Francesco De Lieto: Hey, hey, welcome back to Raw Green. Francesco De Lieto and Emma Mee are here. Emma ciao, how are you?
Emma Mee: Ciao, Francesco. I’m very well, thank you. This is exciting, right? So, people are always asking me whether climate tech is a bit of a vertical, a specialism, a kind of a niche that that we invest in specifically, and I know you might get this as well. And I always come back and say to them, no, it’s not a vertical. It’s more of a horizontal, right? The entire economy needs to decarbonize. Climate tech involves absolutely everything. We’re not just seeing new tech replacing old tech. We’re seeing new tech that comes in that supports and sort of adds to the economy. Completely new from nowhere. And this is one of them. We’re going to do an interesting one with Sention.
Francesco De Lieto: It is. So the the the overall thing starts from factories. And factories today are producing cells at a scale that is hard to grasp. These days gigafactories are no longer a novelty. But when you look at how batteries are tested, there is still a big gap between what can be measured in detail and what can realistically be checked at production speed. So the question becomes given both scale and tech complexities, what’s actually happening inside those batteries? Today we’re joined by Dan Brett, CEO of Sention Technologies, a UK-based company that has developed an extraordinary technology to see inside batteries. Incredibly important from the very initial R&D stages through manufacturing and second life.
What’s actually inside a battery?
Francesco De Lieto: Dan, welcome to Raw Green. Hi guys, great to be here. So, let’s kick off. Tell us what is actually inside a battery that we don’t see.
Dan Brett: Well, you know, on the outside of the battery is pretty pretty dull. You know, it’s like a a black box. Okay. And what you’ve got inside batteries is lots of layers. And um the defects and the and the chemistry is all rather layer specific. Okay. So we need to be able to focus in on these things and identify you know what what what’s occurring what’s what’s what’s happening inside the battery and um you know it’s it’s basically getting a handle on electrodes electrolyte and I I understanding these de defects.
Where defects come from & why they matter
Emma Mee: So this is a completely sealed unit now that you you can’t see or test what’s in it. You just trust that it’s going to be working fine. So what is it what what gets checked at this point or or what could potentially go wrong?
Dan Brett: I mean there there’s the potential for defects all along the production line. Okay. Um and these are varied. So it’s a it’s a very kind of tuned process. You’re dealing with chemicals, you’re dealing with machinery. Um you can uh have a whole range of defects along that line. Ideally you want to identify these defects as early as possible. Okay? So you don’t want to get all the way through to a fully formed cell. So you you ideally want to deploy um the kind of diagnostics along the entire production line. Um but you know the range of defects can be simple things like cracks and wrinkles and pin holes to more um sophisticated unusual kind of degradation kind of issues like uh lithium plating.
Emma Mee: And what do those defects ultimately lead to then? What’s the biggest risk here other than it perhaps just not working?
Dan Brett: Well, the biggest risk is a serious safety issue. Um, if if a defective cell goes out into into the real world, um, well, you know, defective batteries do lead to fires which have led to loss of life. Um, and and you know, if if real batteries go out defective batteries go out into the real world and they lead to a recall, you know, these things are eyewateringly expensive. They they run to billions. Um, so it’s it we need to catch these defects before they go out into the real world.
Francesco De Lieto: What’s the most common kind of defects you’ve seen?
Dan Brett: I mean, cracks and wrinkles are quite common. Um, fact that you have to fill a a a battery with electrolytes is is is an important stage and it doesn’t always wet the the electrodes sufficiently. Um, that’s not a critical defect, but obviously it does um lead to kind of performance uh issues. So, um, a whole raft of different issues there. Um, some are potentially lethal, some just lead to kind of, uh, shortening of life.
Emma Mee: Okay. What what does your system actually pick up that other misses?
How ultrasound sees inside batteries
Dan Brett: So, we use we use ultrasound to see inside batteries. So just as you would use ultrasound for know biomedical imaging we can look at uh uh you know um the health of a of a battery biomedical imaging would look at sort of like the health or gender of a of an unborn baby. We can look inside the cell and we can identify the kind of critical issues that uh could lead to degradation or failure literally with a pad and some gel.
