Climate and Weather

espola said:
What are the environmental hazards of a world full of lithium ion batteries?
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forget about gas...imagine a world full of lithium ion batteries? have you stopped to think of a swimming pool filled with hybrid car batteries instead of water? your kid jumps in...that's an environmental hazard! what's all this about fossil fuels and global warming? the real menace is lithium ion batteries! don't change the subject!
 
Building a hybrid car is almost exactly the same as building a conventional car, requiring high-tech and highly automated assembly lines. This type of manufacturing process requires tremendous inputs of energy, particularly the forging of materials like steel, aluminum, glass and plastic. Interestingly, lightweight vehicles can sometimes be more energy-intensive to build than heavier cars because lighter metals like aluminum are harder to forge than stainless steel [source: Moon]. Experts estimate that 10 to 20 percent of a vehicle's total lifetime greenhouse gas emissions are released during the manufacturing stage alone [source: California Energy Commission].

Toyota admits that the production of its lightweight Prius requires more energy and emits more carbon dioxide than the production of its gas-only models [source: Williams]. The major reason is because hybrids like the Prius include more advanced components than a conventional car, including a second electric motor and heavy battery packs.
 
The trouble with plug-in hybrids (and electric cars, too) is that electricity isn't always cleaner than gasoline. More than 45 percent of electricity in the U.S. is generated by coal-powered plants [source: EIA]. According to another Argonne National Laboratory report, if a plug-in hybrid charges from coal-generated electricity, it could be responsible for emitting up to 10 percent more greenhouse gasses than a conventional vehicle and up to 60 percent more than a standard hybrid [source: Elgowainy].
 
Ricky Fandango said:
Please continue.
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In my professional life, I was the engineer responsible for batteries on three different projects, spanning the time from 1991 to 2008. The first project used a battery pack filled with NiCad rechargeables (20 ea of super-sub-C size, packed in a shrinkwrap 5x2x2 tube along with overtemperature and overcurrent cutout devices and a 9-pin connector).

The next project was for a light-weight device, and the specification had a requirement to use primary (non-rechargeable) batteries that were readily available on the commercial market. I went to Wal-Mart and bought a large number of lithium camera batteries, 12 of which packed into our custom battery holder were adequate to run the equipment for the time specified.

The last project was to equip soldiers and military equipment and vehicles with portable computer/radios. The batteries for the soldier units were specified as limited to certain types of primary lithium batteries - apparently the Army customer had a lot of them in storage.

With respect to the question on the table - Lithium batteries (on average over the many types) present less of a ccradle-to-grave environmental hazard than NiCad batteries (or the Nickel-Metal Hydride cells that followed). The worst of all is the Lead-Acid type as used in cars - its inherently poisonous nature is mitigated to a large degree by a robust recycling market, driven by strict government regulations.
 
espola said:
In my professional life, I was the engineer responsible for batteries on three different projects, spanning the time from 1991 to 2008. The first project used a battery pack filled with NiCad rechargeables (20 ea of super-sub-C size, packed in a shrinkwrap 5x2x2 tube along with overtemperature and overcurrent cutout devices and a 9-pin connector).

The next project was for a light-weight device, and the specification had a requirement to use primary (non-rechargeable) batteries that were readily available on the commercial market. I went to Wal-Mart and bought a large number of lithium camera batteries, 12 of which packed into our custom battery holder were adequate to run the equipment for the time specified.

The last project was to equip soldiers and military equipment and vehicles with portable computer/radios. The batteries for the soldier units were specified as limited to certain types of primary lithium batteries - apparently the Army customer had a lot of them in storage.

With respect to the question on the table - Lithium batteries (on average over the many types) present less of a ccradle-to-grave environmental hazard than NiCad batteries (or the Nickel-Metal Hydride cells that followed). The worst of all is the Lead-Acid type as used in cars - its inherently poisonous nature is mitigated to a large degree by a robust recycling market, driven by strict government regulations.
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We don't drive batteries. Just sayin'.
 
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