Thursday 12 September 2024 - How Is Critical Material Recovery Unlocking a Multi-Billion Dollar Market? Introduction to critical materials and key application markets; Critical material sources and why secondary material streams are rapidly emerging; Critical material recovery technology trends and their application in secondary sources; Valuable lessons to learn from established critical platinum group metal and semiconductor recovery; IDTechEx's outlook and conclusions on emerging critical material recovery markets and key growth opportunities.

Multiple consumer electronics giants, including Apple, Samsung, and Nokia, have previously shown interest in flexible smartphones. Indeed, it naturally seems like the next step after foldable and curved smartphones have seen development and commercialization in the last decade. However, the path to fully flexible smartphones is far from simple, and the reward for successful development is ambiguous.

Sodium-ion batteries bring new opportunities for lower costs, greater sustainability, and safety into the battery market. With sodium being more widely available than lithium, concerns about energy security and supply-chain shortages can hopefully start to decrease for economies.

End-of-life equipment from automotives, electric vehicles, e-waste and decarbonized energy technologies are rapidly emerging secondary raw material sources for valuable critical materials. A new report from IDTechEx forecasts that US$110B of critical materials will be recovered annually from secondary sources by 2045, with a combined weight of over 3.3 million tonnes.

Demand for battery energy storage systems will continue to increase over the coming decade across key countries as the volume of renewable energy sources penetrating electricity grids continues to increase. Governments have continued to announce incentives and schemes to promote the growth of BESS, as well as announce and increase targets for both RES and battery and energy storage.

Major CCUS (carbon capture, utilization, and storage) players converged in Houston, Texas, in the last week of June for the 2024 iteration of the Carbon Capture Technology Expo North America. Co-located with the Hydrogen Technology Expo, the event boasted over 8000 attendees and 400 exhibitors - including IDTechEx.

As the penetration of variable renewable energy increases in key countries, so will the need to manage the increasing uncertainty and variability in electricity supply.

Thursday 8 August 2024 - Flexible Batteries: Differentiation of Technologies and Application Market Analysis. This webinar will first examine the different flexible battery technologies, then move onto an analysis of flexible battery application markets.

Electrification is tough. It has taken around 15 years to convince car owners that battery power is a viable alternative to their fossil fuel comfort blanket. In the construction, agriculture, and mining industries, electrification is an even steeper uphill battle. In these industries, if a machine runs out of battery, the operators will soon start losing money.

Since the conception of flexible battery technologies, suppliers have searched for strong application markets for their products. In the last five years, niches have finally begun to materialize, though the specific use case depends on battery technology.

Fuel cell electric vehicles, Li-ion battery-powered cars, and carbon dioxide removal strategies all work to reduce global CO2 emissions. IDTechEx has a multitude of sustainability reports that give outlooks on the shared efforts of various sectors to reduce CO2 emissions in the air, to promote a cleaner way forward.

Thursday 18 July 2024 - EV thermal system architecture and fluids used; Battery thermal management and trends; Motor thermal management and trends; Future refrigerants; Outlook for fluid content and forecasts

Owing to their exceptional design flexibility, structural versatility, and high porosity, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are gathering interest for a wide range of applications, such as water harvesting for HVAC, direct lithium extraction, refrigerant reclamation, hydrogen storage, chemical purifications, and many more.

Industries have traditionally used fossil fuels to produce heat for their processes or to fuel power plants to generate electricity, including the use of natural gas, oil, and coal. Industrial heating processes are responsible for ~25% of global emissions, and therefore, great attention from governments and states is being seen to decarbonize this area of industry.

Electric buses are booming, with sales growing in Europe, America, India, and other key regions. Transport operators have shown themselves keen to electrify urban transport and cut greenhouse gas emissions. As emissions regulations tighten, city buses are likely to be all-electric within the next few years.

Improving the performance and reducing the cost of Li-ion batteries have been primary concerns for the Li-ion battery industry over the past 10-15 years. The environmental and societal implications of Li-ion battery production and deployment have come under increasing scrutiny, along with concerns regarding supply chain concentration.

Electric vehicles, much like combustion vehicles, require a suite of fluids in order to operate optimally. However, the quantities and properties of these fluids can be quite different. With a strongly growing EV market, this presents a large opportunity for not just fluid suppliers but also fluid additives and fluid handling component suppliers.

One of the main reasons that electrification is so appealing in any industry is the reduction in operating costs offered by electric machines. This is especially true across the construction, agriculture, and mining (CAM) industries. Large machines with high uptimes, like mining haul trucks, can consume millions of dollars in fuel over their lifetime.

Heating and cooling accounts for approximately 50% of global energy consumption, with 30% of this consumption represented by heating demand from industry. Given that the great majority of industrial heating processes use fossil fuels to generate heat, this has caused industrial heating processes to be responsible for ~25% of global emissions.

According to IEA's 2023 update to its net zero roadmap, carbon capture technologies, more efficient space cooling equipment, and clean energy transitions are all cornerstones of achieving net zero by 2050 and limiting global warming to 1.5°C. Emerging technologies utilizing metal-organic framework (MOF) materials for carbon capture, refrigerant reclamation, direct lithium extraction, HVAC equipment, and various other chemical separations and purification processes can see the advent of disruptive next-generation technologies that are essential for industrial decarbonization.