Dan Brett: Well the difference is that we don’t use gel. So our our kind of critical difference here is it would be very impractical to use a gel like you would with a kind of biomedical imaging. You don’t be start putting gel or oil onto onto your battery. So we do it in a non-cont fashion and that means that we can actually deploy the technology much more broadly uh in in fact entirely through the actual production line but also in R&D and and also use cases kind of uh uh downstream actually within a vehicle or even at the kind of recycling stage.
Francesco De Lieto: and and does this does your technology works for any uh material chem any battery chemistry or you have a specific market?
Dan Brett: No, I mean I mean obviously that the kind of core lithium ion is where we focus because there’s so the market but it it will work for any any battery technology provided there’s a medium through which the ultrasound can actually travel we can we can inspect the battery.
Scrap rates & inefficiencies in gigafactories
Francesco De Lieto: So then uh in in our previous conversations we we’ll be talking about scrap rate. Okay, that happens during production and uh I I came across some stats that are absolutely incredible. Um jigafactories when they during ramp up they can have 70 to 90% rate of scrap. Is that possible or is just a Yeah.
Dan Brett: Yeah. when when a when a gigafactory is kind of coming online, you’re you’re effectively just making scrap to begin with. And the the the key to success is getting up that kind of learning curve as fast as possible to get to profitability and a bearable scrap rate. Okay. And bearable, you know, you many gigafactories even at steady state can be generating more than 30% of scrap.
Francesco De Lieto: Um Wow.
Dan Brett: So this Yeah. Yeah. So this I guess this this is kind of the the the kind of guilty secret of the Gigafactory world is that all this all this crap is made. Um I mean much of it can be recycled but it it means a lot to the profit profitability of the actual Gigafactory and and like every day that the the Gigafactory is not actually running live you could be losing a million a million dollars a day because it’s not actually functioning. uh and then obviously when it’s actually operational every percent of scrap uh is is is really costly. So this is this adds up to billions lost uh in ter in terms of the kind of uh uh profitability of of of gigafactories and energy use and things as well in terms of the um I mean I understand that gigafactories are consuming 30 to 50 kow hours of energy per 1 kilowatt hour of cell capacity produced and I imagine waste is incorporated in that calculation.
Dan Brett: Yeah. So I mean obviously when when you have scrap you you’re you’re generating you know use useless material that has to be recycled but in making that scrap you’ve actually gone through lots of costly processes. Huge amounts of energy goes into like drying these cells. You have to ensure you have a kind of a very carefully controlled uh kind of dehumidified environment when you make batteries. This is all very energy intensive. So it’s not just about the actual materials that are lost. Heck of a lot of energy is as well.
Francesco De Lieto: Wow. The the question is then uh if I drop a sentient technology system onto a gigafactory floor tomorrow, what changes first?
Diagnostics, data & improving production
Dan Brett: So first of all, we have to sort of understand where the the losses are. Okay. So we we we need we need a kind of a base case to understand what the you know what what is scrap? How do you define scrap? So, first thing we do is uh look at the u the exit the batteries that fully formed and determine their quality and how good the actual process is. Um then you can start targeting um problem areas areas for for for scrap formation that could be the electrode um formation uh manufacturing process formation uh you know electrolyte addition v various processes along the line. Um then of course you you start applying our tech or or a whole range of different advanced diagnostic technologies at these different locations and we start to um define understand the problems at those locations tune that process improve it and then we can actually see what the the consequence is in terms of performance at the end of line.
Dan Brett: So um in terms of determining the the the the impact obviously we need a kind of a ground truth in understanding what the kind of outcome is but we we we can then actually target the various different locations along that production line uh to see how the tech whether it’s sentience ultrasound or a vast range of other kind of diagnostic techniques what kind of uh um effect that has. Um there’s another another important point to make is it’s not just one location. um it’s almost like um you need to kind of make measurements a range of locations uh to create a kind of a data cloud and then you start comparing these locations correlating this information in order to tune up the overall process.
Francesco De Lieto: So it’s not just a diagnostic there is also a data analysis part that comes after you’ve done your uh your analysis uh through your technology. Is that is that is that correct?
