to get skilled out party hot spot in the mountain and all the way up to that soup spits. checking in 30 minutes on d, w a y d as it is on its way to bring you more conservation. how do we make cities greener? how can we protect habitats? we can make a difference. global ideas, environmental series in global 3000 on dw, and online energy saving lights, smartphones, computers, electric cars, wind turbines. we need metals for all of these things. but mining them is not just energy intensive. it homes, the environment is recycling and alternative. or could we source raw materials from

space that and mo, coming up hello and welcome to to morrow to day d w. science program. lithium is commonly used in batteries that power electric vehicles. the light is metal on earth is abundantly found, but only in small concentrations and mining lithium is complex, expensive, and harmful to the environment. and even when lithium is contained within the batteries, it's still dangerous. with explosions and fire is caused by lithium ion batteries. after shorting damage or over heating time and again, we see how dangerous they can be ah,

that's why the world is searching urgently for a new battery technology. at the helm holds institute in the german city of whom researchers are trying to find a replacement for lithium as an energy source and quickly now decide. thank this hud via yet. we don't have much. i'll tell you that because it's expected that demand for batteries is going to grow very, very strongly. we have often just from ya, but we're expecting a 4600 percent increase by 2013 data to that's not the to comb with us before that . that means we have to give back to the technology a white material base viashi's office. we have to bring abundant for cheap and easily recyclable materials into play. good to go with the side to bottom mother. he all emitted speed of living. the rise and demand for battery storage is huge. with wind and solar power expansion, one of the main drivers. then there is the electro mobility sector. by

2045, they're expected to be 30000000 electric vehicles in germany alone. that will need lithium for their batteries. little miss volume buffer for hm. lithium may be abundant, but it can't be mind quickly enough to meet demand completely design. that means we have to turn to materials that are widely available, but still do a very good job and that was very good. so the inner structure of a lithium ion battery contains 3 problematic materials, a positive terminal of cobalt, a negative terminal of graphite, and the lithium itself, which moves back and forth between the poles to load and discharge the battery. cobol is poisonous and is now often replaced by lithium iron phosphate to create what's known in the industry as an l. f. p battery. chinese firm b y d has developed a new battery design because l f. p technology still requires

a lot of space and the battery self. i'll give unstable if you look, you know, have large units in place of these small battery cells, which are a bit bigger than a chocolate bar. and they simply need less packaging on the outside and was as a result of it could accommodate much more storage material on the actual overall battery to them. whatever you want. a blue using lithium ion chemistry in this space saving battery design gives an amazing 1000 kilometers of range. the new l. f. p. chemistry offers a much reduced range, but the batteries have other advantages. they don't require cobalt and are also 30 percent cheaper, as well as being much safer them in the case of lithium ion batteries, the nail puncture test shows why these batteries are so dangerous. the resulting

short circuit causes an explosion and a fire that is had easily put out l. f. p. batteries aren't completely different. here. the nail test causes only an increase in temperature. also l f. b, batteries will in the future, be able to be recharged $3.00 to $5000.00 times at charging patience. that's 10 times as much as current rechargeable batteries. but the range with the full battery is only 60 percent. that of a lithium ion battery and charging and cold weather also causes problems with. but the biggest hopes yet in battery development are for sodium ion technology. ah, it replaces the batteries, lithium ions with sodium ions. this change and battery chemistry also allows cobalt and graphite terminals to be replaced with more sustainable materials. but the

sodium ion batteries are quite a bit heavier yet not everything needs to be as light as a cell phone battery, for example, in huge wind energy storage facilities such as these and australia, weight is not an issue. the sodium is produced from ordinary table salt, which is readily available and large quantities. sodium ion batteries have a shorter range on a single charge, but they charge faster and are almost full again after just 15 minutes. another advantage, unlike almost all other batteries, they still deliver 90 percent of their power in freezing temperatures. and even in the classic internal combustion engine, the starter batteries can be replaced by sodium batteries and with it their toxic

chemistry. after all, the global market for starter batteries is as large as that for lithium ion batteries. fixed, then, ultimately the question is how quickly are all the raw materials on the market? now this is how quickly will they be available, and can they be installed, affordability, or the production capacities are being prepared at the moment. so that's where every one is actually very well positioned over the next 2 years. but whether sodium or lithium, without natural resources, we wouldn't have any new batteries at all. heavy industries depend on metal souls from rural materials. if their supply is cut, production lines everywhere, right? to a halt. the availability or scarcity of rural materials determines the market price . germany imports missiles from all over the world as, as geologists on the hunt for me. so says headquartered in berlin, the german minerals resource agency, dera for short,

