Why our future depends on lithium
Tons of materials can make batteries, so why is the world, and the future, powered by lithium? And should we be worried we’ll run out soon?
#planeta #lithium #electricvehicles
We're destroying our environment at an alarming rate. But it doesn't need to be this way. Our new channel Planet A explores the shift towards an eco-friendly world - and challenges our ideas about what dealing with climate change means. We look at the big and the small: What we can do and how the system needs to change. Every Friday we'll take a truly global look at how to get us out of this mess.
Credits:
Author: Amanda Coulson-Drasner
Camera: Henning Goll
Video Editors: Amanda Coulson-Drasner, Henning Goll
Supervising Editor: Kiyo Dörrer
Thumbnail: Em Chabridon
Thanks to:
Prof. Dr. Anke Weidenkaff, Fraunhofer Institute
www.iwks.fraunhofer.de/de/ueb...
UL’s Fire Safety Research Institute
fsri.org/
Read more:
IEA trends in batteries:
www.iea.org/reports/global-ev...
Importance of lithium-ion batteries:
www.un.org/development/desa/d...
Recycling batteries:
environment.ec.europa.eu/news...
www.isi.fraunhofer.de/en/blog...
The dark side of lithium:
www.euronews.com/green/2022/0...
Critical minerals explorer:
www.iea.org/data-and-statisti...
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:50 Battery 101
02:52 History
04:11 Energy storage
05:31 Weight
06:08 Demand vs. supply
06:58 Problems
09:00 Recycling
10:04 Alternative batteries
10:48 Conclusion
Thanks, which is why EV batteries will be recycled, despite all the negative comments about landfilling them after just a few years. It will be easier than mining/evaporating the brine. I worked in recycling for 30 years, now retired, but I would have loved to get involved with recycling Lithium.
Yep. Companies like Recyclico are already able to recycle 99% of the lithium battery.
>> Thanks, which is why EV batteries will be recycled, despite all the negative comments about landfilling them after just a few years
In our previous video we checked where these EV batteries end up to. Check out our piece "Can you recycle an old EV battery?" here 👉 kzhead.info/sun/g8aIctGmkYSmjWw/bejne.html.
In Finland to find special containers for waste like batteries it is really hard, especially in a small towns.
Great n informative content! Thanks DW for yet another film.
We should not be wasting Lithium on Grid scale projects where the weight reduction/energy density of Li-ion isn't important. Leave that to the lower density technologies like Sodium or flow batteries. I'd even argue that most cars don't need the energy density of Li-Ion. Most people only drive like 50 miles a day, at most, you don't always need 300+ miles of range when you can charge daily at home. There are 2 things that should be mandated if we are to succeed with moving to an all-electric battery economy. Mandated recycling of batteries and limiting our use of the rarer metals to where their specific advantages are absolutely necessary.
Hey! We actually did a video on sodium-ion batteries a bit ago. You can find it here 👉 kzhead.info/sun/YNqokrGkbJ6agqs/bejne.html
Then going with your reasoning, why are ICE cars have petrol reservoir to make over 300 miles of range if you only travel 50 miles a day?
@@rozonoemi9374 You can't refill your ICE car every night at home... It has to last you more than one day... Unless you want to designate a daily stop at a gas/petrol station...
@@DWPlanetA Cool! Also do VRFB technology. It's great for grid storage!
