Battery Insiders Reflection - PFAs and regulation

0:00Transcript

0:00Welcome to Battery Insiders, your podcast providing you insights in the fascinating world of batteries. Hosted by Bhavya Jha and Simon Engelke. And we're back for the 60th session of Battery Insiders with Simon and me, your usual folks. Simon, how are you doing? I'm doing really well. Excited to talk about nerdy science, talk about some of the components and a lot of batteries, probably a lot of else I've never heard about, but talk about PFAs. Yes, I will say this one got a bit technical for me. I haven't, first off, had not heard of PFAs before. So, you know, thank you for giving us the forum to discuss that. And two, I did have to look it up again because I forgot what those were because I just was not familiar with the term. But the conversation we had was definitely very enlightening. But I'll quiz you on it. So what does PFA? What is a PFA? Yeah, no, I mean, you have to kind of tap back into my chemistry background, I'd say.

1:16So PFA standing for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances. And if you go on ShedGPT, of course, a bit of caution here, a group of chemicals that have been widely used in various industry or industrial consumer products, including batteries, due to their unique properties, such as resistance to heat, water and oil. So we might also know Teflon and things like that. So, you know, there's some strong use cases as well, like more on fluorine, of course, being a very helpful component, but of course, also one which has environmental concerns as well and health risk concerns as well. So that's, of course, one of the reasons also why they're back in the debate and maybe just a bit of context, right? I think regulation is one of the reasons we talked about it. But maybe I'll let you go a bit more on the regulation topic, because I think that may be something you want to touch on. But maybe just as a last quick just introduction on that, they're used quite widely in batteries.

2:12And, you know, we can see them from the electrolyte conductive salts, like NFPF6 and things, different electrolyte salts that can be in there. You know, also from a solvent perspective, NMPs and things like that, which we use. And again, PVDF, different binders, PDFE, right? So there's different. Yeah. So I think there's different kind of components where it's kind of relevant to know that they can play a role and they're being used then. And now are these performance enhancers or are they just, you know, required to like keep a battery together or, you know, are important for longevity? You know, in case you've got any listeners who just jumped to our part, can you give them a little detail on that? Yeah. No, I think, I mean, there's a couple of different topics where it can play a role, right? There's different hypotheses that there can be, as you say, like, you know, the safety and technology improvement, reduction of CO2, you know, emissions as well by kind of increasing, you know, technology, making it last longer, et cetera.

3:13I think one, maybe look at, you know, PDFE, like one of the binders, right? In question, it's quite different. I mean, binders are extremely fascinating topic in itself. We didn't go too much detail. Maybe we do another session on this at some point. But essentially, how is like, you know, these polymers and how you kind of connect them in our battery, right? We have active components, for example, the graphite and the arnode. We want to put them together with some kind of binder. And especially if we think about now people want to go more self-standing or like have, you know, like have different kind of coatings, want to kind of do dry coatings, et cetera, of course, being always keeping, you know, getting talked about. And essentially, they have different strands on how they connect the particles. They can make these kind of nice wraps, for example, with PDFE, et cetera. So that's just one of the things. You can also do other. You can use other polymers, but they might not have the same kind of good behavior in creating these nice structures.

4:12Yeah. So there's been a long answer to being it has some great properties, which can be in great advantage and can make your battery better or can be essential as well in some ways, depending on which components we're talking about. That was amazing. I don't think I've heard you nerd out like that really before this. So kudos to the PFA topic for doing that. I do sometimes forget that you have a very technical background. Very interesting. So I do find, I mean, lots of, you know, you just told us what the benefits were, how, what the role can be. And so I imagine that regulation is grappling with, you know, this tech, it supports the technology that is doing a lot of good, which I mean, I do think batteries do good, but at what cost? And how do we regulate that? How do we regulate the disposal? How do we standardize its use? My usual shtick. So I do think that I am at, I mean, EU being ahead of the US on many things, I say that very clearly now.

5:17I think that there will, of course, be regulations around this, but how that will impact OEMs, I imagine, would is still subject to the future. I don't, I just can't imagine. I know that a lot of things about batteries are coming under regulation, including the materials. And of course, those, those, those, these materials we're talking about, PFAs, they are very, they're very subject to availability of like supply chains and whatnot. And so for those reasons, I am curious as to, I will now make note of like how these, how, if these supply chains are even affected, if at all. And I can tell you that I'm sure that the US will, will take some time before we make any regulation on that front. But thanks to our speaker, we understood a little bit more about what was going on in the EU. Yes and no, right. I think, I mean, I think that's, it's interesting and I think a very important point also to this is that there's some good reasons, right?

6:23People want to get, you know, want to avoid these, right? And I think especially, again, touching this environmental and health risks, right? And I think that's, that's just super important. And, you know, there's, again, you know, I'm not a doctor myself or I'm a PhD, but not a health, you know, doctor. So, you know, health effects, you know, liver and kidney damage, and that's, again, all things kind of aligned, reproductive and development problems, cancer, et cetera. So there is, you know, a range of different, you know, topics people are concerned with. And I think that's, you know, good to kind of be aware of that. And then, you know, if things like this come out there to try to, yeah, you know, I think there'll be about it. And of course, there's always discussion about these risks, et cetera. But I think in general, it's not a bad idea to kind of get rid of some chemicals where there is some concern. So I think the question in here is how you approach it, right?

7:12So I think the interesting approach that I've seen in the U.S. and also it's kind of shared in the discussion or in the podcast. Then in the U.S., the approach is more to say if you cannot find any alternative, then you're kind of allowed to use it. I think this has been kind of a bit more the stance, what I've understood again from the speaker and other people contributing there. And then Europe, it's more right now a public consultation to kind of forbid them at all completely without kind of like this caveat of if you don't have an alternative, you're still allowed to use it. So I think that would be interesting to see how this will be regulated. And of course, there's a lot of big players. And of course, some are more incentivized than others, right? Who, of course, there's quite a few producers also quite of concern, right? Because if they're building up the capacity, they're not allowed to use them. And then that's, of course, an issue.

7:57But yeah, I think that maybe the last thing is I just want to say quite a complex topic, quite fascinating. Again, it's a great topic to note out on, but also look at regulation topics. Maybe the one thing just to quickly add right now at the moment, and this was kind of part also we came up with this idea in some way, was that there is a public consultation right now in the European Union. It just started in March and will run until September, towards the second half of September. And that's, yeah, I think the idea is here. It's a consultation where people can, you know, give their thoughts on this proposal to forbid them in the European Union. Yeah, so if people are interested, feel free to look into that, what the proposals are in the European Union, you know, what your stance is about it. Are they useful for you? Are they needed for you right now in the battery industry? And yeah, maybe that would be an interesting task for some of you who are dealing with this topic.

8:48But definitely to keep an eye on. And I think that's also one thing we definitely have learned that we want to keep an eye on that. Absolutely. It took me back to my Tesla days. The team I was with, Environment, Health and Safety, one of the things that is a focus is industrial hygiene. And that is where, that's the team that looks at what chemicals we're using and assesses their impact on employees who are in the manufacturing setting. And so I imagine that this conversation has already happened there and in other battery manufacturing spaces. But yeah, those people already come to mind. And I'm sure that these conversations will only continue as battery form factor and manufacturing advance in scale. And I think maybe the last quick thing is very fascinating, right? Because here, from a regulatory perspective, right? You want to, on the one hand, you know, support the battery industry and you want to kind of, you know, enable it for carbon reduction, you know, reasons for transport, energy security, all of these topics, right?

9:50And you want to kind of foster innovation, you want to kind of support that. On the other hand, you want to, you know, also, you know, foster innovation and improving, you know, the processes and finding a turn of, et cetera. But yeah, the thing is always about how the timing, how you balance it, because you can, of course, also block one by doing the other. So, yeah, it's very fascinating and definitely a person will take an eye on it. Well, thanks for nerding out with us. And I hope that you all enjoyed this week's episode. Simon and I will be back next week, or rather with our next session in a couple of weeks on residential energy storage. So we look forward to sharing bits and pieces of that conversation with you then. Thanks so much for joining. Thanks, everyone.