trades raw materials source, all over the world to companies on behalf of the german government. doesn't white heidi's, christopher, or that contains cobalt from the democratic republic of congo like 50 hopper is used for electricity from inability to renewable energy technology for power transmission and cobalt i need for batteries and in between ball z amend alber ozzie is concerned about germany's raw material supplies isn't a momento placement in currently facing a lot of challenges for care all over the world. supply chains have been disrupted, or even broken under the current ukraine, russia situation of course, london farrah develops new concepts to keep politicians and industry leaders up to speed on risks that impact supply and market prices. they focus on so called mega trends, like the move to electron mobility niga. hence omega trends are 1st and foremost, global phenomena went and on. among the things we're focusing on our technologies,

such as the lithium ion battery for a mobility and electrolysis, the hydrogen production, orange, an raw material demand in a few champion for group signed. and in this time of energy transition, some key raw materials are hard to procure and becoming increasingly expensive. this means that geologists have to act early to warn others of possible supply bottlenecks, or price fluctuations. they prepare dossiers, and studies like this one with cobalt. you can una mas under this green line is great for showing us how the cobalt price is more than doubled in the last 2 years on the london metal exchange on one site. this is because of increased demand on the other because of the problems to supply chains that we have had to deal with in the past few years. mm hm. yeah. cobalt is important for lithium ion batteries and 202170 percent of the global market share

was mind in the democratic republic of congo, which has been plagued for decades by political and social unrest. number 2 on the cobalt market. is russia big market share around 4 percent, but risky? prices could skyrocket further and deliveries may not be met. bussey doors and retail german firms to diversify to move away from supply from only one country back from 9 am land man man via if you know that a raw material is critical, you look for potential replacement, florid vote. so you try to replace these materials without those if possible. i never washed off if i said, but that's not always possible. special metals like rare earths, are needed urgently to build wind turbines. oh, rare earths are phoned world wide for never in pure form only in compounds. their

separation and upgrading is done with the aid of acids. a large amount of toxic overburden is produced in the process. china's ref, demand amounts to 86 percent of the global supply men in that none of the recent of lucas traveling through countries. then we tried to get as rounded as possible a picture of the whole sector lesson. we publish this information, which we also include in our consultancy service. there are also shares, it's information with non governmental organizations, such as berlin based power shift, which campaigns against global inequality concerning human rights and environmental issues. it can only alyssa foster, we can't cover everything. there are $25.00 of us in the team. and yours are very important in bringing to light abuses in certain countries that helps us recognize developments early. and it's also important for our studies and analysis the student and the reason. it's an important collaboration because the energy

revolution can only truly be clean when the raw materials are procured fairly unsustainably. rare earth are chemical elements from the lancer night group, the element atrium is a rare earth as well. read earth is a misleading name, as they are neither rare nor other earth. they can is range from stone to silver and are quick to tarnish when exposed to oxygen or react quickly when they come into contact with water. one of their many applications is in the production of permanent magnets, which are also used in wind turbines. at the beginning of 2023, a huge deposit of rare earth was discovered in sweden and untapped 1000000 tons as though to be in the ground north of the arctic circle. but to this day, no permission has been granted to mind them. the known methods of their separation and upgrading would home the environment. they'd been mining iron or from many years and key, rona, and the mine is considered one of the world's largest. if the head of the state own

mining company has his way, a new mind will soon be added. exploration has detected more than a 1000000 tons of rare earth oxides than 4 to 5 years. but we have ongoing expiration activities in this. the pulse at which means that for us it's open, it's not hosts, they don't actually know how big it is. but what remote today is by far the largest upholstered off all ries in europe. that's going to be that might help europe fulfill its goal of becoming climate neutral by 2050 as any one building wind turbines or e car batteries needs rare earths after a press conference in the tunnels of the corona mines, sweden's minister of finance is thinking big oh, sad yet horn and installed tis the warriors so sweet and has

a proud history of mine in heaven installed from did some good but also a bright future ahead look, i love it as that many of these so called rare earth are critical and going green get on and needing are ambitious climate targets. what except that came up until now. europe has relied on imports and china dominates the industry according to estimates by us geologists, the deposits and china are 40 times larger than those in sweden. environmental groups hope that the deposits in northern europe will be mined in a greater way than in asia. came autumn stelling and math, transitioning to renewable energy, electron mobility. we're going to us made those 2 dependent on china, not dirty mining going on. they are living. if we can my, in our own re, or as in europe implementing better methods and climate protection, let's say when this find is a real game changer at a game changer. but it will take perseverance to reach that turning point and also

