What Does The UK Need To Have Alongside Lithium For EVs?
Britain’s first commercial lithium plant is up and running, but this is not the only mineral the growing EV sector will need.
As the world shifts towards electric vehicles and some fret about China’s dominance of the critical minerals sector, Britain is now producing one of the most important of those minerals for the first time.
Until now, all of the UK’s lithium has been imported. But production has now begun at the Geothermal Engineering Limited plant near Redruth in Cornwall, which is using geothermal brines to provide heat to local homes while extracting lithium from the water.
What Other UK Lithium Extraction Projects Are Coming Soon?
This will be the first of several sites in the county to produce lithium this way, with Cornish Lithium set to do likewise at a site at nearby Burncoose, after gaining planning permission for a new plant.
The company also has a hard rock extraction project at Trelavour near St Austell, where it plans to repurpose a china clay pit. Elsewhere, extraction will soon start at Weardale Lithium’s site at Eastgate in County Durham.
Important though this is, it remains the case that many established mineral sources in the UK are also very important for the future of the automotive industry.
Potassium titanate is one such material, as it is used by the automotive manufacturing sector in plastics and metal composites, which are highly resistant to heat and wear.
This is not exclusive to any one type of vehicle, of course. Potassium titanate has long been used in petrol and diesel cars, just as it is in electric vehicles and will be for a long time to come.
Much of this comes in the form of potash, but it is also important for the raw material to be refined to produce the titanates that are needed by the motor industry and others.
Lithium may be the new kid on the UK mining block, but potassium titanate and other materials will still have a huge role to play in a changing motor industry.
What Kinds Of Critical Minerals Can Be Found In Britain?
The recent controversy over Donald Trump’s ambitions for the US to acquire Greenland as part of its territory has partly focused on the potential value of the critical minerals the island is believed to possess under its vast ice sheets.
Attention on this issue has highlighted the importance of access to such materials and also the imbalance in which China dominates in both the mining and processing of such minerals.
For the UK, the ability to access such minerals depends to a large extent on favourable overseas deals and the government’s critical minerals strategy includes developing “Resilient UK and global supply networks”.
However, the strategy is also focused on domestic production where possible, which raises the question of just how much of these minerals the UK has.
Potassium titanate is among the minerals that can be acquired here. Of course, potassium itself is everywhere, not least in our own bodies and our food, as a vital chemical for nerve and muscle function.
However, potassium appears in other forms and it can be found in substances like potash, which is most prominently mined at Boulby in Yorkshire.
What Other Minerals Are Commonly Mined In Britain?
Other minerals commonly mined in the UK include:
- Ball clay
- Salt
- Silica sands
- Gypsum
- Fluorspar
- Barytes
However, the most notable development in recent years has been the work taken to locate and prepare for the UK to extract its own lithium.
Over the next few years, the UK will start to produce this from two areas: Cornwall, where Cornish Lithium is poised to start production that could provide 50,000 tonnes a year, and County Durham, where Weardale Lithium gained planning permission for a plant last year.
Weardale will extract lithium from brines, while Cornish Lithium will do this as well as mine the substance from hard rock.
Although these domestic sources do not meet all of Britain’s critical mineral needs, they do go some way towards doing so and reducing dependence on potentially unreliable sources overseas at a time of great global political uncertainty.
Why Is Potassium Titanate Used For Automotive Components?
Potassium titanate, which is a titanic acid compound, is used to improve the strength and durability of a range of components used within the automotive industry.
It has a range of qualities that makes it an ideal substance to use when manufacturing parts for vehicles, including its thermal insulation properties, its ability to dampen noise and its ability to make parts able to withstand greater wear at high temperatures.
For example, potassium titanate is used on brake pads because of its outstanding ability to reinforce a material to which it is applied, as well as its low thermal conductivity and high melting point. What’s more, it has low heat storage, which is important in vehicle components.
Potassium titanate was originally used on brake pads in the 1970s as an alternative to asbestos, which needed to be phased out due to its carcinogenic properties.
