4 things a week: lithium
This week I go from the salt flats of Argentina to the ZAD zone in Western France and discuss the opportunities of technology in material and battery development as we seek to work with nature, rather than against it. Questioning our very relationship to nature along the way... (with a bit of Morrama brand thrown in randomly!)
1. Earth
At an exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery a few weeks back I watched a video about the mining of lithium in Argentina. We all know that batteries are problematic at the end of their life, but we don’t talk enough about where they come from.?
Lithium ion batteries have dominated the battery space because of their energy density. Lithium is a very light alkali metal. It is mined predominantly in the salt flats of Argentina, Bolivia and Chile and the extraction process requires 500,000 litres for every 1 ton of lithium. Too much of this water is poorly managed, ending up poisoning local reservoirs and leaving local communities with serious water shortages.?
But what are the alternatives??
One of the options is sodium ion batteries. Sodium is pretty similar to lithium, but is much more abundant; it can be harvested from the sea! Obviously if it was just as good, we would be using it, but it’s not. However with the increase in cost of lithium and more pressure on finding solutions that are less harmful to our planet, sodium is being looked at more seriously. This week two Chinese EV manufacturers joined up on a mission to become the world leaders in sodium-ion battery production.
There are other benefits to sodium-ion batteries such as the materials that can be used for the anode and cathode. But I’m not going to pretend to be an expert or assume you are either. What’s important here is that the technology is being seriously invested in and that opens up alternatives that will hopefully help us shift away from our reliance on lithium. I’ll be keeping an eye out to see where that goes and if you know anything else working in this space, please let me know!
2. Innovation.
Two weeks ago I mentioned a compostable plastic made by bacteria called PHA. Well the trouble with new materials, particularly ones designed to degrade in certain conditions, is two fold. Firstly, there are millions of potential polymer chemistries that could be created, all with slightly varying properties. And secondly we don’t know how they are going to behave over time and we can’t very well just sit around for a decade and find out. We need to switch out fossil fuel plastics now. So how do we do that?
One of the answers is by using Deep Neural Networks. A form of AI, these models are based on the human brain and can use predictors to select materials and could also model how they will behave over time in certain conditions. These machine learning models are already being used to speed up the discovery of polymer chemistries that meet the property requirement for certain applications. The next step is to develop ways to integrate AI into process of synthesising the materials. (It’s all very well knowing what you are aiming for, but if you don’t know how to get there it’s not much use).?
This all sounds very theoretical, but we know it can be achieved, the question is when. AI is generally getting a bad name, but if it can accelerate the transition from our reliance on fossil fuels by modelling alternative bio-based polymers, and helping us make them, then that’s exciting. I only hope that it also speeds up the certification and change in regulation of new materials, enabling companies to switch out traditional plastics for low-carbon alternatives sooner, particularly in the transport and construction industries.?
You can read more here.
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3. Inspiration
OK, perhaps less inspiring than thought provoking, but I’ve been thinking about our connection (or rather dis-connection) with nature. We position humans as higher beings, somehow in control of, and therefore responsible for, the rest of life on earth. It is our fault that nature is dying, species are becoming extinct. We are their guardians and we have failed. But what separates us from them? How are humans not also nature? How are we not also part of the web of life??
There was a group of activists in France known as the Zadists who spent years protesting the building of a new airport in the west of the country. In order to prevent its construction they took over the land, living on it, with it. They described their cause in a way that really resonated with me. “We are not defending nature, we are nature defending itself”. When we put ourselves in the same box as nature, we realise that the damage done to our planet is damage done to us. Obviously writing this it seems obvious, but yet we all too easily revert back to putting up this invisible barrier separating us from the rest of the world. Watching on as the land burns, the reefs die and animal populations shrink thinking “oh that’s a shame, at least I’m ok”. But we aren’t ok. We are the land, we are the oceans, we are the animals. And we are suffering too.
4. Morrama?
Clearly I’m always in a reflective mood, but August was a particular month of reflection at Morrama as we worked on a rebrand. Why did we rebrand? Well it actually all started with our website. We needed to change it. We were still using Squarespace (yes, that platform that startups use before they get a proper website!) and was slow and heavy despite everything we tried to do to strip it back.?
Having to build a new website is like moving house. You get to decide what you want to take with you, and what you want your new place to say about you. As with everything we do at Morrama, it needed to come from us. We pride ourselves on storytelling, it seemed counterintuitive to have to bring in someone external to help us tell our own.?
The result is light, honest, simple, with a touch of playfulness. And, we’ve cut the CO2e per page by 75%. Shout out to Altiverse for their advice and guidance along the way as we hacked our way through Webflow.
Let me know what you think. Like life, it’s always a work in progress.?
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