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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

Mining extinct volcanoes

December 2, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Rare earth elements are a group of 17 elements that are used to improve the performance, efficiency, and durability of a wide range of products. More than 200 products across a diverse set of applications make use of rare earth elements. Although the amount of rare earth used in a particular product may not be very much of its weight, volume, or monetary value, it may often be necessary for the device even to function. Rare earth elements react with other elements to form compounds that are essential because of their specific chemical behaviors.

Rare earth elements are not actually rare; in fact, they are fairly common. But they are mostly not found in their pure form and are generally difficult to refine. China accounts for more than 90% of global production of rare earth elements and this represents a strategic problem for the rest of the world.

New research by scientists from the Australian National University has found that some extinct volcanoes, which have not erupted for thousands or even millions of years, may be rich sources of rare earth elements. Furthermore, those elements may be easier to extract than the ones from other sources because the iron-rich magma that formed the volcanoes could be up to 100 times more efficient at concentrating rare-earths than magma found in active volcanoes today.

The clean tech industry uses rare earths for wind turbines, solar panels, and electric cars. The demand for rare earths may grow fivefold by the end of this decade. Relying on just one country for the world’s supply is a major concern. There are ancient volcanoes all over the planet and they may represent a solution to a global problem.

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Extinct Volcanoes Could Be Source of Key Metals Needed for Clean Tech

Photo, posted June 6, 2020, courtesy of Dennis Jarvis via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Detecting dangerous chemicals with plants

December 11, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Researchers at University of California Riverside have been studying how to enable plants to sense and react to a chemical in the environment without damaging their ability to function in all other respects. Why do this? The idea is to be able to use plants as environmental sensors that can detect the presence of harmful substances.

The impetus for the work is presence of a protein in plants that senses a plant hormone called abscisic acid (or ABA) that helps plants acclimate to environmental changes. During drought, plants produce ABA causing the plant to produce ABA receptor proteins that close pores in its leaves and stems, keeping in moisture.

The UCR researchers demonstrated that these ABA receptor proteins can be trained to bind to chemicals other than ABA. This ability enabled them to create sensors for many chemicals, including banned pesticides.

In their recent publication, they demonstrated a green plant that turns bright red in the presence of azinphos-ethyl, a banned pesticide. The goal is to easily detect chemicals in the environment from a distance. A field of these plants would provide an obvious visual indicator of the use of a banned pesticide. The researchers also demonstrated the ability to turn a variety of yeast into a sensor that could respond to two different chemicals at the same time.

Ultimately, it would be extremely valuable to design plants that sense dozens of chemicals to they could be used as living sensors that persist for years and provide environmental information. The sensor plants are not being grown commercially at this time. That will require regulatory approvals that are likely to take years. But the discovery opens up real possibilities.

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Plants transformed into detectors of dangerous chemicals

Photo, posted August 29, 2013, courtesy of the United Soybean Board via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Plastic In Lakes | Earth Wise

August 28, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

We are always talking about the millions of tons of waste plastic that finds its way into the oceans and about the challenges of trying to remove it. A new multinational study has found that the concentration of plastics and microplastics in some lakes is even worse than in the so-called garbage patches in the oceans and some of these lakes are even in remote places around the world

Scientists from institutes in multiple countries collected water samples from 38 lakes and reservoirs in 23 countries across six continents. The samples were then all analyzed by the University of Milan to assess the presence of plastic particles more than a quarter millimeter in size.

The study found that two types of lakes are particularly vulnerable to plastic contamination: lakes and reservoirs in densely populated and urbanized areas and large lakes with elevated deposition areas, long water-retention times, and high levels of human influence.

Lakes found to have the highest concentration of plastic included some of the main sources of drinking water for communities and were also important to local economies. These included Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland, Lake Maggiore in Italy, and Lake Tahoe on the California/Nevada border. Not all the lakes studied contained large amounts of plastic. For example, Windermere, the largest lake in England, had very low concentrations of plastic in surface water.

This was the first global survey of the abundance and type of plastic pollution in lakes and reservoirs and the scale of freshwater plastic pollution is sobering indeed. There is widespread concern that plastic debris is having harmful effects on aquatic species and ecosystem function and clearly is not limited to marine ecosystems.

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Plastic pollution is higher in some lakes than oceans

Photo, posted May 27, 2019, courtesy of Jonathan Cook-Fisher via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio