computers

Recycling lithium-ion batteries

March 28, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Lithium-ion batteries are used to power computers and cellphones and, increasingly, vehicles. The batteries contain lithium as well as various other valuable metals such as nickel, cobalt, copper, and manganese. Like other batteries, lithium-ion batteries have a finite lifetime before they can no longer perform their intended function.

Recycling lithium-ion batteries to recover their critical metals is an alternative to mining those metals. A recent study by Stanford University analyzed the environmental impact of obtaining those metals using lithium-ion battery recycling compared with mining. They found that the recycling process is associated with less than half of the greenhouse gas emissions of conventional mining. The process uses about one-fourth of the water and energy of mining new metals. North America’s largest industrial-scale lithium-ion battery recycling facility is Redwood Materials, located in Nevada, which uses a clean energy mix that includes hydropower, geothermal, and solar power.

These calculated advantages are associated with recycling batteries that have been in use. The advantages are even greater for recycling scrap: defective material from battery manufacturers.

The advantages of recycling are dependent on the sources of electricity at the recycling plant and the availability of fresh water.

At present, the U.S. recycles about half of its available lithium-ion batteries. By comparison, 99% of lead-acid batteries (like those found in cars and trucks) have been recycled for decades. As the supply of used lithium-ion batteries continues to increase, it is important for the availability of industrial-scale battery recycling to keep pace.

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Recycling lithium-ion batteries delivers significant environmental benefits

Photo, posted May 7, 2020, courtesy of Mark Vletter via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Electricity demand from data centers

February 17, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Data centers are dedicated facilities containing computers and their related hardware equipment such as servers, data storage drives, and network equipment; they are the physical facilities that store digital data. Data centers are one of the most energy-intensive building types, consuming 10 to 50 times more energy per floor space than a typical commercial office building. With the explosive growth of artificial intelligence technology, data center energy use is expanding rapidly.

A new report by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory outlines the energy use of data centers from 2014 to 2028. The report estimates that data center load growth has tripled over the past decade and is likely to double or triple again by 2028.

Data centers consumed about 4.4% of total U.S. electricity in 2023 and are projected to consume between 6.7% and 12% of total U.S. electricity by 2028. Most of the increased power demand of data centers is due to the growth in AI servers. Artificial intelligence requires increasingly powerful chips and intense, power-hungry cooling systems.

There have been revolutionary changes in artificial intelligence technology in just the past couple of years and its role in society has dramatically expanded. With that expansion has come a dramatic change in the energy usage by the data industry and innovative solutions are needed to allow data centers to meet their growing demand for energy.

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Berkeley Lab Report Evaluates Increase in Electricity Demand from Data Centers

Photo, posted August 31, 2024, courtesy of Aileen Devlin / Jefferson Lab via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Battery life in electric cars

January 9, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Most of us have lots of experience with the batteries in phones, computers, and other gadgets. Batteries don’t last forever, and we sometimes have to replace them. It’s a fact of life. These days, it’s becoming more common to drive electric cars and the fundamental principle is the same. However, the battery pack in an EV is the most expensive part of the car, so its reliability and lifespan is a greater concern.

EV batteries generally have generous warranties. In the US, EV batteries are required by federal law to be covered for at least 8 years or 100,000 miles, whichever comes first. So, the financial exposure from the battery pack is reasonably limited. Even so, EV owners would like to know that their car’s battery pack is likely to last a long time.

Battery life is generally determined by laboratory tests involving repeated charge-discharge cycles over a relatively short period of time, as opposed to those cycles being spaced out over years.

A new study by Stanford University looked at battery performance under conditions much more like what would be experienced in the real world. Cars experience frequent acceleration, braking that charges the batteries a bit, lots of stops, periods of rest, and so forth. Nothing like just charging and discharging repeatedly.

The study found that today’s EV batteries may last up to 40% longer than expected. Real-world stop-and-go driving benefits batteries more than standard test conditions.

The cost of EV batteries continues to get lower all the time and it is likely to be quite a long time before one is likely to need a new battery assuming one even keeps the car long enough.

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Existing EV batteries may last up to 40% longer than expected

Photo, posted August 27, 2021, courtesy of Ron Frazier via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

A better way to extract lithium

December 10, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Lithium is the critical component in the batteries that power phones and computers, electric cars, and the systems that store energy generated by solar and wind farms. Lithium is not particularly rare, but it is difficult and often environmentally harmful to extract from where it is found.

Traditional ore sources are increasingly difficult and expensive to mine. The largest known deposits of lithium are in natural brines – the salty water found in geothermal environments. These brines also contain other ions like sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium, and efficiently separating out the lithium is extremely challenging.

Traditional separation techniques consume large amounts of energy and produce chemical waste, particularly hazardous chlorine gas. These techniques typically suffer from poor selectivity; that is, the process is interfered with by the other ions present in natural brines.

A team of researchers at Rice University has developed a three-chamber electrochemical reactor that improves the selectivity and efficiency of lithium extraction from brines. The middle chamber of the reactor contains a specialized membrane that acts as a barrier to chloride ions, preventing them from getting to the electrode area where they can form chlorine gas.

The new reactor has achieved a lithium purity rate of 97.5%, which means the setup can effectively separate lithium from other ions in the brine and allow the production of high-quality lithium hydroxide, the key material for battery manufacturing.

The Rice University reactor design has the potential to be a game changer for lithium extraction from geothermal brines.

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‘Game changer’ in lithium extraction: Rice researchers develop novel electrochemical reactor

Photo, posted October 21, 2023, courtesy of Simaron via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Lithium in Arkansas

November 28, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Lithium is the critical raw material in the batteries that power electric cars as well as cell phones, computers, and other gadgets. The stuff has been nicknamed “white gold” for good reason. Chile and Australia are the world’s largest producers of the metal, which is mostly extracted from brine in evaporation ponds. The majority of it is then processed in China. The energy industry has been increasingly working to produce the raw materials needed to produce lithium-ion batteries in the United States and process those materials domestically. There are multiple projects at various stages across the country.

Researchers at the US Geological Survey and the Arkansas state government recently announced that they have discovered a vast trove of lithium in an underground brine reservoir in Arkansas.

With a combination of water testing and machine learning, the researchers determined that there could be 5 to as much as 19 million tons of lithium in the geological area called the Smackover Formation. This is more than enough to meet all the world’s demand for it.

Several companies – including Exxon Mobil, which is covering its bets on the future of oil as an energy source – are developing projects in Arkansas to produce lithium. If these companies can develop and scale up economical new ways to extract lithium from salty water, the region in Arkansas could become the lithium capital of the world.

Energy and mining companies have produced oil, gas, and other natural resources in the Smackover Formation, which extends from Texas to Florida. The same brines have long been the source of other valuable substances.

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Arkansas May Have Vast Lithium Reserves, Researchers Say

Photo, posted May 22, 2020, courtesy of the European Space Agency via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

A structural battery

October 25, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The size and especially the weight of batteries is a critical factor for most things that use them. Battery weight is a key limitation for computers and cell phones. It is even more of a limitation for electric cars, ships, or planes.

If the battery of a device or vehicle can also function as a load-bearing structure, its weight and energy consumption can be dramatically reduced. This concept of a structural battery is sometimes called massless energy storage. It has the potential to halve the weight of a laptop computer, make cell phones as thin as a credit card, and increase the range of an electric car by as much as 70%.

Researchers at Chalmers University in Sweden have been working on structural battery technology for many years. Their first published results in 2018 showed how stiff, strong carbon fibers could be used for chemical storage of electrical energy.

Since then, they have been creating batteries with increasing energy density. Their latest versions still have only a quarter of the capacity of today’s lithium-ion batteries. But if batteries can be part of the structure of a vehicle, for example, and can be made of lightweight materials like carbon fiber, then the overall weight of the vehicle can be greatly reduced and not nearly as much energy will be needed to power it.

The goal of the Chalmers research is to achieve battery performance that makes it possible to commercialize the technology. There is a lot of engineering work to be done before these structural batteries can go from laboratory proofs of concept to real world use. But the potential is quite promising.

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World’s strongest battery paves way for light, energy-efficient vehicles

Photo, posted August 8, 2024, courtesy of NOI Techpark via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Big Tech and emissions

September 23, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Most of the well-known largest technology companies have established ambitious clean energy goals. They are on record for achieving net-zero emissions for all their operations and supply chains in many cases by 2030. As a result, they have been investing heavily in renewable energy in various ways. Despite these lofty goals and sincere efforts, many of them are struggling to reduce emissions. The reason is simple: big data.

