Slashdot Mirror
Environmental Cost of Hybrids' Battery Recycling?
LostMyBeaver writes "I have been considering the purchase of an electric or hybrid vehicle for some time. The biggest problem I have currently is that both technologies make use of rechargable batteries. The same tree-huggers telling me gasoline is bad are telling me that batteries are bad too. I'm only partially knowledgable in this area, but it appears the battery technologies are generally based at least on lithium ion, nickel metal hydride, lead acid and nickel-cadmium. I was hoping someone on Slashdot would be knowledgable enough to explain the environmental cost of recycling these batteries. If I understand correctly, after these chemicals are 'spent' so the cells no longer maintain a charge, they are not useful for producing new batteries. I can only imagine that the most common method of recycling the cells is to store the toxic chemicals of the batteries in barrels and refilling the cells with new chemicals. This sounds like an environmental disaster to me. Is there someone here that can help me sleep better at night by explaining what really happens?"
Stolen from Hybridcars.com:
How often do hybrid batteries need replacing? Is replacement expensive and disposal an environmental problem?
The hybrid battery packs are designed to last for the lifetime of the vehicle, somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 miles, probably a whole lot longer. The warranty covers the batteries for between eight and ten years, depending on the carmaker.
Battery toxicity is a concern, although today's hybrids use NiMH batteries, not the environmentally problematic rechargeable nickel cadmium. "Nickel metal hydride batteries are benign. They can be fully recycled," says Ron Cogan, editor of the Green Car Journal. Toyota and Honda say that they will recycle dead batteries and that disposal will pose no toxic hazards. Toyota puts a phone number on each battery, and they pay a $200 "bounty" for each battery to help ensure that it will be properly recycled.
There's no definitive word on replacement costs because they are almost never replaced. According to Toyota, since the Prius first went on sale in 2000, they have not replaced a single battery for wear and tear.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
http://www.rbrc.org/consumer/
http://www.ehso.com/ehshome/batteries.php
Toyota claims that
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Caveat - I used to work for Tek Cominco, and have smelted alloys, been a power engineer, and so on.
First, you have to think of the entire life cycle of both production, shipping, usage, and disposal.
Production: depending on the battery used (and there are multiple types being looked at), it may be produced from minerals from say Ontario or BC - in which case it was processed using a combination of methods, some of which use hydroelectric power (green). Acids are used in all metal production pretty much, so you pushing a giant truck down the road involves more acid than the batteries for a plug-in-hybrid which quite frankly has less mass. Smelting frequently uses coal, of course, so it depends on the source and composition of the coal - high-sulfur high-pollution like in China or low-sulfur low-pollution like in Canada. It is NEVER no pollution.
Shipping - again, the parts and batteries will be shipped on a boat using dirty bunker fuel (even in clean ports like LA they only use clean fuel when near the port, a small infinitesimal fraction of fuel usage).
Operation - if you rarely use a car and it just sits there, then your negative pollution cost of operation for batteries is higher - but your pollution of roadways from diesel/gas would be higher still - if you use it a lot it depends on the power source - if hydro, wind, solar and especially if time-shifted so it charges when power demand is low it has lower impact. If you live in a place where electricity comes from coal it's dirtier.
Recycling - if it is - and it will, these are expensive batteries - recycled, the cost of mining and production of the batteries is vastly reduced (anywhere from half to one-twentieth the pollution of getting it again). This is why we recycle scrap from cars and cans, it's cheaper than mining the minerals again.
In general, all things being equal, with typical usage, you will ALWAYS create less pollution with a plug-in-hybrid than with a non-hybrid.
ALWAYS.
Don't confuse battery warranty life with operational battery life, by the way.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Not only do these batteries last a long time, due to careful maintenance by the car's computer and optimization of charge/discharge patterns, they are fully recyclable and less poisonous when compared to lead batteries.
Most people believe the lifecycle of a battery dies when the car is totaled. Not true. Batteries are being salvaged and sold on ebay to continue their services past the totaling of the car. There has also been progress of mixing n matching individual modules within battery packs, to further extend the usefulness of each part of the battery. Hybrid car batteries are made up of many modules. When the battery fails, its only one or two modules that fail, and can be replaced with other modules that have the same charge/discharge characteristics.
These dead modules can then be sent to Toyota to be recycled, the nickel extracted and re-used in new batteries.
You do realize that the source study (http://cnwmr.com/nss-folder/automotiveenergy/)has been thoroughly debunked in the same Slashdot discussion that you linked to? If you troll, at least put some effort into it.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
It also depends on where you are and the relative costs and pollution impacts of the fuels you use.
Just look at the different types of biofuels - if we grow switchgrass or algae in areas with sufficient water they can make sense, just as cane sugar biofuel can make sense if we don't burn the crop waste in the fields and use sustainable practices, but in an arid place with high fertilizer usage it makes no sense.
In most cases, a plug-in-hybrid makes sense as at least ONE of the vehicles in a family, preferably as the one most used during in-city usage or for commuting. Some family members would be better off carpooling, biking, walking, or taking the (probably already biodiesel hybrid) bus or light rail.
Costs of first adopters of any technology are always high as they rarely can reuse materials, don't have efficient economy-of-scale production, and don't have all the features later adopters get.
