164th Knowledge Seekers Workshop March 23, 2017
As I make presentations at various conferences about our battery or energy storage system ESS, I am often asked the question tee ISN toxic battery and whether or not it can be disposed of safely to reach a wider audience, I thought it best to answer these questions in our blog.
First, it is necessary to understand the content of our EHS The cells of our battery mainly consist of metal oxides lithium They are made in Japan, a country with laws on emissions environment and stringent effluent are strictly controlled and monitored cells meet the requirements introduced by the Directive on the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment 2002 95 EC commonly called the restriction of hazardous substances or RoHS in other words they do not contain any of the following.
Beyond RoHS, our lithium-ion cells do not contain heavy metals or any toxic materials In fact, our cells and ESS, by law, could be eliminated by putting them in a landfill However, we have not the intention to landfill our ESS.
There is an exciting potential uses for the ESS in its afterlife Although our ESS is designed to optimize the performance and life in our roadster at an unfortunate moment, ESS will come to the end of his term of life in the application, however, it might be possible to use the SST in other applications, for example, the ESS could be used as a power source for off-grid backup or upgrade support the requirements of the battery for such an application are not as demanding as a high performance vehicle battery However, eventually the batteries no longer hold a significant burden and should be eliminated.
For this reason, we have worked closely with Kinsbursky Brothers, Inc. KBI Toxco to implement a recycling plan The objective of this plan is as follows.
Maximize the amount of materials that can be reused.
Maximize the amount of material that can be recycled; and.
Minimize the amount of energy used during the process of transport and recycling.
To understand how we achieve these goals, you must first understand some basics on building our ESS ESS consists of 11 modules These 8kwh 4 modules are made of plastic, aluminum, copper, electronics and many other things confidential improve safety and performance Each of roughly 35 kg modules is inserted into an aluminum housing as described above.
The housing also contains our 12V power supply, a battery system management board and other things security Besides the cells, most of the components of our ESS are designed to last the car's life if a person reaches ESS end of life, we plan to replace the modules, not the entire ESS to retrieve the modules used in the market, Tesla will set up an exchange program in which customers receive a credit on their return to their modules.
Propylene glycol in the cooling tubes is discharged and recycled locally.
Electronic components are removed and tested to determine whether they can be reused.
The son and some other metals are removed and recycled locally.
Modules are stored until the amount is sufficient to justify a stop on the milk truck headed by KBI this semi-truck makes regular course of their installation in Los Angeles with their recycling facility in Trail, British Columbia , Canada.
On arrival at the Toxco plant in Trail, the excitement begins if you're in the destruction hardcore Modules are frozen in liquid nitrogen to prevent new lithium component reactions.
The modules are placed in a grinder with mammoth teeth and broken into pieces less than 2 many tiny sparks appear, but otherwise it is not amazingly exciting.
Small pieces are fed into the hammer mill gift t you love these names as shown below to spray the remaining pieces into pieces even smaller.
separate screens and materials in three different products.
Fluff, illustrated above, is trucked to the U S boundary and properly disposed It contains most of the plastic time.
The cobalt and copper product is shown on the left cobalt filtercake is indicated on the right.
The cobalt and copper product is sold for the recovery of metals such as cobalt, aluminum, nickel, copper and the suspension is converted into a cobalt filter cake This cake is then reused in coatings of Appliances.
sodium carbonate is added to the resulting treating solution and precipitated as lithium carbonate; liquid is purged after recovery of the lithium salt, and is sent in the form of non-hazardous effluent for proper disposal.
As you can see, the recycling process is primarily chemical and mechanical, it does not include smelters; if emissions are minimized.
The result of this process is that we are able to recycle about 60 materials ESS and reuse another 10 wt We currently expect landfill only benign fluff, which comprises about 25 SES, but we expect virtually eliminate this in the future when our volumes are higher and we can justify the effort required to separate and reuse the plastic.
Keep in mind that we only made some tests with our modules, we hope that we won not need to recycle our modules for many years to come, however, we believe it is important, before starting the car to shipping, understand and plan for the eventual elimination of these vehicles.
Mythbusters Part 3 Recycling our nontoxic Battery Packs Tesla, recycling, battery, tesla, cobalt filter cake.