Today’s good news comes from the Good News Network

Swedish researchers say they have developed a new method of recycling batteries from electric vehicles that allows recovery of 100 percent aluminum and 98 percent lithium.

Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have presented an efficient way to recycle metals from spent batteries and, at the same time, minimize the loss of valuable raw materials such as nickel, cobalt, and manganese.

Furthermore, no expensive or harmful chemicals are required in the process because the researchers use oxalic acid—an organic acid that can be found in the plant kingdom.

Rouquette produces both the powder and the liquid in something reminiscent of a kitchen mixer. Although it looks as easy as brewing coffee, the exact procedure is a unique scientific breakthrough. By fine-tuning temperature, concentration, and time, the researchers came up with a new recipe for using oxalic acid, an environmentally friendly ingredient that can be found in plants such as rhubarb and spinach.

“We need alternatives to inorganic chemicals. One of the biggest bottlenecks in today’s processes is removing residual materials like aluminum,” says Martina Petranikova, Associate Professor at the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Chalmers. “This is an innovative method that can offer the recycling industry new alternatives and help solve problems that hinder development.”

The aqueous-based recycling method is called hydrometallurgy. In traditional hydrometallurgy, all the metals in an EV battery cell are dissolved in an inorganic acid. Then, you remove the “impurities” such as aluminum and copper. Lastly, you can separately recover valuable metals such as cobalt, nickel, manganese, and lithium. Even though the amount of residual aluminum and copper is small, it requires several purification steps, and each step in this process can cause lithium loss.

With the new method, the researchers reverse the order and recover the lithium and aluminum first. Thus, they can reduce the waste of valuable metals needed to make new batteries.

The latter part of the process, in which the black mixture is filtered, is also reminiscent of brewing coffee. While aluminum and lithium end up in the liquid, the other metals are left in the “solids.” The next step in the process is to separate aluminum and lithium.

“Since the metals have very different properties, we don’t think it’ll be hard to separate them. Our method is a promising new route for battery recycling – a route that definitely warrants further exploration,” says Rouquette, who published her results in the journal Separation and Purification Technology.

Petranikova’s research group is involved in various collaborations with companies to develop electric car battery recycling and is a partner in major research and development projects, such as Volvo Cars’ and Northvolt’s Nybat project.

The research was funded by the Swedish Energy Agency, BASE Batteries Sweden, Vinnova.

The good news here is the extensive mining of precious metals needed for EV batteries can be supplemented with recycled materials, offsetting the problem of supply and mining pollution. Today’s JohnKu talks about one issue with EV proliferation.

Electric Vehicles by John W. Howell © 2023

To power EVs,

Electricity needs rise . . .

Where’s it coming from?

Today’s good news comes from the Good News Network. Here it is in its entirety.

Around the capital beltway or Washington’s famous Rock Creek Park, you may see a group of people ripping up vines along the treeline beside the roads.

If you have then you’ve glimpsed superheroes who traded in their capes for gardening gloves and their time for the satisfaction of terminating an invasive species and saving a native tree.

Washington D.C’s “Weed Warriors” are a group of volunteers going back to 1999 that work for free to keep hundreds of species of invasive shrubs, vines, and climbers from taking over native ecosystems.

Among the 600 or so non-native invasive plant species found in and around our nation’s capital, some, like Polygonum perfoliatum, also known as the “mile-a-minute” vine, can be devastating. Suffocating trees by overgrowing the leaves in their canopy branches, a mile-a-minute can kill thousands of trees every year.

Since 1999, Weed Warrior volunteers have logged over 135,000 hours of time weed whacking in Montgomery County alone. Anyone can become a Weed Warrior; the group works in units for two-hour spaces removing weeds or planting native species in their place.

These invasive species management events are led by specially-trained volunteer Weed Warrior Supervisors and/or staff from the Montgomery Parks Dept. Warriors can get certified to de-weed in their spare time or lead events on their own. They can even have their own unique patch of ground in the D.C.-Metro area to control.

Why would anyone want to trade their free time for laboring hours away for free doing something our tax dollars are supposed to do for us? The answer is simple: it’s addicting.

“If I have any good mental health, it’s due to Weed Warrioring,” said 74-year-old area resident Barbara Francisco. “You have a sense of accomplishment.”

Francisco spoke to Justin Moyer of the Washington Post, who found the volunteer groups were filled with people who were happy to get out into nature and make a meaningful impact on biodiversity.

The Weed Warriors website states that non-native, invasive plant species (NNIs) can alter the complex webs of plant-animal associations that have evolved over thousands of years to such a degree that plants and animals once familiar to us are eliminated.

In meadows, for example, NNI monocultures can threaten butterfly populations because they can no longer find the native host plants they depend on for survival. In forests, NNI vines can strangle and smother trees. NNI shrubs can displace and shade out native plants that provide birds and other wildlife with food and shelter.

Recent research has even shown that NNIs can alter soil chemistry and disrupt the growth of the mycorrhizal fungi on which healthy forests depend.

Anyone who feels this is something they want to contribute their time to can go to the Montgomery County Parks website here and look at the upcoming Weed Warrior events—the next one is October 21st.

The good news is there are folks who care enough to spend their own time in saving indigenous plant life. Today’s JohnKu talks about investment. I hope you have a super weekend.

Volunteer by John W. Howell © 2023

Scratch a volunteer,

And underneath, you will find . . .

Passion, strength, and love.