Solution Fluency Lithium-Ion Batteries

Define

Electric cars have become very popular lately and are known to be safe, but that is not all true. The problem with electric cars is actually with their batteries. Their lithium-ion batteries contain nickel that produces toxins when they are mined. Firstly what are lithium-ion batteries? These are rechargeable batteries made up of positive and negative electrodes along with an electrolyte. The negative electrode is made from carbon or graphite and the positive is made from metal oxide. As said before this specific type of battery is used in electric vehicles or EV’s. Secondly, this problem includes an element that creates toxic when it is mined, this element is nickel. When it creates toxins it can be dangerous for the environment because it affects your health. If this specific toxin is a hazardous chemical (like the one used in EVs) it can be dangerous because it can explode, burn or react with other chemicals. Therefore lithium-ion batteries are dangerous. The nickel in the Li-ion batteries is mined but through that process, it creates problems with the environment.

 

Discover

The has been a very minimal amount of the previous solution for this problem. This is mostly because electric cars are fairly new. But a solution that was used was to try to find another battery for the car itself. Different batteries used in electric cars include Nickel Metal Hydride (Ni-MH) and Lithium Sulphur (Li-S). Both of these batteries were proved unuseful as they both contained elements that when mined can be harmful to the environment (lithium and nickel). They are harmful to the environment because they can cause environmental and health costs. These could include pollution from nickel through its smelting and mining. The toxicity that is created is from the dust in the air as well as concentrations of metal that were produced by the smelting of nickel. Another way nickel can be harmful is that there is a very high chance that global warming could be caused by the process of mining it as it is the eighth highest of 63 metals to be mined in the year 2008. As stated before nickel can be very harmful but so can lithium. This is because there is no safe way to recycle lithium-ion batteries and they are highly reactive and corrosive. This can happen because they are easily overheated and can cause spontaneous combustion. Even though most people think that using a lithium battery is considered ‘green’, technically they aren’t perfectly green because they release toxins and cannot be recycled. The previous solutions didn’t work and this was because they weren’t necessarily new ideas as they both had elements that were already used when making the Li-ion battery. Through the research of what has been done to solve this problem not very much was found but that leads me to a possible solution.

Dream

As stated before electric vehicles are becoming very popular very fast so it is important for them to be as safe as they can for the environment considering there will be a lot of people using it. Car batteries in this day are made from LI-ions. They aren’t the best for the environment even though they may be better than cars that use gasoline. When talking about batteries within these electric cars we know that the main type of battery used in Lithium-ion batteries. Though electric cars are known to be very good for the environment they also have their fair share of disadvantages. For example, there is no safe way to recycle these batteries as well as the fact that they release toxins. So, in turn, this problem could be solved by using another type of batter, one that does not include nickel or cobalt as that is what seems to be the reason why toxins are emitted. So in order to find a battery that is greener than a lithium battery a mixture had to be used.

Deliver

The solution that was used is a molten salt battery. Molten salt batteries are used for both busses and cars with public transportation in urban areas. There are many types of molten salt batteries, for example, there is sodium-sulfur batteries which have a molybdenum interior or a Lithium Sulfer battery. But Sodium Sulfer is one of the safer options. Compared to other EV batteries this battery is made by using salt. This type of battery works by using the reaction of 2 electrodes one molten sulfur and the other molten sodium. This causes cell reactions. In a simulation of electrical consumption molten salt batteries were known to have the lowest energy consumption. This battery helps the environment due to the fact that it doesn’t release toxins since it doesn’t contain nickel. A molten salt battery will only make the environment cleaner. But there is a negative side to this, which is that it freezes easily and needs to be warm most of the time. This is the best choice of batteries from an energy consumption point of view.

