# Toyota Claims Magnesium-Ion Battery Success



## PhantomPholly (Aug 20, 2008)

I can't help thinking about our high school demonstration of Magnesium burning under water. Quite spectacular, but not something you want to be anywhere near...


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## Ziggythewiz (May 16, 2010)

IIRC you got to play with magnesium because it's very safe compared to lithium


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## dragonsgate (May 19, 2012)

PhantomPholly said:


> I can't help thinking about our high school demonstration of Magnesium burning under water. Quite spectacular, but not something you want to be anywhere near...


The same thought was going through my mind as I read the article. I saw a rail blow and catch fire at the Pomona Drags in the 60’s. I can’t remember who was driving but he got out safe. When the fire got to the Mag wheels it made quite a sight.


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## Electroddy (Dec 29, 2009)

Brought to mind the Navy Ring Of Fire exercise that I was part of. All ships in close formation firing 3inch and 5inch Star Shells, and the Crews firing small arms loaded with Tracer ONLY. 2200hrs,no MOON, COOL .50 Cal with 100 round belts of nothing but TRACER  Looks like a red rope.


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## Ziggythewiz (May 16, 2010)

Electroddy said:


> Crews firing small arms loaded with Tracer ONLY.
> 
> .50 Cal with 100 round belts of nothing but TRACER


Sounds like the perfect time to ATTACK!


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## dragonsgate (May 19, 2012)

"Brought to mind the Navy Ring Of Fire exercise that I was part of. All ships in close formation firing 3inch and 5inch Star Shells, and the Crews firing small arms loaded with Tracer ONLY. 2200hrs,no MOON, COOL .50 Cal with 100 round belts of nothing but TRACER  Looks like a red rope. ".......... Sounds cool. I never saw a tracer in anything except old World War 2 footage. Did witness a hell of a gun fight the night our ship got hit. Every ship in the 7th fleet and every plane must have been there. If we had kept it up for five more minutes we would have won the war. Enough war stories and back on track. I am sure there was some magnesium use somewhere during the battle but I will have to hear a lot more about these magnesium batteries before I get too excited.


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

In this article they imply that the reason lithium batteries are so expensive is the price of lithium. There in not much lithium in these batteries and it is a minor part of the cost. I can pin down about $25 in materials costs for a 100AH cell. The rest is manufacturing, shipping and profit. The copper and aluminum foils are the bulk of the cost. It probably actually costs a little less than $0.50 per AH to make. From a recycling standpoint almost everything in LiFePo4 cells is.


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## jeremyjs (Sep 22, 2010)

dougingraham said:


> In this article they imply that the reason lithium batteries are so expensive is the price of lithium. There in not much lithium in these batteries and it is a minor part of the cost. I can pin down about $25 in materials costs for a 100AH cell. The rest is manufacturing, shipping and profit. The copper and aluminum foils are the bulk of the cost. It probably actually costs a little less than $0.50 per AH to make. From a recycling standpoint almost everything in LiFePo4 cells is.


I have to agree. Other than copper and aluminum there really isn't much of material value there. A significant part of the cost, especially in lower volume production, is the facilities and equipment needed to make the batteries. That's probably why all the battery makers are saying that with volume will come significant cost decreases. Once you start making millions of something, in an automated fashion, the cost should drop to slightly more than the actual material cost to make it.


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## PhantomPholly (Aug 20, 2008)

Electroddy said:


> Brought to mind the Navy Ring Of Fire exercise that I was part of. All ships in close formation firing 3inch and 5inch Star Shells, and the Crews firing small arms loaded with Tracer ONLY. 2200hrs,no MOON, COOL .50 Cal with 100 round belts of nothing but TRACER  Looks like a red rope.


Hehe - don't forget, tracers work BOTH WAYS...


