Electric cars with lithium ion batteries.

[GOPBasher]

I'm not a fan of cars in general, and I think we should definitely go the European route and rely much more on mass transit. However, because we will still need some cars, EV's with Li-ion batteries seem to be the best option. It's much more realistic than hydrogen.

Oops, on edit, here's the link:
http://www.technologyreview.com/BizTech/wtr_16624,295,p1.html

[benburch]

1. FAR more realistic.

I also think we need to investigate flywheel energy storage, as the scrap from a worn out flywheel system is not a biohazard, being made of carbon fiber and ordinary metals.

[GOPBasher]

4. I haven't heard of that. I'll look into that. n/t

[Taverner]

2. Except if it rains and there's a leak

:scared:

I'm hoping for ethanol myself - not as clean as fuel cells but a renewable resource and not made in the middle east.

[GOPBasher]

3. Ethanol will play a role, but there won't be enough

to make it a primary fuel to move our nation's transportation system, even with mass transit.

[Taverner]

8. Not sure about that

Combined with more efficient vehicles (Prius 2009 getting 100MPG) combined with Ethanol, which can be produced quickly and cheaply - I see it as the next phase.

HOWEVER, the real pinch comes when we're talking petroleum by-products. Paint, chemicals, solvents, etc...you name it, are produced with petroleum. Ethanol can't fill this need, and the renewable alternative (hemp) is illegal.

[Massacure]

17. Prove that the 2009 Prius will get 100 MPG.

And hemp by no means is perfect crop for energy product. Fiber perhaps, but not energy.

[eggplant]

5. Well, that would be fine, if...

...we lived in a country the size of Europe. But since we have almost 50% more space, and only half the number of people, mass transit just isn't nearly as practical here. In the parts of the US where mass transit *is* practical, we have it.

[WhiteTara]

6. makes me want to wait to get an electric car

I know the hybrids aren't the answer. I'm thinking of the Honda Odyssey van. But sometimes I think that until something really great comes along, I'll have my Isuzu just fixed really well and keep driving it.
edited to say what I mean and tppying

[Dogmudgeon]

7. We're all going to have to "Do The Math"

Gasoline just hit $3 for premium in my neighborhood.

At $5 a gallon (before the end of 2007), people will be looking for an out. At $10 a gallon (before 2009), they will be lining up for hybrid cars, demanding ethanol ... and learning to tie nooses strong enough to hold Rush.

At $20 a gallon (before 2014), the exodus back to the cities begins.

--p!

[benburch]

9. I am SO glad that I have my 2002 Prius. nt

[phantom power]

10. A couple years ago, we moved to be closer to my wife's work...

According to our calculations, we saved roughly $1000 a year on the gasoline for her daily commute. (I work at home, so my commute doesn't count). And that was with gas prices around $1.50/gallon. And she drives a Corolla, not an Escalade.

A grand a year is a lot of money. I'm thinking that gas prices don't have to be anywhere near $20/gallon, before the economics of re-urbanization become compelling.

[NNadir]

11. I think, as you contemplate this, you should contemplate the world...

reserves of lithium.

[skids]

12. Not an issue. n/t

[NNadir]

13. Really?

Are you going to back up this claim, or should we just take your word for it?

Here is the link showing that the world supply of lithium is 13,000,000 tons.

http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/lithium/lithimcs06.pdf

Suppose we forget about the thousand other uses of lithium and dig up all the lithium to make car batteries. How many cars can we build with this 13,000,000 tons? Care to calculate?

[skids]

18. Calcs...

The first clue should be that even in the age of cell phones and laptops, the use of lithium for batteries is hardly a dominant contributer to demand. Between a half and 2/3rds of Lithium demand comes from the glass and ceramics manufacturing sector. So by your same token, perhaps before we advise everyone to buy some double-glazed windows, we should consider the world supply of lithium.

The only people that seriously worry about running out of Lithium are folks who need huge quanities of it for nuclear weapons arsenals, and they only want the trace isotopes.

