Impressive!
- Thread starter Wattie
- Start date
Gazcw
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Including all his tractors?
MrRMB
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I can't see anything green in replacing lots of perfectly good equipment, just to make a point. I have my grandfather's B & S Landmaster rotovator. It's a 1960 model, starts with a bit of tinkering and flies through the work. I only use it twice a year, but always puts a smile on my face. I can't see battery powered stuff lasting 10 years, let alone 60.
stindig
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- 450
I have no specific agenda here, other than preserving our planet. I just feel that the governments are either incredibly ill-informed, or trying to pull the wool over our eyes (updated doc from post about a year ago)
The Reality Behind Electric Vehicles
Charging:Currently only 28% of UK power is generated by renewable sources which means that 72% of the power that is used to charge the batteries comes from coal or nuclear power stations. Most EV owners charge their cars overnight but, given that solar power, which represents about 4%, is not available at night, the percentage of green power drops to 24%. Obviously this will improve over time with the UK’s ambition to cut greenhouse gases by 80% by 2050 – but that’s a long way off.
Battery Degradation:Batteries degrade over time – electric vehicles use the same lithium-ion batteries that are used in mobile phones and we all know that, as they age, their ability to retain power reduces significantly. EVs will therefore need to be charged more frequently as they get older which will use yet more non-green power. Replacement batteries will also need to be purchased at some point in an vehicle’s life and old batteries will need to be disposed of in a way that doesn’t damage the environment – currently challenging, if not impossible.
Recycling: In Belgium, a company called Umicore can recycle around 150,000 EV batteries per annum but there is no facility in the UK. Over 3 million electric vehicles have been registered in Europe and it’s growing fast. We are therefore heading rapidly towards a recycling crisis.
Tesla is looking at improving recycling methods but is a very long way from having a ‘closed loop’.
Charging Points:
It has been estimated that if all cars were electric, we would need approximately 400,000 fast-charge points in the UK. The cost of this would be £30 billion+. Who is funding this?
28% of England’s dwellings are terraced houses, with car owners often having to park some distance from their house, and 20% are flats. Both offer significant charging challenges. There is talk of making every lamp-post a charging point, but this still will only reach a fraction of parked cars, whilst inductive charging within the road structure is surely entirely non-viable cost-wise.
Finally, the advantage of home-charging, which is cheap electricity, is lost whenever an external source is used. The cost of using an external, commercial charging point is not dissimilar to that of petrol, today.
Electricity Supply:
The UK government has plans to ban sales of all petrol and diesel cars by 2040. The National Grid has estimated that by this point, we will need to generate an additional 30GW of electricity on top of the current peak demand of 61GW. Given that the new Hinkley Point nuclear power station generates only 3.2GW and cost £20 billion to build, this really doesn’t seem very viable.
Battery Manufacture:
Two of the key materials used in the manufacture of lithium-ion batteries are lithium and cobalt. The process to source these is described below:
Lithium: The Salar de Atacama basin in Chile is the world’s largest source of lithium (29%). Bore holes are drilled to bring up brine to the surface and into evaporation tanks for up to 24 months before the remaining sludge is taken away (in diesel lorries) to be processed. This destroys the water table.
The local ecosystem cannot support this level of water extraction and, as a result, the local wildlife, trees and farmers are suffering massively. In neighboring Argentina, chemicals resulting from this process have leaked into local rivers and poisoned fish and irrigation water. Ultimately, only 6% of the sludge is extracted as lithium and this is then shipped via giant, polluting container ships to China or Japan for battery manufacture.
An alternative method of extracting lithium is from minerals (typically spodumene). To extract the lithium, the rock is crushed and heated, before being mixed with sulphuric acid. Once the lithium has been removed, the toxic residue, which is still the bulk of the original rock, is typically dumped.
Cobalt: Over 50% of the world’s cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A significant proportion of this is brought up from artisan mines – just holes in the ground, with no safety measures and with many children involved in the process. Cobalt miners die every day and many more will die in the future as they suffer from the effects of having breathed the toxic air. All production in DRC is owned by Chinese companies and the miners sell the ore locally to the Chinese, who then ship it in diesel lorries to ports, where this is then, again, shipped via giant, polluting container ships to China or Japan for manufacture.
