Li-Ion Batteries Get Green Seal of Approval 69
thecarchik writes "It is not an easy task to compare the environmental effects of battery powered cars to those caused by conventionally fueled automobiles. The degree to which manufacture, usage and disposal of the batteries used to store the necessary electrical energy are detrimental to the environment is not exactly known. Now, for the first time, a team of Empa scientists have made a detailed life cycle assessment (LCA) or ecobalance of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries, in particular the chemically improved (i.e. more environmentally friendly) version of the ones most frequently used in electric vehicles. Researchers decided to find out for sure. They calculated the ecological footprints of electric cars fitted with Li-ion batteries, taking into account all possible relevant factors, from those associated with the production of individual parts all the way through to the scrapping of the vehicle and the disposal of the remains, including the operation of the vehicle during its lifetime."
Re: (Score:2)
Damnit, I knew this lion repellent rock was a lie.
Hmm, the source is interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hmm, the source is interesting (Score:5, Informative)
...but since there's no actual paper available...
Link to the actually available paper: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/es903729a [acs.org]
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Hmm, the source is interesting (Score:5, Informative)
Um... huh?
Thanks, well they assume a battery technology that's not commercially available
Oh really? Then what are they putting in the Volt? Or the Leaf? LiMn2O4 is one of the most popular chemistries for EVs. Here, want to buy some? [ebay.com.sg]
To be fair, their wording could have been clearer. Nickel and cobalt-based li-ions currently dominate the market. But LiMn2O4 absolutely are already out on the market, and have been for years. Their main competitor is LiFePO4. Both chemistries offer much better cycle life, stability, and power than traditional cathodes, at the cost of lower energy density. They used to be a lot more expensive, but their prices have been falling, and they'll probably be cheaper within the next few years.
a maximum vehicle lifetime of 92k miles
No, they assume a vehicle lifespan of 240,000 km (pgs 2 and 4). They assume two batteries used per vehicle over it's lifespan (one replacement) -- even though most upcoming mass-market EVs are being *warrantied* for 8-10 years.
a lithium extraction technology that's low energy but unlikely to scale to widespread usage of the lithium for transportation
Huh? What they describe is the standard way of producing lithium carbonate. And energy to produce a product generally declines as you scale up, rather than increasing. And the lithium extraction is only 1.9% of the battery's energy consumption anyway. The biggest chunk is aluminum, at 15.1%. So even if you have to jump to spodumene, like they mention (you wouldn't jump straight there, by the way -- you'd first use lithium hydroxide, like is found in Nevada), it would hardly change the picture.
Lithium is just such a small part of the overall picture; the only reason people focus on it is it's in the name. As they make clear, it's the bulk metals (aluminum, copper, etc) and the roasting of the cathode that takes most of the energy of production.
and finally they don't take recycling into account but rather attribute all inputs to virgin materials.
They specifically note that recycling would *improve* the picture for BEVs (bottom of page 5 / top of page 6)
Still if you tweak the numbers towards a more realistic mix you still come out with battery powered vehicles being no worse than ICE unless the battery vehicle is primarily powered by coal.
Tweak nothing. That would take a complete rewrite with absurd bogus numbers to get a breakeven value. The comparison numbers aren't even close, and coal only increases the total energy 13.4% (page 4). BEVs blow ICEs away.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Missing factor (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Missing factor (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Missing factor (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Run out of oil, sure. Coal...? Not so much.
Re: (Score:1, Interesting)
I dont think that this is actually effectively true (running out).
Today's waste product is tomorrows fuel. It has happened repeatedly since we have been using fossil fuels. If you consider that the coal the drove the industrial revolution is effectively gone, yet we somehow come up with new coal you will realize that we are now using fuel that was once thought to be useless, and was considered a waste product. Oil will/is the same. New reserves are lower quality ( in a $ vs output sense ) that the middl
Re: (Score:2)
Today's waste product is tomorrows fuel.
Amen to that. Gasoline was once [wotwaste.com] considered a waste product [wikipedia.org], and I hope that today's once-through nuclear 'waste' will be tomorrow's IFR [wikipedia.org] fuel [nationalcenter.org].
Re: (Score:2)
we're probably going to exhaust our entire supply of fossil fuels anyway
Do you put any thought at all into the statements you make?
Perhaps you should learn about reality. Your first stop should be an economics class.