>> We should not be wasting Lithium on Grid scale projects ...> I'd even argue that most cars don't need the energy density of Li-Ion. Most people only drive like 50 miles a day > Mandated recycling of batteries
This video elides some really important aspects of lithium-ion batteries and their toxicity and danger. While lithium in and of itself may be only "mildly toxic", the lithium hexafluorophosphate electrolyte that makes lithium ion batteries work is extremely toxic, and when they burn, they become even more hazardous, releasing hydrofluoric acid and hydrogen fluoride gas that will kill you in very short order, and if it doesn't kill you, you will probably wish it had. It will burn every mucus membrane exposed to it, including your eyes and lungs. It is an extremely painful and horrifying way to leave this life. The dangers of lithium-ion batteries, particularly in multicellular series arrays, as most of them are, cannot be overstated. The fact is that lithium-ion technology has long since reached a plateau, and there have not only been no significant capacity improvements in about 30 years, there are unlikely to be any significant improvements. The most promising battery technology that may be able to replace lithium-ion batteries for most purposes is sodium-ion batteries with ferric ferrocyanide, or Prussian Blue, a synthetic inorganic pigment that was first discovered in the early 18th Century, and which is commonly used by fine artists for painting, as well as for whitening laundry, for which purpose it is known as "bluing". Prussian Blue batteries are much, much safer than lithium-ion batteries, and while they do have a somewhat lower energy density, they are far cheaper to manufacture and withstand thousands to tens of thousands of charge cycles before needing replacement, compared with a few hundred or so for lithium-ion batteries. While "ferrocyanide" might sound toxic and scary, the fact is that Prussian Blue is so safe that it is used as orally administered medicine to remove toxic heavy metal contamination and radioactivity from the human body. You can literally eat the stuff and wash your clothes and hair with it, or, as I do, use it as writing ink in your fountain pen.
Thank you for automatically activiating captions for your videos!
@4:18 - it is misleading to say there is a piece of lithium inside the battery even though it is part of the name. In fact, the cathode part where the lithium is, consists of combination of lithium salts - like lithium cobalt oxide, lithium nickel oxide, lithium iron phosphate.
What experiment should we do next? And do you know of any good alternative batteries?
Maybe not an experiment but you should ask Umicore in Belgium about recycling of batteries :)
Please research Australia's advancement in producing green hydrogen. In South Australia they have developed a way to efficiently & cost-effectively desalinate & electrolyse seawater into usable green hydrogen. The Australian Government plans for several renewable energy hubs spaced out around the continent for domestic utilisation & export to Japan and China.
Hydrogen? 😴@@joebloggs6131
VRFB's !!!!
Previously, we did a whole video on hydrogen. Please check this one out here 👉 kzhead.info/sun/dKuNmq-Cf6dvbJs/bejne.html.
That glass periodic table is cool
From cars to smart watches, they're everywhere.
10kg per person sounds like not enough.
0:04 Joke's on you, I'm watching on my desktop, that's plugged in the wall, no batteries powering my device.
It would be great to have an episode about Sodium batteries.
You're lucky day! 🍀 We previously made this video "How salt and sand could replace lithium batteries" 👉kzhead.info/sun/YNqokrGkbJ6agqs/bejne.html
Great! @@DWPlanetA Tanks a lot!
Informative video as always
Thanks for watching! If you like our videos, you should go and subscribe to our channel to be notified on the new ones coming up every Friday. ✨
7:29 Should get more up-to-date data, Lithium prices have been dropping.
0:05 *Feels left out watching on a desktop computer *
Mybe for cars but cities don't need to be. Big battery's that never move don't need to be light or need to use lithium it can be as heavy as we need it to be for energy.
“No it’s not what you think, police officer! Our white gold is just battery, not what’s often called in the black market!”
A biiig stretch on the comouter claim.
Yea the big computers of the past were not like that because of big batteries.
How come graphene battery (project) didnt take off and end up in the markets, competing with lithium ion 🔋
Hey! There are some disadvantages about graphene: It is more expensive than lithium-ion batteries, the production is still in the R&D phase, there are no standards yet and it is hard to compete with such established technologies like lithium-ion batteries. However, there is still lots of R&D and they are still explored as an alternative.
👍
„Electrons float around atoms“?!? Come on.
Yeah that rubbed me the wrong way a bit, too. But of course this is the way they still teach it in school levels below college and university, by presenting electrons as these tiny marbles circling around an atom in specific, fixed orbits at specific, fixed distances from the nucleus. To correctly describe it would mean that they would have to include at least a basis of quantum physics in this video, so hence "electrons float around atoms", even though that is not what is really happening and not what electrons actually are
At least they could have said „floating around the nucleus“.
