Spotted: Heat is crucial for many manufacturing processes. However, generating that heat is also emissions-intensive, with industry responsible for 30 per cent of all of the UK’s heating-related greenhouse gas emissions. One solution is the use of renewable sources, like solar, but this is an intermittent energy source and is not always available when it is needed. To solve this problem, British startup Caldera has developed a new type of heat storage system.
Caldera’s system includes a solar array of almost any size. The solar power is stored as heat, using novel storage cells made of an aluminium-volcanic rock composite encased in vacuum insulation. These highly efficient modular cells are rapidly heated to 500 degrees Celsius and can store this energy for hours, ready to deliver heat on demand at temperatures between 80 to 200 degrees Celsius, which is the temperature range needed for many industrial processes.
The cells can deliver heat whenever required, allowing businesses to substitute on-site solar for more expensive, and non-renewable, gas and electricity. As Caldera explained, the system allows industrial players to capitalise on affordable and abundant solar energy, which can be generated on-site or nearby, and stored until it’s ready to be used.
In June of this year, Caldera was awarded £4.3 million (around €4.9 million) from the UK Department for Energy Security & Net Zero to build a full-scale demonstrator of the system.
Heat storage is a focus of a number of recent innovations spotted by Springwise, including using scrap aluminium to transport heat and hydrogen and a storage system that captures waste energy for reuse.
Prince William has announced the five projects that are taking home this year’s Earthshot Prize, including an AI-powered soil carbon marketplace and a more circular manufacturing process for lithium-ion batteries.
Founded by the British royal in 2021, the annual Earthshot Prize rewards innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing environmental challenges – air and water pollution, environmental degradation, waste and climate change.
From more than 1,100 entries, a winner was chosen for each of these five categories and awarded a £1 million cash prize to help scale up the project and increase its positive impact.
GRST (top image) S4S Technologies (above) are among the winning projects of 2023 the Earthshot Prize
Indian company S4S Technologies was crowned the winner of the waste category for its efforts to provide female small-hold farmers in rural India with solar-powered conduction dryers.
Without the need for energy or expensive cold storage, these can help farmers preserve crops that would otherwise have gone to waste and turn them into sellable products, with the aim of saving 1.2 million tonnes of food waste by 2026.
To date, the company has helped more than 300,000 farmers, who have reportedly seen their profits increase by around 10 to 15 per cent.
“S4S, along with women farmers, are creating a new food ecosystem that reduces wastage and mitigates the increase in GHG emissions while meeting the world’s food needs,” said S4S Technologies co-founder Nidhi Pant.
GRST has created a water-soluble binder for EV batteries
Also among the other winners is Hong Kong company GRST, which is making electric vehicle (EV) batteries more circular by manufacturing them using a water-soluble binder.
This allows its valuable lithium, cobalt and nickel components to be recovered and reused more easily, preventing waste and reducing the need for more mining.
The resulting battery lasts up to 10 per cent longer, the company claims, while emitting 40 per cent less greenhouse gases in its production.
“The world needs a massive amount of batteries to achieve net zero by 2050, but a revolution is needed to make these batteries cleaner and more recyclable,” said GRST’s chief strategy officer Frank Harley. “Today, our water-based technology is driving this transformation.”
In the climate change category, the top prize went to Boomitra – a carbon marketplace that incentivises farmers to use regenerative agricultural practices to store excess atmospheric carbon in their soil.
This carbon storage is tracked via satellites and artificial intelligence, and ultimately sold to companies and governments in the form of carbon credits, which the company says are independently verified.
Boomitra is already working with 150,000 farmers across Africa, South America and Asia, and believes that it could store one gigaton of CO2 in soil by the end of the decade.
“We cannot restore the earth without the support of farmers, who produce the food we eat and rely on the land for their income,” said founder Aadith Moorthy.
“Our technological solution empowers farmers with the data they need to improve soil and maximise their crop yields while creating a valuable store for carbon.”
Boomitra is an AI-powered marketplace for soil carbon storage
Also among 2023’s winning projects is Acción Andina, an initiative that supports indigenous communities with ecosystem restoration in the Andes Mountains, and the WildAid Marine Program, which gives countries the tools and technology to police illegal fishing in protected marine areas.
On top of their prize money, all of the winners winners will receive a year’s worth of mentoring and support as part of The Earthshot Prize Fellowship Programme, together with the other 10 finalists.
