Page 41 - EngineerIt August 2021

SCIENCE IN SOUTH AFRICA

Lithium batteries - South Africa's

lost opportunity

By Hans van de Groenendaal, editor EngineerIT

esearchers at the CSIR (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research) have made need for alternative energy sources and
ground breaking discoveries in the evolution of lithium batteries, today a huge industry improved batteries for energy storage.
Rdriven by the take-off of electric cars. Due to a lack of support and forward thinking by The oil crisis prompted Coetzer to initiate
government and industry at the time, the fortunes of lithium batteries passed us by. structural studies of battery materials.
The period of 1974 to 1994 is described by Michael Thackeray, a major contributor to New to the field of solid-state
the development of the lithium battery, as “Twenty Golden Years of Battery Research and electrochemistry, Coetzer embarked
Development at the CSIR”. on an investigation into the structure-
There seems to have been a general unawareness in the country of the impending electrochemical properties of silver
impact of lithium battery technology that was to follow the consumer electronics boom in the iodide-amine iodide solid electrolytes
1990s. Thackeray, sensing a bright future for lithium battery technology and receiving an offer that showed anomalously high Ag+-ion
to continue his materials-related lithium battery research at Argonne National Laboratory, left conductivity at room temperature. This
the CSIR for the United States in January 1994. The battery group that remained at CSIR project heralded the start of a 20-year
continued to operate for another year before closing its operations. period during which the CSIR and South
Thackeray obtained his BSc, MSc, and PhD (Chemistry) from the University of Cape Town. Africa would make major contributions to
Today Michael Thackeray is the Argonne Emeritus, Distinguished Fellow and Senior advancing international battery science
Scientist, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL, United States. and technology.
Thackery recorded the history of the development of the lithium battery in a paper
published in 2011, from which I have edited this important historical article which illustrates Michael Thackeray and his
the important contribution our scientists and engineers have made and are still making to PhD thesis
technology today. When Michael Thackeray joined Coetzer
in 1975, he used the silver iodide
From farming to science project for his PhD thesis, while Coetzer
The story of lithium battery research and development in South Africa started in 1974. It was turned his attention to more practical
the time of the first ‘oil crisis’ when the price of oil jumped from $3 to $12 a barrel (we wish technologies.
today!) when a structural chemist, Johan Coetzer, returned from a year’s farming in Pongola The discovery of the Na+-ion
in KwaZulu-Natal to resume his scientific career at the Crystallography Division of the conducting solid electrolyte, ‘β-Al2O3’,
National Physical Research Laboratory, at the CSIR. by Weber and Kummer at Ford Motor
The effect of the oil embargo by Arab countries against the United States, Western Company in 1967 had opened the
countries and Japan for their support of Israel triggered a worldwide awareness of the door to the possibility of developing a
non-aqueous, high-energy and high-
temperature (350 °C) sodium-sulphur
(Na/S) battery to replace lead-acid and
nickel-cadmium batteries, particularly
for electric vehicles and stationary
energy storage. In the Na/S system, the
molten sodium and sulphur electrodes
are separated by a thin ‘β-Al2O3’ solid
electrolyte membrane.
By 1975, development of this system
was well under way in the United States
and Europe. At the same time, another
high-temperature battery, based on a
lithium aluminium-iron sulphide (LiAl/
FeS2) electrochemical couple and a
molten salt (LiCl,KCl) electrolyte, was
under development at Argonne National
Laboratory in the USA. In this system,
two solid electrodes, LiAl and FeS2, are
CSIR Campus where South African scientists worked on the development of the lithium battery
separated by a liquid electrolyte.

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