Lithium is abundant, but difficult to extract and purify for use in batteries. Last year, the price of lithium carbonate peaked at over $80,000 per ton, although it has come down considerably since then. Oddly enough, people who don’t bat an eye about oil and gas wells within a few feet of homes and schools are losing their minds about the horrors of lithium mining. It should be noted that no lithium mining takes place next door to homes and schools, but common sense and logic are not prevalent among the fossil fuel crowd. Sodium is also abundant, but unlike lithium, is readily available. For instance, the price of sodium carbonate is around $300 per ton today. Sodium — one of the primary components of table salt — is chemically similar to lithium, and thanks to the explosion in lithium carbonate prices, many companies are researching ways to use it to replace lithium in the batteries for electric vehicles. Despite being chemically similar, sodium-ion batteries today have considerably lower energy density than lithium batteries. That’s a detriment, but bear in mind that not too long ago, LFP batteries were woefully deficient in their energy storage capability. But today’s LFP batteries are nearly as energy dense as lithium-ion batteries were just a few years ago. Things are moving quickly in battery development. The sodium-ion batteries available today will likely improve just as quickly. On the other hand, sodium batteries are much less affected by low temperatures and appear to be able to handle more charge/discharge cycles than lithium-ion batteries. The latest sodium batteries do not require scarce materials like cobalt and nickel. Both CATL and BYD say they are about to introduce EV battery packs that have a mix of lithium-ion and sodium-ion cells. The thinking is the sodium cells will address the low temperature performance issue and the lithium cells will take care of the need for good performance in daily driving.  https://cleantechnica.com/2023/04/22/the-sodium-ion-battery-is-coming-to-production-cars-this-year/        

Solar manufacturing giant Qcells is investing US$100 million in a pilot production line that incorporates perovskites, a “miracle” semiconductor material under development for more than a decade that could improve on the efficiency of existing solar cells by 50 to 75%.“The commercialization of solar cells that use perovskite follows years of breakthroughs with the mineral,” The Independent reports. PVTech says the production line in Jincheon, South Korea will start up by late 2024, aiming to deliver commercially viable perovskite cells by 2026.  “This investment in Jincheon will mark an important step in securing technological leadership,” said Justin Lee, CEO of Seoul-based Qcells. “With global R&D network spanning from Korea, Germany, and the U.S., Qcells will ramp up its efforts to produce high-efficiency advanced tandem cells.The tandem design is meant to “improve the efficiency of standard solar panels by splitting the light spectrum and optimizing the harvesting of energy from each section into electricity,” The Independent explains.The approach points toward a drastic improvement in solar cell efficiency. The record for standard silicon-based cells is 22%, meaning they convert just over one-fifth of the available solar radiation into electricity. Last December, the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin research lab in Germany achieved 32.5% efficiency with a perovskite-silicon tandem cell, in what was hailed as a “really big leap” for renewable energy. PV Tech says scientists at Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology hit a 33.2% threshold in April. While renewable energy is already gearing up to replace fossil fuels and lead the transition off carbon, perovskites could speed things up. “Solar PV and onshore wind are already the lowest-cost forms of electricity generation worldwide,” Stanford University energy transition specialist Mark Z. Jacobson told The Energy Mix in an email. But “any further improvement in solar PV efficiency and a resulting lower cost will only help to speed the transition from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy worldwide.”“Perovskites are semiconductors with a special crystal structure that makes them well suited for solar cell technology,” the Princeton University School of Engineering and Applied Science explained last year. “They can be manufactured at room temperature, using much less energy than silicon, making them cheaper and more sustainable to produce. And whereas silicon is stiff and opaque, perovskites can be made flexible and transparent, extending solar power well beyond the iconic panels that populate hillsides and rooftops across America.” Until now, there’s always been a catch. “Unlike silicon, perovskites are notoriously fragile,” Princeton wrote. “Early perovskite solar cells, created between 2009 and 2012, lasted only minutes.” But last June, Princeton Engineering researchers said they had come up with a design that could offer a 30-year operating life, well above the 20-year threshold for conventional solar cells. “The device is not only highly durable, it also meets common efficiency standards,” the university said at the time. “It is the first of its kind to rival the performance of silicon-based cells, which have dominated the market since their introduction in 1954.”That’s a big advance over the persistent challenge facing perovskites.               https://www.theenergymix.com/2023/05/23/perovskites-qcells-plans-first-production-line-for-miracle-solar-cell/?utm_source=The+Energy+Mix&utm_campaign=cfaab0c92a-TEM_RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_dc146fb5ca-cfaab0c92a-509990701     

Perovskite: new type of solar technology paves the way for abundant, cheap and printable cells. Silicon solar cells are an established technology for the generation of electricity from the sun. But they take a lot of energy to produce, are rigid and can be fragile. However, a new class of solar cell is matching their performance. And what’s more, it can now be printed out using special inks and wrapped flexibly around uneven surfaces. We have developed the world’s first rollable and fully printable solar cell made from perovskite, a material that is much less expensive to produce than silicon. If we can also improve their efficiency, this points to the possibility of making cheaper solar cells on a much greater scale than ever before. The silicon solar cells that are so recognisable to us have a significant limitation. If enough were made to cover our needs, we could run out of the materials to make them by 2050.  The perovskite solar cell is emerging to fill that gap. Perovskite is a crystal structure made with inorganic and organic components, named after Lev Perovski, a Russian mineral expert of the 17th and 18th centuries. Perovskite solar cells first appeared in research labs in 2012 and caught the attention of researchers due to two factors: their ability to convert sunlight into electricity, and the potential for creating them from a combination of inks. In research labs, using highly controlled production methods in environments where oxygen and water are completely removed, perovskite solar cells can now match the electricity generation of silicon solar cells. This is a remarkable achievement.

But cheap perovskite solar cells that do away with silicon have yet to be manufactured on a commercial scale. So what if these materials could be produced using the same sorts of processes we use for printing ordinary packaging?  Scientists have found that to achieve record efficiencies, the semiconductor and perovskite layers in this new form of solar cell must be extremely thin – between 50 and 500 nanometres (about 500 times smaller than a human hair). Perovskite solar cells have demonstrated high performance in research labs, and have now been proven capable of making the leap to high-volume manufacturing. But the job is not quite done yet.    https://theconversation.com/perovskite-new-type-of-solar-technology-paves-the-way-for-abundant-cheap-and-printable-cells-202579?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20May%203%202023%20-%202615426317&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20May%203%202023%20-%202615426317+CID_0dbb6b9f23bab68c9dba0239916331df&utm_source=campaign_monitor_uk&utm_term=Perovskite%20new%20type%20of%20solar%20technology%20paves%20the%20way%20for%20abundant%20cheap%20and%20printable%20cells   

Sustainable structural engineering follows the basic principle that the energy and resources consumption due to the construction and operation of a structure must be minimized. Relating to concrete structures this principle can be realized by the use of the material in the most efficient way considering its strength and durability within the service life of the structure. Against this background the present paper outlines methods to assess and reduce the environmental impact of concrete and means to increase its performance. The presented concept is applied to the concrete type with the greatest potential in sustainability, i.e. green concrete. Thereby, the basic principles of green concrete mix design are introduced and a systematic study of the influence of the cement content on the fresh and hardened concrete properties as well as on durability parameters is presented. From the results it can be seen that green concrete possesses a very high sustainability and, depending on the attack scenario,even might show acceptable durability characteristics when they are subjected to corrosive exposures.      https://www.researchgate.net/publication/270053038_Design_and_Properties_of_Sustainable_Concrete