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A Second Life For Electric Car Batteries | Earth Wise

June 17, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The number of electric cars around the world is growing steadily. Battery technology continues to improve and the battery packs in the cars can have a long life. Generally, the batteries are considered to require replacement only when their range has dropped below 80% of its original value. Many are warranted to last for 8 to 10 years or more than 100,000 miles. Some seem to do much better than that.

But however long it takes, there will eventually be a wave of used batteries whose performance is no longer deemed sufficient for vehicle use. A new study, published in the journal Applied Energy, looked at the application of used vehicle batteries as backup storage for grid-scale solar photovoltaic installations where they could perform for more than a decade in this less demanding role.

The study looked at the economics of several scenarios including running a solar farm with no battery back up, running the same farm with brand-new batteries, and running the farm with a battery array made of repurposed vehicle batteries.

They found that the used EV battery array, if managed properly, could be a good, profitable investment provided that the batteries cost less than 60% of their original price. They looked at the technical issues of screening batteries and combining batteries from different cars to work together. They also looked at the economics of removing batteries from cars, collecting them, checking them over, and repackaging them.

Overall, they found that reusing vehicle batteries could ultimately meet half the forecasted demand for renewable energy backup storage over the next 10 years and would be both a technical and an economic success story.

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Solar energy farms could offer second life for electric vehicle batteries

Photo, posted June 10, 2011, courtesy of Nick Ares via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Keep Track Of Your LEGOs | Earth Wise

April 9, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Plastics in the ocean are a global problem that has attracted a great deal of attention. Most of the concern surrounds grocery bags, bottles, six-pack rings, and similar items. Recent research looked at another source of plastic pollution: LEGOs.

According to environmental scientists at the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom, it can take more than a thousand years for LEGO bricks to break down in the ocean. The iconic toys are made from a strong plastic called acrylonitrile butadiene styrene or ABS. Pieces of LEGOs are commonly found in ocean trash hotspots and wash up on shores across the globe by the thousands.

LEGOs are one of the most popular children’s toys in history and part of what makes them so popular is their durability. Barefooted parents stepping on one on the floor in a dark room can attest to that fact. But the full extent of their durability came as a surprise to the researchers.

The scientists analyzed pieces of weathered LEGOs collected from beaches, confirmed their age, and compared them to unweathered LEGOs from the 70’s and 80’s. They were able to determine the extent to which LEGOs had been worn down by ocean waves, sand, and salt over time. And it was surprisingly little.

LEGO has acknowledged the environmental impact of its products and has launched a goal to make its bricks from more sustainable sources such as sugarcane-based polyethylene by 2030, as well as improve its efforts to recycle and reuse old LEGO plastic.

Meanwhile, we should all we careful of where our old LEGOs end up.

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