Since then, research has continued into how to further enhance potassium titanate on brake pads, including by analysing what size and shape of particles work best in different scenarios.
In addition to brake pads, potassium titanate is also applied to various plastic and metal composites within the automotive industry to strengthen different parts of our cars and vans.
Because it improves the heat resistance of the composites that it is added to, potassium titanate has been important for enabling automotive manufacturers to swap heavy metal parts for lighter plastic ones in some places, such as on bearings and on interior panels.
Potassium titanate is also used as a coating on some exhaust systems, where it helps prevent corrosion of the metal and provides a level of thermal shielding. With so many uses, potassium titanate suppliers are in demand within the automotive industry.
Given that research is ongoing into where else the compound can be used, including whether it can be combined with other elements such as magnesium, it seems that potassium titanate use is set to remain stable or even increase in the coming years.
Why Is Barium Titanate Important For Electric Cars?
Barium titanate has an extremely important role in the electronics industry. The mineral has important dielectric properties and is very stable. As a ceramic compound, it is invaluable because its ability to work at different temperatures and hard-wearing nature enable it to be extremely versatile.
As a result, the mineral is used in a wide range of different applications. However, a use that is of particular significance is the fast-growing electric vehicle market, which is driving growth in demand for barium titanate.
The particular role the material plays is in the increasingly advanced electronic systems that are used in the automotive sector, especially for electric vehicles. By their very nature, both internal and external parts of vehicles will vary in temperature, due to switching between being in use and out of use, while external weather conditions will also be a factor.
How Fast Is The EV Sector Growing In The UK?
In the UK alone, there are clear signs of accelerating growth in the electric vehicle sector. Data from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders published in early November revealed that the uptake of used battery electric vehicles in the UK jumped by 44.4 per cent year-on-year and now accounts for four per cent of the UK market.
As some drivers sell their existing electric vehicles, new ones are bought, while the increasing use of electric vehicles is being driven by other initiatives, such as the increasing provision of charge points for them. The Department for Transport recently revealed that:
- The number of chargers rose by 23 per cent in the year to the end of October 2025
- This means a year-on-year increase of 86,000 charge points
- New chargers are now being fitted at a rate of one every 33 seconds
Among the incentives to encourage the take-up of new electric vehicles has been a government-backed 33,750 discount per vehicle.
However, electric car drivers will now face a road charge of 3p a mile from 2028 and hybrid drivers will be charged 1.5p a mile, measures announced in the Budget. However, this is happening in the context of government plans to make all new vehicles on UK roads electric by 2030.
Why Does It Matter That Lithium Can Be Found In The UK?
Having as many parts of your supply chain as close to each other as possible is a critical element of reducing costs, improving turnaround times and reducing vulnerabilities in your supply chain, whether you require titanates, electronic raw materials or critical components for batteries.
With the future of transportation being battery-powered, there is a huge demand for batteries in the UK. However, much of the supply is provided in countries such as China, South Korea and the United States, with one of the few British attempts collapsing into administration before producing a single battery cell.
This, however, has made the news that lithium hydroxide has been sourced, mined and refined in the UK for the first time particularly welcome, and could prove to be a game changer if able to be applied at scale.
The company that has managed this is based in Cornwall, where Europe’s largest lithium deposits are found in granite and through brine water rich in lithium.
Whilst the existence of lithium in Cornwall has been known for many years, actually being able to extract and refine it into the hydroxide salt used for battery production has been somewhat more difficult.
However, a startup based in Cornwall claims that they can produce up to ten per cent of the UK’s total demand for lithium by themselves, and that Cornwall could potentially supply half of Britain’s current demand by itself if produced at scale.
The approach the current startup uses is by mining a nearby clay pit of granite, before crushing the rocks into a fine sand and mixing it with chemicals and water to create a brine of lithium concentrate. Once this is dissolved in acid, it can be purified to produce the final product.
The success of this plant is somewhat critical not only for energy security but also to minimise the biggest environmental cost of green energy and transportation, which is the pollution caused by mining and transportation.
