Key EV Battery Material Can Come From a Surprising Source: Methane
China controls the graphite supply chain, but Bill Gates-backed startup Molten Industries is looking to change that by creating the material from gas.
A shard of graphite ore at the Nouveau Monde Graphite Matawinie Mine in Quebec, Canada. Molten Industries plans to produce the material by breaking down methane gas.
Photographer: Christinne Muschi/BloombergGraphite is key to manufacturing the lithium-ion batteries that power everything from electric cars to smartphones. While China is the world’s top producer and exporter of the crystalline carbon, there’s been a push to grow a US supply chain.
Oakland-based startup Molten Industries is working to build it by relying on something that’s cheap and abundant in the US: natural gas. The company has developed a specialized technique to break methane into graphite and hydrogen, the latter of which can be used as a source of clean energy. The effort is funded in part by a $25 million Series A financing round led by Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV).