Ed Conway Profile picture
Feb 12, 2022 31 tweets 10 min read Read on X
The Humber Refinery in NE England.
This place looks and smells like a ghost of fossil fuel history. It's where they turn crude oil into petrol, jet fuel & many other petrochemical products.
It won't seem the obvious place to start a thread abt batteries.
But bear with me
🧵 Image
Because the gritty reality of how batteries are made is often skirted over in most reports.
But the deeper you go the more fascinating it gets.
So before we get to the stuff u know about - the gigafactories & lithium mines - let's ponder this place. Why? It's the missing link..
Actually before we head in, let's recall the basic chemistry of a battery, which isn't immediately obvious from the outside.
This is a typical cylindrical lithium-ion battery.
A Tesla is a big slab of thousands of these batteries with a car on top. But now let's look inside. Image
Actually the shape of these batteries is a bit misleading. They're not, as u might think, canisters of liquid with positive electrode at top and negative at bottom.* They are "jelly rolls" of thin metallic film, all rolled up.
* Well, there is liquid too but that's another story Image
Here's what you see when you dissect a typical cylindrical cell: wound up tightly inside the steel canister is a long, metre or more length of film. It's heavier than it looks.
Unpeel it and uncoil it and you find layers of cathode and anode. And between them a polymer separator Image
Here I am, holding the innards of a typical cell.
Cathode in my left hand, anode in my right.
THIS, ultimately, is the battery. And the key principle is: lithium ions pass from cathode to the anode as it charges. Vice versa when discharging Image
The cathode is where u find the lithium/cobalt/nickel/manganese etc & the VAST majority of battery coverage focuses on it, for a understandable reasons:
a) it's where the lithium is
b) some of these minerals are v hard to source ethically esp cobalt
c) cathodes are sexy
They're sexy because that's where a LOT of the clever 🔋chemistry about how much energy can be stored goes on. Cathode active materials are a really big deal but all this sexiness means we often neglect the ugly sister of the battery world: the anode.
When people in government and sometimes business ponder batteries they rarely give much thought to the anode. Why? Because unlike the cathode with its cocktail of elements, anodes are usually made almost entirely of graphite. Boring, right? Well, hold on.
Because it turns out the graphite is of more than passing importance to good battery design. The matrix of that graphite can determine how quickly lithium ions find their way across, and how long they stay there before returning. Or, to put it another way...
Some graphites help a battery charge faster - much faster. Some help it hold its charge much longer. And in recent years battery makers have become v clever in the way they deploy graphite in their cells. And one key trick is to use an ever increasing amount of SYNTHETIC graphite
For it turns out there are 2 types of graphite.
There's the kind you mine from the ground: natural or "flake" graphite 📸.
And the man-made kind.
& the synthetic kind is much better for fast charging. The dream of a 15 minute charging EV depends on synthetic graphite! Image
That takes us back to Humber. Let's go into the plant, towards the enormous drilling rigs you see here. Security is tight (you'll see why soon enough). But once in, wind your way past the spaghetti of pipes where they clean and crack the oil, towards the enormous coke drums. Image
Here they take the bottom of a barrel of oil - the heavy stuff which would otherwise be burnt in ship engines with v high emissions - and bake it into petroleum coke, a very pure form of carbon. They've been doing it for decades here, first with Libyan oil, then North Sea crude.
Up until recently this coke was mainly used in the manufacture of aluminium & in electric arc furnaces for steel.
But yrs ago they realised they could turn this coke into an almost perfect form of graphite.
This, here, is the main feedstock for synthetic graphite in your battery. Image
If you have an iPhone there's a high chance the battery contains this North Sea coke in it.
Similar thing if you have an electric car, depending on where the batteries are made.
For real.
Thought batteries were made from lithium? Well, yes. But there's even MORE graphite in them. Image
That's why in charts like the one I tweeted last night you'll see that our need for graphite for our future gigafactories is actually GREATER than our need for lithium. Look at the height of the bars! But cathodes are sexier than anodes so no one pays much attention
Anyway, it's hard to know where to start with this info isn't it?
