At the end of August, the department selected 13 projects through a Battery Manufacturing Lab Call which will receive US$15 million in funding over three years.
The call sought proposals from National Laboratories to establish public-private partnerships that address engineering challenges for advanced battery materials and devices, with a focus on de-risking, scaling, and accelerating adoption of new technologies.
Albemarle will team up with Argonne National Laboratory on 'Advanced Brine Processing to Enable US Lithium Independence', with the aim of creating a new production pathway to go directly from lithium chloride to lithium hydroxide.
The second project, 'Scaling Up of High-Performance Single Crystalline Ni-rich Cathode Materials with Advanced Lithium Salts', will look at how lithium salts can improve cathode performance to extend battery life for electric vehicles. Albemarle's partner will be the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
The latest project call is part of the DOE's efforts to create and sustain US global leadership in energy storage utilisation and exports, with a secure domestic manufacturing supply chain of critical materials.
