Chapter 423 |
Professor Kim Ho-min looked at us and said.
“For now, we’re calling this the JN Battery.”
“The JN Battery? Is it by any chance named after me?”
Strictly speaking, it should be JH, but since I spell my English name 'Jinu' based on its pronunciation, I use JN for my initials.
Professor Kim Ho-min burst out laughing at my question.
“Haha, I knew you’d think that. It was the OTK Battery before, so now it’s the JN Battery. That's not exactly why I named it, though. This battery uses a large amount of Geratinium, and you see, the element symbol for Geratinium is Jn.”
“Ah, I see.”
I almost got my hopes up for nothing, thinking it was named after me.
“Actually, it’s not completely unrelated. I originally had no plans to experiment with Geratinium, but since its abbreviation was the same as your name, I tried it out on a whim.”
“So it’s all thanks to him, then.”
“Haha, you could say that.”
Professor Kim Ho-min began his explanation in earnest.
“You know about rare earth elements, right?”
“Of course.”
Rare Earth Elements.
As the name implies, they exist in very small quantities in nature, and the amounts mined and traded are low. However, because even a small amount can determine the performance of a material and is absolutely essential, they are called the ‘vitamins of industry.’
Currently, the entity that holds the world's rare earth market in its hands is China. China's share of the rare earth market is a staggering 80 percent.
They have what is effectively a monopoly on the global market.
With such an overwhelming market share, they sometimes use rare earths as a weapon. A prime example was in 2010, when a dispute with Japan over the Senkaku Islands arose. China imposed a total ban on rare earth exports, forcing Japan's unconditional surrender. (Afterward, Japan and other countries reduced their imports of Chinese rare earths, which in turn hurt the Chinese economy).
Even now, whenever the U.S. applies trade-related pressure, China responds by threatening to reduce its rare earth exports.
Professor Kim Ho-min listed the element symbols on the whiteboard.
“There are 17 rare earth elements in total: Sc, Y, La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Pm, Sm, Eu, Gd, Tb, Dy, Ho, Er, Tm, Yb, Lu. This includes the 15 lanthanides, plus scandium and yttrium. As you know, the most traded among these is neodymium, which belongs to the lanthanide series. It's relatively common for a rare earth, but it doesn't exist as a pure substance in nature, so it has to go through a separate extraction process.”
“Oh! I see.”
Taekgyu nodded eagerly and shot me a look.
‘You went to Hankuk University, so you should know this much, right?’
I also nodded eagerly and replied with my eyes.
‘Nope. How would a liberal arts major know any of that?’
Still, I think I’ve heard of neodymium while analyzing the raw materials market. Was it used to make magnets?
A brief explanation of each rare earth element continued for about 30 minutes.
Just as Taekgyu was starting to doze off, Professor Kim Ho-min put down his marker and said.
“...However, the production of this Geratinium is even lower than that of lutetium. It barely exists in nature to begin with, and the process of extracting the pure substance is incredibly difficult.”
No matter how expensive rare earths are, they aren’t more expensive than gold.
Lutetium, a typically high-priced rare earth, costs about half as much as gold. But pure Geratinium currently goes for about $230,000 per kilogram. Considering that one kilogram of gold is over $50,000, it's about four times more expensive.
Using something like this as a key material for a battery, it’s no wonder the price would jump 300-fold.
“Geratinium is almost never used in industry. There’s no compelling reason to use it, and most applications can be substituted with other rare earths.”
“I see.”
It makes sense when you think about it.
For a material to be actively used in industry, there must be a certain level of supply and the price has to be right. It’s rare, so the price is high, and because the price is high, it isn’t used.
The important fact is that the price is that high even though it’s barely used. So what would happen if we tried to mass-produce the JN Battery with it?
Naturally, according to the law of supply and demand, the price would skyrocket by several, or even tens of times, its current price.
“If you’ve heard this much, you’ve probably figured it out, right? There’s a bigger problem than supply and demand.”
The moment the price starts to rise, speculative capital from all over the world would swarm in like moths to a flame, causing the price to skyrocket even more.
This has happened time and time again.
Before the financial crisis, when oil prices were soaring endlessly, speculators not only rented oil storage tanks and filled them to the brim, but they also kept oil-filled tankers floating at sea.
It was all to buy as much as possible and then sell it for a profit when the price went up.
When cobalt prices rose due to increased battery production, speculative capital jumped in there too, and the price of cobalt quadrupled in a short period.
The speculators cornered the market on cobalt and manipulated international prices. However, the seemingly endless rise of cobalt prices plummeted by over 80 percent after the OTK Battery was released, and the speculators who jumped in late all took a collective dive into the river.
I nodded.
“Speculators from all over the world would fill their warehouses with Geratinium and just wait for the price to rise.”
So that’s why he said the price would jump by tens of thousands of times if we went into mass production.
“Well, even if we scraped together all the Geratinium currently on the market, it would be hard to run even one factory. So you have to assume mass production is impossible.”
Only then did I understand why the other researchers had been so calm. The JN Battery was truly a world-changing invention.
But no matter how great an invention is, it’s useless if it can’t be commercialized.
Taekgyu asked, “What if we discover a mine with a large deposit of Geratinium?”
Professor Kim Ho-min shook his head.
