The world has plenty of clean energy. The problem is storing that energy and getting it where we need it, when we need it, says battery recycling pioneer Emma Nehrenheim. While batteries are fundamental to powering a sustainable future, their production is surprisingly harsh on the environment. She lays out the science behind a breakthrough in recycling a battery's core elements, offering a manufacturing solution that could vastly reduce the industry's environmental impact and demand for new materials from mining.
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[00:00:00] TED Audio Collective As an adult, I spent many of my early years in cities like New York and Seattle, where I could make good use of public transit and rideshare services. It wasn't until the pandemic hit that I needed a car for the first time.
[00:00:27] I relocated to the outskirts of an Atlanta suburb and needed a way to get around. I got myself a compact SUV for the first year or two, but I always wanted an electric one.
[00:00:38] And in the spring of 2023, as soon as I had an opportunity to switch out my combustion engine for a sexy new lithium-ion battery-powered joyride, I was in. And while I genuinely felt good about not contributing to the local pollution metric in my city,
[00:00:55] my partner asked me a simple question that I'm still thinking about today. Exactly where did I think the charging stations got their power from? And what impact did my new car battery really have on the planet?
[00:01:12] It made me realize how short-sighted I'd been about the true environmental cost of creating green products. What materials are being extracted from the earth to spur consumers to feel strongly about their good deeds?
[00:01:25] What's the true impact of shopping green if we don't fully understand the life cycle of these products from cradle to grave? I'm Sherelle Dorsey, and this is TED Tech. Dr. Emma Nierenheim is a professor in environmental engineering at Norfolk in Stockholm,
[00:01:46] where she works on a project to deliver the world its greenest battery. And in this talk, she takes to the TED stage to walk us through recycling batteries. It turns out, greener batteries can help us protect the environment while also creating a new economy and industry,
[00:02:05] one that goes far beyond excavating the Earth's crust. Here at Shortwave Space Camp, we escape our everyday lives to explore the mysteries and quirks of the universe. We find weird, fun, interesting stories that explain how the cosmos is partying all around us.
[00:02:33] From stars to dwarf planets to black holes and beyond, we've got you. Listen now to the Shortwave podcast from NPR. So the world is going electric. And batteries will do for electrification what the refrigerator did for food.
[00:02:55] Because batteries will allow us to move clean energy through time and through space. We don't have a problem with the availability of energy on this planet. We have a problem with getting this energy to where we need it and when we need it.
[00:03:13] But if we approach battery manufacturing the wrong way, we will end up repeating mistakes from the past. Mistakes that are at the heart of the climate and environmental crisis that we see today. And that's what I'm here to explain.
[00:03:30] It's all about the way we are using the Earth's resources. So historically and today, we have been mining oil from the Earth's crust with little concern for the long-term effect. And this example of how we've been approaching the fossil fuel industry and how we've been dependent on it.
[00:03:53] How we have been extracting oil where it's economically possible, refined it, burned it and it ends up in the atmosphere. That's the perfect illustration of the fundamental simple and linear model that we are working with. Extract, use and discard.
[00:04:12] When I was a professor in environmental engineering, I used to teach my students that mistakes are okay. As long as you learn from your mistakes and as long as you take action. So now when we are evolving, when we are changing, when we are building things from scratch,
[00:04:31] we should think twice and we should do it right this time. And what does this mean for batteries? There are two things we need to know about batteries. One is they require enormous amounts of energy to produce. And the second is they are made from minerals.
[00:04:49] Minerals that requires global mining, refining and processes in long and complex supply chains. So if we start with energy, a battery factory is a very large and complex operation. It requires large amounts of heat and electricity to produce.
[00:05:09] It starts with a chemical plant, then follows long coating machines. After that we have cell assembly which is fine electronics equipment that requires clean and dry rooms.
[00:05:23] Now in the end of this process, each and every battery cell needs to be charged and discharged in certain patterns to gain its properties.
[00:05:33] And if we put this kind of factory under a fossil fuel grid, we will end up with a carbon footprint which is the benchmark today. Which is around 100 kilograms of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour produced battery. Now that would be a big mistake.
[00:05:52] Luckily you can slash that footprint with some 67 percent. 67 percent, that's two thirds if you put the same operation on the renewable energy grid which we do in northern Sweden.