At any rate, standard back of the envelop disclaimers apply. First let's get an agreeable approximate figure -- within probably an order of magnitude -- for the upper limit of lithium content of one of the older lithium ion (not Li-poly or any of the nanotech) batteries. We have to do this because the chemistry (and thus Li content) of the various new battery techs is being kept secret for proprietary reasons. (It can generally be assued to be much less -- for example because a vanilla Li-ion battery only manages to make half of it's Li ions mobile, whereas some of the newer ones claim to be immune to overcharging by virtue of the Li ions all leaving the cathode. We are far from the theoretical limit of fully utilizing Li in batteries.)

One figure popularly used is in the hazmat transportation field:

On June 21, 2001 RSPA issued a final rule to harmonize the HMR with the 1998 UN Model Regulations, ICAO Technical Instruction, and IMDG Code thereby regulating lithium ion batteries as lithium batteries subject to a lithium equivalency calculation. Equivalent lithium content is calculated in grams on a per cell basis to be 0.3 times the rated capacity in ampere hours. Thus, the equivalent lithium content for a battery/battery pack is the rated capacity in ampere hours for a single cell multiplied by 0.3 and then multiplied by the number of cells in the battery/battery pack.

http://www.batterypoweronline.com/july02Li-IonRegulations.htm

...however we can easily show that this is an overcautious estimate, just by looking at the material safety data sheets for a few Li-ion batteries:

http://www.saftbatteries.com/130-Catalogue/PDF/msds_psds_liion_en.pdf
http://www.rathboneenergy.com/batteries/material_saftey_data_sheets/liion/msds_liion_fr_uk.pdf
http://www.lecroy.com/tm/products/scopeaccessories/MSDS_MH63-2738.pdf

...which tell us, among useful advice like "do not eat" :eyes:, the Li compounds and their percent contribution to the entire battery's mass. Taking the first that's 30% LiCoO2, which is itself, if you'll consult your atomic weight table, 7/(7 + 59 + 16 + 16) 7.1% Li barring any unusual isotopes. So a common Li-ion battery is ballpark 2% Li by weight. The same vendor states it's EV-grade Li-ion batteries have an energy density of 149 Wh/Kg, which works out to 7.45Wh per gram of Li. (The other, over-precautious figure works out to a bit over 1 Wh/ gram of Li -- big discrepancy there and as an aside I have to wonder how they reached their figures.)

http://saftbatteries.com/120-Techno/20-10_produit.asp?sSegment=&sSegmentLien=&sSecteurLien=§eur=&Intitule_Produit=VLEcells&page=2

(no endorsement implied -- this company sells to the military and is attached at the hip with the republican-ass-kissing Johnson Controls. It's just that they had MSDS posted.)

Now I could punt and do a gross vehicle weight calculation here, but let's dig in:

A gallon of gasoline contains 124,000 BTU of which let's say to be extremely generous 60,000 BTU are used. Gasoline tanks in a reasonable car (e.g. not an SUV) are let's say 12.5 gallons. This is also being generous because the demand for larger gas tanks would be signifigantly lower if everyone had a gas pump in their garage.

So if a pure-electric vehicle is to perform to current passenger car specifications, it would need at most 12.5 * 60000 / 7.45 = 29Kg of Li. For a PHEV of course you'd need a whole lot less since the effective "gas tank equivalent" can be smaller by a factor of five to twenty, having fossil fuel onboard as a backup for the rare long trip.

Which brings the official figures of world supply and worst-case EV consumption onto the
same order of magnitude.

Now we get into the question of whether that 13,000,000 ton figure is correct or not. That figure is an estimate based on current extraction technologies, and frankly I'm not so confident it is even up to date at that. The Li production industry has long been concerned about waning demand, so they haven't exactly needed to get especially creative in their technological approaches. Li is found in a great many places:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Occurrence

For example, this here operation closed up shop because the market demand couldn't
justify it:

http://www.fmclithium.com/whoweare/hist.asp

Looking forward, it's quite more likely that Li-ion will be just another phase in a steady progression from one technology to the next, and in that perspective the whole argument is mute. By the time there's an Li supply pinch, nanotech ultracaps would have had a decade or two to develop.

