European battery supplier Northvolt developing wood-based batteries

Volvo’s battery supplier Northvolt strategies to tap an unusual source for its electrical vehicle batteries: trees.

Northvolt and Finnish paper and pulp manufacturer Stora Enso have entered an arrangement to build a sustainable battery, with anode generated employing lignin-based mostly tough carbon developed from Nordic forest wooden.

Lignin is a polymer that, with cellulose, aids constitute wooden. It accounts for around 20-30 for every cent of trees, and is explained to be a person of the greatest renewable resources of carbon on the world.

Stora Enso’s plant in Finland has an yearly lignin generation ability of 50,000 tonnes.

The two firms are aiming to create the very first industrialised battery with anode sourced totally from European raw supplies.

“Our lignin-centered tricky carbon, Lignode® by Stora Enso, will safe the strategic European provide of anode raw product, serving the sustainable battery desires for purposes from mobility to stationary vitality storage,” says Johanna Hagelberg, Stora Enso’s govt vice president for biomaterials.

“With this partnership, we are checking out a new source of sustainable uncooked content and growing the European battery value chain, even though also producing a less high-priced battery chemistry,” said Northvolt main environmental officer Emma Nehrenheim.

“It is an fascinating demonstration of how our pursuit of a sustainable battery sector goes hand-in-hand with producing a favourable affect equally on society and charge.”

Northvolt was founded in 2016 with the mission to develop the world’s greenest battery.

In November 2021 Northvolt created its very first battery cell with 100 for every cent recycled nickel, manganese and cobalt, and designs to have 50 for every cent of all its uncooked elements to arrive from recycled batteries by 2030.

Northvolt claims it has secured extra than A$79.64 worth of contracts from businesses which include BMW, Volkswagen, Volvo Cars and Polestar.

Volkswagen by yourself positioned a A$20.27 billion battery mobile buy with Northvolt in March 2021, and in January 2022 Northvolt introduced it would build a 50GWh battery production plant as aspect of a joint venture with Volvo Autos.

The new plant, located in Gothenburg, Sweden, will start off functions in 2025.

Northvolt at the moment has one particular manufacturing unit in Sweden, which made its very first battery cells in December 2021. It’s preparing to open not only the Volvo manufacturing unit but also a 3rd manufacturing facility in Germany, moreover a cathode factory in Sweden.

As demand from customers for electric cars increases and organizations commit in battery know-how, we’re observing new improvements in battery chemistry – and some of them have sounded just as unusual as employing wooden.

Scientists at Chalmers University of Technologies in Gothenburg have been searching at batteries that use sodium-ion battery chemistry, while closer to home scientists at Monash College have designed a glucose-based mostly additive that could be made use of to stabilise lithium-sulfur batteries.