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Jacksonville, Fl — A man and his two kids were able to escape a house fire early this morning in the eTown area, just south of Atlantic Coast High School. It’s believed the fire started as a result of an overheated lithium battery in a golf cart that was plugged into the garage. The man in the home said he woke up when he heard the batteries explode.

Oxygen Ion Battery - A prototype of the battery at TU Wien. Credit: TU Wien Researchers at TU Wien (Vienna) have developed a groundbreaking oxygen-ion battery, which boasts exceptional durability, eliminates the need for rare elements, and solves the problem of fire hazards. Lithium-ion batteries, while commonplace in today’s world – powering everything from electric vehicles to smartphones – aren’t necessarily the optimal solution for all applications. Researchers at TU Wien have made a breakthrough by creating an oxygen-ion battery that offers several significant advantages. While it may not match the energy density of lithium-ion batteries, its storage capacity doesn’t...

Tesla CEO Elon Musk traveled to Texas on Monday to celebrate the groundbreaking of the company’s new lithium refinery that the electric vehicle maker hopes will give the company more control over its supply chain. Musk said the facility, which will be one of the largest of its kind in the world, will produce lithium for "about a million vehicles" and have more lithium refining capacity than "the rest of North American refining capacity combined." He explained that the refinery’s capacity could be expanded above the one million vehicle mark and noted that while Tesla will still use other suppliers...

Saindy Pyles thought she was going to die with her baby son, Liam, clutched to her chest as she flew home to Wichita from Miami after photographing a wedding. Midway through the flight Pyles said smoke filled the cabin after she saw sparks and fire burst from a bag in the seat directly behind her. "Honestly, I thought we were going to die," she said. "I looked and all I saw was flashes, just like flashes. I'm like, 'Oh my God, like, what is that?' And [the owner of the bag] is like, 'I don't know. I don't know.'" "Then...

Tonight developments in Idaho being watched that's where Libertarian activist Ammon Bundy... Suspensions handed out to five NFL players... In the African nation of Mali an Al-Qaeda affiliated group... The Biden Administration spending 140 million dollars on water-related projects in western states... Ex-Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo surrendering to US authorities for extradition... The US Supreme Court Abortion drug decision late today... A Lebanese-Canadian man convicted in the October 1980 bombing of a synagogue in Paris... Russian President Vladimir Putin talking with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman... "What" The reaction of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to NATO Secretary General...

Chile’s President Gabriel Boric said on Thursday he would nationalize the country’s lithium industry, the world’s second largest producer of the metal essential in electric vehicle batteries, to boost its economy and protect its environment. The shock move in the country with the world’s largest lithium reserves would in time transfer control of Chile’s vast lithium operations from industry giants SQM and Albemarle to a separate state-owned company. It poses a fresh challenge to electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers scrambling to secure battery materials, as more countries look to protect their natural resources. Mexico nationalized its lithium deposits last year, and...

Afghanistan's Ministry of Mines and Petroleum, controlled by the radical Islamist Taliban organisation, announced that Chinese company Gochin expressed its interest in investing $10 billion in Afghanistan’s lithium deposits, reported The Khaama Press. The Taliban arguably perceive Beijing as a potential source of economic investment following the US withdrawal. The acting minister for Mine and Petroleum, Shahabuddin Delawar, met with the Chinese company representatives in Kabul and said that the investment would create 120,000 direct and a million indirect jobs in the country, reported Khaama Press.

Raw materials such as cobalt and lithium have seen availability drop and prices rise—export restrictions may be playing a role ... Rising export restrictions on lithium, cobalt and other raw materials critical to the energy transition threaten to slow the move to a greener economy, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In a new report, the OECD said that over the last decade, export restrictions on critical minerals—usually in the form of taxes—have increased more than fivefold. From January 2009 to December 2020, the total number of export controls on industrial raw materials surged to 18,263 from...

An inexpensive, environmentally friendly technique for lithium recycling could help ensure we have enough of the valuable metal to power the clean energy future — if it works as well in the real world as it does in the lab. The challenge: Transitioning to electric vehicles (EVs) is a key part of combating climate change, and because lithium-ion batteries can store a lot of energy for their size, they’re our best option (so far) for powering them. The lithium needed to create those batteries is a finite resource, though, and mining it is environmentally destructive. Demand for lithium extends beyond...

Alberta’s Leduc geological formation contains an abundance of lithium, a critical and rare metal that is needed in batteries to power electric vehicles and cellphones. Lithium has traditionally been extracted from “hard rocks,” but in Alberta, it exists in the brine, or water, left behind in oilfields across the province. Geologist Chris Doornbos started E3 Lithium, a TSX-listed geo-tech company that entered into a strategic partnership with Imperial Oil last year. And last week, the company announced some impressive test results. “Our resource was upgraded (last week) to 16-million tonnes — 9.4 indicated and 6.6 measured resources of lithium carbonate...