“That would be great, but the chances are close to zero. Geratinium is already found in rare earth mines; the amount is just incredibly small. Even if we found a new mine, it's unlikely the proportion of Geratinium in it would be significantly higher.”
The situation is similar for rare earth mines themselves.
Rare earths are just mined along with various other minerals in a deposit. And to mine these rare earths, you essentially have to tear the mine apart, not to mention dousing it with chemicals to separate a specific rare earth from other minerals.
“Even if we got really lucky and found a large deposit, extracting the pure substance is the problem. Seventy percent of that price is the cost of extracting it from the other minerals it's mixed with. The only other method is to create a similar substance through synthesis… but that’s not easy either. Stability would be the first problem. As you know, chemical substances react sensitively to even the slightest changes.”
If it were that easy, they wouldn't be using rare earths in the first place.
Even now, countless researchers are tearing their hair out trying to develop technologies to avoid using expensive rare earths or to find substitutes.
Isn't it thanks to people like them that we can enjoy the benefits of civilization?
Professor Kim Ho-min scratched his shaggy hair and said, “Don’t be too disappointed. We’re still researching ways to replace it with new materials. Who knows, maybe this will be an opportunity to find a new method.”
***
I kept thinking about it even after I returned to the company.
A prototype is just a prototype. To solve the heat and stability issues, and to actually enable mass production and ensure commercial viability, you have to invest more time and manpower into continuous research.
Most attempts fail during this process.
This is also why Kodak, which created the world's first digital camera, and Nokia, which created a smartphone, ultimately abandoned them.
It was because they judged that further investment would not lead to a commercially viable product.
So, what about the JN Battery?
Yuri came up to the CEO's office holding a stack of documents.
“Here is the data you requested.”
“Thanks.”
I scanned through the documents related to the global battery market.
Currently, the battery market is growing at an average annual rate of over 20 percent. This growth is, of course, due to the rapid expansion of the electric vehicle market.
Innovation isn’t always a completely new concept. Improving an existing product is also innovation.
The smartphone was merely a combination of existing functions into a single mobile phone. But from the moment ENple announced the EN-Phone, the world changed.
The same was true for the OTK Battery.
The OTK Battery brought the electric car era forward by at least five years. Thanks to the advancement in battery technology, electric cars could outperform internal combustion engine vehicles in almost every aspect.
So, how would the JN Battery, which is 20 times superior to the OTK Battery, be used in industry?
In truth, the method for increasing battery capacity is very simple. Just as you use two batteries instead of one, or three instead of two, the usage time doubles or triples accordingly.
The problem is weight and volume.
You wouldn’t carry around a smartphone the size of a brick just to get a longer-lasting phone, would you?
This is especially true for products where weight and volume cannot be increased indefinitely. A prime example is the drone.
A drone is an unmanned aircraft.
Its applications are diverse: military uses like reconnaissance and attack; agricultural uses for spraying pesticides and fertilizers; surveillance for monitoring forest fires or coastal accidents; search and rescue for saving people in dangerous areas or delivering medicine; filming for movies and dramas; and toys for kids, among others.
A drone-based delivery service is already in its experimental phase, and recently, drones capable of carrying people have emerged.
More than 20 companies are already developing the technology, with prototypes being unveiled at events like CES. Iver plans to launch a passenger transport service using manned drones starting next year.
Perhaps in a few years, an era of flying taxis will dawn, going beyond the taxis that run on roads.
Drones operate with batteries and motors to reduce weight and size. That's why the drone industry welcomed the release of the OTK Battery with open arms.
The problem is that even with the OTK Battery, it’s difficult to fly for more than an hour. If you add packages or people, the flight time is reduced by more than half.
The JN Battery could solve these problems.
If it could be commercialized, wouldn't it be possible to make not just drones, but airplanes, run on batteries?
This would be advantageous not only for efficiency but also for safety.
One of the most frequent and fatal aviation accidents is the bird strike, where a flying bird gets sucked into an engine.
Currently, there is no solution other than trying to scare the birds away. But if the propulsion system were changed to batteries and motors, it would be possible to eliminate the engine entirely.
If we created an electric airplane, couldn't we issue a new challenge to the global aviation market dominated by Boeing and Airbus?
If the OTK Battery opened up the electric car market, the JN Battery is the key to ushering in a new era of mobility beyond the automobile.
It could completely transform the entire industrial landscape.
Taekgyu said, “So we just need to solve the price issue, right?”
“And I’m telling you, that’s the problem that can’t be solved.”
Hydrogen batteries, which have more than four times the capacity of existing lithium-ion batteries, are already in use by the military. The reason such good technology isn’t widely used by civilians is because of problems with price or mass production.
“Saying ‘we could make JN Batteries if we just had more Geratinium’ is no different from saying ‘we could build safe nuclear power plants if we had uranium that didn't emit radiation during fission,’ or ‘we could fly if humans had wings,’ or ‘if my dad owned a building, I could just loaf around and do nothing.’”
Uranium that doesn't emit radiation during fission doesn't exist, and humans don't have wings. And my dad is not a building owner.
I reached a conclusion.
“Just like you have to study hard and get a job unless your dad suddenly buys a building, commercialization is impossible unless we can solve the price and production problems of Geratinium.”