Dan Brett: Absolutely. So there there’s the measurement there and the measurement allows us to see inside the battery or inside the component to identify an issue uh that generates data and it’s with that data that you then have an impact. You can make decisions. Um and of course there’s two parts to that. There’s the kind of the innovation in making the measure measurement which is bespoke to a particular battery and then there’s using the data and obviously there’s AI and machine learning that we can use to take this huge amount of data that is generated um make sense of it and then do something you know practical and useful.
Francesco De Lieto: would change anything if uh we we were to place your system uh early in in the factory ramp up.
Dan Brett: I think early you the earlier you detect a fault that you know the more the more impactful it is. Um so so t typically defects are kind of identified too late. So the the more kind of um locations for analysis that we can actually put on the line uh the earlier we can identify the potential problem and cut it out or indeed um you know correlate those locations and come up with a more refined understanding of what’s happening.
Second-life batteries & recycling challenges
Emma Mee: So, we’re concentrating a lot on the new batteries coming out, the gigafactories. What about used batteries, Dan? This is obviously a a mountain that’s going to be growing rapidly uh from EVs and various other things. What can you do there to test the batteries health and longevity and potential future life with rather than immediately sort of shredding it and scrapping it?
Dan Brett: Yeah. I mean, I mean, at the moment, um most most you used batteries are are burned and recycled. which is it which is which is a shame and is is quite unnecessary. Um so around 2030 we’re going to have a real wave of of used batteries coming along. Okay. Um so we need to start putting these kind of recycling capabilities in. Now by 2030 basically it’s end of life of of of vehicles. So um there obvious obviously you know some of the early adopters they’re coming to the end of their lives now. We do, we are recycling batteries, but there’s going to be a real wave coming along in the next few years.
Emma Mee: And and what are we working on there? Sort of an understanding of about a 10 year lifespan or is that a little bit longer? I’m trying to think when the first sort of uh swell of of of EVs took off.
Dan Brett: They’re often um a lot of the early adopters of fleet vehicles, right? And and they’re really heavily used more than family vehicles.
Emma Mee: Gotcha.
Dan Brett: So, so they’re they’re reaching the end of life a little earlier. So, 2030 is seen to be when when a wave of of kind of um recycling is going to be required. Now, of course, you need to put that kind of capacity in now so we’re so we’re ready for when that comes along. Um but it it’s not really a question of it’s not really a question of having the ability to recycle. It’s it’s it’s having the intelligence to know what can be reused or repurposed or what is actually destined for the for recycle.
Francesco De Lieto: That’s a secondary huge market. Dan, I was about to say it. You have the second life usage of uh battery cars used for energy storage uh for home storage or putting into 20ft container used for grid storage uh grid scale storage. So that that’s where your tech as a pivotal role because you you can say this pack it is safe to be used as a to extend its life or it isn’t safe for X Y and Zed reason reasons that that that’s
Dan Brett: I mean safety obviously is is the ultimate kind of measure. Um, but it’s it’s assessing what value is left in in the pack. And um, you got you got to balance the economics of actually disassembling a battery pack and and using it again uh, versus what is a kind of a a constantly um, lowering cost of of new new batteries to to to compare it with. So we we need to be able to actually assess the value, the safety and the practicality of actually recycling the batteries. Okay. And a lot and and it’s got to be on fast. Okay. And and cheap. Um and so and so ultrasound actually lends itself to this in in in a in many ways. It’s very very fast. It is it is low cost. Um and it it does give you that those key metrics of whether the battery is uh well certainly if whether it’s unsafe, but you really want to understand what’s called the state of health. So a battery becomes less healthy if you like um as it as it works through its life uh and towards the end you need to assess how how degraded it is and whether it is actually economically viable to uh repurpose it or reuse it.
Francesco De Lieto: I’m just thinking about, sorry, Emma. I’m just thinking about the the secondary used car sales that now you start to see on secondhand EVs battery health check with a massive green chop on it that probably is worthless. But how good would it be to to be able to have access to a technology like yours that says okay the the battery health not just the the charging and discharging capacity but also the health overall of each and every single one cells inside tells you okay this battery has I don’t know uh 30,000 miles more run or I don’t know 100,000 charge discharge whatever it is going to be that’s huge for the for the consumers huge value.
Dan Brett: Yeah. I mean I mean the thing with batteries is they don’t they don’t tell you very much. You know, they’ve got two terminals. You make a voltage measurement, measure current, maybe you’ve got temperature. Um these don’t tell you very much at all. Uh um you really need to be able to kind of monitor its entire life. You can use algorithms to infer kind of degradation, but you know that voltage is just a kind of a thermodynamic average of of the batteries um um health. uh it tells you nothing about the internal structure, whether it’s delaminated, whether nasty things are going on. But the ultrasound can actually see inside the cells uh and give that information. The challenge is obviously seeing inside a large fully kind of deployed battery in a vehicle. Uh now we can put our our technology on board. It’s very difficult to look at every single cell, but uh you can use certain cells as indicators of an entire pack’s degradation. uh but at the moment the the voltage measurement really leaves a lot to be desired. It’s uh we we need those internal structural information to be really sure of what you have.
Emma Mee: This is what I want to just stay on the secondhand market and that that reuse piece just for a second down. Do you see anything changing in the landscape here in terms of regulation any kind of measurements? Um, I’m thinking of sort of labeling or or some sort of health check as you say that that could be more of a an industry language that you can all talk to each other about with regards to what the second hands and and ongoing life of these matches could be. Any change there that you’re seeing?
Dan Brett: I mean there is there is regulation, there are lots of checks but it’s not so standardized um globally. Uh there is something called a battery passport. So the idea that every every battery at kind of at birth, you know, it gets its kind of birth certificate and then it has a kind of passport throughout its life. So you know when the materials have come from, how it’s been used and so forth. So that that’s an important thing because it gives you information about end of life, where it’s been, how it’s been used, and so forth. Um, one one of the interesting places is in is not not so much actually the the EV market, but like secondhand batteries being bought and sold on kind of eBay or or open markets. Um, you know, people people are buying batteries, putting them in things like electric scooters and they’re resulting in quite like sometimes lethal incidents. uh and there’s certainly regulation about about the need to have certain measurements taken place before a battery can simply be bought and sold on the open market. Um and again that’s the sort of thing needs to be super fast, low cost, not add too much to the actual cost of the secondhand item but give the customer the kind of um assurance that they’re buying something which is which is at least safe.
Northvolt case & gigafactory lessons
Francesco De Lieto: When we see cases like Northvolt struggling with yield and ramp up, what what’s actually uh what’s usually going wrong under the hood?
Dan Brett: So So of course Northvolt was a kind of Europe’s great hope for a kind of uh homegrown uh battery gigafactory scene uh in Sweden. Um i think something like $15 billion went into investment to to to to make and and unfortunately it did fail. Um i think that there were a few things to learn from that. I mean they were very ambitious. Um probably for maybe bit off more than they could chew. They tried to absorb the entire kind of battery value chain which ultimately is the right thing to do but it’s very difficult to come up with a high performing uh gigafactory as well as claiming the entire um ecosystem. Although certainly that is is the ultimate goal. Um really ultimately they they weren’t making batteries of the required standard and quality and obviously customers are not going to suffer that. Um they while they were European based they were still relying on um um machinery and people to a large extent from from the far east. Um and so you know i think that the the the kind of the lessons learned there are is this is really difficult to do. Um and um you know you don’t just need the tech and the machinery, you also need the people. Okay. And uh ideally if those people are trained locally, uh communication barriers are lower and um you know just it’s just far more efficient and effective to do things that way.
Emma Mee: Just regulations.
Francesco De Lieto: Yeah. Massively different. Absolutely. Abs. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. So there’s a huge movement obviously. There’s no denying that that 70% or something of batteries are made in China. But there’s an intent to bring things back to the Western Europe. It’s intent to build some gigafactories for batteries here in the UK. I read that there’s going to be uh five to six large scale gigafactories going to be needed right by around 2030 rising to 10 um in 2040 something from the Faraday Institute. So with those kind of jobs and that kind of new market opportunity opening up, where do you see the bottlenecks? What’s going to be hard for the UK to do this?
