SCOTT doesn’t drive but he still wants to talk about the switch to electric vehicles, there’s the small issue of all the lithium already out there.
ONE thing anyone in their right mind can agree on is we must stop burning stuff for fuel right now. It’s environmental critical, and in the case of the combustion engine their days – like coal, steam and wood before them – are numbered.
would neeThe big drive now is to replace your vehicle with a shiny hybrid or fully electric vehicle (EV). I don’t drive but we have a camper van, an old diesel one. So old the switch to an electric dynamo would be relatively easy, just a case of ditching the big end and gearbox and replacing them with a dynamo connected to the accelerator and brake pedals. 23 years old, in good knick, often used, and much loved. I don’t want to replace it with an expensive new EV one, but I’m holding off converting to an EV for now, because of the batteries it would need.
As the number of electric vehicles and smart gadgets surges, the ethical and environmental problems with the lithium-ion batteries that power them are increasingly being highlighted as a major issue. On current usage rates, it is predicted the world will have some 15 million metric tons of discarded lithium-ion batteries to contend with by 2030, the vast majority of these will ending up in landfill – polluting as they degrade.
Unlike conventional batteries which store large reservoirs of energy and drip-feed it slowly, ion supercapacitors can rapidly discharge their stored energy. It’s this process that we traditionally have relied on combustion engines for delivering sharp bursts of power to rapidly accelerate heavy things.
Recently there have been developments in changing lithium battery electrode materials for graphene – a material made from Carbon just an atom thick. In tests graphene aluminium ion batteries have a battery life of up to three times that of current leading lithiumion batteries. Graphene batteries (I imagine the adverts) can be light, durable and suitable for high capacity energy storage, as well as shorten charging times. However the huge production costs make this an extremely expensive if long lasting solution for vehicles like our van.
I remember making batteries from fruit in school, and there has been research into all flavours of biowaste – from peat moss to eggs. The problem is we tend to mix our bio waste and the organic structure of each plant fibre determines what electrical device their discharge pattern suits. Banana peels have been found to work as great traditional drip release batteries when turned into sodium-ion batteries.
Hemp and bamboo are my favourite go to replacements for plastic products. Hemp is being grown industrially in the UK for clothing and building materials – van insulation, cupboards, surfaces and carpets. It was discovered recently that the waste fibres from hemp crops, the inner bark can be fashioned into carbon nanosheets and then also made into supercapacitors.
Hemp sheets with high surface area can be transformed into highperformance energy storage devices and at a fraction of the price. Not only is hemp not mined from the ground, with all that environmental damage and workers safety to be considered, but it is non-toxic and batteries containing no metals are better if they do end up disposed irresponsibly in landfill.
We know lithium-ion batteries degrade with use, it’s very difficult and energy intensive to recover them. So, we end up replacing the gadgets powered by them. There’s now a new charging method which uses totally different chemistry – polypeptides (amino acid glue) to make the battery’s two electrodes, these pass electrons back and forth during charging and discharging with no degradation. A new battery that is also metal-free, easier to recycle and if they do end up in landfill they dissolve harmlessly.
Green, sustainable, rechargeable batteries are just around the corner, and for those who want to convert our vehicles to EVs we await their arrival. These technological advances will not solve our environmental problems. They’ll be mainly used to get is to buy lots of shiny new tech and dump all that old tech, instead of reducing and adapting what we have already.
The car industry, electric or otherwise, generates more than 3 million tonnes of scrap and waste every year already, and that’s before we all buy new EV ones and ditch our old ones at the same time.
Of course green batteries don’t solve everything – what are car emissions? Not just exhaust fumes. There’s tyre degradation throwing rubber everywhere, and a need for roads, which make a significant contribution to the destruction of ecosystems. Plus the production of ‘green’ EV vehicles creates environmental costs, our response to climate change needs to be a more measured technological adjustment, we need to ensure materials and manufacturing are as green as possible, and only then subscribe to them.
It’s not just a green lifecycle, but goods must be green after end of life, or isn’t it environmentally better not to buy anything? The current options promised by ‘green’ technologies are in reality just illusions. That new electric vehicle will still need the batteries changed for greener ones – or more likely you’ll have to buy a newer model. Best wait – like our van retrofit until the options are greener and take the bus.