Interesting fact – the world’s largest 16 container ships produce more pollution than all the cars in the world!
https://www.lngtransfer.com/news/th...ore-pollution-than-all-the-cars-in-the-world/
Battery manufacturing locations:Historically, Japan has been the worlds largest battery manufacturer for automotive but currently China has two of the largest 5 lithium ion battery manufacturers (CATL and BID) but they are growing rapidly and will provide 60% of automotive batteries by 2030 (up from 45% today). Chinese manufacturers also control two thirds of the market for four of the key components of lithium ion batteries - cathode materials, anode materials, electrolyte solutions and separators so there is little potential currently for more localised production. Once the batteries have been manufactured, a significant percentage is then shipped to America and Europe for car production – in giant, polluting container ships.
Battery Size and Weight:
Whilst batteries work for cars and bikes, they are not practical for large lorries, large ships or planes because the volume taken up by the batteries reduces that storage capacity of the vehicle significantly, and are just too heavy for any form of aviation.
Batteries are also not practical for equipment with high power demands, and for machines that work in remote locations, such as large excavators. Batteries weigh too much, cost too much and there is not enough time to charge machines that work 24 x 7, even if on-site charging infrastructure was in place.
Cont'd
The Reality Behind Electric Vehicles
Charging:Currently only 28% of UK power is generated by renewable sources which means that 72% of the power that is used to charge the batteries comes from coal or nuclear power stations. Most EV owners charge their cars overnight but, given that solar power, which represents about 4%, is not available at night, the percentage of green power drops to 24%. Obviously this will improve over time with the UK’s ambition to cut greenhouse gases by 80% by 2050 – but that’s a long way off.
Battery Degradation:Batteries degrade over time – electric vehicles use the same lithium-ion batteries that are used in mobile phones and we all know that, as they age, their ability to retain power reduces significantly. EVs will therefore need to be charged more frequently as they get older which will use yet more non-green power. Replacement batteries will also need to be purchased at some point in an vehicle’s life and old batteries will need to be disposed of in a way that doesn’t damage the environment – currently challenging, if not impossible.
Recycling: In Belgium, a company called Umicore can recycle around 150,000 EV batteries per annum but there is no facility in the UK. Over 3 million electric vehicles have been registered in Europe and it’s growing fast. We are therefore heading rapidly towards a recycling crisis.
Tesla is looking at improving recycling methods but is a very long way from having a ‘closed loop’.
Charging Points:
It has been estimated that if all cars were electric, we would need approximately 400,000 fast-charge points in the UK. The cost of this would be £30 billion+. Who is funding this?
28% of England’s dwellings are terraced houses, with car owners often having to park some distance from their house, and 20% are flats. Both offer significant charging challenges. There is talk of making every lamp-post a charging point, but this still will only reach a fraction of parked cars, whilst inductive charging within the road structure is surely entirely non-viable cost-wise.
Finally, the advantage of home-charging, which is cheap electricity, is lost whenever an external source is used. The cost of using an external, commercial charging point is not dissimilar to that of petrol, today.
Electricity Supply:
The UK government has plans to ban sales of all petrol and diesel cars by 2040. The National Grid has estimated that by this point, we will need to generate an additional 30GW of electricity on top of the current peak demand of 61GW. Given that the new Hinkley Point nuclear power station generates only 3.2GW and cost £20 billion to build, this really doesn’t seem very viable.
Battery Manufacture:
Two of the key materials used in the manufacture of lithium-ion batteries are lithium and cobalt. The process to source these is described below:
Lithium: The Salar de Atacama basin in Chile is the world’s largest source of lithium (29%). Bore holes are drilled to bring up brine to the surface and into evaporation tanks for up to 24 months before the remaining sludge is taken away (in diesel lorries) to be processed. This destroys the water table.
The local ecosystem cannot support this level of water extraction and, as a result, the local wildlife, trees and farmers are suffering massively. In neighboring Argentina, chemicals resulting from this process have leaked into local rivers and poisoned fish and irrigation water. Ultimately, only 6% of the sludge is extracted as lithium and this is then shipped via giant, polluting container ships to China or Japan for battery manufacture.
An alternative method of extracting lithium is from minerals (typically spodumene). To extract the lithium, the rock is crushed and heated, before being mixed with sulphuric acid. Once the lithium has been removed, the toxic residue, which is still the bulk of the original rock, is typically dumped.
Cobalt: Over 50% of the world’s cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A significant proportion of this is brought up from artisan mines – just holes in the ground, with no safety measures and with many children involved in the process. Cobalt miners die every day and many more will die in the future as they suffer from the effects of having breathed the toxic air. All production in DRC is owned by Chinese companies and the miners sell the ore locally to the Chinese, who then ship it in diesel lorries to ports, where this is then, again, shipped via giant, polluting container ships to China or Japan for manufacture.