@@timmehTheNapYes, agreed. And even "floating around the nucleus" is...I'm not going to say "wrong", because it definitely is not, but I think the right term is "incomplete" when taking into account the duality (wave-particle) of electrons. But likely they have used incorrect terminology because most people would be scratching their heads if they used the correct terms without a good amount of explaining to go along with it, so they went with the incorrect terminology because most people are familiar with that and so it avoids having to do a bunch of explaining (though it teaches incorrect information of course, which is worse in my book)
Nope, don't get exited! Potatoes would not create electricity by themselves alone, you still need those different metals as electrodes to be able to create electricity.
Yes you're right, the potato acts as an electrolyte and provides the ions necessary for the electrochemical reaction between the two metals. 🥔
1:10 It's very unlikely this circuit worked as it was made out to. A white led has a voltage drop greater than 2V. A 1.5V battery as shown, is not able to drive such a device. Some trivial circuitry could get around this, but we were told that it only required two wires. If something misleading and dishonest like this was so casually conveyed, how can we trust anything else in the production? Fact check: false.
I noticed that right off the bat.
It would but not full brightness, which makes it visible to the camera and not a flare
@@NeoShameMan Sounds like you've discovered a new form of physics that no one has ever heard of. It's a shame, because all electronic devices depend on the capability that you have disproved. No electronic devices will never work again. None. Congratulations on your discovery though 🎉
@@user-fed-yum you mean experimental physics 🤣 I don't think I invented it, china were already on it 4000 years ago. Diode aren't binary to power, I don't know which one you use, but most electronics I have on my bench still have a response at low voltage, like dim light or slow motor speed, generally you won't be doing anything useful at low voltage, except when you do trick like in the video where close up need to not saturate the cmos. The response curve isn't linear either, which is why you can still see it, but it's weak at 0.5v less than recommend voltage, at full voltage you wouldn't be a to demonstrate such close range, it would create a bloom bigger than the diode itself at such distance, remember that light intensity decrease at inverse square law, so basec on that you should be able to deduce the actual lux falling on the camera receptor from the weak response of the diode.
Thanks for your comment. You're completely right - the battery alone wouldn't power the LED. It was plugged in to charge, which is what made the LED light up. In order to make these videos as accessible as possible for a wide audience, we simplify a lot of aspects, and therefore didn't have time to go into voltage in the video. Because of this, we decided it would be more confusing to show the cable.
Isn't it irresponsible to just focus on "how we make lithium mining more sustainable" when there are other options that involve materials that don't threaten ecosystems and local populations? Like why is everyone so obsessed with reform?
Ideally, we’d never rely on fossil fuels, but realistically it’s still good to find more ways to be fuel efficient. Lithium is here to stay for the foreseeable future, so it would be irresponsible NOT to discuss ways to improve extraction. Yes, other technologies will be developed and they will have their issues as well.
Because the status quo is killing our planet. Okay that’s a lie, it’s actually killing tons of species including us
Safety first Meanwhile: no glasses, lab coat, and distance
Ecosia
assuming we are watching on a mobile device!?!
We have oceans ..
What can I say, i like my chips salted
The more technological power we seek for needs proportionally more population to rely on it.
5:49 I love DW But this does NOT seem correct at ALL. The reason computers are small is not the battery. Even the computer in the picture did not have a battery. It was plugged into the wall. The reason PCs are smaller is because storage got smaller, from tapes, to SSDs, and processors are smaller. Just saying lol
5:50 ... it has no relationship with reality this statement , computers without battery are still minimal today vesus some while ago...
For the most part, buying batteries and battery chargers which are UL and CE certified minimizes your chance of having an uncontrollable fire on your hands. Sure, issues come up, but gasoline is also a highly reactive substance which we managed to work into our infrastructure safely. The same can happen with proper regulation around LI batteries. The US desperately needs to catch up in this area of policy…
You should take just about everything she says with a bucket of salt - there is something out of line with a lot of what she says. She says she can make a super simple circuit with the battery, two wires and a LED. What they don't tell the viewer is that without a current limiting resistor, the LED will no light or else draw excessive current and burn out. She goes on and says batteries destroy themselves. Very poor choice of words. She gives reasons but fails to tell us that it may take years and thousands of charge-discharge cycles for the cells to slowly lose their capacity. Then she says that in the worst case they can ignite and explode. She fails to tell us that this almost never happens and usually when it does it's because of damage from outside. She says making a good battery that doesn't explode is "tough stuff." Well, no, there are are billions of lithium batteries in use without any problems from the time they're made to the time they're recycled years later. She goes on about how bad lead batteries are yet the world has been running on lead batteries for over a hundred years. The cars we drive *safely* use a lead battery. The reason why people were exposed to excessive lead was because companies failed to recycle and handle the lead properly and allowed it to escape into the environment. Blame the companies, not the lead. Thank you for the video. I hope my criticism helps improve the video.
