The Lithium-Sulfur pilot line will reportedly begin delivering commercial battery cells in 2023 to early adopting customers within the defense, automotive, logistics, and satellite sectors. Battery delivery will be used to support testing, qualification and initial commercialization across the sectors. Reservations for the remaining battery cells will be limited by the pilot line’s nameplate capacity of 200,000 cells per year.
The pilot line is housed within Lyten’s 145,000-square-foot Silicon Valley campus. The campus also includes Lyten’s 3D Graphene fab and its operations supporting the development of additional Lyten 3D Graphene applications. These include lightweight composites and revolutionary forms of chemical, resonant, and biological sensing solutions for transportation, aerospace, industrial, energy, and defense customers.
The Lyten battery pilot line will produce Lithium-Sulfur cells in a range of pouch and cylindrical form factors to support a variety of customer requirements and allow Lyten to further develop manufacturing equipment capabilities for scaled Lithium-Sulfur cell production. The pilot line will deliver cells that exceed conventional Nickel-Cobalt-Manganese (NMC) lithium-ion battery gravimetric energy densities.
"Lyten is taking a leadership role in helping to ramp up a domestic battery supply chain in America,” said Dan Cook, Lyten Co-Founder and CEO. “Meeting the electrification and net zero goals of our investors and customers, such as Stellantis and the Defense Innovation Unit, means delivering a higher energy density, lighter weight battery with a localized supply chain free of geopolitical risk. This is what we intend to deliver with our Lyten Lithium-Sulfur battery.”
Celina Mikolajczak, Lyten’s Chief Battery Technical Officer, added: “Lithium-Sulfur is the battery chemistry that has the potential to electrify everything. A projected 50 percent lower cost bill of materials compared to conventional lithium-ion chemistries will enable significantly lower-cost automotive battery packs, making an all-electric automotive fleet economically achievable. The high energy density of the chemistry will make it appealing for application in heavy vehicles such as delivery vans, trucks, buses, and construction equipment, as well as in aviation and satellites. The raw materials for this chemistry are abundant throughout North America favoring a domestic supply chain and domestic manufacturing, supporting a strong American electrification industry.”
The Pentagon’s National Security Innovation Capital (NSIC) investment group has invested in Lyten in support of the government’s mission of advancing energy storage technologies in the United States.
Keith Norman, Lyten Chief Sustainability Officer, states “Lyten is making a battery with a lower carbon footprint using readily available materials sourced in North America. Lyten’s Lithium-Sulfur battery uses no nickel, cobalt, or manganese (NMC), eliminating key environmental and ethical barriers to ramping up battery production to meet global demand. At scale, we target to produce the lowest carbon footprint EV battery on the market, more than 60 percent lower than best-in-class lithium-ion batteries and more than 40 percent below emerging solid-state batteries. For automakers to achieve their net zero commitments, we believe they will require a battery with a fundamentally lower carbon footprint and lighter weight, both features we are delivering with our Lithium-Sulfur battery.”
To meet the expected demand for Lithium-Sulfur batteries, Lyten is progressing engagements across multiple U.S. states to expand 3D Graphene production capacity and build its first Lithium-Sulfur cell gigafactory. Additionally, Lyten is securing domestic supply for its completely NMC-free battery materials, including low emissions natural gas, sulfur, and lithium.
Read the original article on Graphene-Info.