I know the natural response to that is "if we wait that long we're doomed" so please do explain how the entire world is going to be persuaded to buy a new automobile (and where they would get the money) in less than that amount of time.

[NNadir]

21. OK, I'll buy that. If we dig up all the world's known Li, we can make

450,000,000 cars, roughly, if we buy your figures, 30 kg/car. Your calculation certainly seem well thought out. I am certainly not qualified to challenge your numbers, and you have done your calculation in a convincing way.

I stand corrected.

Now all we need is the electricity to power them up and we're back in the high life again, no?

I note that not all elements can be recovered economically, but I would imagine that an element like lithium could be recovered by a variety of means, depending on the energy available to process it, and the return on the energy invested in separating it from its contaminants. It is an unusual element because of it's physical properties, and this helps.

You are probably right that the technology could be seen as transitional.

[GOPBasher]

14. That's a good point. And thanks for the link in the other post, b/c

that's exactly the info I've been looking for (I had the same thought as you), but couldn't find. So thanks for providing that. :-)

[GOPBasher]

15. One point about Lithium reserves.

That source you provided for lithium reserves is really good. You should be aware, though, that's just existing reserves -- that which has already been discovered. I'm sure there is at least some still undiscovered, but the question is, how much?

[NNadir]

16. I am aware of this.

Still, even if the reserves were three times larger, there would be some limits on the technology.

[Dead_Parrot]

19. Earth has loads of lithium...

the problem is, most of it's in the lithosphere (gimme a "Duh"! :D). Extracting it might be tricky...

I wonder, though, if reserves of lithium are subject to the same economics as reserves of uranium - it's not currently worth the cost of going out and finding the stuff. Crank the price from $4/Kg to $40/kg and we might see a drastic change...

[dcfirefighter]

20. Give up the cars, urban living

I can't forsee any 'green' solution to a problem where every adult needs his own 2 ton vehicle.

Fix our cities. Capture the wealth created by transit systems by taxing the increase in land values.

[GOPBasher]

22. I agree with you, but we can't totally

get rid of cars. I do hope in 20 years far fewer people rely on them -- and that will pretty much have to be the case -- but there will still be some exceptions. I mean, there can be *some* cars. I don't see anything wrong with four people riding in a small, 1-ton electric car to work and back everyday. But one person sitting in gridlock in his SUV everyday is slightly different.

[dcfirefighter]

23. Perhaps just get rid of them for commuting

People often focus on intercity trains and the like, I think what is needed is a massive rebuilding of local transit. I'm not sure what fraction of vehicle miles are used commuting, but I do know that roughly half of the valuable land area of urban centers is dedicated to the car, between roads and parking.

The commuter lifestyle must end. Work where you live, live where you work. It's difficult because 1) jobs are scarce and 2) real estate is expensive. Fix both by moving taxes from jobs & labor and onto witholding land and emitting pollution. (If owning land had a carrying cost commensurate with it's market rental value, NO ONE would own land unless they were going to use it well. There would be no strip malls in cities, much less vacant lots or abandoned buildings)

Cities are where the jobs are. If a city were liveable (low crime, easy to get around, good public schools, affordable housing market) more folks would live there. It's fairly easy to set up a workable transit system when there are 10 or more housing units per acre.

[GOPBasher]

24. I agree. That's what the ideal would be. n/t

[NMDemDist2]

25. i saw an electric car on the freeway in Scottsdale just a couple days

ago

it was tooling along at 70 with the rest of us and i was stoked to see it in RED RED RED AZ

[GOPBasher]

26. That's cool. n/t

[Haole Girl]

27. I'm so glad people are still looking at alternatives

And this week the SPI (I think that's what it's called) comes out, showing the price of products related to inflation. What I'm wondering is how these reports don't show the spike in energy costs. It seems like it would have to affect the economy in a negative way. After all, didn't they say, for almost the past 30, years that the "fuel shortages" under the Carter administration caused horrible inflation?

Anyway, that was off topic, I know, but thanks for posting this. I've never heard of lithium battery cars and it sounds worth looking into.

[GOPBasher]

28. Thank you and welcome to DU!

:hi: