The Dirty Truth About Green Batteries (gizmodo.com) 202
If we're going to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, we'll need an energy revolution. But there's a big problem. Making that future a reality will, among other things, require a lot of batteries: batteries to charge our electric cars; batteries to store solar power collected while the sun's up and wind power harnessed when it's gusty out. And as a new report by researchers at the University of Technology Sydney warns, that's likely to drive demand for the metals used to build green batteries -- as well as wind turbines and solar panels -- through the roof.
From a report: In other words the clean tech boom is, at least in the short term, likely to fuel a mining boom. And that won['t come without cost. "We already know about the environmental, social, and human rights impacts extraction is posing to front line communities right now," Payal Sampat, mining program director at Earthworks, which commissioned the new report, told Earther. "It's kind of unimaginable to think about... how it would be considered sustainable to scale up those impacts that many fold and still be reaping benefits."
Much like our smartphones and computers, the high-tech energy infrastructure of tomorrow requires a host of metals and minerals from across the periodic table and the planet. The lithium-ion batteries used in EVs and energy storage require not just lithium, but often cobalt, manganese, and nickel. Electric vehicle engines rely on rare earths, as do the permanent magnet-based generators inside some wind turbines. Solar panels gobbles up a significant share of the world's supply of tellurium, and gallium, along with a sizable fraction of mined silver and indium. Most renewable technologies demand heaps of copper and aluminum.
From a report: In other words the clean tech boom is, at least in the short term, likely to fuel a mining boom. And that won['t come without cost. "We already know about the environmental, social, and human rights impacts extraction is posing to front line communities right now," Payal Sampat, mining program director at Earthworks, which commissioned the new report, told Earther. "It's kind of unimaginable to think about... how it would be considered sustainable to scale up those impacts that many fold and still be reaping benefits."
Much like our smartphones and computers, the high-tech energy infrastructure of tomorrow requires a host of metals and minerals from across the periodic table and the planet. The lithium-ion batteries used in EVs and energy storage require not just lithium, but often cobalt, manganese, and nickel. Electric vehicle engines rely on rare earths, as do the permanent magnet-based generators inside some wind turbines. Solar panels gobbles up a significant share of the world's supply of tellurium, and gallium, along with a sizable fraction of mined silver and indium. Most renewable technologies demand heaps of copper and aluminum.
Nuclear is the answer (Score:2, Insightful)
You are not serious about climate change if you fail to include nuclear power as a solution. At least until fusion comes of age.
No need to feel sad (Score:2, Insightful)
If you're not a religious environmentalist, your batteries are not a sin.
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Occam's Razor: 95% of climatologists are lying for funds --OR-- Oil executives and uneducated Hannity are full of [bleep]?
Just in: Resource needs change with technology (Score:2)
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I was never against shifting from Fossil Fuels (Score:2, Insightful)
When I was a kid I fully expected they would be obsolete by now, not because of peak oil which is at what it's 6th or 7th time it's happened, but because quite simply they would be obsolete by nuclear power.
Then the people who function on magical thinking stepped in and decided we could power civilization with rainbows and unicorn farts stepped in. Oops, that would be solar and wind. To this day they are still pushing their idiocy no matter how obviously damaging it is.
Meanwhile, China and India build coal
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It's always funny that all your problems with batteries and electric cars disappear when they are recharged by nuclear power. Or stop being a hypocrite and state"I am in favor of nuclear power and the attacks on batteries are bullsite".
I also thought nuclear power was a great idea but the failure of it's defenders to refute these lies is making me seriously question the motives of those who like nuclear.
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if you are running your grid off nuclear you don't need batteries to power it at night now do you ?
If nuclear power is to replace carbon emissions, you need electric cars (unless perhaps you think they can be powered by small nuclear engines?)
The continuing refusal of nuclear proponents to defend batteries against anti-science attacks such as this has really made me question them and whether they really know what they are talking about. I used to be a big proponent of nuclear power for electricity generation (also directly to power ships) but I am seriously worried that I have been duped. All you have to
You can skip those to store the solar and wind ene (Score:2)
Just create a world wide grid to fairly distribute the energy were it is needed.
Don't use Lithium for grid-level storage (Score:5, Insightful)
Lithium batteries are great for their high power density and high energy density; They pack a lot of punch into a small, lightweight package. This is great for applications where space and weight are valuable, like mobile electronics or passenger vehicles.
But if you're building out grid-level energy storage, density is NOT the primary concern. You have plenty of space, and since they're not moving around you aren't concerned about weight either. What you want is low cost and durability.
Even if we ignore the storage methods that aren't chemical batteries... Compressed gasses, pumped hydro, hydrogen, thermal... we still have lots of options that aren't lithium based. We don't need or want lithium based utility storage.
=Smidge=
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pumped storage, lead acid, nickel iron, and ni-cd is a much more sustainable tech base.
No mention of vanadium redox batteries? They have many benefits over the technologies you've listed, and one of the great ones: expandability since the storage id directly proportional to liquid ullage.
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Last I checked, hydrocarbons aren't rechargeable. There are a few processes that can build hydrocarbons, but they're bottlenecked by the ability to extract carbon from the local environment so can't be used in grid-level energy storage, which would be cycling on a schedule of hours to days.
Your pedantry is irrelevant to the actual topic here. Try again in some other thread.
=Smidge=
Fossil fuel vehicles have a lot more negatives (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember, the dirty pollutants from mining their fuel, having engines that explode (basic power mechanics), and other wear and tear mean fossil fuel vehicles are still way more polluting than electrics. Just delivering their fuel provides a long dirty train of pollution, on the ground, in the sea, in the rivers, and in the air.
Look at total utility costs.
A powertrain that needs one new replacement every ten years is a lot less damaging than a powertrain that wears out twice as many parts per year and eventually is scrapped too.
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You must not live near mountains. Stuff wears out faster here.
Flywheels (Score:2)
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Not really:
From your link:
Flywheel energy storage systems using mechanical bearings can lose 20% to 50% of their energy in two hours.
Which is why you need magnetic bearings, not mechanical bearings, for energy-storage flywheels.
And... Sunlight (Score:5, Funny)
Solar panels gobbles up a significant share of the world's supply of tellurium, and gallium, along with a sizable fraction of mined silver and indium.
They also use a LOT of sunlight -- leaving less for the rest of us. The more panels we use, the less sunlight we'll have left over for use during the daytime.
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Not to mention sunburns. Think of the poor old white folks, now dealing with shortages for their tanning beds, after a sunlight spill causes a sunburn, reducing the utility of tanning beds.
Luckily, here in the West, we're moving to permanent Daylight Savings Time, so we'll have more sunlight, allowing us to both expand solar power while getting more sunlight to use for other things.
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They also use a LOT of sunlight -- leaving less for the rest of us. The more panels we use, the less sunlight we'll have left over for use during the daytime.
Yeah but we can fix that with daylight savings time.
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People who think you can make a rope longer by cutting off one end and attaching it to the other shouldn't be commenting on science and technology. DST and more sunlight...I weep for humanity if/when these kind people gain control.
That's nice. (Score:2)
I really wish these people would fuck off and admit they want us to live in mud huts until we go extinct so we can stop listening to them.
Study funded by Oz coal industry? (Score:2)
Re:Another hit piece of scaremongering. (Score:5, Interesting)
The truth is, batteries are better than the hydrocarbon based fuel source that is the alternative, even without counting the political effects.
Your right and wrong all at the same time. What this says is that batteries can't be grid scale backup for renewables because the amount of mining would be even worse for the environment. This is something we have known for some time but most folks just ignored this inconvenient fact. Batteries are nice for cars because we don't need *that* many of them compared with grid scale storage. But they have a cost and it would help if there was some sort of required recycling of the EV batteries as they are probably large and valuable enough to recycle. That would help the EV batteries be more closed loop. But it still means we need some other storage solution (that doesn't exist and doesn't look like it will exist) or use nuclear to make liquid fuels (in addition to electricity). Otherwise, the environmental damage will be worse from either: 1) more fossil fuels or 2) too much mining for battery materials.
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How much grid scale storage would we "need"? In other words, how much of total electrical demand is perfectly price-inelastic?
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Even a small amount of grid storage can reduce the capacid of the primary power grid needed. Look at what Tesla is doing in Australia.
Ref: https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
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How much grid scale storage would we "need"? In other words, how much of total electrical demand is perfectly price-inelastic?
It depends on how often you want to have to spin up the natural gas plants? Say you have a 20GW load (about California) which is ~1% of global usage. Now say you have 20GW of intermittent solar power (6x what CA has but whatever). When all of that capacity is producing you are good. No CO2 is produced, everyone is happy. But solar only produces power about 1/4-1/3 the time (morning and dusk produce little power, less in the winter, more in the summer, etc). So let's say its 1/3. And let's say we need
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You haven't answered how much of total electrical demand is perfectly price-inelastic. Do you know how to read a demand curve?
Re:Another hit piece of scaremongering. (Score:5, Informative)
You haven't answered how much of total electrical demand is perfectly price-inelastic. Do you know how to read a demand curve?
Yes, I also know how to have manors. You are asking what base load is for CA I'm assuming. Today it was ~20GW of base load and ~7GW of variable load. That's a pretty normal day for CA although you do see changes during the year due to increased heating or AC demand during parts of the year (not today). The lowest price power sold in CA over the last few days (and usually) is about $0.022/KWh and at that price about 20GW is produced, mostly by natural gas, hydro and nuclear. That price will go negative on about 3 days a month on average, usually for nodes in the central valley near Ivanpah. I've seen the spot price spike as high as $0.17/KWh (during cold snaps) and go as low as $-0.05/KWh on hot windy days during the fall (those are statewide averages over all nodes). Is that specific enough for you or do we need yet another lecture on the duck curve?
Now, to make energy storage profitable you need a gap between the lower price during the day (about 2 cents) and the daily spike in prices between 7-9pm which is usually about 5-7 cents. And you need to be efficient enough with your energy conversion into and out of your stored form that your can get at least 28% (making 2 -> 7 profitable) of your energy back which sounds easy. But that's two conversions and that need to average 53% each way and that's just to break even before you pay your workers or for the capital to build the storage facility. That eliminates all but the most efficient forms of energy conversion. The Helm's pumped storage plant on days with a large variation in price basically prints money for PG&E. But its capacity isn't terribly large by itself and its only profitable about 3 days a month (the 3 days with negative prices) and then only if its able to buy power from nodes with a negative price. And that's almost the ideal case for non-battery storage.
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You're dodging the question again. Is that what passes for manners these days? No, I'm not asking about baseload, I'm asking about how much demand for electricity cannot be satisfied by pricing electricity at market equilibrium. As any economist will tell you, the correct answer is "none," because perfectly inelastic demand doesn't exist in the real world, not even for food or medicine.
A small amount of power is required to keep the grid up, but beyond t
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Everything is still so early in its development, we don't know what solutions could be around the corner, we all make the mistake of using yesterdays ideas as the only solutions for tomorrow.
So, use a different technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Your right and wrong all at the same time. What this says is that batteries can't be grid scale backup for renewables because the amount of mining would be even worse for the environment.
No. What is being said is that grid-scale backup for electrical panels probably won't use lithium batteries.
The reason cars (and phones) want lithium batteries is that they are light. But grid-scale power buffering doesn't move, so there's no reason it has to be light. Other technologies (like sodium/sulfur [ngk.co.jp] for example) would be find.
Re:Another hit piece of scaremongering. (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right and wrong at the same time. ;)
Lithium batteries are needed where weight is a consideration (like cars and laptops). For grid store (which you correctly identify as a big issue) we can and should be using liquid metal [digitaljournal.com] or similar technology. There is no need to keep weight down in these cases and no need for the expensive and potentially environmentally damaging metals involved.
I also agree with the approach of nuclear power. I think we're going to need more than wind and solar can realistically provide. With lots of investment we will eventually be able to use fusion.
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My guess is that fusion will never produce cheap energy due to the massive complexity, similar to nuclear power. "Too cheap to meter".
