A day is a long week in the life of batteries. On 9 February 2018, China Molybdenum announced it was purchasing Tenka Fungurume mine in Democratic Republic of Congo. Consequently, China will own 62% of global refined cobalt production in 2019 once the deal is through. Is this a sledgehammer blow to democratic cobalt? No not at all, said South Korea’s Samsung four days later. We will break the China cobalt monopoly another way.
How Will South Korea Break the China Cobalt Monopoly?
Samsung SDI makes batteries for electric cars, including BMW. It had been tinkering with recycling cobalt from smartphone batteries, but decided to up the ante. It announced a project to develop low cobalt, or even zero cobalt lithium car batteries.
Samsung SDI currently deploys nickel-cobalt-aluminum, and nickel-cobalt-manganese technologies. It has made excellent progress towards its goal to break the China cobalt monopoly already. It has successfully raised the proportion of nickel to over 90%, with cobalt down to 5%.
Could This Change the Way We Make Lithium Batteries?
It’s hard to tell at this stage. China money is on the Democratic Republic of Congo unless it backs off the deal. However, it may well develop a low cobalt plan b, to hedge against the Congo entering another violent phase, which we hope not.
Meantime, China is following its millennium strategy for industrial metals and oil. Sometimes it invested at source. At other times, it bought source outright. Samsung is also exploring a plan b to break the China cobalt monopoly. This increases dependence on recycled lithium from first gen electric car batteries.
It must find a way through. Global cobalt prices shot up from $34,600 per ton in January 2017 to $81,360 in early 2018. The given reason is ongoing low-level conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Related
China Is Racing Ahead With Batteries
Lithium Cobalt Oxide Batteries LiCoO2
Preview Image: Handful of Cobalt