BATTERIES ARE MADE IN PART FROM CRUDE OIL!
It is one of the best kept secrets of the green revolution. And while the amount of cobalt in cells is being engineered down, synthetic graphite is going the other way.
After the graphite coke is made here in Humberside it's shipped off, mostly to China, where it is turned into graphite, after which it is put into batteries. That this happens mostly in China means a lot of people think the entire graphite supply chain is already sewn up. Not so. Image
Because it turns out it's actually quite hard to do what they do here in Humberside. There's decades of experience & IP here. So much so that a few years ago a Chinese spy tried to steal their secrets (from parent company Phillips 66's Oklahoma HQ) reuters.com/article/us-usa…
Most people in the UK are completely oblivious that we have a key part of the battery supply chain on our doorstep. Downing St isn't even aware of it.
Why?
Maybe because when it comes to batteries anodes aren't sexy.
Cathodes are sexy
Gigafactories are sexy
Lithium is sexy.
Maybe because while ministers are v happy to be pictured in pristine factories they don't like the "optics" of flame-belching oil refineries.
No matter that a molecule of oil turned into graphite is doing more to help reduce long-term emissions than most manufactured products. Image
So the Humber Refinery carries on doing what it's doing and no one in Whitehall pays it much attention. Even though it's literally world-renowned in anode circles for the quality of the coke produced here. Or that it's the only place in Europe making this stuff.
When critical minerals committees in US/EU (and, soon, the UK) make lists of key materials they tend to include natural graphite as something to keep an eye on but not synthetic, even tho it's the big growth area in batteries. Maybe because they assume it's easy to make. It's not
If one were genuinely interested in industrial strategy one would be pondering why this place ships graphite coke to China to be turned into anodes, which are then imported back as a Chinese product.
Why aren't we doing that here, in a low income corner of the north of England?
Is it because graphitisation is another high-energy high-emissions process, so doing it here would undermine our chances of getting to net zero - even tho it's helping the world replace petrol cars w/ electric ones? Maybe. But I wouldn't discount plain ignorance either.
Side note: this goes to a deeper point, one I've written about before. Economics is v good at aggregate statistics. It's much less good at understanding how the economy fits together. We need more maps like this one from @theapcuk of battery supply chains edmundconway.com/we-need-more-m… Image
Anyway, I'll prob do another thread or two on batteries in the coming days, having spent quite a while delving into the topic. Not only is this product central to our industrial and environmental future, it turns out the deeper you go the more interesting and surprising it gets!
Here is my long read about batteries. And when I say long I mean LONG.
But it's long because it's the most fascinating thing I've written about for ages.
Pls do share if you enjoy news.sky.com/story/inside-t…
Here's our mini-documentary about batteries. Everything you ever needed to know about one of the most important products of the 21st century... in less than 15 minutes.
If you enjoyed this thread you'll love it.
Produced by @aoifeyourell edited by @tsueyek
I’ve written something based on the above on my website (with a few extra nuggets I couldn’t fit on Twitter).
If it was of interest, do sign up for the newsletter as I’ll be posting more somewhat random but hopefully fascinating stuff in the coming months edmundconway.com/jelly-rolls-an…

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More from @EdConwaySky

Jul 20
🧵
80 years ago today, newspapers in Europe carried news of the unexpected death of a very important man, in a hotel miles from the nearest city.
A man who, said some, was helping the Allies win the war.
But there was a twist to the tale. The man in question wasn't actually dead Image
That man was John Maynard Keynes. The 61 year old economist was at the Mount Washington Hotel in New Hampshire for what became known as the Bretton Woods conference. And the day earlier he had indeed collapsed, following a heart attack. It was a moment of high drama. Image
The conference had already overrun.
It was supposed to be done in two weeks and there was talk that the delegates would soon be kicked out of the hotel. This was, to put it lightly, a problem.