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## Duncan (Dec 8, 2008)

dougingraham said:


> In this article they imply that the reason lithium batteries are so expensive is the price of lithium. There in not much lithium in these batteries and it is a minor part of the cost. I can pin down about $25 in materials costs for a 100AH cell. The rest is manufacturing, shipping and profit. The copper and aluminum foils are the bulk of the cost. It probably actually costs a little less than $0.50 per AH to make. From a recycling standpoint almost everything in LiFePo4 cells is.


I am amazed that you can identify $25 worth of materials - if the thing was pure copper it would be about $25 and everything else is worth a lot less per Kg

Can you let us know your breakdown - please


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## dougingraham (Jul 26, 2011)

Duncan said:


> Can you let us know your breakdown - please


It is all estimates of the quantities of different things. To do a real job I would have to dismantle a cell and weigh all the different components. Like you say, if it was all copper it would cost about that at todays spot price. I estimated about 1/2 of the weight is copper ($13) and about 1/4 is aluminum ($1.25). The plastic case is about 1/8 ($0.50).

I should have said estimate rather than pin down.


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## McRat (Jul 10, 2012)

Cliff Notes:

There is about $15 of lithium in a Nissan Leaf battery pack. No cost savings possible.

Magnesium batteries are going weigh a lot more. Magnesium is far heavier than lithium.

Lithium is not rare. It's used to make glass. Many lithium mines shut down because of overabundance.


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## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

A battery researcher told me the cell separator membranes are extremely high dollar items. Also the level of purity of the other materials drives up the cost.


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## Duncan (Dec 8, 2008)

JRP3 said:


> A battery researcher told me the cell separator membranes are extremely high dollar items. Also the level of purity of the other materials drives up the cost.


Hi JRP
The separator membranes and the high purity are "present costs" - and can go down massively with mass production - and learning how to make them better

The materials costs are kind of fixed - if you need xKg of copper it will cost..
and represent a lower bound for the costs

I suspect a "materials only" cost for a 100Ah cell is going to be ~ $2

bearing in mind that Cummins could sell a 6 liter turbo diesel (complete) to Chrysler for $2000 (back in 2001)

This is why using cheaper materials may not make a difference


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## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

Getting high purity copper is not going to get cheaper with greater volume. I think copper pricing is going to be a concern going forward. Hopefully improvements in other areas will make up for it.


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## Duncan (Dec 8, 2008)

JRP3 said:


> Getting high purity copper is not going to get cheaper with greater volume. I think copper pricing is going to be a concern going forward. Hopefully improvements in other areas will make up for it.


_Getting high purity copper is not going to get cheaper with greater volume._

Why not?
It certainly happened with aluminium


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## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

I expect increasing demand for copper is going to drive material prices up, existing mines playing out will increase the cost of acquiring it, and increasing energy prices will drive up the cost of purifying it.


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## Sunking (Aug 10, 2009)

If memory serves me correctly but does not the military like the Airforce use Magnesium structural parts not only because of the light weight and stregth, but also to keep the design secrets in the event the aircraft is shot down and/or over enemy territory so it all burns up with no way to extinguish.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

Magnesium does not always burn in a crash. It is strong and light weight. That is why it is used.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

I've witnessed plenty of airplane crashes that never burned. They are full of magnesium parts. No, that argument does not hold water.


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## Ziggythewiz (May 16, 2010)

I've never heard of a plane that burned itself up without the help of large amounts of jet fuel. Seals/CIA carry along C4 and thermite for disposing of remains.

How reactive any given element can be is irrelevant to how it may be used. Many elements have both stable and unstable compounds.

It's like arguing that salt is dangerous to eat because in another form it could be poison gas or explode in water. And watch out for that deadly dihydrogen monoxide.


