Environmental Cost of Hybrids' Battery Recycling? 520
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?"
Google Much? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
They can be recycled (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.rbrc.org/consumer/ [rbrc.org]
http://www.ehso.com/ehshome/batteries.php [ehso.com]
Toyota Claims It Can Recycle The Whole Battery (Score:5, Informative)
Toyota claims that [hybridcars.com]
It really depends on many factors (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Battery life cycle (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Google Much? (Score:3, Informative)
Try Sanyo Eneloop.
They have slightly less capacity than the top of the line regular NiMH (2000mAh vs 2700mAh), but they can output upwards of 3A with no problem, and are Low Self Discharge cells. They can be recharged >500X, have no memory effect to speak of, and only lose 15% of the charge PER YEAR at 70F.
With Hybrid LSD cells such as these, there is really no excuse to use alkaline batteries any more.
P.S. You can get a pack at Costco for $30 that includes the charger, 2xAAA, 8xAA batteries, plus 2xC and 4xD sized adapters, that let you use the AA cells in devices that take C or D batteries.
Bad study. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Toyota Claims It Can Recycle The Whole Battery (Score:2, Informative)
And those batteries are probably worth more than that $200 in raw materials, and for new batteries, they need the raw materials anyway.
Re:Google Much? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Interesting. (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Not just the cost of recycling... (Score:1, Informative)
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.
How Tesla's Lithium Batteries are Recycled (Score:5, Informative)
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 [teslamotors.com]
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.
Re:Google Much? (Score:3, Informative)
Toyota also treats the batteries gently, keeping the charge between 40-80% except in emergencies (like out of gas) where it can drain them to 0%.
Consumer batteries only hold about 60% of the charge put into them, so to hit 100% they take roughly 167% of their capacity. Toyota's batteries hold something like 80-85% of the charge put into them.
Consumer batteries trade reliability for capacity.
Re:$200 bounty (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Car's Battery (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:$200 bounty (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Battery life cycle (Score:3, Informative)
In fact, current estimates [batterycouncil.org] are that 97% of lead used in lead-acid batteries is recycled. 60-80 percent of a new lead-acid battery that you buy is recycled from an older battery. Don't believe the Greenpeace BS - their data is 20 years old, before many laws were passed regulating lead-acid battery recycling.
Disclaimer - I'm a heavy [volt914.com] user [blogspot.com] of lead-acid batteries.
Hogwash (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:$200 bounty (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Google Much? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Google Much? (Score:1, Informative)
Actually, the life of your rechargeable batteries relies mostly on your charger. Cheap trickle chargers dump energy into your batteries even after they are full, cutting their life expectancies. Expensive battery chargers detect when the batteries are full and stop placing more energy on the cells. If your batteries are ever warm from charging, you just lost battery life. NiMH can be recharged more often then NiCd, but have less capacity too.
Um, factual error: NiMH batteries have about 3 times the capacity of NiCads. However, they are less tolerant to overcharging. It's certainly not difficult to make a very smart charger. In fact, if you have a computer, you can do it extremely precisely by looking at derivatives of charge curves. Certainly, you'd expect Hybrid cars to employ that kind of technology.
Re:$200 bounty (Score:4, Informative)
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.
"Battery" is plural (Score:1, Informative)
Bruce
Re:Car's Battery (Score:4, Informative)
330V at 6.5Amps? Are you sure.
Doing the simplest of EE calcs that gives you 2145W of power. Or 2.1kW, that doesn't seem like enough to push a car anywhere.
Also assuming that the battery holds a standard 100Watt-Hours per KG thats 4.5kW hours.
So the battery could push the car (at 2mph) for 2 hours before needing a recharge.
I think 65-100A delivering 21.5kW-33kW at least would be required to push the car around at a decent speed, for few minutes before the engine kicks in to keep the battery topped up. These are not Plug in electric vehicles, they are hybrids.
all batteries can hurt you (Score:4, Informative)
Check out the Prius Emergency Response Guide [toyota.com] for some information on some pieces that can hurt you.
Bruce
Re:Google Much? (Score:5, Informative)
There are a ton of variables that determine battery life, but to say that it relies mostly on your charger is not true when even the most basic charger these days uses peak detection and thermal monitoring to stop charging.
