Li-ion battery expert: Graphene is key to making shelf life longer and more cost-effective
Dr. Shane Beattie is known as one of the world’s go-to experts when it comes to the field of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries. He has over 17 years of experience in the field, and one of his specialties is forecasting and estimating the lifespan of these energy storage systems. It’s this expertise that has made him a key player in Elcora Advanced Materials’ (TXSV:ERA,OTC:ECORF) efforts to revolutionize the lithium-ion industry.
Li-ion batteries are highly sought after sources of power because of their use in electrical-intensive devices ranging from the ubiquitous laptop to the next generation of “green” vehicles. As lightweight, high efficiency, energy storage systems, lithium-ion batteries are extremely popular with industries that create products dependent on external battery life.
Always looking for ways to move beyond projections and non-stop testing, Dr. Beattie is dedicated to improving Elcora’s products. That is the main reason why, in the early part of 2017, he made the leap from a battery scale-up facility in the United Kingdom to the innovative Canadian enterprise that he describes as a “vertically integrated graphite company.”
Elcora Advanced Materials (TXSV:ERA,OTC:ECORF), founded in 2011, is dedicated to the end-to-end production of the mineral known as graphite. This means Beattie takes a hands-on approach and oversees the process, from the time that the rock is mined from the depths of Sri Lanka to its eventual refinement in Elcora’s Canadian research and development facilities.
Once graphite is transformed into graphene, it becomes the critical ingredient that can boost and sustain lithium-ion batteries’ capacity to store power and then deliver it to necessary equipment or devices for a significantly longer period of time. Li-ion batteries with graphene in them actually last longer than their counterparts which do not have this refined form of graphite inside them.
Graphene allows battery makers to make their products even more efficient. It’s these improvements in battery storage capacity which are are creating new opportunities for manufacturers across many industries around the world.
Being able to disrupt industries and transform what’s possible is a key reason Dr. Beattie is so proud to be supporting his new firm. His move to Elcora as its new Chief Technology Officer was also fueled by that vision.
As he says in an interview, “I read about Elcora in the newspaper and was immediately interested in what they were doing with graphite. I’ve worked in the lithium-ion battery industry for over 15 years and I believe that graphite has a bright future. Graphite is one of the main ingredients in Lithium-ion batteries. With the advent of electric cars and grid storage, the lithium-ion battery market is set to explode. As demand for lithium-ion batteries grows, so will the demand for graphite.”
The demand is certainly poised to increase, as confirmed by a report from Grand View Research. The global market for lithium-ion batteries is estimated to rise by 17 percent in the next eight years, reaching a value of $93.1 billion. Driving this growth is the energy-driven sectors of consumer electronics, grid storage systems, and soon, electric vehicles. All these industries depend on lithium-ion batteries because of their considerable capacity to store and run power at very safe levels.
Dr. Beattie points out that Elcora’s graphene is a game-changer that can increase the operational time of these industries while boosting the chances for success of new fields like electric cars.
He says, “Graphene is the strongest material ever tested. It also has exceptionally high thermal and electrical conductivities. These characteristics could help build a battery that can be charged quickly and safely. It’s important to reduce lithium-ion battery charging times for automotive applications. Users don’t want to wait hours for their car to ‘fill-up’. The industry needs to work on reducing charging time to minutes instead of hours, and graphene could help do that.”
In his role as Elcora’s CTO, Dr. Beattie is certainly at the forefront of exploring how graphene can be further mined and processed to be able to add more juice and longevity to lithium-ion batteries. He is the perfect choice to accomplish this thanks to his experience working on cellphone and automobile energy storage systems in previous roles.
In his current post, Dr. Beattie spends a huge part of his time, “testing pouch cells, evaluating different graphite sources, supervision of the anode facility construction and related personnel, and interfacing with clients.”
With graphene potentially raising the bar when it comes to the quality of these batteries, Dr. Beattie is already looking further into the future. One of Elcora’s key projects will innovate by adding silicon into graphite-based electrodes; the higher gravimetric capacity of silicon allows for batteries with even more energy capacity.
Dr. Beattie is optimistic about the future of energy storage, “With the addition of silicon and graphene, Elcora is planning to build the world’s best lithium-ion electrodes.”