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nuclear is too cheap to meter - that's why its always used to provide power to the grid. Its just that nobody figured the incidental costs of looking after the stations would be so large, what with terrorists and eco-warriors and the like, plus the cost of putting the residue away somewhere instead of just chucking it in a very deep hole.
They say the same about renewables, but they just haven't been around long enough to count the cost of replacing the turbines or panels at the end of their lives (or the re
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You should take your solutions to the relevant authorities, i'm sure all of their scientists, engineers etc have never thought of them. In fact, patent it and sell it for a fortune.
There are several startups working on this. The problem is that licensing even the necessary research materials is absurdly difficult. It took 7 years for the US to issue a license to allow a startup to rent an existing government lab that wasn't be used for anything so they could work out the chemistry for the fuel salts (and fission product removal). China just broke ground on a Thorium powered MSR but its still experimental. The US had one of these working 50 years ago but we stopped working on it wh
Re:Another hit piece of scaremongering. (Score:4, Interesting)
Not necessarily - vanadium flow batteries can be good for the environment as you can get the vanadium from old mine tailings. not that anyone will use them if its cheaper to dig it up elsewhere, but its still better than alternatives.
They can also be reused at the end of their lives, replace the membrane keeping the tanks separate and you're good to go for another 20 years.
But they require a lot of space, so you're not going to be putting them in a car or phone anytime ever, but for grid-scale, they're nearly perfect.
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Not necessarily - vanadium flow batteries can be good for the environment
Vanadium flow batteries are wonderful. Just one problem: Vanadium pentaoxide is sold by the troy oz and the current price is about $400 per. A 1MWh battery requires 10 tonnes of V2O5 to function. Other than that, its great. Unless we find a huge vein of Vanadium that contains more Vanadium ore than we have mined since the dawn of time, its probably not a scalable solution.
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IDK. My A/C draws around 2.5KW and in summer can easily run 5 or 6 hours during the night. Say 5 hours, that is 12.5KWH. My entire battery supply of 12 car batteries (about 1KWH each) So if I want to stay in the dark, not use the washer, the dishwasher, any lights, stereo, tv, etc then I could do it. And I have panels, and during the summer the max 3.6KW they can generate is usually sucked up by the house. If not, it is tossed onto the grid reducing my bill. I'd also point out regular car batteries do not l
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I think the problem is there's a lot of money in it, even if you do it yourself.
Something like what, $7-8000 worth of batteries if you want to deliver around 20 kWh per day, and lead acid would be used up in about 3 years.
Nickel-iron would last longer, but the up front investment is like $40,000 in just batteries.
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I don't understand why nickel-iron costs so much, as none of the components are expensive and the manufacturing process is not especially delicate.
Lead-acids should go for more than three years though. One of their major advantages over li-on is the much longer lifespan.
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Lead-acid doesn't seem to last longer. I use 4x AGM batteries in my boat, and I get about 4 years out of them, and that's with a high-tech permanent battery charger always in use when docked. I follow other boating blogs, and they have similar kinds of lifespans. The longer lifespans seems to come from using 6V deep-cycle type batteries, but now you're running cost up and increasing complexity, especially if your primay use is driving an inverter. You really want 24V if not 48V power to drive an inverte
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They're called "inverters". Google it.
Re:Another hit piece of scaremongering. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you had a valid argument capable of rebutting sfcat's position it would be nice if you provided. Attacking the person rather than his or her argument only serves to announce your acceptance of defeat.
And the words used to communicate don't have to be perfect to convey a perfectly valid idea or concept. Your response indicated understanding of his intent to communicate. You decided it wasn't sufficient.
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Sorry? Didn't hear anything beyond "RAWR! I LOST! BOO HOO!" when you opened your mouth.
Battery recycling is quite straightforward (Score:2)
Battery recycling is actually quite difficult.
Battery recycling is actually quite straightforward. I'm not sure why you think it's difficult.
One of the larger companies: https://www.duesenfeld.com/ [duesenfeld.com]
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Not quite as good as the fancy video suggested:
https://www.upsbatterycenter.c... [upsbatterycenter.com]
Duesenfeld plans to reprocess these âoeinto lithium carbonate and sulfates of nickel, manganese and cobalt by a hydro-metallurgical processâ
But good luck to them, I hope they actually manage to recycle the awkward material too.
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Provided that somehow includes environmental costs. Which -unfortunately- is often NOT the case...
This is true on both sides of the coin. How often do you read that coal ash is more radioactive than nuclear waste (it is!) or that they're poisoning the seas with the mercury they release in the air (they are!)?
Living near a coal power plant is far more dangerous than living near a nuclear power plant - nuclear plants only release radiation when something goes terribly wrong, coal plants do it 24/7 even when they're running perfectly.
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a) The people at Fukushima knew there was a problem and also knew what needed to be done about it long before the accident.
b) Lets not build any more 1950s-tech atom-bomb factories (which is basically what those old power plants were built to do)
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Sellafield was renamed many times because it kept releasing toxic waste.
Tech/science has advanced now, believe it or not.
Solar panels use silicon (Score:5, Informative)
This is the worst science ever
Indeed.
"Solar panels gobbles up a significant share of the world's supply of tellurium, and gallium, along with a sizable fraction of mined silver and indium."
Bullshit.
While there do exist solar panel technologies that use tellurium, and ones that use gallium, and even ones that use indium, these are not the common panels you can buy at low cost. The vast majority of low-cost solar panels built are silicon.
Not only do they not use "a significant share" of the world's supply, they don't use any tellurium, nor gallium, nor indium.
They might use silver for the metallization or the interconnects. Or they might not; there are many conductors that can be used.
Re:Solar panels use silicon (Score:5, Insightful)
Even more bullshit is that "battery production isn't clean" speaks nothing towards how much dirtier the alternatives are. It's a pretty dishonest smear on batteries and renewable technology along the lines of, "If it's not 100% non-polluting, why would we bother?" And "mining is mining, so renewables are bad."
Mine some coal, and it's burned and causing climate change tomorrow. Mine metals for a wind turbine, and they'll get recycled into another wind turbine in a couple of decades.
All mining isn't equal, and it's ridiculous to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
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apoc.famine observed:
Even more bullshit is that "battery production isn't clean" speaks nothing towards how much dirtier the alternatives are. It's a pretty dishonest smear on batteries and renewable technology along the lines of, "If it's not 100% non-polluting, why would we bother?" And "mining is mining, so renewables are bad."
Exactly so.
The fallacy here is of the general type known as "making the perfect the enemy of the good," and it is a classic error peculiar to the left.
I speak as one who has consistently labelled himself a radical centrist, so I have no dog in the left vs right conflict so endlessly reiterated here on Slushdot - or, rather, what pitifully little is left of it these days. The right has its own failings, and they are every bit as grevious as those of the left, but this one is a fallacy th
Re:Solar panels use silicon (Score:5, Insightful)
and processed with existing processes in a carbon-negative manner
Uh...no. It's only carbon-negative if you only consider the plant and the fuel in your equations. But biofuel doesn't magically transfer from field to fuel tank, nor do biofuel crops nor their fertilizers magically spring from the ground.
Also, biofuels have the itty-bitty problem of requiring a massive quantity of the world's arable land if they are going to power all of our vehicles. And we keep having this pesky need to eat.
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Also, biofuels have the itty-bitty problem of requiring a massive quantity of the world's arable land if they are going to power all of our vehicles. And we keep having this pesky need to eat.
There are promising algae based biofuels that are grown in man-made pools. No arable land needed.
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And they've been "promising" for about 25 years now. Expecting them to be practical in the near future is not a good idea.
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So far, we've only been able to make fuel efficiently out of sugar cane. Corn is kinda meh. Everything else doesn't make fuel right now, and promises for cellulosic ethanol haven't panned out yet.
So we can't just pick a random spot on the ground. It's gotta be able to grow sugar cane or corn.
Re:Solar panels use silicon (Score:4, Insightful)
And since something like 95% of my electricity comes from burning natural gas, it's literally zero gain in terms of carbon dioxide emissions to run, and quite a hell of an increase in overall emissions to manufacture vs keeping my car, or even replacing it with a brand new one of the same model.
a) You really need to look into efficiency of gasoline engines vs. efficiency of power plants.
b) You're assuming that 95% of electricity will ALWAYS come from burning gas. Simply not true.
