April 10, 2002 -- Large size batteries and fuel cells, defined here as batteries approximately equal to or larger than automotive batteries, have long been used to provide backup electrical power, start automobiles and power industrial vehicles. More recently, they can be found in advanced military systems, electric automobiles and buses, and generating power from clean fuels like hydrogen. A battery has five components: two active elements (a cathode and an anode), a separator, an electrolyte medium for carrying ions between the reactants through the separator, and a case. Like batteries, fuel cells produce electrical energy through an electrochemical process. Fuel cells also typically have a pair of electrodes, electrolyte and structural supports. In both cases, there are hundreds of combinations of possible electrode, electrolyte, separator, and electrocatalytic materials, and material selection plays an important (and often the most important) role in battery and fuel cell design.
According to a soon-to-be-released updated study from Business Communications Company, Inc., RGB-266A: Materials for Large Size Batteries and Fuel Cells, the U.S. large battery and fuel cell material market dipped from $1.45 billion in 2000 to $1.37 billion at the wholesale level in 2001. It should be worth more than $2.4 billion in 2006, rising at an AAGR (average annual growth rate) of 12% over the next five years.
Lead remains the most important large battery material. The value of lead materials sold in the U.S. actually fell between 2000 and 2001. Shipments will increase somewhat, but the price charged has fallen significantly. Over the next five years, growth will average about 0.8% per year.
Other materials used in lead-acid batteries will fare somewhat better. Materials like tin, antimony, sulfuric acid, arsenic, bismuth, selenium, tellurium, silicon oxide and calcium are used mainly in lead batteries. This group also includes cadmium (used in some lead-acid batteries, as well as nickel-cadmium systems) and phosphoric acid (used in phosphoric acid fuel cells). These materials were worth about $80 million in 2001 and should approach $87 million in 2006.
Non-lead-acid battery materials in high demand (each worth over $10 million per year) include platinum group metals, titanium, zirconium and lithium, carbon and rare earth compounds. Taken together, they will grow at an AAGR of 66% from $74 million in 2001 to $936 million in 2006.
Organic materials include plastic resins (mostly used in lead-acid batteries) as well as organic electrolytes and many battery separators. Mainly because of relatively flat lead-acid battery sales, this market should remain at about $40 million throughout the five-year scope of this report.
Other battery and fuel cell materials (each worth under $10 million annually) include chromium, molybdenum, tungsten, aluminum compounds, nickel and iron compounds, halogens, silver, cobalt compounds, vanadium, tantalum, barium, strontium, boron compounds, indium, gallium, sodium, potassium and zinc. Taken together, these materials represented a $35 million market in 2001 and should grow to a $167 million market in 2006.
