The battery world has fallen head over heels for lithium iron phosphate cells. This cheap and durable chemistry can lower the price of a vehicle by thousands of dollars. However, tariffs and anti-China regulations have complicated the picture for American automakers.
Many believe LFP is the missing ingredient for energy prosperity, but the problem is that it is literally ninety-nine percent made in China. If the United States wants to have a chance of competing, that script must be flipped.
One company, Electroflow, is attempting to do just that. Its co-founders, Eric McShane and Evan Gardner, have developed a technology they believe can undercut Chinese producers on cost by eliminating several steps in the production process. If they can deliver, they could cut the cost of an LFP battery by as much as twenty percent while building a domestic supply chain.
The founders examined the entire process of mining lithium, from the rock or salt water all the way to a finished lithium chemical. They observed that the traditional method involves about ten steps and concluded that it is clearly not the best way to do it.
Much of the world’s lithium comes from salty water found deep underground. When pumped to the surface, these brines can be processed to extract the lithium they contain. Brines in the United States contain millions of tons of lithium, enough to produce millions of electric vehicles per year. The potential is so large that ExxonMobil is developing a site in Arkansas. Despite this, refining costs make competing with Chinese suppliers difficult.
LFP material from China currently sells for around four thousand dollars per metric ton, which is about one-third of what it costs in the United States. The CEO of Electroflow stated that once his company is at full-scale production, he expects they will be able to produce it for at least forty percent less than the Chinese producers, all while manufacturing in the United States.
The goal for their first system by the end of this year is to reach a five thousand dollar per metric ton production cost. The plan is to then scale up and get that cost down to less than two thousand five hundred dollars per metric ton.
Electroflow recently raised a ten million dollar seed round. The round was led by Union Square Ventures and Voyager, with participation from Fifty Years and Harpoon Ventures.
The process developed by Electroflow takes just three steps to transform salty water into LFP material. The startup recently proved the technology worked on salty brines extracted from a pipe at a geothermal site in California.
Electroflow’s technology is based on lithium-ion batteries themselves, which is not surprising as both founders previously researched batteries and battery materials. They were fascinated by the idea of using newer battery technology and applying it to other industries beyond batteries. Applying battery tech to mining has proven to be very fruitful.
The true inspiration for Electroflow came to Evan Gardner one day while he was riding Caltrain to work in the Bay Area. As people were getting on and off the trains from the platforms, he pictured them like ions moving between different chambers of a device. He sketched the idea on a piece of paper and showed it to his co-founder, who immediately recognized that it could work.
The startup’s key technology is a cell which contains anodes that, when run in one direction, absorb lithium ions from brines. When run in another direction, they release them into water containing carbonates. When both passes are finished, the result is lithium carbonate that is ready to be reacted with phosphate, iron, and other reagents to produce LFP powder for battery factories. For manufacturers that want to make something other than LFP, Electroflow can stop the process early and just send them lithium carbonate.
The system runs entirely on electricity. Producing fifty metric tons of lithium carbonate per year would require only as much electricity as one U.S. household. The water used in the carbonate step can also largely be recycled. The process does not use a ton of electricity or a ton of water.
When the full-size system is complete, it will be packed inside a twenty-foot shipping container and be capable of generating one hundred metric tons of LFP material per year. The company plans to churn out these electrochemical cell stacks to process a lot of brine across the United States.
The CEO is confident the company will be able to undercut Chinese producers, even when Electroflow reaches commercial production in a few years. He believes that unless methods in China change to a complete blank-slate and clean-sheet solution like the one Electroflow is developing, they cannot get much lower than this.