Don't Junk That EV Battery- It Might Power A Town
9/30/19
Recently, the Department of Energy has begun an initiative to find solutions to recycle the batteries of electric cars. The department awarded several checks to contest winners with the most viable ideas on how to reuse or re purpose the batteries. The large monetary incentive for the best ideas in the contest is likely a response to the worrying information that fewer than 5% of materials in car batteries are ever recycled. There need to be ways to recycle the components of the battery like metals such as lithium, copper and cobalt. Alternatively, instead of scrapping electronic device for its raw materials, plans have been proposed to use the batteries for other purposes, such as energy storage if they are able to be recharged.
It appears that many groups are interested in making every step of an electric car's production and usage more environmentally friendly. This is a noble goal, however recycling the battery is only a small part of the problem of how electric cars are used. The rare and exotic materials used to make the car and its battery requires lots of mining, invariably done with fossil fuels, contributing further to our carbon emissions. Recycling does not undo this process, but if the battery in its entirety cannot be reused and recharged, the raw materials can be recycled and used in the production of new batteries instead of minerals from the earth. If done efficiently and with more knowledge than we currently have on the topic, electric cars could finally be beneficial to the earth and not the environmentally unfriendly failure it is today.
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ReplyDeleteI find this very interesting because of the fact that yet another product/movement that claims to be helping the environment, is not necessarily and, in the process, is causing more harm to the environment. Overall, I thought this blog post was informative because people, as well as the companies producing these electronic cars themselves, should be thinking about how the collection of materials needed in order to make these cars is affecting our environment. Brainstorming ideas on how to better organize recycling so we are not constantly in need of materials that need to be mined (with the use of fossil fuels) is also essential in ending this repetitive cycle of supply and demand.
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing to think that something meant to be environmentally friendly can be the opposite. I would think that during the design process, ideas would be thought of to perhaps recycle or reuse the materials. It shouldn't lie to the Department of Energy to run a contest to find ways to reuse the batteries. Either the companies making the cars just forgot about the idea of recycling, or their greed comes before the intended use of the car, being helpful to the environment and not a detriment.
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