The Swedish company Northvolt is developing a battery that includes wood-based anodes, specifically lignin-based hard carbon. This would considerably reduce the environmental impact of this type of element.
Northvolt is a Swedish battery manufacturer founded by two former Tesla executives who gained a lot of experience in this field from working together with Panasonic.
Now, the Nordic firm has a gigafactory in Sweden and partnership agreements with such important brands as Volkswagen, BMW and Volvo. All this has allowed it to project a second gigafactory in Germany and also to initiate various research projects in the field of sustainable batteries.
One of them is the one that uses recycled nickel, manganese and cobalt. Another is the one we bring you today and whose origin comes from nordic timber forests.
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Anodes made from recycled wood
From the hand of Stora Enso -the main producer of lignin in the world with some 50,000 tons per year-, Northvolt is working on the use of “lignode” for the production of the anode of batteries.
The commercially named “Lignodo” is a substance derived from lignin, a polymer present in the wood of rainfed plants. And it is that trees are composed of approximately 25% lignin, which acts as a natural binder. In addition, it is a natural source of carbon.
The key lies in creating hard coal from the Lignode, thus dispensing with graphitea form of fossil carbon that is in turn extracted from other mined fossil materials.
Being a secondary stream in the production of cellulose fiber, lignin is one of the largest renewable sources of carbon in the world. Most of the byproducts, like lignin, are burned for energy, so by turning them into hard carbon we ensure that more of the tree is put to good use.
The process to create Lignodo anode batteries
- lignin separates from the wood during the production of cellulose fibers.
- lignin is refined into a fine powder of carbonwhich serves as the active material for the negative anode of the lithium-ion battery.
- Hard coal dust is used to produce electrode sheets and coils.
- Finally, hard carbon electrodes are combined with positive electrodes, separators, electrolytes and other components. on a lithium ion battery.
The lignin from which Lignin is produced is a scalable and renewable material that can replace fossil-based anodes in limited supply. In addition, it generates better performance at low temperatures and allows faster charging and discharging.
Although the production of wood-based battery biomaterials currently only exists as a pilot line, Stora Enso is conducting a feasibility study to explore industrial production of your technology Lignode.
Font: Stora Enso
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Photos: Stora Enso