A good example is Google, which started investing in renewable energy in 2010 and since 2017 has been purchasing renewable energy on an annual basis to match the electricity consumption of its global operations. However, Google’s greenhouse gas emissions have increased nearly 48% since 2019. This is primarily a result of data center energy consumption.

The expanding use of artificial intelligence technology is consuming large amounts of electricity. For example, a single ChatGPT query uses nearly 10 times as much electrical energy as a traditional Google search.

Google is by no means unique in having this problem. Microsoft’s carbon emissions have risen by nearly 30% since 2020. Amazon is struggling to reach net-zero across its operations by 2040.

All of these companies are entering into large power agreements with renewable energy companies all across the country. The AI arms race for more and more computational power is driving a race to install more and more large-scale renewable energy. Power purchase agreements for solar power, wind power, and even geothermal power are becoming a major activity for most of the largest tech companies.

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Can Google gobble up enough renewables?

Photo, posted February 12, 2023, courtesy of Geoff Henson via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Solid-state batteries for cars

September 19, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Battery-powered electric vehicles have historically faced the challenges of limited driving range and long charging time. In recent years, both of these limitations have been largely overcome for many if not most drivers. Popular EVs on the market can go 300 miles and more on a charge and today’s fastest charging networks can add 200 miles of range in 20 minutes. But many people want even more range and even faster charging. Both of these things will happen in the not-too-distant future.

Multiple companies are working on solid-state batteries, which hold more energy in a given volume than current batteries. The lithium-ion batteries that power today’s EVs (as well as our phones and computers) have a liquid or gel electrolyte. Solid-state batteries use a solid ceramic or polymer electrolyte that provides higher energy density, faster charging times, and reduced fire risk as well.

Samsung announced that it will produce solid-state batteries for vehicles by 2027. Toyota says it is on track to develop a solid-state battery by 2027 or 2028. California-based QuantumScape has an agreement to supply solid-state batteries to Volkswagen for mass production. Tesla has not said what it is doing with regard to solid-state batteries, but it is likely that it’s also pursuing the technology.

The upshot of all of this is that EV ranges are likely to increase dramatically over the next several years leading to the availability of vehicles that can go 600 miles or more on a charge. Given that the cost of EVs is already rapidly becoming at least competitive with if not lower than that of gasoline-powered cars, the days of internal combustion are becoming numbered.

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Want an EV With 600 Miles of Range? It’s Coming

Photo, posted August 17, 2024, courtesy of Bill Abbott via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Mining Metals From Water | Earth Wise

March 14, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington are working with industry to develop a method of extracting valuable materials from various sources of water. The technique is the 21st-century equivalent of panning for gold in rivers and streams.

The patent-pending technology makes use of magnetic nanoparticles that are surrounded by an absorbent shell that latches on to specific materials of interest that are found in certain water sources. These sources could include water in geothermal power plants (known as geothermal brines), water pulled from the subsurface during oil or gas production, or possibly effluents from desalination plants. Extracting valuable materials from geothermal brines could greatly enhance the economics of geothermal power plants.

The initial focus of the development is on lithium, which is an essential element in many high-technology applications, especially in the batteries that power cell phones, computers, and electric cars. The global market for lithium is projected to reach over $8 billion a year by 2028 and very little of it is currently produced in the United States.

The tiny particles are added to the water and any lithium is drawn out of the water and is bound to them. Using magnets, the nanoparticles can be readily collected. Once the particles are no longer suspended in liquid, the lithium can easily be extracted, and the nanoparticles can be reused.

PNNL is developing the technology in partnership with a company called Moselle Technology as well as with other commercial partners. This new technology offers the promise of extracting critical materials in a quick, cost-effective manner.

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Tri-Cities Scientists “Magically” Mining Metals From Water

Photo, posted June 4, 2012, courtesy of Tom Shockey via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Lithium Mining And The Environment | Earth Wise

August 22, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The Salar de Atacama in Chile is a large, dry salt flat surrounded by mountain ranges and is one of the driest places on Earth. Parts of the Atacama Desert have gone without rain for as long as people have been keeping track. Water rich in dissolved salts lies beneath this flat surface and it is particularly rich in lithium salts. Forty percent of the world’s known lithium deposits are the in the Salar.