Dan Brett: Well, I mean the the thing is is I mean globally there’s more than enough gigafactories. Okay. There’s actually there’s actually an over supply of of batteries, but it’s it’s where it’s where they are.
Emma Mee: Yes. Yes.
Dan Brett: Okay. So, um these you know the China they’re all in China. They’re all in China. They’re all in China. You know, 80% or some something like that are in China. And it’s not just that the actual gigafactories in China. the actual whole supply chain is kind of controlled by by by China. So obviously there are lots of um um plans for for gigafactories to be built in the UK and certainly in Europe. Um but there’s there’s you have to be slightly careful here and realize it’s not just about building putting up a gigafactory and putting some machines inside it. you have to own the entire uh ecosystem and and that’s what kind of Northvolt was trying to do that that just shows what a big job it is to to do this. So obviously we need the gigafactories located in the appropriate locations. You need the machinery which still comes from all around the world and largely from the far east. Um you need the people but you also need the uh you need the supply chain. Okay. And um there’s there’s a whole range of different materials which are needed to go in. uh and it’s not just raw materials they need to be refined and China still very much completely dominates that area. So onshoring is essential because while there is an over supply it’s uh there’s still there’s still an issue around security of supply.
Francesco De Lieto: What if you get to be really good on the other end of the supply chain and recycling? Think about redwood materials in the US. What if you get that good? then you’re not obliged to build up your upstream supply chain. You’re not obliged to develop your rare earth uh supply chain. You’re not obliged to build up gigafactories. You just have to be really good at recycling.
Dan Brett: Yeah. I mean that that was that’s part of the picture. There’s there’s a large amount of of the materials can be supplied via recycling, but not all not all. Um, so we certainly need the recycling capability and and the location of that recycling capability needs to consider be considered alongside the location of the the gigafactories and and the manufacturing base. Um, but you you you still need um um you still need the kind of um first run of of of of supply. Um but if you if you get the recycling right, it will it will make up a lot of that deficit that we have currently in the uh uh in the supply chain.
Emma Mee: It it’s really ringing true what you’re saying about the supply chain issues actually and and we know that China was buying up half of Africa and and and South America developing economies with regards to their land rights for for the supply chain issues for exactly this moment. And now what we see with happening in Iran and the and the pressure that everybody’s wanting to install their own solar PV and and and batteries here at home to sort of take ourselves off the dependency of of oil and gas is is starting to really pinch for that very reason as as you’ve just said Dan. So maybe maybe the restriction on our supply chain is the uh the the necessary innovation that’s going to happen in the second hand and and do you think that something like sentience technology that helps us you know understand how we can reduce raw material wastage and how we can potentially prolong the life of the batteries and things that we have in different sites. Do you think Sention’s got a part to play in the UK’s uh supply chain here?
Dan Brett: Absolutely. So first of all in in the actual kind of development of batteries we’re going to make them faster. So that means we need companies to actually understand their tech faster. You get the tech to the market faster then the impact is is comes all the sooner in in the actual um uh factory itself. producing scrap obviously has a big big part to play and then at the end of line at the end of uh sorry end of life or end of first life understanding the value that still resides in the battery is absolutely key and that’s all about data and insight and information and that really comes from technology such as sentient being able to see inside the battery understand its quality and its remaining life and its health that allows us to make the kind of decision around whether you recycle reuse use or or go to um repurposing.
Francesco De Lieto: Can you give us an example of a project you work through your technologies that you were able to identify uh a uh problem during the production?
Dan Brett: There’s so many I mean um one of one of the things which are very uh sensitive is is electrolyte um filling. So you can imagine where where the where liquid exists within a a battery, the ultrasound passes through it much easier. So we have a very clear understanding of where electrolyte is within within that uh that particular stage. There’s also um a stage called formation and it’s that’s when a battery truly becomes a battery. It’s almost like when electricity first goes into the cell and it kind of breathes life into it and and that that’s a kind of kind of a mysterious process. You don’t really know what’s going on. It’s very interface specific and we can see inside that and actually monitor that formation process. So that’s uh certainly very very very insightful and then further along the line we can certainly see kind of gross defects like wrinkles and cracks and the kind of things that lead to these critical um recalls. So um you know very deployable u including electrodes as well. We can actually see electrode morphology how the electrode dries if there’s cracks and defects there. And in right at the very end of the production line, we can actually look at the fully complete cells and we can because we have our machine learning algorithms, we can uh predict the degradation into the future because we’ve kind of learned about how that particular battery can uh can degrade and uh potentially fail.
