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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.