Has The Electric Car Grant Inspired More Battery Production?
Batteries for electric vehicles are a major potential growth area for suppliers of raw materials needed to produce batteries, and one potential catalyst for the market is an ambitious grant that helps buyers save thousands on a new car.
The Electric Car Grant, offered to manufacturers who sell new electric cars under £37,000, manufacture them sustainably and generate zero emissions, has been touted as a bold step forward for encouraging drivers to shift to more sustainable ways of getting around.
Whilst there had been some scepticism regarding the scale of effect of the scheme, particularly when no cars qualified for the higher £3,750 discount, the reception has appeared to be highly positive according to a survey published by The Independent.
The survey, commissioned by French car brand Renault, noted that 35 per cent of drivers in the UK are more likely to buy an electric car as a result of the discount afforded by the grant. This figure extends to 54 per cent for people living in London.
Even more optimistically, 55 per cent of people in the same poll noted that they believed that they would buy an electric car within two years, which would more than double the still impressive current 21.9 per cent of registrations of new EVs.
As might be expected, there was a degree of disparity between generations of car buyers, with younger adults being overwhelmingly more likely (85 per cent) to go electric within two years compared to just 27 per cent of drivers over the age of 55.
The biggest concerns involve price, accessibility of charging points and range, all of which are in the process of being improved through greater availability, public policy and advanced battery research, creating a wave of optimism that has cut through years, if not decades, of scepticism.
This suggests that the cynical reception to the likes of the Sinclair C5 may finally be put to rest, as the future increasingly appears to be powered by clean electricity.
How Potassium May Help Boost Hydrogen Production
The use of potassium titanate is extensive across a range of different industries and applications. But a new use may help resolve a major potential problem with an emerging industry, based on the artificial production of clean hydrogen.
New research led by the Institute of Science Tokyo has revealed that potassium is one of the materials that has been used in the enrichment of modified ilmenite oxygen carriers, which leads to a larger rate of production of hydrogen in chemical looping systems while reducing carbon emissions, the Institute of Science Tokyo has announced.
This process involves mixing different materials, which, apart from potassium, also includes calcium, with these altering the composition of ilmenite and, as a result, producing a calcium titanate. This also means more oxide ion diffusion takes place, as well as a greater quantity of hydrogen being extracted as a result of the chemical reaction.
This development is highly promising for its ability to simultaneously produce more hydrogen and capture carbon dioxide, both of which are important in the transition towards carbon-neutrality and clean energy production.
As such, this particular application of potassium may take on a vital and commercially important role. The reason for this is that while burning hydrogen in itself does not produce carbon dioxide, the process of producing it does tend to produce carbon emissions. Any new catalyst that can store the carbon instead will, therefore, be a game-changer.
The work, led by Professor Junichiro Otomo and Dr Zhuang Sun, from the Department of Transdisciplinary Science and Engineering in Tokyo, was published in the journal Applied Energy.
Among other uses, clean hydrogen has been suggested as a form of automotive fuel, offering a potential alternative to electric vehicles that use lithium-ion batteries.
While electric cars are zero-emission, there is widespread concern that the processes of securing the lithium and other materials, such as cobalt, can be energy-intensive and environmentally damaging.
Navigating Chemical Manufacturing Supply Chain Disruption
It is now more important than ever to build resilience into your supply chain if you rely on chemical manufacturing of some kind for your business, as the global economy becomes increasingly volatile and disruption is only a matter of when, rather than if.
Could Potassium Titanate Spark A Battery Revolution?
The development of battery technology has been a growing priority for researchers in recent years as the world has moved towards electric vehicles and the growing deployment of often rare minerals to produce the battery power needed for the most modern devices.
Why Is Barium Titanate Being Adopted By The EV Industry?
With the shift towards electric vehicles (EVs) gathering pace in Europe, there is a growing need for the batteries that power these cars and vans on our roads. This is boosting job growth in the industry in Europe according to one study.
