Transportation Cu, Li and Co Flashcards
Electrification can be good for decarbonisation but what are some key issues?
- Displacing the energy demand on the national grid
- Demand on precious metals
How much copper is in your average electric vehicle?
83kg
(most of it is in the battery)
What it an issue with electric vehicles power generation?
- It wears down the tires more - Releasing particulates onto the roads
- Battery is often built into the structure and incredible difficult to remove
- Thermal management of these batteries are required for chemistries of the battery to be maintained (expensive + important)
(importance in understanding all the effect associated with an electric vs non-electric vehicle)
What is in a Lithium Nickel Manganese Cobalt Oxide battery (NMC) which forms an EV battery?
LiNiₘMnₙCoₚO₂
(92.5% efficient at 25 degrees)
Where does Cobalt go once it is mined in the DRC
- Cobalt: starts off in the DRC, imported and refined in Japan/China
- Then to South Korea for primary formulation and back to China again before it is sold on
(China is the primary refinery for many of the elements inside LIBs) - Note the energy required in movement
What is the issue with refining processes of the metals used in LIB
- Where does the energy come from for these refining processes
- These processes take up a lot of energy
(China was very brown coal but has made the switch to renewables)
The original mining of these precious metals/materials used in LIBs comes from where?
Ususal quite unstable regions (e.g. DRC or South Africa)
What is the main 3 applications of Cobalt?
- Batteries (41%)
- Superalloy (16%)
- Hard materials - carbides, diamond toolings (10%)
How much Cobalt is in an electric vehicle?
6.8 Kg
What % of the DRC’s cobalt comes from artisanal mines?
And how many child miners are associated with DRC mining?
- 20%
- 40,000%
What is a Gigafactory?
- Is a large-scale manufacturing facility that produces batteries, primarily for electric vehicles (EVs) and energy storage system
- The term was popularised by Tesla, which used it to describe its massive battery production plants
- The idea is to having them running of renewable to offset the footprint of the car
What are Tesla Powerwalls
- Are at home battery systems (from spent EV batteries) that store energy, from solar panels to power your home
- Second-life of batteries
- Reduces reliance on the energy grid
What is a big no-green driver towards electrification?
What is the issue with this?
- The rising cost of energy
- Is out grid big enough to take the amoung of current required/capacity (even if we have the grid structure)
How can electric vehicles make the most difference?
- EV can make a big difference depending on the energy which is used in the battery production
- (i.e. this anlysis below came from when China depended more heavily on brown coal than renewables)
- Need to factor this in when using metrics (quite a dynamic concept)