Re:Solar panels use silicon (Score:5, Interesting)
When you ran the numbers, what did you put for the efficiency of the step-down steam turbine of the local gas plant versus your 2007 2.2L inline four cylinder gasoline engine? Because it strains credulity to think that there isn't a huge win there, given that the gas plant literally squeezes every bit of thermal energy out of the steam it boils, versus your engine that gets a single stroke from each combustion and the rest goes out the back as hot exhaust.
Just the act of moving power generation from a million car engines (not to mention lawnmowers, weed whackers, snowblowers, ...) to a few hundred highly-efficient power plants is itself a pretty big win, even taking into account distribution losses over the grid and inefficiency charging the battery.
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You're forgetting power transmission and distribution losses. As well as charging losses.
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Nope. Still a giant step forward. If you don't think so, show your math.
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"show your math."
Interesting. Where is yours?
You're [Re:Solar panels use silicon] (Score:5, Informative)
Your an Idiot... Do you honestly believe that solar panels, ICs for computers or anything else is Purse Silicone... Using a Trace amount of doping material is necessary with all currently mass produced solar cells.
Yes, I've worked in photovoltaics for over forty years. I know what solar cells are made of.
(1) "You are" requires an apostrophe. You're an idiot (not your).
(2) Solar cells are made of silicon, not silicone. Different things.
(3) Congratulations, you got one right: silicon solar cells do require trace amounts of dopants. About one part per million, but indeed, not zero. And one of those dopants could be gallium or indium (both of which dope silicon p-type). But they're not. Current solar production uses phosphorus for an n-type dopant, and boron or aluminum for p-type.
(4) I don't usually sign my posts with my research affiliation, but you could look it up, say, on google scholar.
There have been concepts of cells that don't but presently they are not proven for production..
You have that backwards. There have been concepts for cells that do use rare elements, but presently they are not, for the most part, used for large-scale production.
There are not enough rare elements on earth to convert our global grid to solar/batteries...
And thus we need technologies that use common elements, like silicon (and silicon dioxide: glass) rather than rare materials
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"Your an idiot" is the absolute best way to get a response to your argument. It's just such a beautifully ironic statement.
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Re: Only one green solution (Score:2)
Thanks meatbag!
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Since you can't convince nations like China and India to keep their populations from expanding ...
They may have abandoned it in 2015, but China had a one-child policy [wikipedia.org] for 36 years. So while you probably couldn't convince them to do it because it's good for you, if they thought it was good for them they'd do it again.
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What I find amusing is humans think they have removed the barriers that keep populations in check. Normally, in the wild predators will keep prey species in check. Well, we humans have eliminated that check and balance. We have not eliminated the second check and balance, starvation.
What we have done is raised the bar on it but that limit is still there. There is only so much farm land available, only so much modern farming can do. Unless we can control our baser instincts we will hit that second ba
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There is only so much farm land available, only so much modern farming can do.
That's why a global food supply chain is such a horrible idea. Once things get tight shortages cascade through the system quickly. Areas that have moved upscale to higher margin luxury foods will be the first hit as exports of staples dry up. This is covered depressingly well in Empires of Food [amazon.com].
Re: Only one green solution (Score:2)
If China and India can just make it "over the hump" it seems we are likely to see the global population growth taper off. And maybe the millenial face-to-the-phone will help us get there more peacefully, as they either choose to die off to save the planet because Facebook told them to, or quietly starve to death by trying to survive on social media and Fortnite alone.
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Enough with the AD-hominems. He's right. We do need to move production off-world. It's the best option to scale and it gets us off this rock as a side benefit.
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Building an energy plant to the moon and beaming it to Earth sounds all well and good until you find out you accidentally made a Death Star.
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Right... "accidentally"...
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You mean FaceBook will build it?
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Only on Thanksgiving I am sure.
Re:What is that you say? (Score:5, Informative)
Much better to dig/pump up oil.
