<article><p class="lead"><i>US-based start-up Battery Streak recently received a lucrative investment from Brazilian niobium producer CBMM to boost development of its niobium-based battery technology. Battery Streak president David Grant spoke to Argus about the emerging technology and the company's plans for production:</i></p><h3>What new technology is Battery Streak commercialising?</h3><p>The core technology is the materials that go into the battery and one of the secret materials in that is niobium, which is why we are working with CBMM. We make batteries on a prototype basis but going to market we expect to be selling more materials than actual batteries.</p><p>The technology is called a mesoporous pseudocapacitive material, and what that means is, you can think about the electrodes in a battery being made into a little sponge that has very tiny little pores. This allows electrolyte and electrode material to get very close together, so the physical transport distance of ions is very short. </p><p>The other part of the story is the way the energy is stored in the battery. In most batteries today, energy is stored in a chemical change, which produces heat when charging and discharging. In our batteries, the energy is stored on the surface of those pores like it is in a capacitor, so there is no chemical change that happens when there is a charge or a discharge. </p><h3>What are the benefits to using this niobium technology in lithium-ion batteries? </h3><p>First of all, the process does not generate any heat, because there is very little chemical change going on and this means the materials in the battery can last much longer.</p><p>Another benefit of that is, if you do not generate heat in the normal operation, you do not have to remove that heat. Today, there is a very large effort that goes into monitoring the temperature and dissipating heat as batteries charge and discharge. If that goes away, you can save a lot of time, space and money that goes into thermal management.</p><p>And another benefit is fast charging. As it does not overheat, you can charge the battery very quickly without damaging it. If you can charge in just a few minutes you increase the utilisation rate and lower the overall cost. </p><h3>What are some of the biggest challenges to overcome with the use of niobium in batteries?</h3><p>The main obstacle now is production volume. We have scaled up to the point that we know how to make large quantities, but there is a barrier to that and that is investment in new equipment. So that is the purpose of this investment from CBMM. We are going to buy some new equipment to scale up manufacturing, as well as licence to other manufacturers.</p><h3>Which markets are Battery Streak hoping to apply this technology to? </h3><p>Electric vehicles are an unbelievably large market and far too big for a small company like Battery Streak to start with. We are discussing with some of the large automobile manufacturers already about our technology, but we would definitely need a large partner to address that market in the near term. What we are looking at now are mobility markets, but smaller ones, like sit-down electric scooters. </p><p>And another one is power tools. Power tools are a very large market for construction, and even home uses but corded and gas powered models are going away. These are used all day every day so they cannot sit on a charger for half that time, making them an excellent opportunity for fast charging.</p><p class="bylines">By Sian Morris</p></article>