After all, in the absence of an agreement there was a chance of yet another world war Image
Read 29 tweets
Jul 10
It says something about how confusing Labour's green investment policies are that seemingly even the Treasury has misunderstood them.
Contrary to what the picture in this press release👇 suggests, the National Wealth Fund has nothing to do with wind power or indeed green energy
Instead it's very specifically designed to focus on all the low or zero carbon technologies that AREN'T really to do with generating power.
- Green steel
- Hydrogen
- Clusters
- Gigafactories
Here's the sectors the institution will focus on 👇 Image
Simple way to think abt this:
Pretty much ALL heavy industry today emits carbon, directly or indirectly. The techniques we use to make stuff mostly date back to the industrial revolution. Getting to net zero involves redoing the industrial revolution! edconway.substack.com/p/yet-another-…
Read 7 tweets
Jul 5
🧵
How did Keir Starmer manage to win a landslide majority even though fewer people voted for him than for Jeremy Corbyn in either of his election bids?
A quick thread looking beneath the numbers.
Let’s start with swing…
Election nerds like to focus on two-party swing - essentially showing how voters shifted between the main parties.
And on this metric, Labour enjoyed a MASSIVE swing. 11%. Slightly more than Blair in 1997.
But there’s more to this chart than meets the eye… Image
Let’s take the same data, two-party swing, & break it down. Red bits of bars show change in Labour vote, blue bits show Tory change.
Now look again at that 2024 bar (on the far right).
The vast, vast majority of swing to Labour is in fact swing AWAY from the Conservatives. Image
Read 10 tweets
Jul 2
🧵THE STRANGE CASE OF THE YAKOV GAKKEL🧵
A thread about the energy story no-one wants to talk about.
About how UK companies are helping facilitate Russia, as it earns money to finance its war.
And about how the cost of living crisis didn't end quite how you prob thought it did…
But before all of that it's a story of a ship. A v unusual ship.
The Yakov Gakkel. A vessel that routinely passes these shores. As I type this it's somewhere north of Norway. But I first saw it in the English Channel.
And at first glance you might not think it all that special.. Image
But beneath that enormous blue hull is some incredibly advanced technology. Because the Yakov Gakkel is a cutting edge liquefied natural gas tanker, capable of holding vast amounts of natural gas at temperatures of approximately −163 °C.
These things are pretty incredible! Image
Read 21 tweets
Jul 1
🧵You know the idea, posited by @theIFS, that the main parties are engaged in a "conspiracy of silence" this election.
Their original point was about spending plans.
But I think you cld go much further.
I can think of at least 5 other areas where there's a conspiracy of silence
1⃣Taxes ARE going up under all the main parties' plans.
But they prefer not to talk about this, hiding instead behind the claim that tax rates on income tax, NICs and VAT won't rise. But they've still signed up to plans which will mean the AMOUNT of taxes we're paying will rise. Image
2⃣The magical tax avoidance money tree.
All the parties think they'll raise enormous sums clamping down on tax avoidance.
So much that they need not raise other taxes. This is v uncertain. But since they've all done the same trick they remain silent about its ridiculousness
Read 7 tweets
Jun 23
🧵
You've probably heard this claim - both from @rishisunak and more recently from @Nigel_Farage 👇
UK has leapfrogged others to become the world's fourth biggest exporter! And all after Brexit!
Unfortunately the reality is somewhat less impressive than this sounds.
Here's why: Image
First thing to say is that the bare bones of the claim are certainly true.
Between 2021 and 2022 the UK did indeed rise from 7th in the league table of the world's biggest exporters (counting both goods and services) to 4th.
We'll get to why this happened in a moment. But still Image
However here's some (very) important context.
It's not like the UK has only JUST hit fourth spot. In fact, it was in 4th place in 2020. And in 2015, 2014 and 2013.
Actually if you look at the modal average of our position in the past decade it was... fourth. Image
Read 12 tweets

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