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Valence Technology's chairman and CEO, Stephan Godevais, hopes the company's phosphate-based lithium-ion technology will make lithium-ion the dominant chemistry of the future battery industry
Stephan Godevais is in good spirits: industry analyst firm Frost and Sullivan has just presented Valence with an award for its pioneering work in lithium-ion technology.
Says Godevais: "It's one more mark of credibility we're getting from the industry. The interest being generated in phosphate-based li-ion chemistry is becoming increasingly significant.
If our mission is to make li-ion the dominant chemistry of the battery industry, then phosphate-based li-ion technology has to supplant lead-acid, Ni-Cad and NiMH. It has to expand into as many applications as possible. Frost and Sullivan has recognised what we trying to do in terms of chemistry and cost, with the potential to create a major breakthrough in the industry."
Valence was initially set up in 1989 with a focus on developing phosphate-based li-ion technology and Godevais was brought into the company in 2001 as chairman and CEO to guide the company through its commercial phase from its R&D beginnings.
The company acquired a sizeable portfolio of over 600 patents worldwide from 1998 to 2001 that ranged from polymer technology into manganese and phosphate chemistry. Godevais saw a significant potential for li-ion to go beyond the traditional cobalt oxide chemistry and to start addressing market sectors that required large format batteries, such as HEVs, EVs and other motive applications, such as wheelchairs and golf-carts.
Godevais wants to take the li-ion market much further than its current boundaries: he says li-ion batteries could also be applied to other markets, such as industrial back-up systems, utilities and consumer applications. The advantage of using phosphate-based li-ion technology over cobalt oxide is that it is significantly safer, claims Godevais. Phosphate-based technology is likely to be much cheaper than cobalt oxide, due to the abundance of phosphates. This may allow Valence to take a share of the market share that cobalt technology oxide could never aspire to.
THE PHOSPHATE APPROACH
For a long time, cobalt oxide has been used as the core cathode material of li-ion batteries. Although this chemistry was a breakthrough in terms of performance, there were significant drawbacks in terms of safety and cost.
In the event of...