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for your feedback but I have no idea what exactly you decided doesn't conform to reality. It would help if you provided a little more context for your side of the ... I'll call it an argument.
Are you saying it is unlikely we run out because we have so much? Or are you saying it is not necessarily true that we'll run out and that we could easily be shifted away from such a path? Or are you saying that we won't run out because much of it isn't profitable enough to warrant extraction. Or are you going d
Re:Missing factor (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
My guess is that he is saying the price will go up so high that no one will want to buy it when the reserves get small enough.
OK, great... so how is that different than exhausting it entirely?
Re: (Score:2)
The argument works like this.
As supply dwindles the price sky rockets. As the price increases, harder to reach oil supplies become cost effective. As price continues to rise, alternative forms of oil (including synthetic) scavenging and processing become cost effective which lowers pressure on traditional sources of oil. As demand grows a new market is created which continues to lower pressure and establishes alternate sources.
Basically saying, we will never run out of oil. Our economic model ensures that w
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, they didn't understand economics on Easter Island and they completely managed to run out of a finite and slowly renewing resource. If they had just known basic economics, magically they wouldn't have run out.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course! We'll never run out of fossil fuels because a few rich dudes will have jars of oil or lumps of coal on display in their curio cabinets. For similar reasons we'll never run out of helium or IPv4 addresses.
I mean it's basic economics, jeez, some people are just so ignorant.
Re: (Score:2)
Lithium peak (Score:3, Interesting)
When we hit the lithium peak, how will we make more Li-ion batteries?
Re: (Score:2)
When we hit the lithium peak, how will we make more Li-ion batteries?
I guess we won't make more Li-ion batteries. But luckily there are plenty of other ways to store electricity -- many in development. We'll manage. Is that suppose to be some type of argument about why it is pointless to switch to renewable energy sources? If so, it doesn't really have much punch to it.
Re:Lithium peak (Score:5, Informative)
Not going to happen. [gas2.org]
Re:Lithium peak (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I do worry about this. While lithium isn't consumed by the batteries, electrifying a substantial portion of the world's road transport would require a huge increase in world wide lithium production.
[... goes away and searches ...]
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/lithium/mcs-2010-lithi.pdf [usgs.gov]
World production was about 25,400 tons in 2008, and reserves about 10,000,000 tons, so we have about 400 years of production at current rates.
If an electric car typically contains a 200kg battery which is 5%
Re:Lithium peak (Score:4, Informative)
Please read the GP. Thanks.
Also, your numbers on how much lithium is used per EV is wrong. The leaf's battery pack is about 600lbs and contains 9 pounds of lithium (1.5%).
Recycling? (Score:2)
I dunno if it's actually cost effective (it might be cheaper to mine/extract 'new' lithium), but if need be, shouldn't the lithium in the battery be recylable? Batteries go bad, but it's not like the elemental lithium in the battery is destroyed through use (well, I'm not sure what the half-life of Lithium is, but since it doesn't seem to be a radiation hazard, I'm going to guess it has a nice long, stable half-life, so that means that it's not decaying into some other element in any time period we care abo
Re: (Score:1)
Stable means that no decay rate can be measured, which mean more than about 10^20 years (probably vastly more).
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
we're probably going to exhaust our entire supply of fossil fuels anyway
Not before acidifying the ocean to the point that everything dies. The increased CO2 in the atmosphere would also destroy countless ecosystems and result in mass extinctions.
Long story short, there is way too much carbon available to burn. We will kill ourselves long before we run out. Those who think governments should piss off and just let the market determine the price of oil really don't see the problem. As long as the environmental costs of oil are ignored, the market does not work to our benefi
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That's an incredibly stupid thing to say.
I mean, life survived asteroid impacts but I think it's in mankind's best interest to do anything possible to avoid such things.
But that might just be me.
Re: (Score:2)
Your manifesto was excellent, by the way!
Re: (Score:1, Funny)
Your manifesto was excellent, by the way!
It left out the part about 'disgusting human babies' though, and didn't factor in the immigration pollution that Li-ion batteries promote.
Re:hmmm (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Other materials, such as aluminium, are much more harmful. Aluminium of course is used heavily in all cars. From the article:
Re:hmmm (Score:5, Funny)
Or you know, it could be this well researched study is more credible than your unsupported assertion on slashdot. Just saying.