You could cut your global warming emissions in half just by living near where you work, actually.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
It's not just the environmental impact of recycling, which as i read in an earlier post isn't that bad. The cost of making the batteries in the first place is hugely destructive to the environment. I was going to quote this to you verbatim but its just easier to link you here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKTOyiKLARk
I know its jeremy clarkson and he hates hybrids, but he makes valid points about the mining, the refining and the shipping of these materials.
Others have already given a good idea of how NiMH batteries are recycled (and how they are relatively benign if not), here is how Tesla is planning on recycling Lithium batteries used in their electric cars when it comes time to replace them:
Mythbusters Part 3: Recycling our Non-Toxic Battery Packs
While NiMH batteries are what's used in just about all hybrid vehicles on the road today, the industry is slowly moving towards as the advantages of Lithium based batteries (higher power to weight ratio, higher power density) outweighs their drawbacks (high cost), and higher energy density is required to make plug-in and pure electric vehicles usable.
Your typical car battery is designed to be a short-lived, end-user-replaceable unit.
A hybrid's batteries are different beasties altogether; replacing them is more like replacing your car's engine.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
As a Prius owner, let me assuage your concerns. There are two batteries in the Prius: the main hybrid battery that provides the power to move the car and a standard 12-volt battery that is used for starting the vehicle, running the radio, and all of the other things you would expect from a normal car battery.
The former has no user-serviceable parts and can kill you if you're careless. The harder to access in this case the better. The latter is easily accessible from the trunk and can be used with standard jumper cables to start someone else's car or similar functions.
If the main hybrid battery needs replacement, you sure as hell don't want to do it yourself. That thing is 330 volts, 6.5 amps, and a hell of lot bigger/heavier than a standard car battery.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
Sucks to be those thieves, mufflers are made out of stainless steel or rarely aluminum.
I've got a first-gen Prius, bought in 2000. While I've had to replace the 12V standard car batter, the main hybrid battery's fine. As there are no Priuses substantially older than mine, I'd say that I'm a good example, as are the friends who have the exact same model let alone the later models.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
i think you mean catalytic converters, mufflers are pretty much worthless. catylitic converters however are chock full of precious metals.
i have a roll of electrical tape.
Most of the vehicles have a single battery *pack*. Within that pack are somewhere around two hundred individual NiMH cells* which are each about the size of a D-cell battery. So you could break open the pack and steal the individual batteries, but that would probably entail more effort than just hauling the pack around (the pack contains things like the battery cooling and battery control computer. And you thought batteries were simple...
* Sometimes the cells are bundled together like in RC vehicle packs, so you can't actually get at the individual cells without even more effort.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Check out the Prius Emergency Response Guide for some information on some pieces that can hurt you.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Be careful of that. It's important not to confuse point emission with total emissions. Hydrogen has to be made by some process and then transported some distance, and the total emission footprint depends on how this is accomplished.
It takes electricity to create hydrogen, and (I just looked this up) just under 50% of our electricity comes from coal, and only about 7% from hydroelectric, so in most cases you're trading one type of pollution for another. It might be a good trade, because of economies of scale, but you still have to consider transportation, and the fact that hydrogen bulks more than fossil fuels -- a tanker truck can't hold as much energy in hydrogen as it can energy in petrol, so there has to be more trucks for a given energy requirement, which tends to drag down the benefits. The further you are from the source, the worse this becomes.
Hydrogen, essentially, isn't an energy source, it's a way to move energy around. This is because very little raw hydrogen exists naturally on Earth -- it has to be made somehow, and the best you can do is get slightly less energy out of it than the energy used to make it. If the energy used to make it is from a high pollution source, all you've done is move the pollution somewhere else.
To make hydrogen viable as a "friendly" fuel, you need to start with cheap, plentiful, low-footprint electricity to create hydrogen, and then have a way to get it to the pumps efficiently. It almost seems like we should stick with electric cars because the distribution network already exists. But I can see where hydrogen would probably be more practical for long trips, and the recharge time is much shorter.
The hot setup would be hydrogen created by fusion plants powered by deuterium from seawater, (a reaction we can not sustain yet) and transported via pipeline (which does not currently exist). But who knows -- maybe the existence of hydrogen vehicles will drive the need for a cheap source and cheap delivery.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
"Don't put it past them to steal the batter packs some time in the future as well."
Apparently you live in a sheltered area, because thieving dirtballs have been stealing car batteries for decades.
If it don't GO... chrome it. ~ Frank Banks
It's collective -- it refers to a group of things like "flock" or "bunch". But it's not plural -- batteries is plural.
I think it's more like replacing your car's fuel tank.
In terms of expense, it's definitely more like replacing the engine. Think ~$10,000 if you ever need to do it.
Of course, it's hard to see why you ever would. A hybrid is not like a battery electric; it uses the same sort of battery technology that's specced to last (typically) 10,000 deep charge-discharge cycles. But you're unlikely to ever see more than 50% discharge on a hybrid's battery pack (probably not even that), so you'll get a lot more cycles. 20,000 or more, I would guess. That equates to more than 200,000 miles with anything like a normal usage pattern. If you're doing long journeys it's probably more like 400,000 miles.