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2022-01-10
Lithium battery: Rare-earth mining comes at a heavy cost for environment
Are electric cars really greener?Since the body of the lithium battery itself uses the storage type of lithium battery as the power source, it can achieve zero emissions, which makes everyone generally believe that the ultimate practice in compliance with environmental protection standards. It is a pity that this is a wrong view, and it was misled by a number of car manufacturers, and it was even used to educate consumers. The fact is that although the car body is zero-emission, this kind of achievement is obtained at the cost of the damage to the environment by the lithium battery. To understand whether lithium electric vehicles and even hydrogen vehicles are truly zero-emissions, it is not only from the car body itself, but from the analysis of its complete supply chain, in order to meet objective and scientific judgments.
With the gradual popularization of electric vehicles, the demand for lithium batteries has increased sharply, which has led to the mining of rare metal raw materials and battery recycling, which may lead to new resource challenges and supply chain risks. Therefore, the industry is facing great challenges in this regard, and it is necessary to take a two-pronged approach to reduce the rare or harmful metals in the battery, reduce the harsh environmental and social costs caused by mining; and improve the recycling rate of the battery so that the metal in the waste battery can be reused. Therefore, the industry has tried to strengthen the flexibility and sustainability of the automotive supply chain and reduce the demand for major resources. It is necessary to formulate regenerative economic strategies.
Two-thirds of the global supply is mined in the Congo, Africa.
According to data from the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois under the U.S. Department of Energy, a typical automotive lithium battery pack NMC532 contains approximately 8 kg of lithium, 35 kg of nickel, 20 kg of manganese, and 14 kg of cobalt. The acquisition and disposal of these rare metals are extremely complex issues.
The oxides of lithium, cobalt and other metals, layer by layer, constitute the cathode of a lithium battery. The atomic properties of cobalt can stabilize the layered structure of the cathode and increase the energy density of the cathode. However, cobalt is a by-product of copper and nickel mining, and production is limited depending on the amount of copper and nickel mining. On the other hand, two-thirds of the global supply is mined in the Congo, Africa. The environment is extremely harsh, and the harm to child labor and the health of workers is immeasurable; just like other heavy metals, improper handling can produce highly toxic. Therefore, cobalt is the most valuable and most controversial heavy metal component in current lithium electric vehicle batteries. So academia and many new entrepreneurs are committed to developing feasible technologies to reduce or even completely abandon cobalt, claiming to have extremely positive results. Some companies try to replace part of cobalt with nickel to reduce the negative impact of using cobalt, but this may result in a shift in burden. In particular, nickel ore has a low content of available nickel metal, and there are still concerns about environmental protection, which cannot completely solve the problem. As for the cobalt-free technology, it is only the research results of the laboratory at present, and it is still unknown whether it can be mass-produced.
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