At this stage, the four major materials used as new energy batteries are Ternary Precursor, lithium iron phosphate, lithium cobaltate and lithium manganese oxide. Each material has its own advantages and disadvantages. The details are as follows:
1. Ternary Precursor
ternary usually refers to the three raw materials of nickel, cobalt and manganese, ternary lithium battery is the product obtained by mixing the three raw materials in different proportions and adding certain chemical additives. The ternary precursor material is mainly used for energy storage devices of various new energy vehicles, lithium batteries bicycles, notebook computers, digital cameras, drones, robots, solar energy, wind energy, etc., as well as communication equipment and backup power of such base stations.
The biggest advantage of this type of battery is the high energy density, and the discharge performance in low temperature environment is relatively good, mostly used in new energy vehicles with long range. However, due to the poor chemical stability of its raw materials, so the safety of ternary lithium batteries is not high.
2. Lithium iron phosphate or lithium ferro-phosphate (LFP)
Lithium iron phosphate or lithium ferro-phosphate (LFP) is an inorganic compound with the formula LiFePO. It is a gray, red-grey, brown or black solid that is insoluble in water. The material has attracted attention as a component of lithium iron phosphate batteries, a type of Li-ion battery. This battery chemistry is targeted for use in power tools, electric vehicles, solar energy installations and more recently large grid-scale energy storage.
Most lithium batteries (Li-ion) used in consumer electronics products use cathodes made of other lithium compounds, such as lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO2), lithium manganese oxide (LiMn2O4), and lithium nickel oxide (LiNiO2). The anodes are generally made of graphite.
Lithium iron phosphate exists naturally in the form of the mineral triphylite, but this material has insufficient purity for use in batteries.
Because of its stable olivine structure and chemical properties, it is considered the safest lithium-ion battery cathode raw materials, compared with ternary lithium batteries, lithium iron phosphate has the advantages of long life, high safety, low cost, but its energy density and low-temperature discharge performance is inferior to ternary lithium materials.
3. Lithium cobalt (LCO)
Lithium cobaltate generally refers to lithium cobalt oxide LiCoO2, which is one of the cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries. Its main advantages are high operating voltage, smooth discharge, high specific energy and good cycling performance, but because of the price of rare metal cobalt, the manufacturing cost of lithium cobaltate batteries is very high, and the stability of cobalt materials is not very good, making the safety of the batteries poor.
At present, lithium cobalt acid batteries are still mainly used in the field of cell phones, laptops and other electronic devices, but Tesla values the advantages of its high voltage and high energy density and makes them into 18650 type lithium cobalt acid batteries, which are mainly used in Tesla Model S and Roadster.
4. Lithium ion manganese oxide
Lithium manganate is an inorganic compound originally discovered in 1981, as an electrode material, it has the advantages of low cost, high safety, high potential, environmental-friendly and pollution-free, etc. It is considered to be the anode material that is expected to replace lithium cobaltate.
However, this material is not perfect. The two most fatal shortcomings of lithium manganate is low energy density and poor cycling performance, so lithium manganate is mainly used in cell phones, laptops and other consumer electronic devices, but there are also a few new energy vehicles, such as Nissan Leaf, Chevrolet Volt, Ford Focus EV, etc.
Although there are a variety of battery materials, the market is actually dominated by lithium ternary and lithium iron phosphate, which occupy 99% of the market share of new energy batteries. No matter whether lithium iron phosphate or ternary, ONGOAL has rich design experience in the production of cathode material and provides a one-stop solution including unpacking, feeding, pneumatic conveying, metering &batching, crushing & coating, blending screening and demagnetization, mixing and packaging, etc.
For anode materials, ONGOAL has special process technology in the production of anode material including artificial graphite and natural graphite, and so on. Provides automatic material production line including feeding, metering and batching, sintering, crushing, screening, packing, etc.
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