Electric cars can cause environmental problems

Electric cars are expected to reduce air pollutants but their batteries are a big environmental challenge.

The campaign to replace gasoline-powered cars, diesel-fueled air pollutants with environmentally friendly electric cars is being promoted, but the problem of disposing of waste batteries of electric cars can be a challenging problem. with the environment, Guardian reported on August 10.

The British and French governments last month pledged to ban the sale of petrol and oil vehicles before 2040. Sweden's Volvo carmaker also said it will only sell electric or hybrid cars from 2019.

The number of electric cars in the world surpassed the milestone of 2 million vehicles in 2016 and will increase to 140 million vehicles by 2030 if countries meet the targets set out in the Paris climate agreement, according to estimates by the International Energy Agency. . Ajay Kochhar, CEO of Canadian battery recycling company Li-Cycle, said the electric vehicle boom could generate 11 million tons of batteries that need to be recycled between now and 2030.

Electric cars of Baojun E100 by General Motors.(Photo: General Motors).

The process of exploiting lithium and cobalt, the two main materials for batteries, can cause water poisoning and exhaustion of resources. Amrit Chandan, a chemical engineer at British high-tech company Aceleron, says the process of extracting these materials consumes too much energy. Damaged batteries have the risk of toxic gas leaking into the environment.

In the European Union (EU), which regulates automobile manufacturers to collect and recycle batteries and encourage cooperation between them and the recycling unit, only about 5% of the lithium-ion batteries are currently being recycled. processing. This low rate comes from the fact that most batteries need to be recycled in household appliances, often stored in a house or thrown into a landfill.

Marc Grynberg, CEO of Umicore battery recycling company in Belgium, predicts this scenario will not happen with electric cars."Automobile manufacturers will be responsible for collecting and recycling batteries , " Grynberg said. Umicore invested nearly 30 million USD to recover cobalt and nickel. However, lithium recall requires additional costs.

According to Francisco Carranza at Japan's Nissan carmaker, battery recycling has yet to be economically viable. For every kilogram of battery, companies have to spend more than a dollar to recover the $ 0.3 crude metal.

Nissan is currently collaborating with energy management company Eaton to reuse car batteries for the purpose of storing energy for families. According to Aceleron, when removed, car batteries only reduce 30% quality, suitable for reuse purposes.

Linda Gaines, transportation system analyst and electric vehicle specialist at Argonne National Laboratory, said that there is still time to build electric battery recycling plants with strong technology."But the problem is we don't know what kind of battery will appear when there are no standards and design specifications for recycling purposes."