Francesco De Lieto: So as the vast majority of battery production and manufacturing is in China, is that your main market market?
Competing diagnostics & inspection limits (X-ray vs ultrasound)
Dan Brett: I mean it’s I mean obviously it’s uh it’s it’s 80% of the market. It’s uh it’s it’s certainly um something to target. Obviously doing business in China is a bit more difficult uh than the rest of the world. But we um we do actually have a a a showroom and a safe testing site in China which gives us access to the kind of technologies that are being developed out there. um a lot of the most advanced new kind of tech is coming out of China and so obviously that’s very useful for us to see and analyze. Um we certainly intend to sell to China. Um but the obviously the complexities of that market means that uh our our first target will be in Europe and uh and North America.
Emma Mee: I have to ask Dan, what is your background and why did you come across this problem to ultimately become you know the the doctor of all battery technology?
Dan Brett: So um my background is as as an academic and so for a long time i used to specialize in uh diagnostics for electrochemistry and so that’s not just batteries that’s like fuel cells and super capacitors and a whole raft of other uh technologies. Um but what we realized was there’s a big missing piece around measurement for for the kind of what we call the age of electrochemical power. Um so all these new technologies that are coming out still really are really old quite old-fashioned when it comes to the level of sophistication in say uh the silicon ship area. Okay. So we knew we needed new technologies, new ways of looking inside batteries and we set about understanding and creating new new technologies such as ultrasound uh that we went on to actually commercialize.
Francesco De Lieto: Who’s not too happy if your technology becomes widely used? Who are going who are you going to piss off?
Dan Brett: I would like to say we’re we’re everyone will have a big smiley face if uh if what it will do what it will do is potentially it will potentially um allow it will allow companies and developers who have been slower to market to get there faster. Okay. So it allows people to catch up. So at at the moment um lots of people get stuck in that kind of labtoline place where you kind of have a a g- whiz new kind of material which could be market leading okay but tend to fail because they they they don’t have the ability to learn fast and then transition to reliable scaling. Um and so those those kind of companies will catch up much more rapidly with the incumbent uh companies. So, strangely enough, it could be the kind of um uh kind of a hair and tortoise that we we we could be we could be doing lots of favors to the uh to the tortoise here by allowing them to actually go much faster.
Francesco De Lieto: But the look what i like a lot it is that it is uh technology agnostic that you you can work across chemistries. But what what about your competitors right now? How it is diagnostic done now?
Dan Brett: So i mean so there’s a there’s a range of kind of measurements already taking place on the on the production line and they range from quite kind of trivial kind of thickness measurements and so forth. Um there’s more and more sophisticated um instrumentation starting to be deployed initially on a kind of a nearline basis. Um so X-ray is a is a is a kind of a competing technology. Um I I like to think of it as being complimentary really. um our our kind of platform actually takes in a range of different measurement uh um modalities. So we we will take in electrochemistry and X-ray and ultrasound and various other measurement uh tools and combine those that information in a complimentary fashion to actually lead to actually more more insight. So we we’re very agnostic. We don’t believe in one particular technology. Ultrasound is super. It’s it’s you know it’s really deployable. It has its strengths, but we see the ultimate benefit here uh by taking a kind of a a metrology platform approach and taking in all these different um inputs and then synthesizing the kind of output that uh really makes a difference and and to a large extent that’s where we are truly truly uh um separated.
Francesco De Lieto: The thing is uh why why you run diagnostic uh in theory you shouldn’t be stopping uh the production throughput right what what i read for example about uh city scanning uh it is that it is incredibly powerful but it is uh too slow for high throughput production. Would you would you be able to cover that gap with sention?