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## onegreenev (May 18, 2012)

I know of a VW that burned for 2 1/2 hours because the magnesium in the case caught fire. All fuel was long gone and it kept burning. Yup, it was mine. Stood there watching while the fire truck guys tried to keep it cool around the engine case until it burned it self out. 2 1/2 friggin hours. The only thing left of the car was from the just in front of the windshield forward. Every thing from there back was toast. There were even steel parts in the engine that were just gone. Some with some nasty burned away areas. That shit burns mighty hot when it does burn. So if by chance a plane or drone crashed and the mag caught fire then yes, it would pretty much be gone. Its not that they use it just for that purpose.


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## dragonsgate (May 19, 2012)

In the 1980’s I used to go from Riverside Ca. to Palm Springs just about every week. Around 1984 there was a train derailed at the halfway mark by Cabazon. The diesel Electric caught fire and they buried it with dirt. For more than a month when I passed that pile of dirt it would still be smoldering. I always figured it was motor windings. Do they use much magnesium in trains?


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## McRat (Jul 10, 2012)

Magnesium, Aluminum, and Titanium are all flammable metals given the right conditions. They are used in fireworks and flares. And by pyromaniacs.

Get a bonfire going, and throw an early VW bug case on it and wait 10 minutes. They are magnesium. 

You can see the light from it at night for more than 20 miles; it's blinding white. The BLM has outlawed doing it on their land.

Memories ...


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## Sunking (Aug 10, 2009)

onegreenev said:


> Magnesium does not always burn in a crash. It is strong and light weight. That is why it is used.


Crash is only 1 failure mode of many. Short circuit comes to mind.


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## kerrymann (Feb 17, 2011)

dougingraham said:


> In this article they imply that the reason lithium batteries are so expensive is the price of lithium. There in not much lithium in these batteries and it is a minor part of the cost. I can pin down about $25 in materials costs for a 100AH cell. The rest is manufacturing, shipping and profit. The copper and aluminum foils are the bulk of the cost. It probably actually costs a little less than $0.50 per AH to make. From a recycling standpoint almost everything in LiFePo4 cells is.


True but the article says that the chemistry is potentially more energy dense. So if that 100ah cell is even the same cost but has more capacity then you $/wh has gone down. IMHO it's all a mute point till it commercialized. There are hundreds of battery break thru's that looked great it the lab but haven't gone anywhere. I hope that isn't the case here but I am certainly not holding my breath.


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## Sunking (Aug 10, 2009)

kerrymann said:


> So if that 100ah cell is even the same cost but has more capacity then you $/wh has gone down.


Does not compute .How do you figure that? 

Example a 3.6 volt 100 AH battery has a capacity of 3.6 volts x 100 AH = 360 watt hours any way you spin it. So take 2 batteries that are 3.6 100 AH. Battery A cost $100, and battery B cost $100. Both are $0.277/wh.

Now what you could say if one battery has a specific energy of 100 wh/Kg, and the other same capacity is 200 wh/Kg, then the seconds one weighs about half as much of the other. 

The other half of the problem is Energy Density which is a volumetric rating expressed as wh/L .


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## kerrymann (Feb 17, 2011)

Sunking said:


> Does not compute .How do you figure that?
> 
> Example a 3.6 volt 100 AH battery has a capacity of 3.6 volts x 100 AH = 360 watt hours any way you spin it. So take 2 batteries that are 3.6 100 AH. Battery A cost $100, and battery B cost $100. Both are $0.277/wh.
> 
> ...


If you have a given cell that has a more or less fixed cost (as mentioned previously) then focusing on making that cell store more energy is your only real option. If you can cram 120ah into that same cell and/or operate at a higher voltage (say 3.8) due to the improved chemistry then you can increase the amount of energy in that cell (wh). If you keep the cell the same cost or slightly cheaper, then you will decrease your $/wh. As with most new chemistry discussions there are a lot of "if"s that have to be made true before we can buy them.


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## PhantomPholly (Aug 20, 2008)

Ziggythewiz said:


> And watch out for that deadly dihydrogen monoxide.


Hey, watch it! That stuff has claimed more lives just this year than all the EVs in history combined!


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