the biggest concern, valuable metals are difficult to obtain and are becoming increasingly expensive. to morrow to day. next, on d, w, germany was singing for it and with a winning offer is available worldwide. and for every language level, learning german has never been simpler. german to go with energy saving lights, smart phones, 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 and i would welcome to to morrow today, d, w science program. lithium is commonly used in batteries that power electric vehicles. the lightest 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 overheating time. and again, we see how dangerous thing can be that's

wanting 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, think this hot by 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 the so called us void. that means we have to give back to the technology, a white material base for y'alls office. we have to bring abundant for cheap and easily recyclable materials into play. good to go include beside the bottom of the all admitted is feeding. the rise and demand for battery storage is huge. with wind and solar power expansion, one of the main drivers. then there is the electron mobility sector. by

2045, they're expected to be 30000000 electric vehicles in germany alone, that will need lithium for their batteries. mitchell mas volume buffer for han, lithium may be abundant. look up, but it can't be mind quickly enough to meet demand completely. that means we have to turn to materials that are widely available, but still do a very good job and that was it. 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. cobalt 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. when chinese firm b y d e is 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. and the actual overall battery is on 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 an 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 stations. that's 10 times as much as current rechargeable batteries. but the range with a 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 in 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 coordinator a 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 there toxic chemistry. after all the global market for starter batteries is as large as that

for lithium ion batteries. then if ultimately the question is how quickly are all the raw materials on the market? so this is how quickly will he be available and can they be installed to quote, it was 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 rule materials, determines the market price. delanie 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. li, if it's you help her is used for electricity from inability to renewable, energy technology for power transmission and cobalt i need for batteries and in between bowl z. amanda alber ozzy is concerned about germany's raw material supplies isn't a momento placement. he currently facing a lot of challenges for care all over the world. supply chains have been disrupted or even broken. and those are the current occur in russia situation of course london. oh, vera 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. me get him for mega trends are 1st and foremost, global phenomena one to and on. among the things we're focusing on our technologies,

such as the lithium ion battery for a my bill is he and electrolysis, the hydrogen production, orange, an raw material demand in the future for growth 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 until 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. in 202170 percent of the global market share was mind in the democratic republic of congo. oh,

which has been plagued for decades by political and social unrest. number 2 on the cobalt market. is russia. market share around 4 percent, but risky. price is good. 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 einem lunde man. man via if you know that a raw material is critical, you look for potential replacement laura hyphen route, so you try to replace days materials without those, if possible. i know washed off as that. but that's not always possible. special metals like rare earths are needed urgently to build wind turbines. oh, rare earths are found world wide. the 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 rare f demand amounts to 86 percent of the global supply. and in that none of them exceed that of lucas for traveling through countries. then we try 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, fast, we can't cover everything. there are 25 of us in the team and yours are very important and bringing to light abuses in certain countries that helps us recognize developments early and it's also important for our studies and analysis of 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. red earth's 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 are they 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, an untapped 1000000 tons is thought 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 in 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 mine 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 that really means that for us it's open, it's not host, we don't actually know how big it is. but what we know today is by far the law just the pulse it 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, bad yet horn and installed the story as sol suite and has

a proud history of mine and haven't installed from did some good but also a bright future ahead look. i love it. and that many of these so called rare earth are critical and going green around and needing our ambitious climate targets. when i picked up 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 and agreed her way than in asia. came autumn, standing on may transitioning to renewable energy through an electron mobility. we're going to us made those have to dependent on china. hey, not the dirty minute going on. they are leaving. if we can mine our own re, or as in europe implementing better methods and climate protection, let's say when this find is a real game changer and game changer. but it will take perseverance to reach that turning point. and also the good will of the sammy 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 old. 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 lie cycle. a lithium ion battery recycling company from canada, which we basically come up with a process designed specifically for this to have high recovery rates of the material. in the 1st stage, what we call 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, calls 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 products 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 drive 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 factories grow, it will also make even more financial sense to recycle them. this is in the idea that we could, we hope that there is no burden taking her and want to renew her material safety around pretty quickly. we used indefinitely. if i am, that is read why i i want to find out more about role materials. i oh 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 does that danya in colombia why are 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 by all rhythms. ah, new new 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 planet 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 was also water on mars 3 and a half 1000000000 years ago. as these river valleys show, then the red planets 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 magnetic field. to day

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 eye. she 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 mand outposts. in early 2022. europe's ex. omar's trace gas orbiter discovered vast reserves of water ice under the valleys marinez, 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 melts, 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, as yet another potential solas 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 and 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 paint the co founder of google, put his wealth behind the company planetary resources which joined the race to mine . asteroids. in 2017, nancy announced it would pay a visit to psyche. he won't get there. this is lindy elkin stanton who has nasa psyche mission an important thing just to go, but the thank you. mission 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 hein 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 and to the earth's atmosphere. terrestrial mining would generate 40000 kilograms. so asteroid mining could be hundreds of times less polluting. essentially, the main reason is there's almost no other substance you can mine, which generates that much of 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. no 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 the at the much lower price. which means that you are diminishing your profit margin. so you all through it in your infrastructure, the loss. and that makes sense, very unattractive 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 asteroids. 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 of human times because we can't resist. 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 today, d w sign show. thanks for joining us until next time. stay curious. bye bye. ah, with

who took off what's going on with i think they are good questions. you can find the answers here. all the games,

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this is w news coming to live from berlin. ukraine says its future depends on winning the battle for buck moved. intense fighting has raged in the eastern city for months with each side suffering heavy losses, but opinion is divided over the strategic importance of the area.