 

Debrief

The process of my assignment didn’t start the best way as my partner and I couldn’t find a topic we were both interested in and related to what needed to be done. But we did end up finding a problem that was hard in a way because most people think that electric cars are good for the environment but for our topic, we had to go against that. When making a solution we were able to analyze the problem and fix it in a creative way. The product was a well thought out assignment. An improvement that could have been making in my assignment was my solution as I only used a couple of sources. This isn’t bad but I feel like if I were to use more cites my information would be more valid. Another improvement that could’ve been made is if I was to dream of another solution as I only had one which was to use another battery. This could’ve helped me to make more connections with another solution.

Sources

Beam, The. “Cobalt: the Toxic Hazard in Lithium Batteries That Puts Profit before People and the Planet.” Medium, TheBeamMagazine, 26 Apr. 2018, medium.com/thebeammagazine/cobalt-the-toxic-hazard-in-lithium-batteries-that-puts-profit-before-people-and-the-planet-ae5a63e0f57c.

Brueckner, Martin. “Not so Fast: Why the Electric Vehicle Revolution Will Bring Problems of Its Own.” The Conversation, 27 Oct. 2019, theconversation.com/not-so-fast-why-the-electric-vehicle-revolution-will-bring-problems-of-its-own-94980.

Davison, Alan. “Molten Salt Battery.” Molten Salt Battery – Liquid Metal Battery, Info on Renewable Molten Salt Batteries, www.altenergy.org/renewables/molten-salt-battery.html.

“Department of Health.” What You Know Can Help You – An Introduction to Toxic Substances, www.health.ny.gov/environmental/chemicals/toxic_substances.htm.

“How Green Are Home Batteries? The Environmental Impact of Lithium-Ion.” Solar.com, 1 July 2019, www.solar.com/learn/how-green-are-home-batteries-the-environmental-impact-of-lithium-ion/.

“Is Your Electric Car Really Green?” A\J – Canada’s Environmental Voice, 8 June 2015, www.alternativesjournal.ca/energy-and-resources/your-electric-car-really-green.

Lightfoot, Michael. “Three Steps to Clean up Electric Vehicle Supply Chains.” World Economic Forum, www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/09/clean-vehicles-have-a-dirty-secret-and-it-s-time-we-took-action/.

Opray, Max. “Nickel Mining: the Hidden Environmental Cost of Electric Cars.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 24 Aug. 2017, www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/aug/24/nickel-mining-hidden-environmental-cost-electric-cars-batteries.

“Sodium Sulfur Battery.” Sodium Sulfur Battery – an Overview | ScienceDirect Topics, www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/sodium-sulfur-battery.

University of Nottingham. “Rechargeable, High-Temperature, Molten Salt Battery.” Tech Briefs, 6 May 2019, www.techbriefs.com/component/content/article/tb/techbriefs/energy/34150.

C Iclodean et al 2017 IOP Conf. Ser.: Mater. Sci. Eng.

Einsteinium

A radioactive element named einsteinium was once created by Albert Ghiorso in 1952. Ghiorso was a nuclear researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. He was one of the many scientists to ever contribute to the discoveries of 12 chemical elements. Some of these elements include Californium or Fermium. Einsteinium is known as part of the actinide series. The actinide series is group 3 of the periodic table that includes elements that are all metal and all radioactive. Einsteinium has very comparable properties to the actinide series, which means that it is, in fact, metal and is radioactive. Actinides are also attacked by the element, oxygen or acids. Einsteinium was first isolated in the year 1952 when it was in leftover residue located in the south pacific after a test explosion. This explosion is known as a thermonuclear explosion which is an explosion that starts with a fission reaction in order to cause a reaction of hydrogen. Other elements relied on Einsteinium in order to arrange the element. For example, Einsteinium was used to arrange an element called mendelevium.

There are 17 known isotopes of Einsteinium and the most stable is Einsteinium-252. Einsteinium has an atomic number of 99 and has an atomic weight of 252 and its atomic symbol is written as Es. This element was the 7th transuranium element to be created.  A transuranium element has an atomic number that is greater than 92. It’s only use is for research about science and nothing else. The element Einsteinium is considered toxic because of its radioactive power. This element is formed when a uranium atom took neutrons and went through a lot of capture and decay which then lead to Einsteinium. This is exactly what happened with the thermonuclear explosion and that was how Einsteinium came to be.