the goodwill of the fermi people who have lived up north since time immemorial. the area that they want to develop, run straight through the land of the reindeer herders. and additionally, official approval and construction of a new mind could take 5 to 10 years instead of mining new rule materials, could we recycle those that have already been processed and are in circulation? it's a feasible option, even when it comes to lithium, ion battery is used in electric vehicles. the batteries have to be shredded and the fundamental materials separated. but how does this work in detail? let's get out the lego to understand her lithium ion batteries get recycled. it often involves smelting, so essentially heating them until the melt. but this uses lots of energy, creates toxic emissions, and you lose some of the materials. that's why companies are coming up with new ways to recycle. you want to have as much as we can,

what high value materials that are, have taken a lot of effort to get out of the ground. we want to use those carefully and as many times as we can, this is canal, foul fur, chief commercial officer at ly cycle. a lithium ion battery recycling company from canada. we would basically come up with a process designed specifically for this ah, to have high recovery rates of the material. and the 1st day, what we call a stock is a mechanical process that breaks down the batteries and separate some of the fundamental materials. very, very simply speaking, this is what happens. the batteries are shredded while being submerged in a non toxic solution. this is important because it prevents them from catching fire . and in the worst case, blowing up, then materials like plastic culprits, aluminium are separated from the industry. coals the black mass, this contains valuable materials like cobalt, nickel and lithium. the 2nd,

a part of the process is the hub and this is really a bespoke hydro, metallurgy or wet chemistry process to process black mass into battery materials. what this means is that different chemicals get added to the black mass, which li choate, different elements. these chemicals either make their way into the final product or a re used in the process. so this doesn't actually produce any waste water. you end up with the black mass separated into single components like lithium, cobalt and nickel. so that the end goal is that as we pull them out of the batteries, we're putting them back into new batteries and that hasn't been, she been achieved yet at a high scale there's, there's elements of, of it around the world. but ah, we want to help to continue to try that fort. it's hard to keep track of exactly how many lithium ion batteries already get recycled mainly because they're often exported. but it's already happening more and more, especially in asia,

where most of them are also produced. and as volumes of spent, batteries grow, it will also make even more financial sense to recycle them. in the idea that we keep, we hope that there's no burden payroll. and want to renew that material safety already as could be used in any event that is read. why are this one to find out more about role materials? i o i you curious about something else from the world of science, send us a voice message or a video. if we answer your questions on the show, you even get a small price as a thank you. come on just does this week i'll view question is from can this do saldonya in colombia why our researchers more interested in mars than in the moon?

mars is our outer next door neighbor. it's orbit is further away from the sun than the earth's mars is the only other planet in our solar system that humans could conceivably live on. that makes it, especially interesting. mars has a comparable day and night rhythm to earth. a day on mars is just 37 minutes longer than a day on our planet. it's shaped our bio rhythms. ah . lunar days and nights are both 14 earth days long with extreme temperature swings between daytime and nighttime. because unlike earth and mars, the moon has no atmosphere to regulate the warmth and the coldness. margin earth also have similar like conditions as the sunsets on both planets show. on top of that,

the earth's axis is inclined almost as strongly as mars's all these shared commonalities mean that they're atmospheres have similar characteristics in comparative planet research that makes mars's atmosphere a model of the earth's atmosphere. the moon would be of no use. the earth's atmosphere is primarily made of nitrogen and oxygen. it's the only planet in the solar system with liquid water on its surface. there also water on mars 3 and a half 1000000000 years ago as these river valleys show. then the red planet's climate was more conducive to life and its atmosphere denser. but mars has lost a large part of its atmosphere. a constant flow of particles from the sun blows, parts of mars's upper atmosphere into space. earth's atmosphere is largely protected against this by its bank kinetic field today. mars's

atmosphere is only 100 the density of earth's and the world that was once conducive to life has turned into a dry icy desert. water can only exist on the red planet as ice or vapor. there's even ice covering the surface of its poles. and in the ground, there are rich reserves of important resources for manned outposts. in early 2022, europe's ex o. mars trace gas orbiter discovered vast reserves of water ice under the 5 marine heiress. the so called grand canyon of mars. simulations are already in use to calculate whether it would be possible to set up an artificial magnetic field between mars in the sun to make the red planet more conducive to life. again, air pressure and temperature would rise until the carbon dioxide ice at the north pole mills and sparks