Dan Brett: Yeah, I mean i mean speed is certainly a a benefit of of of of ultrasound and because we look at the various layers inside a battery. We listen to the reflections we can build up uh kind of a pseudo three-dimensional image of what goes on inside. X the X-ray power is really in the computer tomography side where you can build up a three-dimensional image of what goes on inside the cell and that tends to take longer. Um there is technology that can do it quite fast with uh cylindrical cells which had a smaller kind of format. But when you start going to large cells some of these kind of uh kind of blade cells can be as long as your arm it’s much more difficult to get a three-dimensional representation with with X-ray whereas ultrasound can actually do it because it relies on the reflections throughout the uh that that device. But but again, i still i still see complimentarity as being the the uh approach here rather than, you know, kind of a a VHS versus Betamax kind of approach. It’s it’s not one or the other. It’s a combination.
Francesco De Lieto: The the reality is that we’re talking about uh something that that gets produced at such a fast rate that must be able to detect defects that are into the micron scale. That is the thing that is mind-blowing. We’re talking about 10 to 100 microns uh defects that like you said earlier they can they can generate uh huge damages.
Dan Brett: Yeah, absolutely. Um and you know it’s you know it’s it’s a horses for courses thing here. I mean you don’t there’s a difference between kind of quality control and quality assurance. Um lots of the lots of these diagnostic tools are are kind of done you know they they’re not constantly monitoring in line. Okay. So lot lots of the analysis is done in a nearline fashion. So you can take samples off you can take you can take kind of uh and and and make these measurements and then make decisions and then other things are much more about process monitoring where you’re keeping uh the process you know continuous and operating within certain certain bounds. So there’s various different deployments, different speeds, different requirements, different uh uh different deployments and you know uh ultrasound seems to be one of the most deployable rapid and certainly uh is certainly relatively low cost um in in terms of how it can be deployed.
Francesco De Lieto: It is it is it is an amazing puzzle because even i mean we we’re talking about plants producing millions of cells per week. So even if we’re talking about a 0.01% defect rate, we’re still talking about thousands and thousands of bad sales that are that can potentially go to the market.
Dan Brett: Absolutely. And it that that’s not acceptable really. It it isn’t. And you know, I mean, it’s it’s often said that the it’s about reproducibility and um understanding the kind of uncertainties in manufacture that are the differentiator between a successful plant and and and and one fails and and lots of work obviously goes into coming up with the latest G- Whiz materials, but actually it’s the conversion into reliability, low yield, obviously capacity and the ability to scale that really really makes the difference. Um, but you’re right. I mean, the the scale of what goes on at the Gigafactory is quite remarkable. If if you ever been to one of these places, you know, you’re immediately struck by the size. These are real kind of cathedrals of industry. You know, people kind of dealing around on bicycles and uh and you know, it’s often said that, you know, these gigafactories are producing batteries faster than bullets out of machine gun. they are absolutely incredible generators of of of uh of hardware. Um so yeah, so and and you you simply have to have kind of parts per parts per billion kind kind of kind of quality control in order to uh to be uh have the reliability that’s required.
Francesco De Lieto: I I remember seeing uh a while ago the environmental impact assessment a summary of the environmental impact assessment of the Tesla Gigafactory in Germany and uh all the works that had to be done just for the water supply and it was absolutely staggering what had to be done uh displacing water from I don’t know a dozen villages around it was just incredible. So there is a an immense environmental impact moving away from the from the let’s say the the factory the macro area. Is there a chemistry that you like that you see okay this is what’s going to be the next lithium ion?
