Used EV batteries could power vehicles, houses or even towns – if their manufacturers share vital data

EV batteries are made of hundreds of smaller cells. IM Imagery/Shutterstock Daryoush Habibi, Edith Cowan University and Yasir Arafat, Edith Cowan University Around the world, more and more electric vehicles are hitting the road. Last year, more than 17 million battery-electric and hybrid vehicles were sold. Early forecasts suggest this year’s figure might reach 20 million. Nearly 20% of all cars sold today are electric. But as more motorists go electric, it creates a new challenge – what to do with the giant batteries when they reach the end of their lives. That’s 12 to 15 years on average, though real-world data suggests it may be up to 40% longer. The average EV battery weighs about 450 kilograms. By 2030, around 30,000 tonnes of EV batteries are expected to need disposal or recycling in Australia. By 2040, the figure is projected to be 360,000 tonnes and 1.6 million tonnes by 2050. Is this a problem? Not necessarily. When a battery reaches the end of its life in a vehicle, it’s still got plenty of juice. Together, they could power smaller vehicles, houses or, when daisy-chained, even whole towns. For this to work, though, we need better information. How healthy are these batteries? What are they made of? Have they ever been in an accident? At present, answers to these questions are hard to come by. That has...

Read More........→May 20, 2025

Electricity Captured from Falling Rain Conjures the Ultimate Picture of Tropical Sustainability

By Ann Fisher, CC licenseScientists in Singapore have broken a long-standing limitation on the ability to generate electricity from flowing water, suggesting that another elemental force of nature could be leveraged for renewable electricity: rain.With the simplest and smallest scale test setup, the team could power around 12 LED lightbulbs with simulated rain droplets flowing through a tube, but at scale, their method could generate meaningful amounts that could rival rooftop solar arrays.Singapore experiences significant rainfall throughout the year, averaging 101 inches (2581 millimeters) of precipitation annually. The idea of generating electricity from such falling water is attractive, but the method has long been constrained by a principle called the Debye Length.Nevertheless, the concept is possible because of a simple physical principle that charged entities on the surface of materials get nudged when they rub together—as true for water droplets as it is for a balloon rubbed against the hair on one’s head.While this is true, the power values thus generated have been negligible, and electricity from flowing water has been limited to the driving of turbines in hydropower plants.However, in a study published in the journal ACS Central Science, a team of physicists has found a way to break through the constraints of water’s...

Read More........→May 08, 2025