Einsteinium was used to create heavier elements like mendelevium as said before. This was the only use for Einsteinium, which was for scientific research. There were no other uses for it. This was mostly because of its radioactivity as it was hard for scientists to work on the element. The creation of Einsteinium was due to the bombarding of plutonium. Einsteinium is a very unique element in the sense that it is known to decay very fast, in turn, it is very difficult for the scientists who are studying it because isn’t there for very long. This could be costly for scientists if they are trying to experiment with Einsteinium and other substances. For example Californium. Einsteinium decays very fast into that element which then makes it toxic so scientists can’t be near it.

As stated before, Fermium was one of the first 12 chemical elements but coincidentally it was also created in the debris of the explosion. Both Fermium and Einsteinium had similar components and scientists came up with developed methods in order to cleanse the both of them. An example of this is in a paper written by D.E. Ferguson who talked about the elements being in nuclear reactors and those elements enduring radioactive decay. Lastly, though there is very little research that has been done about Einsteinium compared to other elements, Einsteinium is still one of the most unique elements that exist.

 

Information Fluency

I used several questions to research my topic in depth. I had to ask myself about the key features of this element. For example, you start off with the basic questions like “Who created this element” and “What was it used for?” After answering those question you may ask a series of questions that can lead you onto different discoveries. This could mean asking in-depth “How this element was created/discovered?” or even how “Einsteinium could be alike any other element?”. Lastly, my last question was “Is Einsteinium part of a specific group on the periodic table? Which part?”

In this project, I used digital tools like Ebsco host and the world wide web in order to find out key information about my element. Another new tool I also didn’t realize was there for me to use was the Riverside Digital Library as well as the Encylopedia of Britannica. Within these sites, they taught me how to use the information correctly meaning how I can correctly cite my sources.

The process I used to investigate my topic was to firstly, research keywords of my questions about Einsteinium in order to get information about those questions. An example of this is searching “Einsteinium discovery” instead of searching “How was einsteinium created/discovered?”. After that, I used the research to make well thought out paragraphs of my elements information. Lastly, my process included being open-minded of the information I may find and to never stop asking because that is how you gain more knowledge of your project.

I verified and cited my information by always making sure I check if there is a viable author, publication date, if it is outdated and if the site is secure before I use any information from that specific site. Another way I verified my information was to always cite it in APA format in order to keep it consistent.

In my opinion, the process of this project went pretty well due to the fact I had enough information to explain my thoughts thoroughly. I think I also got a lot of information to answer my questions which made me more knowledgeable and excited to learn more about chemistry and elements. In the future, I think I could use different sources of information because a lot of the time I stumbled upon the same information on the same cites. Whereas if I used videos or books that outcome could’ve been different.

Sources

Einsteinium. (2018). Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia, 1; Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=funk&AN=ei020000&site=ehost-live 

Periodic Table of the Elements: Einsteinium. (2019). Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition, 1. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=rch&AN=134487461&site=ehost-live

Actinide series. (2019). Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition, 1. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=rch&AN=134518316&site=ehost-live

 Haynes, W. M. (2011). CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, 91st edition: http://www.hbcponline.com/ Retrieved April 7, 2011 

Schmider, W. Robert (2011). In memorial, Albert Ghiorso, 1915-2010 https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2011/01/03/ghiorso-obit/

The Editors of Encyclopedia Brittannica (2017) Thermonuclear Bomb https://www.britannica.com/technology/thermonuclear-bomb 

Haynes, W. M. (2011). CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, 95th edition: Retrieved from http://www.rsc.org/periodic-table/element/99/einsteinium 

Ross, Rachel (2017) Facts About Einsteinium https://www.livescience.com/40307-einsteinium.html