Lithium is the key component of the batteries that power electric cars as well as cell phones and computers. It is an essential part of the transition away from fossil fuels and towards green energy. But it is important that this element is obtained responsibly with minimal damage to the environment.

Lithium, the lightest of the metals, tends to occur in layers of volcanic ash, but reacts quickly with water. It leaches into groundwater and settles in flat basins where it remains in a briny solution. This dense brine often ends up beneath pockets of fresh surface water, which are havens for fragile ecosystems.

A new study by the University of Massachusetts Amherst looked at the hydrological impact of lithium mining in the Salar. The study found that the impact of lithium mining depends critically on how long surface water is in place. Much of the fresh water there is at least 60 years old. Both droughts and extreme rainfall can cause major changes to the surface water that ordinarily comes from mountain runoff. Lithium mining itself only accounts for less than 10% of freshwater usage in the Salar. But the state of the surface water needs to be carefully monitored to protect the ecosystems as the climate continues to change.

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How environmentally responsible is lithium brine mining? It depends on how old the water is

Photo, posted February 21, 2016, courtesy of Jorge Pacheco via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Computing With Honey | Earth Wise

April 28, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Researchers are always working to develop faster and more powerful computers. Some of them believe that the future of computing lies with neuromorphic computers, which are systems designed to mimic the neurons and synapses found in the human brain.

The human brain has more than 100 billion neurons with more than 1 quadrillion synapses or connections among them. These numbers far exceed anything people have built. There have been some neuromorphic computer chips made that have the equivalent of more than 100 million neurons per chip, but this is still far less than the number in the brain. Despite all its complexity, the brain uses vastly less power than a powerful computer. Some supercomputers use tens of millions of watts to operate; the brain uses around 10 to 20 watts.

Many researchers are searching for biodegradable and renewable ways to make neuromorphic computing components. Researchers at Washington State University have demonstrated a way to make them using, of all things, honey. The honey is used to form a memristor, which is a component similar to a transistor that can both process and store data in memory. The device uses honey processed into a solid form and sandwiched between two metal electrodes. The organic device is very stable and reliable over a long time.

So far, these devices are on a micro scale – about the size of a human hair. The researchers want to develop them on a nanoscale, which is about 1/1000 the width of a human hair, and then bundle many millions or even billions together to make a neuromorphic computing system. Such a honey-based system would be renewable and biodegradable – which, pardon the pun, would be really sweet.

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Honey holds potential for making brain-like computer chips

Photo, posted January 28, 2008, courtesy of Dino Giordano via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Iron Flow Batteries | Earth Wise

November 15, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Lithium-ion batteries power computers, cell phones, and increasingly, automobiles. They started out being rather expensive but have become dramatically cheaper over the last decade, with prices dropping about 90%. Batteries are needed to store clean power from wind and solar generation and lithium-ion batteries are increasingly being used for that purpose as well.

Utility-scale energy storage requires substantial battery installations and battery cost is still very much an inhibiting factor in the widespread adoption of the technology. Lithium-ion battery costs continue to drop but because they require expensive materials like lithium and cobalt, there are limits to how low their prices are likely to get.

As a result, researchers have continued to seek ways to produce batteries made out of cheaper materials. Among the more promising technologies are flow batteries, which are rechargeable batteries in which electrolyte flows through electrochemical cells from tanks.

Flow batteries are much larger than lithium-ion batteries and include physical pumps to move electrolytes. They typically are sold inside shipping containers. Clearly, such batteries are not suitable for use in vehicles, much less in consumer electronics. Nevertheless, they represent a practical option for grid storage.

A company called ESS has developed an iron flow battery suitable for utility energy storage. Clean energy firm CSB Energy plans to install iron flow batteries at several solar projects across the U.S. that will store enough energy to provide power 50,000 homes for a day. According to ESS, the iron-based batteries should sell for about half the price of lithium-ion batteries by 2025 and be able to store energy for longer periods.

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New Iron-Based Batteries Offer an Alternative to Lithium

Photo, posted March 21, 2021, courtesy of Nenad Stojkovic via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Metals In Western Water Supplies | Earth Wise

October 29, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

A new study published by the University of Colorado Boulder looked at the problem of rivers being contaminated by acid rock drainage. Rocks that include sulfide-based minerals, such as pyrite, oxidize when exposed to air and water. The resulting chemical reaction produces sulfuric acid which, when present in water, dissolves metals like lead, cadmium, and zinc. The recent study found that rare earth elements are also leached out of rock by this process.

