Quantum computers
One of the roles of Galvanotechnik magazine authors is to inform readers about the latest advances in technology. There are many advances - but there are two technologies that promise to really change our world. These are nuclear fusion, which can generate low-cost electricity without radioactive nuclear waste, and quantum computers, which are orders of magnitude more powerful than our current computers. Good progress is being made in nuclear fusion - in perhaps five years we could see a plant generating significant amounts of electricity. There was a major breakthrough in quantum computing a few weeks ago.
Oxford Ionics(www.oxionics.com) has declared that its latest chip can be mass produced and that the world's first viable quantum computer could be built in three years. The new technology makes it possible to perform very complex calculations extremely quickly and solve problems that are too difficult for normal computers. According to Oxford Ionics, the breakthrough is based on trapped ion technology, which can provide the required performance. According to the experts, some problems that would take a conventional computer (with so-called binary logic) years to solve could be solved in a matter of minutes with a quantum computer that uses "qubits" instead of binary (1 or 0) logic. The Kidlington-based company's new chip (Figure 1) is said to be able to control these trapped ions - with more than double the performance of previous attempts. According to the company, the results suggest that "the dawn of usable quantum computing is much closer than previously thought".
A new coating material
July and August are the months when some of us go to the seaside. And we often see seaweed on the beach. For hundreds of years, people have wondered if they could find a use for it. Some farmers have spread seaweed on their fields as fertilizer. But the high salt content warns of caution. Now scientists at the University of Bath in the UK have developed a new coating based on seaweed. To this end, they have founded a company called Kelpi.(www.kelpi.net). Using seaweed as a starting point, they have developed a biopolymer that can be used as food packaging. The new material is made by extracting carbohydrates from the seaweed to form a biopolymer that breaks down easily after use, unlike most plastics such as PET. Figure 2 shows fresh mango fruit sold in a large UK supermarket, packaged in a Kelpi tray.
Fig. 2: Kelpi, a biopolymer derived from seaweed, can be seen in UK supermarkets (Photo: Kelpi)
Kelpi is not the only company in this field. Another is Notpla(www.notpla.com), whose products are sold under the trade name "Ocho". They work closely with a leading German manufacturer of food processing machines, Handtmann GmbH in Biberach, whose machines are used to produce sausage products, among other things.
In February of this year, Kelpi secured a second contract with the French group L'Oréal. Both Notpla and Kelpi hold numerous patents, such as patent number US2020/0047927 A1 "Method of Encapsulating Liquid Products". I am sure that there will be more companies in this field - and that biopolymers will become part of our everyday lives.
Lithium batteries - good and bad news
Setting up a lithium battery factory is not always a guarantee of financial success, as recent months have shown. The Swedish battery giant Northvolt is rethinking its plans for new plants, such as those planned in Germany, Canada and Sweden. Northvolt suffered a setback when BMW recently canceled a €2 billion contract. BMW decided to award the contract to Samsung SDI in South Korea instead. The country is a leading manufacturer of lithium batteries. The plans for a second Northvolt plant in Borlange (Sweden) are also on hold. Northvolt's latest financial figures show a turnover of 128 million US dollars and a pre-tax loss of 1.2 billion US dollars.
Fig. 3: At the end of June, a battery factory in South Korea burned down, killing 22 people. Lithium batteries were manufactured in the factory. Due to the strong reaction of lithium with water, sand was used to extinguish the fire (Photo: Screenshot NTV report from 26. 6. 2024)
Worse than these massive losses, however, is a catastrophic fire that recently raged in a South Korean battery factory (Figure 3). The fire was caused by the explosion of several lithium batteries. At least 22 people lost their lives. The fire broke out at the Aricell factory in the city of Hwaseong, about 45 km south of the capital Seoul. Local television pictures showed large clouds of smoke and small explosions as firefighters tried to put out the fire. 18 Chinese, one Laotian and two South Korean workers are among the dead. Of the 100 people who were working when the fire broke out, eight others were injured, two of them seriously. The Aricell factory had an estimated 35,000 battery cells on the second floor, where the batteries were tested and packaged, and others elsewhere. The fire broke out when a number of battery cells exploded, although it is still unclear what caused the initial explosions. As a lithium fire reacts strongly to water, firefighters had to use dry sand to extinguish the fire, which took several hours to bring under control. Normally, lessons can be learned from such incidents - but in this case it remains a mystery how and why these battery cells exploded. In terms of technology, however, there is better news.
