteries, are more "environmentally acceptable" than
lithium-ion systems because they contain fewer
potentially hazardous substances. Also, they do not
generally need the type of protective electric circuitry
required for lithium-ion products.
On the ecological front, the use of rechargeable
consumer batteries (the most up-to-date of which can
has be re-used 1,000 times) have won plaudits from
many environmental groups on the grounds of resource
conservation.
It is, however, worth pointing out that many of the
relatively new rechargeable devices being used in mobile
phones and other equipment contain potentially
hazardous substances, such as nickel and cadmium.
So they require careful recycling methods if they are not
to cause environmental problems once they come to the
end of their lives and have to be discarded.
A new US report on the battery industry says more
international regulation may be required to police the
longer-term disposal procedures for these novel types of
battery. In particular, battery makers and users need to
work out ways to ship their devices around the world to
the safest sites for recycling, says the report by
Ohio-based Powers Associates. *
As for the longer established lead-acid rechargeable
devices, the main types used in broad industrial
applications for batteries as well as in conventional cars,
David Ryan, president of the power storage division of
Invensys, the UK controls equipment company, says
this sector has a great deal of life.
Mr Ryan's division, which sells under the Hawker name
and is based around selling lead-acid devices, has sales
of about £600m a year. It claims to be the world's
biggest maker of industrial batteries, outside the vehicle
field. Invensys is the new name for the combination of
BTR and Siebe, the two UK engineering groups which
merged last year.
Customers, especially those in the electronics and
telecommunications industries, are increasingly
demanding batteries which offer better performance in
terms of reliablity and robustness, he says.
"Customers want more predictability from their batteries
which is where suppliers such as ourselves have to put
more effort into new designs. Lead-acid may be a mature
sector, but it is still capable of being improved." |
