2023-04-27 00:11:36
Lithium batteries contain potentially toxic materials, including metals such as copper, nickel, and lithium, and organic chemicals. A car battery emits about 18 tons of C02 when manufactured, about 2kg for each lithium ion cell, and a lithium battery contaminates an average of 600,000 liters of water.
Doubts about recycling and the possible reuse of electric vehicle batteries are precisely one of the arguments used by people less favorable to their use and implementation.
According to the Report of the Institute of Science of India, barely 1% of this type of batteries is being recycled compared to 99% that is recycled in lead batteries. By 2050, it is expected that there will be up to 2 billion batteries in circulation, but there will not be enough lithium to meet this demand.
The DGV company, located in Alicante, has already taken action on the matter, and currently has the largest factory in Europe for repairing lithium batteries for electric vehicles, where they repair some 2,000 batteries per month, which is equivalent to about 60T. With this, they avoid destroying about 40T of batteries per month, which is equivalent to 1.9 Mwh. His bet lies in the repair of existing batteries and thus avoid having to recycle. His idea is to reuse as many of these components as possible, managing to recover up to 75% of the parts.
As explained to this newspaper by Germán Agulló, CEO and Co-founder of GDV Mobility, the company receives the battery before it is discarded and selects, analyzes and extracts the components that it can reuse both to make batteries for electric vehicles and to make accumulators for photovoltaics. In this way, they only throw away what is strictly bad or really impossible to recover.
In this way, they manage to prevent approximately between 0.6 and 1.2 T of lithium from being crushed per day, and they set the goal of avoiding 500 tons of crushing this year, which would be equivalent to 25% of the total in Spain. . «For each battery that we repair, we avoid the pollution that would be produced by recycling it, and that which is produced by manufacturing a new one. Such is the saving, that last March we reduced about 320T of CO2, and throughout the year we expect to reduce about 20,000 Tons of CO2, with this we get our company to achieve not a neutral carbon footprint, but even a negative one, and also in a few tons».
The GDV Mobility factory started working on February 1, during that month up to 800 batteries were repaired (300 of them motorcycle batteries) and they plan to close March repairing more than 2,500 batteries. The company ensures the repair of the part in just 72 hours and achieves a cost reduction of up to 75%-80% of what was, up to now, the most expensive repair for this type of vehicle.
This company manages to take this process to an industrial level, giving them a second life and taking another step in favor of sustainable mobility. In addition, it provides a certificate to its customers assuring them that their batteries are put back on the market or that they go to recycling companies, something that benefits them for the closing of many contracts.
The Know How that they have managed to develop from then until it is fully operational in February 2023, will allow them to repair almost half a million batteries a year. The platform thus manages to offer brands the possibility of closing the vital circle of electric vehicle batteries. After this, GDV Mobility seeks to be present and develop research models in order to improve the electric mobility sector, and make it accessible and affordable for everyone.
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