Tesla Invests In New Process To Extract Lithium From Clay Using Salt
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Elon Musk announced TeslaInvesting in the extraction of the most commonly used metal in battery anodes from sand (silicon) because it appears to store up to nine times more lithium than the same amount of graphite (the material from which it is normally extracted). The technology needed to extract lithium from silicon had to be perfected by Tesla. This all sounds pretty difficult and requires salt (saline solution) to work.
In Elon's own words, "With silicon, the biscuit will crumble and become sticky," which refers to the 4-fold expansion of silicon when fully charged with lithium. This means that the particles have an expansion tension and after many charge / discharge cycles they begin to crack and ultimately lose capacity.
The biggest problem, however, has to be cost, as it is currently quite expensive to make lithium from silicon - $ 100 / kWh versus $ 10.2 / kWh when extracted from graphite. Tesla says its own tech will make it difficult to bring the price down to around $ 1.2 / kWh.
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