Rock drainage occurs naturally throughout the western United States, but historic mines that disturbed large amounts of rocks and soil have dramatically increased this process and have led to growing downstream water pollution. Upwards of forty percent of the headwaters of major rivers in the West are contaminated by some form of acid mine or rock drainage.

The warming climate has brought longer summers and less snow in winters. Longer, lower stream flows make it easier for metals to leach into watersheds and concentrate the metals that would otherwise be diluted by snowmelt.

Rare earth elements are essential components of many high-tech devices such as computers, hard drives, and cell phones. There is not a long history of studying the hazards they might represent when they enter the environment.

The study looked at the Snake River watershed in Colorado and found that increasing amounts of rare earth elements are entering Colorado water supplies. Concentrations of rare earth elements are not ordinarily monitored and there are no water quality standards set for them.

According to the researchers, once rare earth elements get into water, they tend to stay there. Traditional treatment processes don’t remove them. It is a growing problem that needs to be addressed.

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Rare earth elements and old mines spell trouble for Western water supplies

Photo, posted October 27, 2007, courtesy of Dion Gillard via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Red Hot Chili Solar Panels | Earth Wise

April 9, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The majority of solar panels in use today are made from either single-crystal or polycrystalline silicon, the same stuff used to make the ubiquitous chips in computers, cell phones, and countless other devices. In addition, a growing fraction of solar panels utilize thin-film technology, which offers cost and flexibility advantages.

Monocrystal silicon still provides the highest efficiency and longest lifespan in commercially available panels, but the lower costs and some other features of thin-film solar panels are growing that market over time.

More recently, perovskite solar cell technology has been a source of great interest in the research community. Perovskites are a class of minerals with a specific crystalline structure that already have uses in various applications. As a solar cell material, perovskites offer the potential for converting more sunlight to electricity, being manufactured far more cheaply using no exotic or expensive materials, being more defect-tolerant, as well as a having number of other advantages. They also have the potential for having very high efficiency.

Recently, a group of researchers in China and Sweden published results of studies demonstrating that the addition of a novel ingredient has increased the efficiency of perovskite solar cells to nearly 22%, which is better than most commercial silicon solar cells. The ingredient is capsaicin, the chemical that gives chili peppers their spicy sting. Adding capsaicin expands the grains that make up the active material of the solar cell, allowing the more effective transport of electricity.

Why did the researchers think of adding the active ingredient of hot peppers to a solar cell in the first place? So far, they aren’t saying.

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Solar panels capture more sunlight with capsaicin – the chemical that makes chili peppers spicy

Photo, posted August 16, 2019, courtesy of Pedro via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

China And Rare Earth Mining

September 4, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Rare earth elements are a crucial part of much of modern technology. Everything from computers to X-ray machines and aircraft engines needs one or more rare earth elements for magnets, lenses, and other functions. The world’s tech giants such as Apple, Huawei, and Tesla depend on suppliers of rare earths.

Rare earth elements are not actually rare, but they are very expensive to extract in ways that are not extremely harmful to the environment. China has been a major source of these elements since its rare earth mining industry took off in the 1990s. The removal of rare earths from the earth’s crust, using a mix of water and chemicals, has caused extensive water and soil pollution.

Today, concrete leaching ponds and plastic-lined wastewater pools dot the hills of Southeast China. Large wastewater ponds sit uncovered and open to the elements in many places. Landslides or barrier failures can spill contaminated contents into waterways or groundwater.

Local and federal officials in China have started to shut down illegal and small-scale rare earth mining operations and have embarked on a cleanup of polluted sites. The rare earth mining cleanup operation is part of wider efforts across China to address severe problems of water, air and soil pollution.

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology estimated that the cleanup bill for southern Jiangxi Province could amount to more than $5 billion. Many environmental experts and local officials say that the cost of the cleanup should not be shouldered by the Chinese government alone, but also by the rare earth industry and the global companies and consumers that benefit from rare earth technology. As rare earth mining efforts start up elsewhere around the world, it is important not to repeat the mistakes made in China.

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