Last week I wrote about Electric Vehicles (EVs), today I am continuing with the same subject and writing part 2 of the said article.
In that article, I mentioned the composition of the material required to manufacture the battery required for EV. The main material required to manufacture the battery is Lithium, Nickel, Manganese, Cobalt and Copper. The demand for these minerals is going to increase manifold with EVs coming into demand in a big way. Lithium is not readily available, as it is available as ore for mining in very few countries in the world. Chile in the South American continent has the world’s largest reserves, then there are Argentina, Australia, Portugal and China.
Lithium mining is done by two methods, lithium from Australia comes from ore mining, while in Chile and Argentina lithium comes from salt deserts, known as Salars.
In South America the biggest problem is water. The continent’s lithium triangle which covers part of Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, holds more than half the world’s supply of lithium metal beneath its Salars. The real issue is, to extract lithium miners start by drilling holes in the Salars or salt flats and pumping salty, mineral-rich brine to the surface. Then it is left to evaporate for months at a time, first creating a mixture of manganese, potassium, borax and lithium salts which are then filtered and placed into another evaporation pool, and so on. After between 12-18 months, the mixture has been filtered enough that lithium carbonate can be extracted. This process uses a lot of water-approximately 500,000 gallons per tone of lithium.
In Chile, lithium mining activities consume about 65% of the region’s water. This is having a big impact on local farmers in an area where some communities already have to get water driven in from elsewhere. There is also the potential for toxic chemicals to leak from evaporation pools into the water supply. These include chemicals, including hydrochloric acid, which are used in lithium processing.
In Australia, lithium is mined from the rock using more traditional methods, but still requires the use of chemicals in order to extract it in a useful form.
According to experts, on lithium extraction in Argentina’s Salar de Hombre Muetro, locals claim that lithium operations have contaminated water streams used by humans and livestock, and for crop irrigation. In Chile, there have been clashes between mining companies and local communities, who say that lithium mining is leaving the landscape marred by mountains of discarded salt and canals filled with contaminated water with an unnatural blue hue.
But lithium may not be the most problematic ingredient of modern rechargeable batteries. It is relatively abundant and could in theory be generated from seawater in future, which will be a very energy-intensive process.
Two other ingredients, cobalt and nickel, are more in danger of creating a bottleneck in the move towards EVs, and at a potentially huge environmental cost.
Cobalt is found in huge quantities right across Congo and Central Africa, and hardly anywhere else. Its price is jumping every year. Unlike most metals, which are not toxic when they are pulled from the ground as metal ores, cobalt is uniquely terrible. One of the biggest challenges with cobalt is that it is located in one country. You can literally just dig up the land and find cobalt, so there is a very strong motivation for unsafe and unethical behavior. The Congo is home to small mines, where cobalt is extracted from the ground by hand, often using child labour, without protective equipment.
Nickel is mined mainly in Indonesia, Philippines, Russia, Australia, Canada, China, Brazil and in small quantities in Michigan (USA). The nickel mining process depends upon whether the ore is sulphide or laterite. Both processes are very extensive and need lots of time and energy. Sulphide mining causes many pollution problems because of sulphur content in the ore. Being free from sulphur, laterite nickel deposits do not cause pollution problems as compared to the sulphide ones, but they do require substantial energy input, and their mining can have a detrimental effect on the environment. (soil erosion).
It has been proven extensively that Lithium, Nickel, and Cobalt mining are basically going to have negative effects on the environment, which in the long run may outweigh the environmental advantages which may be imparted by EVs.
As the main ingredient like lithium, Cobalt, and Nickel is generally not mined in USA and Europe, the countries from these regions are rooting for EVs, because the extra mining efforts are not going to ruin their environment, and they are after the other countries in the world to go in for EVs.
The impacts are very severe. Then how to make the Electric Car truly Green? What may be the solutions
1 The world has to find other types of batteries, which do not have lithium in them. Presently lithium batteries are everywhere. Everything was ok till the time EVs started using lithium batteries. Otherwise, lithium batteries were used for cell phones and laptops.
2 Make Lithium Ion batteries long-lasting- Research has been started in this field.
3 Find sustainable sources of lithium if the above two options do not succeed. Alternatively, the world must invest in advanced, cheap mining methods that can extract lithium from seawater.
4 Recycle Lithium Ion batteries- If none of the above works, we should dismantle lithium-ion batteries and recycle them safely. The initial research work has already been started in one university in the UK.
The lithium miners should also work on to do mining using clean energy to minimize Carbon Dioxide emissions.
In the end, the fact is that the lithium extraction process is not safe for the environment. Ironically, since 2018, the demand for lithium batteries for EVs has been growing.
The bottom line is that we should make EVs truly safe by supporting the efforts to develop environment-friendly batteries and adopting sustainable extraction processes.
Waiting for your views on this blog.
Anil Malik
Mumbai, India
15th November 2022.