[00:06:07] That on the other hand leaves us with the remaining footprint, the last third, coming entirely from everything that is outside the factory. And the lion part from the supply chain. And that leads us to the second topic we have to talk about which is the minerals.
[00:06:29] So batteries are made from minerals, for example nickel, cobalt and lithium. And the way we approach this is going to determine how much we can further slash that carbon footprint.
[00:06:44] Luckily if we put it under this renewable grid, if we approach it the right way with sustainable mining and a lot of recycling, we can significantly reduce the footprint. One tonne of lithium, battery grade lithium, requires 750 tonnes of brine or 250 tonnes of lithium ore.
[00:07:12] Same with cobalt. If you need one tonne of battery grade cobalt, you have to mine 300 tonnes of cobalt ore. So does this give us a similar situation to the oil history we had? No, because the difference is that when we mine metals, they are elements.
[00:07:34] And if you can get elements back to their elemental form, they are just as good as new. And this is the fundamental difference between the combustion engine history that we're leaving now and the new electric vehicle industry.
[00:07:52] Because at the end of the life cycle, you can bring the metals back from the market and you can use them again and again.
[00:08:01] So what we have developed at Northvolt is a recycling process where we take the batteries back from the market, we discharge them fully, we take away the aluminium casing, we take away all the cabling.
[00:08:17] And then we take out the cells and the modules. We take those cells and modules together with some waste material we have from the production and we throw it into a big shredder. We chop it up, we take out the foils, the copper foil, aluminium foils and plastics.
[00:08:37] And then we are left with something that we call the black mass. And this black mass is a fine black powder. And this fine black powder consists of everything that we had coated on the electrodes in the factory.
[00:08:52] It's the graphite from the anode and it's the nickel, cobalt, manganese and lithium from the cathode. We take this fine powder, the black mass, we pass it on into the hydrometallurgical process. Hydrometallurgy means treating metal in liquid.
[00:09:13] And what we do is that we use different pressure changes, temperature changes and pH to separate them from one another. We refine them so we get them into the form that we need for the production. Salts for nickel, cobalt and manganese or hydroxides for lithium.
[00:09:32] And then we do like this. We send them across site straight into production. So what we have is a circular battery economy. And this is the fundamental difference between the combustion engine industry and what we are building now. We should do this not only for batteries.
[00:10:00] We should do it for wind turbines, we should do it for solar panels. We should do it for all the new industries that we need for this transformation. And we're going to have to accept mining as part of this transition. Absolutely.
[00:10:19] But when we are taking things from the earth crust, when we are borrowing from the future generations, we have to do it responsibly and we have to make sure that we can use these materials over and over and over again. Because fundamentally, we can.
[00:10:38] And we should not only build recycling processes and a port for the materials when they come to their end of life.
[00:10:46] We should also build accounting and traceability systems so that each carmaker can follow up and trace how much they can further sash their footprint by sending the batteries back at the end of their life.
[00:11:04] And while we are doing this, I'm sure you already figured this out, it's not only environmentally beneficial. It's also, of course, economically profitable. Because by doing this, the material sustains its value through the lifetime.
[00:11:23] And this all together may sound a little bit hard, it may sound a little bit complex. But if we get this right, it will be rewarding on so many levels.
[00:11:34] And I can tell you that the young generation of talents, of engineers that we hired today, they understand all this and they ask nothing less from us.
[00:11:50] So with that said, I just want to say to all of you who listened, and I also want to say to all the people who packed their bags and moved up to the Nordics who are fighting every day to make this happen, thank you.
[00:12:05] NFTs, GPUs, grokking, capacitance. The tech world is full of a lot of lingo. Keep up with the latest acronyms and technology news with TED's new newsletter.
[00:12:27] TED Talks Tech will bring you tech headlines, talks, podcasts, and more on a biweekly basis so you can easily keep up with all things tech and AI. Subscribe now at the link in our show notes. All right, that's our show. Thanks for listening.
[00:12:49] TED Tech is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced by Nina Lawrence, who also wrote it with me, Sherelle Dorsey. Our editor is Alejandre Salazar and the show is fact-checked by Julia Dickerson. Our production coordinator is Farah DeGrunge.
[00:13:06] If you're enjoying the show, make sure to subscribe and leave us a review so other people can find us too. I'm Sherelle Dorsey. Let's keep digging into the future. Join me next week for more.