graphene battery, future and present
The uptake of electric vehicles today has much to do with the advent of batteries lithium-ion technology Lithium are relatively light, energy-rich and can be recharged many times they are at least three times lighter than equivalent lead-acid batteries, about three times more powerful and offer three times the life cycle July 2012 McKinsey Quarterly Company said the price of lithium-ion batteries could decline sharply by 2020 could disrupt the transport, energy and oil costs current lithium-ion areas are about 500 per kilowatt Article McKinsey sees this price drop to about 200 kWh by 2020 and 160 by 2025 others, as Navigant research predict the price drop to 300 by 2015 the price of the EV battery have already fallen 40 Regardless between 2010 and 2012 that gets the right numbers, it is inevitable that pr ix decline quite significantly over the next 5 years removing the biggest obstacle to wider cost EV adoption.
According to Kate Krebs of the National Recycling Coalition U S, the lithium-ion are classified by the federal U S government as non-hazardous waste and are safe for disposal in the normal municipal waste stream.
The metals in batteries to lithium cobalt ions, copper, nickel and iron are considered safe for landfills or incinerators Lithium in Lithium-ion is in an ionic form, hence the name, but they contain no lithium metal is highly reactive and corrodes quickly in the air it is also very flamable in its elemental state.
Lithium-ion batteries are made from non-toxic lithium carbonate often used in dishwashing oxide, non-toxic cobalt used as a ceramic enamel, non-toxic graphite used in the rods, and a diaphragm material plastic polymer the most toxic components in the final product are the electrolyte and lithium cobalt oxide, none of which are persistent in the environment and that are both increasingly replaced by more benign compounds.
But why anyone would have this profitable resource in a landfill when it can be recycled for example Tesla's electric vehicle batteries are recycled with Umico in Europe and with Kinsbursky Brothers in North America for a nice profit.
Here is an excerpt from an article on closed loop recycling program for batteries to Tesla Tesla, we refined our recycling program for years before sending our battery packs to recycle, we can reuse about 10 of the battery weight, for example if the battery and some electronic components in North America we work Kinsbursky Brothers to recycle about 60 percent of the battery in Europe, we recently began working with Umicore, and now we sell cars in Japan and the Asia-Pacific region, we will soon have new recycling Asia.
We focus on the Tesla recycling process with Umicore, which is the first time we were able to use a recycling system closed-loop factory plants of Umicore are able to recycle our batteries in materials fully reusable and significantly reduce the carbon footprint of manufacturing lithium-ion batteries in.
The battery recycling technology Umicore is able to save at least 70 percent on CO2 emissions at the recovery and refining of precious metals It does this by creating products and by-products, rather than following a mechanical separation process Click here for the full article.
Battery recycling lead acid vehicle is one of the recycling stories of the most successful world with a recycling rate of over 90 As seen from the experience of Tesla, the recycling of lithium batteries is not only environmental sense, it makes economic sense.
Research on lithium batteries has accelerated over the past last decade, with the promise of the energy density multiplied by four or even enhanced by a factor of ten promising areas of research are for phosphate batteries lithium-vanadium batteries also called redox flow vanadium, lithium sulfur batteries and lithium-air batteries.
Vanadium flow batteries promising VFBs huge battery storage technology and have been touted as the next big thing.
When applied to the highest voltage VE for this type of high speed results in battery and acceleration The energy density of this battery will result in VE lighter weight.
LVP batteries recharge faster and also have a life expectancy greater than current batteries lithium ion.
Lithium-sulfur would increase the energy density of the batteries by a factor of four while the lithium-air increase the energy density up to a factor of ten.
There are challenges to develop and market the two types of batteries.
Lithium-sulfur have a lifespan shorter than current lithium-ion batteries and can t be charged repeatedly Pacific Northwest National Laboratory PNNL announced on 9 January 2014, they developed a hybrid anode for lithium batteries -soufre which increases the cycle rate of this battery type by providing a graphite shield around the anode.
Research conducted at Stanford University researchers provides battery with tools investigating how the battery behaves in real time.
IBM began to study the technology of lithium-air batteries in 2009 with the Battery 500 Project There are certainly challenges to develop breathing air batteries, but the price is a battery with energy density of gasoline this would extend the range of electric vehicles about ten times.
Click here for more information on the IBM 500 project.
Lithium solid state have a breakthrough the greatest potential in the coming years density levels in lithium-ion ones with a liquid electrolyte has significantly improved over the last 20 years or tripled, but the curve improvement is over for this type of technology and just as tweaking can be done without solid state batteries offer liquid electrolyte much higher energy density than current lithium-ion on the two have much less melted, they are easier to form, be no risk of fire and don t inflate the batteries in solid remove much of the complexity built for lithium-ion today.
The semiconductor battery manufacturing process is very similar to a number of current industrial processes there is no major work to do on tooling up for production Because of this, the potential for electric vehicle batteries in the solid state to introduce over the next two three years is reasonably high, a company in particular the development of this technology is now Sakti3 right led by Dr. Ann Marie Sastry There are a number youtube videos featuring Anne Marie describing the batteries from the solid state.
Stanford University researchers announced their discovery of an aluminum-ion battery in the journal Nature that holds the promise of cheap, super-fast charging, flexible batteries with thousands of charge cycles The team headed Hongjie Dai by Professor made the accidental discovery of using a graphite cathode which were found to have some pretty amazing results aluminum batteries have long promise as advanced technology because they are cheap, safe, non-flammable and able high charge storage capacity part of the problem, however, is that the load cycles were miserably poor.
Using the graphite cathode in composing the researchers found the number of charge discharge cycles cycle rate was in the thousands with virtually no battery capacity loss in appropriate lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles generally have a duration life of about 1500 researchers say a cycle rates for experimental battery 7500.
There is still work to do on these batteries, but this could be a major advance These batteries could charge a mobile phone in a minute rather than the hours it takes using lithium-ion technology Read more here.
The aluminum manufacturer Alcoa has teamed with Israeli based company Phinergy and announced the development of a battery that will provide a 1600 km range battery electric vehicle air aluminum feeding s requirement is only for water ups every three or four hundred kilometers energy is released by the reaction of aluminum and water when mixed with the oxygen in the air using a silver-based catalyst the company has already tested the battery and intends to begin production late 2014 this type of battery is used, it can not be recharged and this fact is being promoted as an additional technology.
The battery can be used in hybrid or electric pure as a supplement to pack existing lithium-ion battery, it would certainly put the limited range undermined now considered by many as a disadvantage for EV adoption When the battery is discharged, it is simply replaced still give 1,600 km range There is no mention on the website Phinergy the amount of electricity used to create aluminum, which is an intensive industrial process power however, this is a demonstration that the battery technology can provide the wide range of electric vehicles.
Lithium is considered a relatively rare element is a rare earth metal in the lithium Manual and natural calcium with limited global supply discounting the seemingly endless amount found in sea water of 230 billion tons The current programs EVs recycling will be further developed as the use of the battery faster.
Having said that research conducted in 2004 sponsored by the US Department of Energy, Office of Transportation Technologies, Advanced Automotive Technologies Office indicates that the supply of materials used in the construction of lithium batteries, including lithium does will not issue more research by the University of Michigan in collaboration with the Ford motor company in 2010 indicates that there are sufficient resources for the rest of this century technology to extract lithium from seawater has been developed by the south Korean company POSCO There is simply no reason to think there will be a shortage of lithium in the way we came to understand peak oil.
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