Australia-based battery graphene anode producer Talga has entered an agreement with European lithium-ion battery giant Farasis Energy Europe (Farasis). Talga will supply coated anode products for evaluation in Farasis batteries.
Talga sources its graphene and graphite in the north of Sweden, from where the company produces coated ‘active’ anode products which it will now, according to their agreement, supply to Farasis.
Talga is making substantial progress in commercializing its European lithium-ion battery anode products, said Talga Managing Director, Mark Thompson, and demand is growing rapidly, particularly in the EV market.
Concordant to the rise of EVs and lithium-ion battery demand is the necessity to improve the batteries themselves, to improve efficiency and increase energy density for better range and charging capabilities. This is not to mention the need to clean the global battery supply chain.
There is still a lot of room for improvement in graphite anodes, but alternatives are vigorously examined, and one alternative is silicon. Silicon anodes have far greater energy density than graphite. However, due to silicon’s tendency to expand by as much as 400% when forming alloys with lithium, the graphite alternative still experiences a range of performance degrading effects.
Despite graphite’s inferiority to silicon, the latter is not yet as stable and integrated to serve the enormous and growing lithium-ion battery market. Considering the rise of EVs depends heavily on an ability to scale, graphite, and sustainably sourced graphite like that of Talga, is a major boost to the energy transition in the transport industry.