There is a global race to develop faster-charging batteries that are more powerful, lighter and more durable. Last year, Toyota announced that a technical breakthrough would enable the development of a solid-state battery that takes just ten minutes to charge and lasts for 1200 km. And a compact charger developed by US start-up Gravity can extend the range of an electric vehicle by 200 miles in less than 13 minutes.
However, Dr. Edward Brightman, a lecturer in chemical engineering at the University of Strathclyde, explained that while fast charging is useful for long journeys, the real barrier to electric vehicle adoption is infrastructure.
"Electric cars are really no longer limited by the batteries," he said. "We urgently need to upgrade the grid and deploy fast chargers that are capable of delivering the charge to the battery."
Better batteries
But on the technical side, there is better news. Reports are coming from various sources about better batteries with longer life and faster charging. A small company, Nyobolt(www.nyobolt.com), has succeeded in charging a lithium battery from 10 to 80% in four minutes and 37 seconds. The sports car in which the Nyobolt battery was installed - and which was recently tested for two days - achieved a range of 180 km after this charging time.
By comparison, a Tesla car charged to 80% with its "Supercharger" has a range of up to 300 km after 15-20 minutes of charging. We know little about the new Nyobolt battery, but there are at least two patents describing it - WO2021074406A1 - Electrode composition (published in 2021) and US 20230071080 A1, published on March 9, 2023 under the same title.
According to Nyobolt, the company does not intend to produce its own vehicles and plans to work with existing car brands, with the battery potentially being fitted in electric cars "on a small scale" within a year, and the powerful 350kW DC superfast chargers Nyobolt requires are publicly available in the UK but not yet widely available. The company also claims to have minimized degradation - it says the battery is still 80% charged after 4,000 cycles. By comparison, Apple claims that the iPhone 15 battery is still 80% rechargeable after 1,000 cycles. We don't know much more about the technology of this new battery, but the company has published an image, which we reproduce here (Figure 4). Nyobolt is also active in Germany.
Fig. 4: Image of the new Nyobolt battery in-situ (Photo: Nyobolt)
Nyobolt is by no means the only company developing advanced lithium batteries. Toyota, which is developing a new generation of solid-state lithium batteries, has stated that its batteries will offer a range of 1100 km with a charging time of just 10 minutes by 2027. In due course, even better batteries with a range of 1400 km will be launched. Toyota has stated that it has discovered a "new material" - but otherwise there are no further details.
These developments raise several questions. Should we as consumers perhaps wait another 3 to 4 years before buying an electric car? And then there is another question. Charging in just 10 minutes sounds like a wonderful idea. But what do we make of the very large currents that flow? Charging a typical electric car battery requires around 50 KWh. If we can do that in an hour, that's a 50 kW current. In 10 minutes, this requires 50 x 6, i.e. 300 KW - a huge amount of electricity. And if such fast charging is less efficient than slower charging - which one would expect - the current would be even higher. Never before have we - the public - been asked to deal with such high currents. What do we make of it?
A relatively new company, Gravity Technologies(www.gravitytechnologies.com), offers battery chargers with an output of500 kW, which are mounted on the wall and are hardly bigger than a large book. The cables connected to the battery of the electric car are liquid-cooled and designed for a continuous current flow of 500A. The company offers other devices for analyzing and optimizing charging strategies. I am sure that no normal German or English household is capable of meeting such a high power demand. Incidentally, Wikipedia contains a useful section describing the history of development and regulations for vehicle charging.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_Charging_System
Sooner or later, when the price of batteries comes down, we - as electroplaters - will be able to think about using batteries charged with cheap night-time electricity for our businesses that provide energy for production during the day.
Our world is changing, but I think it's changing in a good way!