WildAid Marine Program is providing countries with the tools to police illegal fishing
“Our winners and all our finalists remind us that, no matter where you are on our planet, the spirit of ingenuity and the ability to inspire change surrounds us all,” Prince William said in a speech at the awards ceremony in Singapore.
“The last year has been one of great change and even greater challenge. A year in which the effects of the climate crisis have become too visible to be ignored. And a year that has left so many feeling defeated, their hope, dwindling. However, as we have seen tonight, hope does remain.”
The Earthshot Prize is now in its third year, with previous winners including a greenhouse-in-a-box and a tool that creates fuel from agricultural waste.
Spotted: Lithium is a vital component in the high-energy batteries that power electric vehicles (EVs). But lithium is in increasingly short supply — threatening the conversion to EVs. According to estimations, by 2025 lithium demand is likely to marginally outstrip supply, with this gap widening dramatically by 2030.
Most of the world’s lithium reserves are found in brines – natural salt-water deposits. The conventional process for extracting lithium from brines requires evaporation in large ponds. This process is environmentally damaging, slow, and vulnerable to weather. However, startup Lilac Solutions has developed a new technology to extract lithium from brines without the need for evaporation ponds.
Lilac’s process uses specially developed, nano-coated ion exchange beads to absorb the lithium from the brine. Once saturated with lithium, hydrochloric acid is used to flush the lithium from the beads, yielding lithium chloride. This is then processed on-site using conventional equipment to create the finished product.
According to Lilac, this process offers a seamless scale-up and an 80 per cent recovery rate for lithium, as opposed to 40 per cent using conventional evaporation techniques. Lilac’s solution is seen as a potential game-changer.
Optimising mineral extraction is not limited to lithium ponds. Springwise has also spotted innovations in the archive that include the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to discover minerals important for green energy and environmentally friendly processes for mineral extraction.
Spotted: When it comes to on-site renewable energy, a key challenge facing many businesses is that sources such as solar and wind are intermittent, generating power only when the sun shines and the wind blows. Energy-storage solutions are therefore crucial for ensuring sufficient power is available when it’s needed most.
Enter Connected Energy, a UK startup that has created E-STOR, a commercial-scale, energy-storage system that leverages 24 second-life Renault EV batteries. Easily installed at modern commercial and industrial sites within a 20-foot shipping container, E-STOR can optimise a site’s energy use, reducing costs and carbon emissions.
Another key benefit of the system is that it’s completely modular. Units can be installed individually or as multiple systems working together, meaning storage can be scaled-up as the client requires. Servicing businesses across the UK and Europe, the company even offers free feasibility studies to ensure that battery energy storage is the right solution for any given site.
Clients use E-STOR for active load management. The system can be charged from existing building supply or from solar panels and on-site wind, flexibly storing surplus energy generated when demand is low for use at peak times. Companies can also use E-STOR to generate revenue by offering load-balancing services to the grid.
Springwise has spotted other energy storage solutions in the archive, including one designed for homeowners in the event of a power outage, and another made from recycled batteries.
Spotted: Advancing battery technology is a main pillar of the transition to clean energy. But batteries themselves are not that ‘clean’. In order to make the move to net zero, batteries will need to be more efficient. A major step in this direction is now being taken by French startup Otonohm.
While other innovators are focusing on making changes to battery hardware, Otonohm is concentrating on the software – battery management systems (BMS). Its switched BMS technology allows manufacturers to remove the charger, converter and/or inverter on a drivechain or powerchain.
By paring down the battery, Otonohm’s switched BMS system offers big improvements in efficiency, battery lifespan, and reliability, which also translates into big carbon savings. The system can also monitor the state of charge of each cell in the battery, providing more available energy and a longer battery life, and allowing damaged cells to be disconnected without preventing the operation of the others.
The company claims its system will work with almost any type of battery, and will provide 20 per cent more available energy over conventional batteries and cut carbon dioxide emissions by 20 per cent.
Battery technology is taking off – and given its importance in renewable energy and net zero – even more will need to be done. Springwise has recently spotted a material recovered from seaweed that could boost the lifespan of electric vehicle (EV) batteries and a more environmentally-friendly process for recycling EV batteries.
