Superior Graphite operates a continuous graphitization technology in Hopkinsville KY since 1977. The presentation shows how this found its place in the synthesis of artificial graphite for lithium-ion batteries.

With the exponentially growing demand for energy storage devices, the Li-ion battery (LIB) industry blooms rapidly, which leads to a dramatic increase in spent LIBs and the fast evolution of battery materials, leading to significant environmental and supply chain challenges. While the recycling of cathode materials is widely studied, graphite as the anode material has always been discarded due to its relatively low value and irreversible damage. Moreover, concerns about scalability, environmental feasibility, and economic feasibility prevent the battery recycling method from commercialization. In this work, we propose a close-loop LIB recycling method, recovering the cathode and anode materials with an overall efficiency of over 95%. Through the novel hydrometallurgical-based process, the recovered cathode and anode deliver comparable capacity and superior stability towards the commercial materials. Perfected by the innovative anode recovery process and demonstrated through the cost analysis, the proposed LIB recycling method not only possesses a technical feasibility of producing advanced recovered cathode and anode materials but is of higher profitability compared to traditional recycling methods, potentially offering a stride towards environmentally friendly and economically viable LIB recycling solutions.

Lithium is a critical mineral underlying the batteries that power grid-scale energy storage, electric vehicles, data center reliability, and other applications. However, supplies remain largely under foreign control due to underutilization of domestic resources, technical challenges associated with the low-grade of domestic resources, and low domestic refining capacity. New technology that enables low-cost extraction and production of lithium from domestic resources is key to building a US supply chain for batteries.  

Lilac Solutions has developed a proprietary ion exchange (IX) technology capable of efficiently extracting lithium from a wide range of aqueous resources with vastly different and challenging chemistries. These sources span high-grade salar brines with > 2 g/L of Li to low-grade surface water resources with < 100 mg/L of Li and challenging chemistries that render incumbent lithium recovery methods unviable. Such challenging chemistries are prevalent in domestic resources, including salt lakes and industrial waste such as oil & gas produced water. Lilac’s technology enables economical lithium extraction from these low-grade resources, delivering a path to a commercially viable domestic supply chain of lithium.  

This presentation will provide an overview of Lilac’s IX performance with various lithium resources across a range of brine chemistries, including domestic salt lake and oil & gas produced water. This data includes:  

•    Key technical performance indicators, such as lithium recovery (> 90%), impurity rejection (> 99.9%), product purity (battery-grade), and reagent consumption,   

•    Environmental impact indicators, including water intensity and physical footprint,   

•    Economic performance indicators, developed through rigorous FEL engineering studies validated by 3rd parties.  

This data demonstrates how Lilac’s IX technology can produce lithium with competitive economics, while exceeding the technical and environmental performance of incumbent processes. Lilac’s technology development and production is vertically integrated in the US, minimizing FEOC concerns and geopolitical risks to its projects. 

Lithium metal anodes are widely recognized as a key enabler for next-generation rechargeable batteries due to their high theoretical capacity and low electrochemical potential. However, their practical implementation is limited due to scaling roll to roll deposition technologies, surface reactivity, and dendrite formation in the device. Achieving stable electrochemical performance requires, high purity  lithium films within situ surface coatings. Li Film roughness and morphology, thickness uniformity are critical parameters needed  to accelerate the road map. Thin substrates choice (e.g., Cu, Graphite anode, Silicon anode, etc.,) is desired  for reducing inactive components  and help to increase the energy density of the cell. Handling thin substrates and reactive films such as Li needs to overcome challenges such as  fragility, reactivity, dexterity. Reducing the defects in the film and improving the quality is a must for adopting this technology for commercialization.

At Elevated Materials, we are developing scalable roll-to-roll processing technology for ultra-thin lithium foils. Our platform produces continuous films with thicknesses of 1–20 m, widths exceeding 800 mm, and uniform surface characteristics over longer lengths. 

In the context of all-solid-state batteries, interface engineering between lithium and solid electrolytes is essential for long-term stability. Elevated Materials’ deposition platform enables integrated coatings without breaking the vacuum to produce highest quality Lithium metal The talks highlight some of our advances in manufacturing ultra-thin lithium for high-energy-density lithium metal and solid-state battery technologies.

Blue Current has pioneered the development of fully dry solid-state batteries with silicon anodes and is now scaling pouch cell production at its pilot manufacturing facility in Hayward, CA. This technology offers unique technical advantages: energy densities that surpass state of the art lithium-ion cells (>750 Wh/L), high cycle lifetime compared to other high Si-content anodes (over 1,000 cycles with 80% capacity retention at >5x the silicon content of state of the art cells), and inherent safety stemming from its fully dry cell composition. In this presentation, Blue Current will detail technical challenges facing silicon solid state cells and the solutions Blue Current is developing to overcome these challenges. Blue Current’s roadmap for cell production at its 1-2 MWh pilot facility in Hayward, CA will also be discussed.

Starting with the human genome sequencing project 25 years ago, computational methods have become an essential component of the scientific arsenal for dissecting diseases and developing therapeutics. The big AI breakthroughs in reasoning about biomolecules have recenly led to their industry-wide adoption in target discovery, target characterization, hit discovery, and lead optimization. The talk will provide an overview of the key milestones, the difficulties in translating computational techniques to high-value applications, and their actual impact on drug discovery and development. Parallels with challenges in battery research will be outlined. 

 Advanced materials drive innovation in energy technologies. Yet, discovering or optimizing solid-state materials function as electrodes, electrolytes, separators, coatings, or composites is often hindered at the synthesis stage. This is largely due to the lack of a guided framework for synthesis design and the time-consuming nature of traditional design-synthesis-characterization workflow. Recent advances in autonomous, automated, and semi-automated laboratories fully or partially assisted by robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and computational modeling offer new strategies to accelerate synthesis. This talk presents two accelerated workflows for powdered materials: one based on solid-state reactions, the other on wet-chemical synthesis. The solid-state platform targets complex metal oxides with varied compositions and structures, examining how precursor selection and synthesis temperature influence phase formation and impurities. The wet-chemical workflow leverages Pourbaix diagrams to navigate aqueous synthesis conditions, addressing challenges from multiple competing solid phases and dissolved species. These integrated approaches reduce experimental load while improving efficiency in refining synthesis protocols and enabling the discovery of new energy-relevant materials.

In this talk, we will discuss our work on building large foundation models for enabling electrolyte discovery.