And burn it.
And then dig up more, and burn that too.
And again, and again, roughly the car's weight in fuel every single year.
Rather than make some batteries that are mostly made of nickel oxide (nickel = a common steel alloying agent - it will take decades for battery consumption to catch up to use in alloys) and graphite, and which are recycled at end-of-life. The most controversial metal - cobalt - is on its way out (now down to just a few percent of the cathode mass, and recent research suggests that at such low quantities it no longer serves a useful role). Lithium - only a couple percent of a battery's mass - is rather abundant (and essentially limitless from the ocean, if that were ever needed), and salar lithium (the majority) is one of the most low-impact forms of mining that humanity engages in.
As for rare earths, not all EV motors use them. Neither of the Model S or Model X motors use rare earths, while only one of the Model 3's motors uses them (and a lot less than most motors, since they use Halbach arrays). It's probably worth mentioning that "rare earths" are not especially rare; it's just a name.
Alumium is the third most common element in Earth's crust, after oxygen and silicon. 8,1% of the mass of the crust. We'll be running out of alumium the day after never.
Manganese is only used in some types of batteries (NMC as opposed to NCA, which uses alumium in the same role). Manganese is a metal that's cheaper than copper and is an incredibly widespread steel alloying agent. Every car contains lots of manganese. EV battery use of manganese will never catch up to its use in steel.
EV copper consumption is, and will continue to be, insignificant compared to that of general electric wiring's use of copper. And it's declining. Tesla for example has not only dramatically been reducing wiring harness lengths, but the heaviest wiring (DC power to and from the battery pack) is alumium, not copper. Model Y (where the target is to get the wiring harness down to only 100 meters) may well use less copper than your average gasoline car. And again, this is all pretty silly, since virtually no heavy cabling in an EV is going to get thrown out - especially if it's made of copper. Heavy copper wire is so in-demand by scrappers that there are thieves that specialize in stealing it.
Re:What is that you say? (Score:5, Interesting)
Alumium is the third most common element in Earth's crust, after oxygen and silicon. 8,1% of the mass of the crust. We'll be running out of alumium the day after never.
Abundance of elements in the Earth's crust is a poor measure imho. For example: sand is extremely common. But for production of solar panels that doesn't matter much. What matters is the effort needed (energy, and other materials used) to turn that sand into solar panels. If you can do it cheaply / easily: great. If not: useless. Likewise, elements found in seawater are irrelevant as long as there isn't an economical method to extract them.
Re: (Score:2)
Abundance of elements in the Earth's crust is a poor measure imho. For example: sand is extremely common. But for production of solar panels that doesn't matter much. What matters is the effort needed (energy, and other materials used) to turn that sand into solar panels.
Where will that energy come from? Solar panels!
If we start building solar panel plants in the middle of deserts then pretty soon all the energy and sand will be free.
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For example: sand is extremely common. But for production of solar panels that doesn't matter much. What matters is the effort needed (energy, and other materials used) to turn that sand into solar panels.
Do you mean Quartz (or Silica) in sand, not just 'sand', in this case?
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
There's another obvious downside to renewables that has to do with the conservation of energy: God has mandated that we will never get something for nothing, or even at break-even.
Renewables have DNA in fossil fuels. It's how we extract, transport, refine, distribute, fabricate, transport the renewables. It's how we get people back and forth to work from the points of those same activities and it's how we recycle the components and how we dump the unsalvageable shit.
If we had no fossil fuel at all, we'd nev
Re: (Score:2)
I remember a time when we didn't have fossil fuels. They weren't discovered yet. We only had renewables back then.
Re: (Score:2)
"Rather than make some batteries that are mostly made of nickel oxide"
There are other options that should be used for large-scale stationary storage.
I don't think Tesla should be using the same cells for PowerPacks as for PowerWalls and car battery packs; instead they should consider LiFePO4 packs which have the benefit of being the most resistant Li-on chemistry to thermal runaway.
For really massive storage, you need something even cheaper. Since 2005, I've been following Isentropic UK's attempt to reach c
Re: (Score:2)
Sodium batteries are what myself and others are working on (and air batteries) for large scale storage, its cheap and 'safe'
How corrosive are they? What's the lowest operating temperature?
