Charging ahead Many companies with various approaches to lithium-sulfur design are charging ahead with aims to commercialize batteries in the coming years A growing list of companies is also sprouting up, seeking to develop commercially viable models of what has so far been a promising, but limited, battery chemistry. In early 2024, Chrysler released a concept EV called the Chrysler Halcyon, which is powered by a lithium-sulfur battery. Several benefits make sulfur an appealing input compared with current Li-ion batteries. First, it has a higher theoretical energy density per kilogram – it would take a lighter battery to store the same amount of energy. Second, sulfur is cheaper than nickel, manganese and cobalt, which are required in Li-ion batteries used in many EVs. Platts, part of S&P Global, assessed CIF North Asia Cobalt Sulfate 20.5% at $5,700/mt on April 24. Weekly sulfur prices were assessed significantly lower at $90-$93/mt FOB Middle East (excluding Iran) on April 18. Third, sulfur is widely available. Global sulfur supply exceeded 75 million mt in 2023, according to S&P Global data. Global cobalt reserves sit at 11 million mt, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS). Just as important as sulfur’s quantity is its distribution. Most of the sulfur produced today is a byproduct of oil and gas processing. While the Middle East is the largest supplier of sulfur, there is also significant production in Asia, North America and Europe. This means, in addition to being cheap and capable of storing large amounts of energy, sulfur has less geopolitical risk. More than half of the global reserves of, say, cobalt, are in the politically fraught Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to the USGS. But the commercialization of lithium-sulfur batteries has been impeded by numerous hurdles. “Sulfur has a lot of challenges,” said University of Texas at Austin Chair of Engineering Professor Arumugam Manthiram. Chief among the challenges with lithium-sulfur batteries, said Manthiram, who is also a battery researcher, is that they tend to be limited to a few hundred charge-discharge cycles “at most,” compared with lithium-ion batteries, which can go for at least 1,000 cycles. Nevertheless, many companies with various approaches to lithium-sulfur design are charging ahead with aims to commercialize batteries in the coming years. In the US, Lyten is developing the battery that Chrysler seeks to incorporate into its Halcyon EV and opened a pilot production line for lithium-sulfur batteries in California in June 2023. In the second half of the 2020s, the company plans to open a 5-10 GWh gigafactory, according to Lyten Chief Sustainability Officer Keith Norman. That early factory, Norman said, will have an initial sulfur demand of about 5,000 mt/year. Lyten aims to scale up production to around 50 GWh by the end of the decade, which is estimated to require 30,000-40,000 mt/year of sulfur. “It’s a relatively efficient use of sulfur,” Norman said. Gelion, an Australian company, hopes to begin pilot manufacturing lithium-sulfur batteries between 2026 and 2027, and scale up to a larger commercial scale of production by the end of the decade, according to Jake Carpenter, the company’s commercial officer. In Germany, Berlin-based Theion, which is sulfur in ancient Greek, plans to open a “small scale production line” in 2026 capable of producing several hundred MWh of batteries per year, said CEO Ulrich Ehmes. Global sulfur supply exceeded 75 million mt in 2023 40 Commodity Insights May 2024
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