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
Not trolling, but due to the mining, production, added weight to vehicles and disposal of the lithium makes an old muscle car's carbon emissions look appealing versus a hybrid.
From TFA:
If some of the most vocal anti-EV spokespersons are to be believed, mining the minerals and metals used in electric car batteries are much more damaging to the planet than any gasoline car.
Thankfully, it turns out they are wrong. Making an electric car really doesn’t take up as many of the earth’s resources as previously thought.
You can read the rest of TFA from the link in TFS....
Hasty Disposal (Score:3, Informative)
One thing that bothers me about seeing Li-Ion battery-powered devices everywhere these days is the way so many people view them as disposable, when in reality the battery is good for hundreds of charge/discharge cycles, and the device for many times that number.
Take for example the laptop I just bought secondhand today. It's a 2001 Gateway with a pentium 3 and the original li-ion battery. The battery is still capable of FOUR HOURS of constant web browsing and disk thrashing on a single charge. I paid $40 for this thing, and it performs just as well as any "netbook" for about 13% the price. My purchase was environment-agnostic, but if you don't want li-ion batteries going into landfills, finding ways to re-use them like I did is a good way to start.
Re:Hasty Disposal (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Or 3 years in the case of a Toshiba laptop.
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
One particular drawback to Li-ion batteries (of the type used in laptops) is that the battery degrades even when not being used. They degrade slower when lightly charged and stored at low temperature, but degrade much faster when near fully charged and/or warm.
The common use pattern where a laptop is plugged in for significant periods of time will degrade Li-ion batteries faster than anything else. The battery will be lucky to last more than 12 months under such conditions. I'm on my third battery in thre
Re: (Score:2)
I have a 3 year old laptop with no discernible difference in battery duration between now and when I bought it. Not saying there is none, from what I know there's no real way there couldn't be degradation, but it isn't yet enough to be noticeable on the odd occasion I do allow it to run until empty on battery.
I have a netbook that's a couple of years old, same thing. No discernible change in battery longevity.
I have an MP3/video player, bought in November 2007, no noticeable degradati
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You and I have very difference opinions on notable degradation. 80% of original capacity .. is huge.
Under optimal conditions, Li batteries degrade just a few % per year. Under average conditions, 8-10% is fairly normal. Under poor conditions, 25-35% loss in a year is reasonable. And you could kill one entirely in less than a year under worst case conditions.
Re: (Score:2)
Bear in mind that the post I replied to talked about needing three new batteries in as many years, with the batteries being down to lasting 5 minutes (this happened to the first and only iPod I ever bought, incidentally). Compared to that, retaining 80% after three years is freakin' stellar.
The original endurance of that PMP, when playing video, was 6 hours. At 80% capacity that's more in the area of 5 hours.
Whether that's noticeable or not is down to usage pattern. If I routinely used it for a 5.5 hour fli
Re: (Score:2)
Damn, my new laptop spends 99% of its time plugged in and charged up...I'd take the battery out, but the power's pretty unreliable in most places where I use it.
My N900's battery on the other hand gets run down to 30% or lower charge every day. It'll be interesting to see which one goes first.
Re: (Score:2)
That's nice for you, but what my lady has is a Dell with a battery which conforms to SBS, and it refuses to charge even though it was still holding one when it stopped being willing to charge. It's a perfectly working battery absent the chip that tells it not to charge any more, but we're forced to get rid of it. (it had a power jack problem so it thought it was charged more times than it was.)
The assumption (Score:2)
The assumption is made that I would really care if I am driving a so called "green car" when in reality I don't.
Re: (Score:3)
The assumption is made that I would really care if I am driving a so called "green car" when in reality I don't.
I don't think they performed this study just for you, personally. So, I doubt that they are making such an assumption. Speaking of assumptions, do you usually presume that everything that anybody in the world does is for your benefit?
Great, so when cheap enough... (Score:1)
I am happy, now I just have to wait for the prices to go down and the charging stations to be built before getting one.
Other numbers (Score:2)
I agree that electric-based transportation is a great deal more "green" than traditional ICE vehicles. However, I don't expect as great a movement toward the former whilst fuel prices remain so low. This is one of the key elements holding back the proliferation of electric vehicles: they cost more. Not only do they cost more upfront, but replacing a vehicle-sized battery pack is also quite expensive.
Another factor I would like to argue for is this: it saves more money, and is better to the environment, to u