Future of batteries: chemistries, scaling & industry outlook
Dan Brett: Yeah it’s interesting because if if you look at a a battery there’s you it’s quite simple. There’s an anode and a cathode like a negative and a positive electrode. uh and most of the fancy kind of materials development goes on on the positive electrode that the cathode uh and for a long time the you know what you’re trying to do here is increase the capacity the amount of of energy that the uh the battery can hold and that’s largely a challenge on on the positive electrode. At the same time you obviously need to keep the cost down and you need to make sure that it it lasts long enough. So it’s that kind of balancing act between those three different areas. Uh and for a long time um a chemistry called NMC was seen to be the kind of way NM NMC so it’s nickel manganese cobalt uh and people were trying to actually kind of put more and more nickel in because it gave you more capacity um but one of the one of the kind of most interesting things which has happened in the industry uh over recent times is that um the kind of the poor relation to NMC is a chemistry called LFP so lithium ion phosphate So this is an older chemistry if you like. It’s uh has a lower capacity. Um and it’s regards to be safer because it doesn’t kind of hold so much capacity. But it was largely kind of uh written off. Um but because there were changes in the way that it could be processed and engineering changes to the way that actual cells are designed, it become much more feasible. And we now see that more than 50% of EV batteries are actually using this old-fashioned LFP chemistry. Um, so so some of the most exciting work is now looking at how we improve LFP, introduce other other constituents to it to actually start to even kind of compete even more on a on a like forlike basis with NMC. So I I would say that my the kind of chemistry that excites me is this kind of relatively old-fashioned written off LFP chemistry which is now dominating the market.
Francesco De Lieto: Yeah.
Emma Mee: What do you think about solid state?
Dan Brett: Uh yeah. Well, I mean solid state is is is largely seen to be if you like the ultimate answer to to lithium batteries.
Francesco De Lieto: saying grow.
Dan Brett: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s i mean solid state means it uses a solid electrolyte rather than a liquid. Um and and the challenge there is that the the electrolyte is a ceramic. Um well there’s lots of there’s lots of challenges but one of them is it’s a ceramic and and if if you’re kind of familiar if you think of a a kind of a a kitchen tile you know um ceramics are quite are quite uh quite fragile and these are very very very thin tiles. Okay. Uh and so while there is excellent performance and we know they work, um soon as you start making that bathroom tile larger and larger, okay, it’s more likely to break during manufacture and uh and therefore, you know, the scaling challenge is uh largely where um again it’s a manufacturing thing. It’s not necessarily a materials challenge. It’s actually the materials are you know kind kind of solved to a large extent but manufacturing it and scaling it is uh is uh still some way to go.
Francesco De Lieto: Plenty of texts. I mean this is a story that we heard so many times right plenty of texts uh that works at lab or pilot scale uh pilot stage sorry but then when they have to scale up um you have to build up that manufacturing.
Dan Brett: Yes.
Francesco De Lieto: Uh and sometimes that’s a very physical thing, an actual component of the of the of the physicality of what you’re trying to do, never mind a a manufacturing challenge. It’s uh yeah, just the scale alone is enough to break it.
Dan Brett: Yeah.
Francesco De Lieto: Fantastic. We have exciting times ahead and uh i mean uh the the the the the president of the United States is doing a a massive favor to the entire climate tech industry and voluntarily uh with uh with everything and batteries obviously are are key to the transition uh towards a net zero. So and your technology that can help to to to monitor to analyze to diagnose uh what’s happening inside at any of the stage of the life cycle uh it it’s going to be incredibly helpful. I mean the the just extending by five 8 years the life of a EV battery pack uh can be absolutely extraordinary. So I do really like your tech. I really do. It is it is fantastic.
Emma Mee: What’s the future for Sention?
Dan Brett: So, I mean, at the moment, we’re we’re actually doing a fund raise. At the moment, we we have a product. People are buying our tech, which is which is super. And we’re going we’re going from that kind of interesting evolution of developing a technology through to to selling it, which is uh very very exciting.
Emma Mee: Nice.
Dan Brett: Um and obviously we we have a very broad kind of um range of customers and so we we continue to learn their needs and uh obviously tailor tailor our solution to that.
Francesco De Lieto: Wonderful. Thank you, Dan. This was uh very interesting, very informative. It was a a nice lesson around batteries and the incredible work that you guys are doing. So, thank you for being on Ro Green and uh catch up soon.
Dan Brett: Thank you, M. Thanks. Bye.
Francesco De Lieto: Thanks for listening to this episode of Ro Green. If you made it this far, you probably enjoyed it. So, don’t forget to hit subscribe and follow our podcast. It’s an awesome way to support our community. At OBI, we’re all about research, life cycle assessment, and the green tech innovation. Stay in touch through our socials or visit our website. Links are ready for you in the description. Catch you in the next episode. Ciao.
