Technology 18650 battery 1800 mah "Magic Crystal" boosts the future of lithium batteries and electric vehicles

　　US company Energy Exploration Technologies (EnergyX) has developed a cleaner lithium mining application, bringing benefits to future cars and batteries. Electric vehicles and renewable energy battery storage are becoming mainstream around the world.

　　Matthew Hill has used a Melbourne invention - metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) - sometimes called "magic crystals" - to demonstrate that they can be used to clean air and water, as well as in a variety of industrial processes. Now, his team at CSIRO (Australia's national science agency) and Monash University are working with US company EnergyX to commercialize a new production process for lithium using metal-organic frameworks.

　　That evening, Matthew accepted the inaugural David and Valerie Solomon Award from the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering (ATSE). David Solomon is Australia's leading inventor of plastic banknotes, developing a range of new technologies that are widely used in the plastics and polymer industry.

　　Most of the world's lithium is produced from "lithium salts," a labor-intensive process that requires huge evaporation ponds. For example, an evaporation pond in Chile covers an area of 42 square kilometers. Matthew's technology has the potential to replace a 4,000-hectare pond with a filter covering an area of just 0.1 square kilometers.

　　His "magic crystals" are networks of metal atoms connected and separated by carbon-based (organic) compounds. Above this is a huge surface area that can be customized to absorb just about anything. In the late 1980s, Professor Richard Robson, a chemist at the University of Melbourne, first made this substance, but it was very difficult to make.

　　When Matthew first tried to make a MOF, he mixed the contents of 40 containers together to make just one gram of crystals. Today, he and his team can produce hundreds of kilograms of this crystal every week.

　　It is estimated that by 2040, annual global sales of electric vehicles will reach 56 million units, and annual sales of battery energy storage systems will exceed 1,095 GW, an exponential increase compared with 2 million units and 90 GW in 2018 . Electric cars use the same lithium-ion battery technology as cell phones and laptops.

　　EnergyX founder and CEO Teague Egan believes that this element will become the most important and valuable economic commodity of the 21st century. He said: "The world has never needed so much lithium before, so current production methods cannot achieve the necessary scale. Matthew's disruptive technology allows us to restore this quintessential resource in a transformative way. This would significantly improve the economic and environmental impacts of lithium mining.”

　　Lithium mining is just the latest of many applications. Matthew and his team are also working with industry to use these crystals to clean natural gas, clean air in specialty fields, purify pharmaceuticals, and more. Matthew points out that this is just the tip of the iceberg. "Not only can our metal-organic framework membranes separate lithium ions from water so they can be used to make batteries, we have also shown that we can put these membranes into lithium batteries to increase their life and capacity. We are working with local of Boron Molecules to expand the production scale of our crystals."

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