Am I the only person who watches youtube on a desktop computer or TV? 0:03 Neither of those are 'powered' by lithium. In fact nothing is powered by lithium (outside of some increasingly-rare primary cells used mainly in photography). I'm tired of being talked down to, as if I don't know anything. Documentaries used to assume a level of knowledge of a subject. Now they aim everything at children and idiots. The comment at 5:50 is a straight-out lie.
No one is talking down on you in specific. It’s just that the vast majority of people watching will be on a rechargeable device that uses a battery. Don’t forget that there are other necessary components in those devices you mentioned that could also be a topic of interest. For the comment about the size of computers compared to today. It depends how you look at it. You could say that computers are smaller now because of the lithium ion battery, which allows for a rechargeable device that is more portable and ergonomic. But yes, it is not the main reason why computers have shrank.
if apple care about environment they should make a wire ear buds, making bats/wireless earbud is dumb and dangerous( wire earbuds are lossless and doesn't need to charge ) and what happened if that bats blows up in u earhole?
Now do sodium
the size of a laptop compared to a computer occupy a big room don't have anything to do with lithium, wtf?
This video feels like it is aimed at primary school kids.
Most non EV driver are acting like school kids towards EV.
Who " We " ?
Society
LTO batteries.
5:40 Ummm...the reason why a laptop today is not as big as the room sized computers of the 50s is not because of Lithium it's because of solid-state transistor technology and Silicon.
True, since we had nickel cadmium batteries in laptops and they were "slim" compared to the room sized computer they referenced
I mean a laptop was never going to be a room size unless you are a really big building sized person.
She said "one of the reasons". Not "the reason".
@@cg986 It isn't even "one" of the reasons.
Girl, no, lithium is not the reason computers are not the size of a room. Omg.
Yeah, even just looking at the battery size (ignoring the major size reductions in other components), most of the improvement has come from making computers _more efficient_ so smaller batteries can be used. More efficient also reduces the need for as much thermal management (heat sinks, fans, etc.). Lithium ion isn't _that much_ better than the older Ni-MH or NiCd chemistries, IIRC. Replacing a modern laptop's Li-Ion battery with Ni-MH of equivalent energy would no doubt be mildly annoying for the extra weight & size, but I doubt it'd be that dramatic. Maybe an extra 25-50% to the weight? That won't turn it into a 1980s(?)-style 25 kg "luggable" :)
Lithium batteries are not recycled as the cost to mine is lesser than cost to recycle. When that equation reverses, recycling will atumatically happen driven by economics itself than by good will.
They are recycled in North America. Redwood Industries is one.
>> Lithium batteries are not recycled as the cost to mine is lesser than cost to recycle.
.
first
i take lithium cuz i'm bipolar!
can you please configure your channel so it _doesn't_ activate subtitles every time? it's annoying as hell.
you can change that in your youtube settings.
@@philwid9338 please read more carefully. I habe subtitles disabled. (everywhere, for that matter). it's only on this channel that subtitles appear every. single. time.
@@theblackwithin3457 It turned my CC on too. How can they do that?
Bruhh... You need to click or tap a single button to deactivate cc. What! Dawggonit?
@@yasirrakhurrafat1142 i just don't care about clicking it every. single. time. just because someone thought it'd be a good idea to annoy people with it. you understand that, or do i need to simplify it further?
The west goes imperialist again...
From where are going to steal this time? Allways i the name of democracy, bla,bla
Pretty awful battery 101....