Spotted: The more we improve fossil-fuel-free vehicles, the greener the transportation sector will become. And, according to The University of Glasgow’s School of Chemistry, Scottish-grown seaweed may be the unlikely key holder to making electric vehicles (EVs) more enticing for buyers. More specifically, the team is currently testing whether it will help improve the life span and charge time of lithium-ion batteries, used to power EVs.
A material found in brown seaweed might help develop batteries using silicon instead of graphite. Although graphite is a central component of a lithium-ion battery, it can only store a limited amount of charge and has a restricted lifespan. Replacing it, then, is vital to improving the charging capacity, with silicone being suggested as a viable alternative. The only issue is that when silicon is used on its own, it damages the battery quickly. So, to couple an increased need to store energy with an increased battery lifespan, the team have created a prototype that combines silicone with a material in seaweed.
“Battery technology is going to play a hugely important role in our transition away from fossil fuels. Electric vehicles, renewable energy production, national grids and other critical elements of a net zero future will depend on having batteries that can store large amounts of energy in the smallest volumes possible and with extended lifetimes,” said Professor Duncan Gregory, chair in Inorganic Materials at the University of Glasgow’s School of Chemistry.
Using funding from the Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre (IBioIC), the team has so far produced a prototype the size of a watch battery, with tests showing promising results. To prove that seaweed can boost charging capacity, the researchers are now looking towards making a larger battery to test the technology at scale.
Springwise has previously spotted other innovations that aim to improve electric vehicles (EVS), including a 3D-printed prototype that could improve EV engine efficiency and a battery manufacturer that makes EVs less likely to catch on fire.
Spotted: Lithium-ion batteries form the basis of today’s electric vehicle (EV) technology, and their production is ramping up rapidly. According to one estimate, the global production of lithium-ion batteries is expected to increase five-fold between 2001 and 2030. But as more batteries are produced, the question of what we will do with the leftover waste becomes more pressing, as currently only a small percentage of used lithium-ion batteries are recycled (5 per cent is an often-quoted, but disputed, figure).
Now, researchers at Rice University have found a way to recycle one of the key components of a lithium-ion battery: the graphite anode. Today, used anodes are either burned for energy or sent to landfill.
Rice researchers developed a process called ‘Flash Joule heating’ back in 2020 to produce graphene, a ‘wonder material’ that can enhance plastics, paint, metals, asphalt, and cement. Now, a team of chemists, led by James Tour and Weiyin Chen, has re-configured the process for use in battery recycling. In the latest iteration of Flash Joule heating, a sudden and powerful jolt of energy, lasting just a few seconds, decomposes inorganic salts, such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, and manganese, found in spent anodes. These can then be recovered using dilute hydrochloric acid and re-used in anodes for new batteries.
The team estimates that it would cost roughly $118 (around €110) to recycle one tonne of untreated anode waste using the new process. And, the researchers estimate that the ‘flashed’ anodes retain 77 per cent of their capacity after 400 recharge cycles.
Springwise has been tracking the development of Flash Joule heating for several years and has previously spotted it being used for recovering metals from electronic waste, and turning plastic from old cars into graphene.
Spotted: According to the IEA, the number of electric cars on the world’s roads by the end of 2021 was about 16.5 million, triple the amount in 2018. While this may seem like great news for the environment, it is not all positive. That is because the current recycling rate for electric vehicle (EV) batteries is extremely low, with some estimates putting it at just five per cent. For electric mobility to represent a truly sustainable solution, this needs to change, and Stockholm-based Cling Systems is one of the organisations working on a solution.
Currently, when EV batteries reach the end of their life, they often end up in a fragmented system of car dismantlers, workshops, and wreckers. But connecting these to the businesses who want to use or recycle old batteries is difficult. In fact, according to Cling, logistics can account for almost 50 per cent of recycling costs. In response, the startup has developed an intelligent collection and trading platform that connects vehicle manufacturers and buyers of end-of-life batteries to vehicle scrap yards and dismantlers.
Cling’s platform aims to solve the logistics issues that prevent end-of-life batteries from being reused. It does this by aggregating data to allow recyclers and dismantlers to connect with buyers of end-of-life batteries. Through efficient matching of supply and demand, Cling enables the development of a circular battery recycling system while also maintaining a competitive market for the batteries.
While Cling’s marketplace is initially aimed at the Nordic region and Europe, the company hopes to expand to other areas. According to the company, “Our presence in the industry has already generated some exciting early conversations from key players. We have potential customers and partners from both Europe, North America, and Asia. Our vision is to make the electrical transformation truly sustainable.”
As battery technology becomes more vital to a sustainable future, we are also seeing a big uptick in innovations designed to deal with battery waste. Some of those we have recently covered include a riverboat powered by old EV batteries and repurposed EV batteries being used for energy storage.
Spotted: Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) look set to play a crucial role in the future of energy as the world transitions away from fossil fuels. Found in everything from electric vehicles to smartphones and computers, these batteries have several downsides when it comes to environmental impact. Lithium mining is an extremely water-intensive process that involves the use of toxic chemicals. In fact, producing each tonne of lithium requires 500,000 gallons of water. And exacerbating this problem is the fact that several of the leading lithium-producing regions, such as the Atacama Desert in Chile, are among the world’s driest.
Innovators are rising to the challenge in several ways. Some are exploring alternative ways of extracting lithium, while others are developing batteries that avoid using lithium (and other minerals with a high environmental impact) altogether. But given the current prevalence of LIBs, and the early stage of alternative technologies, one of the biggest things we can do to mitigate their impact is to invest in effective recycling technologies.
Canadian company Li-Cycle has developed a two-step recycling process that enables the recovery of critical materials, including lithium, cobalt, and nickel.
The first step of the process involves breaking down the end-of-life batteries into their component parts. The second step consists of refining the materials into different product streams which can then be used for new batteries.
Unlike other battery recycling processes, which require high temperatures, Li-Cycle’s patented approach relies on chemistry, using unique ‘hydrometallurgical’ technology that is more environmentally friendly. Moreover, traditional approaches to battery recycling typically result in the loss of up to half of the useful recycled material in comparison to Li-Cycle’s 95 per cent recovery rate. The Li-Cycle system can handle batteries of various sizes used for different applications.
The company has recently announced that it plans to expand its operations into Europe. The company will open spoke facilities in Norway and Germany in the first half of 2023, with an aim to recycle 65,000 tonnes of batteries annually by the end of that year. This expansion will help Li-Cycle to meet the growing demand for its services as the world moves toward a more sustainable future.
Other innovations spotted by Sporingwise that re-use end-of-life batteries include e-rickshaws that give a second life to electric vehicle batteries, a startup re-purposing used electric vehicle batteries into home energy storage systems, and technology that yields pure graphite from used lithium-ion batteries.
Spotted: While electric vehicles certainly release far fewer tailpipe emissions than their internal combustion forebears, the lithium-ion batteries that power most of them face several sustainability issues. One of these is the fact that the average lithium-ion battery is sent to the recycler while still retaining around 70 per cent of its charging capacity. That may not be enough charging capacity for an electric vehicle (EV), but it is enough for other uses. A number of businesses are now popping up to provide a second life for these semi-used batteries. One of these is Nunam.
The non-profit startup based in Berlin and Bangalore is funded by the Audi Environmental Foundation and focuses on developing uses for second-life batteries. Its most recent project, in collaboration with AUDI AG and the Audi Environmental Foundation, is an e-rickshaw powered by used battery modules that spent their first life in an Audi e-tron. The e-rickshaws will be provided to women small business owners in India to use for transporting their goods.
While e-rickshaws are not new to the roads of India, most run on lead-acid batteries, which have a comparatively short service life and are often not disposed of properly – leading to additional pollution. On top of this, most e-rickshaw drivers charge up on the public grid, which gets a large amount of its power from coal. To get around this, Nunam has developed solar charging stations for the rickshaws. During the day, sunlight charges an e-tron battery, and in the evening, the power is passed on to the rickshaws, making local driving largely carbon-free.
Nunam cofounder Prodip Chatterjee describes e-rickshaws as having an ideal eco-efficiency. He explains that, “Car batteries are designed to last the life of the car. But even after their initial use in a vehicle, they still have a lot of their power. For vehicles with lower range and power requirements, as well as lower overall weight, they are extremely promising. In our second-life project, we reuse batteries from electric cars in electric vehicles; you might call it electric mobility ‘lite’.
Rickshaws are just the latest vehicle to join the EV revolution. Their small size makes them perfect for use as EV-powered delivery vehicles. But they are not alone. Springwise has also highlighted other EV delivery or micro-mobility vehicles, including solar-powered tuk-tuks, electric tuk-tuks for use in last-mile delivery, and an autonomous, electric grocery store on wheels.
