Harrogate LTD Zambia Discusses Electric Vehicle Batteries and Maganese

Harrogate LTD Zambia knows an exciting and new major application for manganese is its use in electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Elon Musk and Tesla announced in 2020 that they will use high purity manganese in their next generation of electric vehicle batteries.

Today, most of the batteries that power electric cars today are lithium-ion batteries. They all include cobalt in them. Cobalt helps pack more power into a battery safely, but it has two main problems, it’s high cost and where it’s found in the world, usually in politically unstable countries.

Manganese is mined by four major countries in the world South Africa, Australia, Ghana, and Gabon along with several other countries. Zambia is one country that exports manganese, primarily to China. Harrogate LTD Zambia is one of the companies based in Zambia that produces manganese for world markets.

Manganese in Electric Vehicle (EV) Batteries

Researchers believe manganese will become a catalyst for all new lithium-ion batteries and future energy storage products, replacing cobalt nickel as part of the anode to store energy. The researchers at Elon Musk’s Tesla labs experimented with manganese and nickel for energy storage in EV batteries.

They found if they removed cobalt and increased manganese with nickel, it helped to improve the density of the battery. Removing expensive cobalt and utilizing manganese instead will make future nickel manganese lithium-ion EV batteries more efficient and cost effective to produce.

These batteries are still a few years away, as this testing was done in Tesla’s labs, but it is a glimpse into the use of manganese in the EV battery of tomorrow.

Other Applications for Manganese in Battery Storage

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy Argonne National Laboratory created a nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) cathode material rich in lithium. This type of battery material could deliver a 50 to 100% increase in energy storage capacity EV batteries over the current cathode materials.

These researchers believe manganese is key to creating safer and cheaper lithium-ion batteries. They feel the work they have done with nickel-manganese can apply not only to EV but also to battery storage for renewable resources like solar power and wind power.

Scientists at Argonne National Laboratory found batteries with a manganese-rich cathode are safer and cheaper than one with high nickel concentrations. But increasing the manganese and lithium content changes the cathode’s performance and stability over time. More research in the future may yield better and better results in EV and renewable energy storage batteries over time.