In news– The Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology has visited India’s first lithium cell manufacturing facility at Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh recently.
About the facility-
- This state-of-the-art facility has been set up by the Chennai based Munoth Industries Limited with an outlay of Rs. 165 crores.
- The facility is located in one of the two Electronics Manufacturing Clusters set up in the temple town, by Prime Minister of India in 2015.
- The installed capacity of the plant at present is 270 Mwh and can produce 20,000 cells of 10Ah capacity daily.
- These cells are used in power bank and this capacity is around 60 per cent of India’s present requirement.
- Cells for other consumer electronics like Mobile Phones, hearable and wearable devices will also be produced.
- Currently India imports complete requirements of lithium-ion cells primarily from China, South Korea, Vietnam and Hong Kong.
About Lithium-
- Lithium (Li), chemical element of Group 1 (Ia) in the periodic table, the alkali metal group, lightest of the solid elements.
- The metal itself which is soft, white, and lustrousand several of its alloys and compounds are produced on an industrial scale. Three fragments of Lithium metal.
- The principal industrial applications for lithium metal are in metallurgy, where the active element is used as a scavenger (remover of impurities) in the refining of such metals as iron, nickel, copper, and zinc and their alloys.
- A large variety of nonmetallic elements are scavenged by lithium, including oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, sulfur, and the halogens.
- A lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery is an advanced battery technology that uses lithium ions as a key component of its electrochemistry.
- It is also extensively used in the production of other organic chemicals, especially pharmaceuticals.
- With 8 million tons, Chile has the world’s largest known lithium reserves. This puts the South American country ahead of Australia, Argentina and China.
Source: PIB