a greenhouse effect that turns the ground ice into rivers and sees it would be possible, at least in theory. now back to the topic of rural materials, there's yet another potential sylis for us to explore in space. sounds far out, but in theory it seems possible some celestial bodies that passed by us untapped gold mines. nittany 2015, an asteroid that passed close to our planet. was estimated to contain more platinum than has ever been moneyed on earth or take asteroids. 16 psyche, a metal rich world sent to be worth $700.00 quintillion dollars. mining asteroids seemed just theoretical for a long time because space travel was just too expensive. but that's changing a seat on a space, x rocket as 3 times cheaper than it was on the space shuttle. this has started

a new gold rush in 2012 larry page, the co founder of google put his wealth behind the company planetary resources which joined the race to mine. asteroids in 2017 nasa announced it would pay a visit to psyche they won't get there. this is lindy elkin stanton who has nasa psyche mission an important thing to note is that the thank you mentioned that i money is a pure science mission. but although the program is not about asteroid mining, it could help lay the groundwork for such missions in the future. crazy as it sounds, mining asteroids might not only be feasible, but also much more sustainable than mining on earth. and it actually turns out that the answers seems to be yes. and we have heine is a researcher who has actually crunch the numbers. he estimates that the rocket fuel

needed to go and bring back one kilogram of platinum from an asteroid would release 150 kilograms of c o 2 into the earth's atmosphere. terrestrial mining would generate 40000 kilograms. so asteroid mining could be hundreds of times less polluting. essentially, the main reason there's, there's almost no other substance you can mine, which should generate stuff much ha, greenhouse gases outsourcing, mining to space would decrease pollution on earth. but there's an economic problem in terms of sustainability into gigantic when in terms of economics, it's not profitable yet. the problem, if you mine like 5 times of the platinum you have on earth right now, it means that the market prices will in the crush, you can sell it as a, as a much lower price. which means as you are diminishing your profit margin. so you operate in your infrastructure, the loss, and that makes sense. marie,

unaffected for investors. carbon taxes and new technologies could change this equation. but it would still take several years for space mining to become profitable. investors do not want to wait that long live it's keith company failed to raise enough funds, forcing it to abandon its goal of mining after rights t planetary resources didn't succeed in their ultimate goal to to mine asteroids. but i think it succeeded in a lot of ways of the steps to get the business case doesn't quite yet close, but we couldn't. right to get there. we can find a way, and i think it is in some ways the inevitable future times because we can't resistance. it's been our history as long as we've been able to track it, going backwards that humans are explore. new inventions can make space mining economic on just a few decades ago. the very technology you're using to watch this video seemed impossible. today. we can use satellites to being the internet everywhere on the

planet. 101520 years. a lot can happen. one day mining on earth may be obsolete a bit light using candles to light your room. and that was this week's episode of tomorrow to day d. w. sign show. thanks for joining us until next time. stay curious. bye bye. ah, with

who mountains back in. and we answer their call, we take your trip to a winter sports paradise, the pal, to sophisticated saint lawrence to his skilled party

hotspot in the mountains and all the way up to that soup spitzer. which again coming on du duluth. ah, is it a matter of tellin more can every one news for the self motivated or do they need a lot of outside pressure? musical prodigies. what does the rest of their life look like? we asked genius is big and small. experts and parents aren't 21 in 30 minutes on d. w o or slime rivers created by waterfalls throwing water

particles into the air b, trees sweating out up to 1000 liters of water in a day. course fee forest fires evaporating large amounts of moisture tune in to get the answer and learn more about this phenomenon with the invisible river that flows through the sky starts march 23rd on d. w never hor her last minute. i am currently more people than ever on the leave world wide in such a better life. one of us, assal a as a committed god like goes out. ah, so just the now here is it america unknown to god that illegal for condense to okay . the still nanda key donation one back to the gun. find out

about robina story in some migraines, reliable news for migrant. wherever they may be. what secrets lie behind these walls? discover new adventures in 360 degrees. and explore fascinating world heritage sites. d, w world heritage 360. get the out now. ah ah, this is date of you news and these are our top stories. the u. s. government says it will not bail out silicon valley bank. it's the 2nd largest bank failure in u. s. history. regulators in the united states shut it down on friday after a loss of assets.