Interesting fact – the world’s largest 16 container ships produce more pollution than all the cars in the world!
https://www.lngtransfer.com/news/th...ore-pollution-than-all-the-cars-in-the-world/
Battery manufacturing locations:Historically, Japan has been the worlds largest battery manufacturer for automotive but currently China has two of the largest 5 lithium ion battery manufacturers (CATL and BID) but they are growing rapidly and will provide 60% of automotive batteries by 2030 (up from 45% today). Chinese manufacturers also control two thirds of the market for four of the key components of lithium ion batteries - cathode materials, anode materials, electrolyte solutions and separators so there is little potential currently for more localised production. Once the batteries have been manufactured, a significant percentage is then shipped to America and Europe for car production – in giant, polluting container ships.
Battery Size and Weight:
Whilst batteries work for cars and bikes, they are not practical for large lorries, large ships or planes because the volume taken up by the batteries reduces that storage capacity of the vehicle significantly, and are just too heavy for any form of aviation.
Batteries are also not practical for equipment with high power demands, and for machines that work in remote locations, such as large excavators. Batteries weigh too much, cost too much and there is not enough time to charge machines that work 24 x 7, even if on-site charging infrastructure was in place.
Cont'd
stindig
Member
- Messages
- 450
Cont'd:
Electric Vehicle Motors
All EV motors – and there are typically 3 per car, use rare-earth magnets. This is because alloys of neodymium with iron and boron are four to five times as strong by weight as permanent magnets, but the neodymium needs to be mined. The US used to have a large neodymium mining capability in California but it was closed down in 2002 because of the severe environmental problems that it created. It also left a 50-acre open pit.
Rare-earth metals, despite the name, are relatively abundant in Earth’s crust. The 16 naturally occurring rare earths are usually found mixed together in deposits that often contain radioactive elements as well—and separating the metals requires costly processes that produce a stew of toxic pollutants.
The first step in extracting rare-earth oxides from the surrounding rock is to crush the rocks and grind them into a fine powder. This is passed through a series of tanks, where the rare-earth elements float to the top. Unwanted minerals sink to the bottom, and this hazardous waste material, called tailings, is sent to ponds for storage. Meanwhile, the resulting concentrate of rare-earth metals is roasted in kilns and then dissolved in acid. The fraction of the resulting slush that contains rare earths, in the form of mixed metal oxides, is removed. Finally, the solvent is neutralized.
The reaction generates a lot of salt: when the California mine was running at full capacity in the 1990s, it produced as much as 850 gallons of salty waste-water every minute, every day of the year. This waste also contained radioactive thorium and uranium, which collected as scale inside the pipe that delivered the wastewater to evaporation ponds 11 miles away. Several times in the 1990s, cleaning operations intended to remove the built-up scale caused the pipeline to burst, spilling hundreds of thousands of gallons of hazardous waste into the desert.
Today, 95% of neodymium mining happens in China, and we have no visibility of the environmental consequences.
Electric Vehicle Summary
Those who purchase EVs do so in the genuine belief that they are helping the environment but with the current technology and manufacturing processes, EVs are currently an environmental catastrophe.
Hydrogen as an Alternative
Generating hydrogen uses electricity, so some of the same problems exist – but if we can find a clean way to generate the electricity to produce the hydrogen, fuel cells would become extremely viable, particularly as the only output from a hydrogen engine is water.
Most hydrogen is made by natural gas reforming, which results in carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and, worst of all for the environment, methane. An alternative method is water electrolysis – seperating hydrogen from water using an electric current. Whilst this can be green, if the electricity is from renewable sources, it is inefficient, with 30% of the power used being lost in the process. The most promising method seems to be polymer exchange membrane electrolysis, which is 80% efficient now, with scientist believing that this could improve to 86% by 2030.
The existing fuelling infrastructure could be converted to supply hydrogen, rather than petrol or diesel, and hydrogen could be produced in-country, rather than having to ship anything several times around the world. Over time, fuelling stations could be converted to generate and store hydrogen locally, which, whilst marginally more expensive than mass-scale, centralised production of hydrogen, completely removes transport costs.
Tyseley refueling station, near Birmingham has recently gone live and is generating its own hydrogen locally.
With hydrogen, there are no extended recharging times (as per battery charging) and no need for range anxiety, as filling stations are everywhere. There are already 20 double-decker buses in London, and 20 in Birmingham, running successfully on hydrogen. JCB has now produced its own hydrogen engine for larger machinery, having abandoned batteries for this purpose, and Hyundai and Toyota are already manufacturing hydrogen cars.