The discovery of Lithium reserves in the Reasi district of Jammu and Kashmir would be a game changer for the country and for the Union Territory. It would lead to economic development for the people of J&K, officials said. “The discovery of 5.9 million tonnes of Lithium reserves in Reasi district is the most important discovery in recent times. It means that we are second in the world after Chile. It is a game changer for the country and J&K,” Secretary, Geology and Mining, Amit Sharma told this newspaper.The reserves have been discovered by Geological Survey of India (GSI) in...

With the number of fires caused by lithium batteries soaring across the U.S., firefighters and other experts say the training needed to fight them effectively is lagging in many places. Firefighters and city officials are also imploring the manufacturers to redesign the batteries so that, when they fail, the resulting fires can be put down more easily. Kerber said his team has run tests on lithium-ion batteries in which it took only 15 seconds from the first sign of smoke to the windows being blown out in a house. In a traditional fire, it typically takes about three minutes for...

Advanced Battery Technology Breakthrough A team of engineers has made a significant advancement toward the development of fast-charging lithium-metal batteries, according to a recent paper published in Nature Energy. These batteries are capable of charging in as little as an hour, thanks to the growth of uniform lithium metal crystals that can be rapidly seeded on a surprising surface. This innovative technology holds great promise for the future of energy storage. In a new Nature Energy paper, engineers report progress toward lithium-metal batteries that charge fast – as fast as an hour. This fast charging is thanks to lithium metal...

Jan. 31 (UPI) -- General Motors announced Tuesday it will make a $650 million equity investment into Lithium Americas to develop the Thacker Pass mine in Nevada to produce material needed for its electric vehicles. GM is touting the news as the largest-ever investment by a carmaker to produce domestic lithium to make EV batteries. Lithium Americas, which is based in Vancouver, Canada, said it believes there is enough lithium in the mine to produce batteries for 1 million EVs annually. As the market for electric cars grows, so have supply chain worries for lithium, the critical raw material needed...

Tesla caught on fire while the driver was on Highway 50 in Rancho Cordova Fire officials said that nothing was wrong with the car before it combusted Firefighters used 6,000 gallons of water to extinguish a Tesla Model S that spontaneously burst into flames on a busy highway outside of Sacramento on Saturday. The driver, who was not injured, was on Highway 50 in Rancho Cordova at around 3pm when smoke started to come out from the front of the car. Photos of the luxury car showed the vehicle completely totaled with the front end of completely burnt. Officials responded...

It’s no secret that some electric cars have been susceptible to their lithium batteries catching fire. What’s increasingly becoming known to fire departments is how difficult those blazes are to put out. A Stamford, Connecticut, fire involving a Tesla took three times the normal effort to extinguish, according to the Stamford Fire Department. And this fire was perhaps an easy one — the car’s batteries fell out of the vehicle onto the ground...

A high-stakes, yearslong legal battle over a huge lithium mine planned in Nevada resumes Thursday with arguments from lawyers for the mining company, the U.S. agency that approved it and the rancher, tribes and conservationists fighting the project. U.S. District Judge Miranda Du has refused twice over the past year to grant temporary injunctions sought by tribal leaders who say the mine site is on sacred land where their ancestors were massacred by the U.S. Cavalry in 1865. But Thursday’s hearing in her Reno courtroom marks the first on the actual merits of the case and will set the legal...

Zimbabwe has banned all lithium exports after the government said it was losing 1.7 billion euros from exporting it as a raw mineral and not processing it into batteries in-country. Lithium is so valuable as a component of electronic batteries - mostly for cars mobile phones and computers - that it’s known as “white gold.” The price has gone up by 1,100 percent in the past two years alone. Zimbabwe has the largest amount of the mineral in Africa and has enough of it to supply a fifth of the world’s needs, the government says. Whilst it’s on track to...

So what does "American-made" mean to the Biden administration as it hands out huge chunks of "free" taxpayer cash for its "green" infrastructure schemes?As Donald Trump used to say: "Chiii-na."According to Alana Goodman at the Washington Free Beacon:President Joe Biden's Department of Energy is touting a grant to a lithium battery company as a move that would help herald the shift to green energy and ensure the United States is cultivating domestic sources of energy. It did not say, however, that the Texas company receiving the grant operates primarily from China and is under scrutiny from American financial regulators.The DOE...

Top China hawks aren't sold on Canadian company Lithium Americas' move to distance itself from top Chinese investor.. A Canadian company hopes to use Biden administration loans to open the largest lithium mine in North America. But first, it must convince government officials and prospective partners that it's adequately decoupled from its top shareholder: a Chinese enterprise led by known Chinese Communist Party members. Lithium Americas—whose largest shareholder is Chinese mineral giant Ganfeng Lithium—earlier this month announced its intention to split the company into two separate entities, a move that comes as it works to obtain a Biden administration loan...