NaS (sodium-sulfur) batteries have been in use for decades but haven't really caught on.
Sumitomo promised to have a lower-temp molten salt sodium battery ready for sale by 2015 but suddenly stopped talking about it years ago.
Re: (Score:2)
What an ignorant article. Opens with a picture of salar lithium (the majority of the world's lithium production), but then talks about a problem of leaked silt-laden water at a Chinese spodumene mine (Ganzizhou Rongda) killing fish, as if they're the same thing.
Hint: there's no fish living in salars. Some of them can't even support brine flies. They're nature's wastelands, about the most barren places outside of Antarctic and Greenlandic glaciers. Furthermore, ater doesn't flow out of salars, it flows i
Re:Where are the champions of materials science? (Score:4, Informative)
We need leadership in private industry and government that realizes research into alternative materials for energy storage, displays, structures and the like from processing more common materials cleanly is missing. While the sky isn't falling yet, these breakthroughs could really help drive technology into more places more cheaply and with less impact to the environment and to human lives in the dangerous primary resource extraction industries.
The DOE is doing this: https://www.energy.gov/eere/so... [energy.gov]
and others: http://www.pcrg.unsw.edu.au/be... [unsw.edu.au]
https://phys.org/news/2018-09-super-cheap-earth-element-advance.html
Re: (Score:3)
There is massive amounts of research going on in to energy storage, most of all batteries simply because the potential market is literally trillions.
The whole summary is re-hashed flame-bait, 'rare earths' are not actually rare. Energy storage is the lesser of two evils, how much mining is required to get neodymium or lithium compared to how much is required to dig out the coal and all of the associated downsides that coal has, same for natural gas The only form of energy that doesn't require motors to gene
Re: (Score:2)
People seem to forget, even the manufacturers, there are actually two distinct battery markets. One needs light batteries, the lighter the better and the other does not give a crap about light batteries beyond initial transport costs.
This should alter the design of home batteries to heavier batteries of completely different design, even compactness becomes arbitary, your home battery can literally be the size and weight of a car, as long as it is long life and cheaper than light weight, compact batteries.
I
Re: (Score:2)
Totally agree, I have seen article(s) in the past about using the most commons elements available to make batteries, a quick google finds:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com]
https://www.advancedsciencenew... [advancedsciencenews.com]
It's certainly something I'd like to see more research and investment in, the holy grail would be cheap as chips batteries that could be easily recycled, with massive batteries being made for the grid on a scale to match hydro-electric and a price as cheap as a dam for a battery the size of a dam and being
Re: (Score:3)
Tesla is already using 75% less cobalt than the competition, and are aiming for none at all.
https://www.teslarati.com/tesl... [teslarati.com]
And they're working on a program to recycle their batteries at the same plant at which they are produced (It hasen't been a significant issue so far because they haven't reached end of life in any significant quantity).
I'm no chemist, but it seems to be it would be a lot cheaper to recycle the existing batteries that have the required chemicals in a highly refined state than mine the
Re: (Score:2)
Re:If solar panels were free... (Score:4, Informative)
But if I wanted batteries, it would cost me 48k
You shouldn't be using expensive battery chemistries in a fixed location. The cheap and heavy chemistries will do just fine for a lot less money.
Re: (Score:2)
but there are none that consume and render inert, rare earth metals
Um.....what?
Rare earth metals don't need to be rendered "inert". They aren't particularly toxic.
You worried that there's currently no creatures that break down copper? 'Cause that's about as dangerous.
Re: (Score:2)
For fixed installations like grid storage, you wouldn't use any form of lithium battery. It's way more expensive than other chemistries.
Which is the massive flaw in this particular study - if we start massive banks of grid-scale storage, they're not going to be made using the same batteries as electric cars and cell phones, where size and weight are critical.
Re: (Score:2)
They'll probably be Vanadium flow batteries, assuming mechanical ones like compressed air or pumped hydro is not possible.
eg..
https://redtenergy.com/ [redtenergy.com]