NiMH batteries will _always_ get warm when charging at a decent rate (and most cells like to be charged at a rate somewhere between C/2 and C to get reliable peak detection), because charging them is only 70-80% efficient. The rest goes into heat. If you continue pumping current into them after full, then yes, they heat up quickly.
NiCd batteries only heat up significantly when you continue to charge them after they are full, or you charge them at very high currents.
The #1 killer of typical batteries is letting them sit around dead or pushing them into reverse voltage by draining a pack too far. They like to be stored with at least some charge in them, but too often they end up sitting around for a year or two in between uses and too often they end up sitting dead which kills them. Lithium based cells are so bad that if you drain them completely, you can not revive them, so they typically have a small circuit on them which monitors cell voltage and disables the cell when too low.
There is a ton of information on proper care of batteries including charging here at BatteryUniversity.com [batteryuniversity.com] including information on what types of behaviour kills certain types of cells the fastest.
Re:"Battery" is plural (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Fuel Cell is the only way to go... (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Car's Battery (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, as a fellow Prius owner I have to correct you slightly. The "standad" 12v battery in a Prius is puny compared to that in a standard car. Generally speaking you cannot easily jump a "standard" car with a Prius (I tried and just about drained both my batteries entirely and ended up resetting the Prius. It wasn't happy!). If you have to jump a traditional car with a Prius it's recomended to have the other car off and the Prius on. Let the other car charge off your 12v for 10 mintues, then disconnect the Prius from the other car before trying to crank the other car. If you leave the Prius connected the other car will drain your Prius in the hurry. The problem is the 12v in your prius has very little capacity. This is because the 12v is really like a watch bettery, it's used to turn on the computer in your car, while the 100lbs NiMH hybrid battery is what is actually used to start you engine when you start up at every red light.
They do it already... (Score:2, Informative)
"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.
Re:$200 bounty (Score:3, Informative)
It's collective -- it refers to a group of things like "flock" or "bunch". But it's not plural -- batteries is plural.
Re:all batteries can hurt you (Score:3, Informative)
People tend to dismiss low voltage, while respecting high voltage. But it's not the voltage that kills you, it's the amperage. The only reason you can ignore low voltage is that under about 50 volts, electricity won't break your skin with the presence of salt water. (sweat can sometimes suffice, or some other electrolyte [wikipedia.org]) And while an auto spark coil will often generate 50,000 volts or more, there's not enough amperage to do any significant damage. (you won't forget the feeling, however!)
A car battery throws 12 volts with an large amount of amperage. (50 amps? 100?) This much amperage is enough to melt wedding rings, screwdrivers, and lots more in very short order. To give an analog, your standard wall socket is rated at 15 amps.
Always show respect for the car battery. There's plenty of death in there if you're stupid.
It's true that Volts*Amps=Watts, where Watts is a measure of total power. But while high voltage is annoying, high amps will kill you.
Re:Car's Battery (Score:4, Informative)
I think 65-100A delivering 21.5kW-33kW at least would be required to push the car around at a decent speed
Probably not, no. At 21.5kW a good electric motor typically delivers something like 100Nm (70 lbs.ft) at 4000rpm (or nearly-proportionally higher torque at lower speeds), which is more than enough to accelerate a reasonable weight vehicle quite quickly.
I agree that 6.5A@330V wouldn't be enough, but I don't think as much as 65 would be necessary. Looking at the specs for the Prius, its motor produces 450Nm at 400RPM, which probably equates to approximately 10kW. The _motor_ (not the battery pack) is described as max 6.5A, which suggests there's a voltage step-up somewhere in the control system.
Re:$200 bounty (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Car's Battery (Score:2, Informative)
I've owned a 2002 Prius, and currently own a 2006 Prius. Neither car has a starter motor, that the 12 volt battery can spin, to start the ICE.
This link [ecrostech.com] describes the starting and other operation of the hybrid system. The very first line under "Stationary Engine Start" reads: "To start the engine, MG1 is driven forward using electrical power from the high voltage battery ..."
2004 Prius II - Emergency Response Guide. (http://techinfo.toyota.com/public/main/2ndprius.pdf)
Roadside Assistance
The Prius uses an electronic Gear Shift selector and an electronic P switch for Park. If the 12-Volt auxiliary battery is discharged or disconnected, the vehicle cannot be started or nor can it be shifted out of park. Most other roadside assistance operations may be handled like conventional Toyota vehicles.