In Japan, there are already 134 hydrogen filling stations and Germany has 90, but there are just 11 in the UK. However, the model has been proven and it is clear that, compared to Lithium Ion batteries as a power source, hydrogen has the potential to be many times greener. It is unclear why hydrogen power is not receiving the same level of investment as battery power, but currently our governments are pressing on with an electric-powered initiative that I believe to be deeply flawed.
Electric Vehicle Motors
All EV motors – and there are typically 3 per car, use rare-earth magnets. This is because alloys of neodymium with iron and boron are four to five times as strong by weight as permanent magnets, but the neodymium needs to be mined. The US used to have a large neodymium mining capability in California but it was closed down in 2002 because of the severe environmental problems that it created. It also left a 50-acre open pit.
Rare-earth metals, despite the name, are relatively abundant in Earth’s crust. The 16 naturally occurring rare earths are usually found mixed together in deposits that often contain radioactive elements as well—and separating the metals requires costly processes that produce a stew of toxic pollutants.
The first step in extracting rare-earth oxides from the surrounding rock is to crush the rocks and grind them into a fine powder. This is passed through a series of tanks, where the rare-earth elements float to the top. Unwanted minerals sink to the bottom, and this hazardous waste material, called tailings, is sent to ponds for storage. Meanwhile, the resulting concentrate of rare-earth metals is roasted in kilns and then dissolved in acid. The fraction of the resulting slush that contains rare earths, in the form of mixed metal oxides, is removed. Finally, the solvent is neutralized.
The reaction generates a lot of salt: when the California mine was running at full capacity in the 1990s, it produced as much as 850 gallons of salty waste-water every minute, every day of the year. This waste also contained radioactive thorium and uranium, which collected as scale inside the pipe that delivered the wastewater to evaporation ponds 11 miles away. Several times in the 1990s, cleaning operations intended to remove the built-up scale caused the pipeline to burst, spilling hundreds of thousands of gallons of hazardous waste into the desert.
Today, 95% of neodymium mining happens in China, and we have no visibility of the environmental consequences.
Electric Vehicle Summary
Those who purchase EVs do so in the genuine belief that they are helping the environment but with the current technology and manufacturing processes, EVs are currently an environmental catastrophe.
Hydrogen as an Alternative
Generating hydrogen uses electricity, so some of the same problems exist – but if we can find a clean way to generate the electricity to produce the hydrogen, fuel cells would become extremely viable, particularly as the only output from a hydrogen engine is water.
Most hydrogen is made by natural gas reforming, which results in carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and, worst of all for the environment, methane. An alternative method is water electrolysis – seperating hydrogen from water using an electric current. Whilst this can be green, if the electricity is from renewable sources, it is inefficient, with 30% of the power used being lost in the process. The most promising method seems to be polymer exchange membrane electrolysis, which is 80% efficient now, with scientist believing that this could improve to 86% by 2030.
The existing fuelling infrastructure could be converted to supply hydrogen, rather than petrol or diesel, and hydrogen could be produced in-country, rather than having to ship anything several times around the world. Over time, fuelling stations could be converted to generate and store hydrogen locally, which, whilst marginally more expensive than mass-scale, centralised production of hydrogen, completely removes transport costs.
Tyseley refueling station, near Birmingham has recently gone live and is generating its own hydrogen locally.
With hydrogen, there are no extended recharging times (as per battery charging) and no need for range anxiety, as filling stations are everywhere. There are already 20 double-decker buses in London, and 20 in Birmingham, running successfully on hydrogen. JCB has now produced its own hydrogen engine for larger machinery, having abandoned batteries for this purpose, and Hyundai and Toyota are already manufacturing hydrogen cars.
In Japan, there are already 134 hydrogen filling stations and Germany has 90, but there are just 11 in the UK. However, the model has been proven and it is clear that, compared to Lithium Ion batteries as a power source, hydrogen has the potential to be many times greener. It is unclear why hydrogen power is not receiving the same level of investment as battery power, but currently our governments are pressing on with an electric-powered initiative that I believe to be deeply flawed.
Phil H
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The answer may lie behind a few 'blind' trusts, but we'll never know.
Chrisb2015
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Zep
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Honest answer, I haven’t got any data on that. I was basing my assumption on that the majority of new cars are company or lease cars, many of which are driven plenty of miles.
In any event, if 53k is passed by the first or second owner is largely irrelevant to the environmental benefits, there isn’t a hierarchy in that matter. The average lifespan is still 123k miles, regardless of the number of owners.