What Argonne scientists are working on to get electric vehicles going en masse

As Illinois continues its push to get a million electric vehicles on the road by 2030, a line of complex hurdles stands in the way, from preparing the electric grid for increased demand to sourcing the metal for the cars' batteries.

Along with the rest of the nation, the state is nudging its residents to trade in their gas-powered cars and go electric by rolling out initiatives, such as rebate programs and charging infrastructure projects.

The effort is part of the state's lofty climate goal of reaching 100% clean energy by 2050. But with the environmental benefits of electric vehicles comes a host of challenges.

Batteries

At Argonne National Laboratory in DuPage County — one of the federal Department of Energy's 17 laboratories in the nation — scientists are exploring solutions to a range of those challenges, one of them being innovating better batteries.

With the demand for EVs taking off over the last few years and continuing to grow, there is an incentive to manufacture more batteries domestically in the U.S., and there's also a long-term goal to build better batteries.

The U.S. is not currently manufacturing batteries at “any appreciable capacity,” said Venkat Srinivasan, the director of the Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science.

Instead, we rely on foreign countries like China to build the batteries, as well as countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo — which leads the globe in cobalt production — to source the metals with which the batteries are made.

On the environmental side of the issue is the fact that though EVs have lower life cycle carbon emissions than gas-powered vehicles, mining for the batteries' metals “is not the cleanest of businesses,” Srinivasan said.

“The fact that you're not emitting from your tailpipe is a huge benefit, but I think as a community we need to be thinking about that 2040 future where we are not using fossil fuel energy, we are not wasting water, and we are completely clean in terms of how we do the mining and communities aren't affected,” Srinivasan said. “If that's the future we want, there is still a lot of work for us to do in that area.”

To help solve both the supply chain and environmental considerations of the surging demand for EV batteries, Srinivasan said there is a push for scientific institutions like his to create better, cleaner batteries that hold more charge, charge faster and last longer.

“If we can get innovation, then there's an opportunity for a new player to come in, and therefore a new country to come in,” he said. “There is this effort to try to innovate so that we can get a better battery, solving some of these challenges like fast charging or cost.”

Two other solutions are to recycle batteries and to make mining itself cleaner. Srinivasan said Argonne works with companies to look at new mining processes that use less water and energy.

While recycling metals from used batteries is possible, as a relatively new technology, only a very small number of EVs are at the end of their life cycle and currently ready to be recycled.

Additionally, recycling is not always the most economical option.

“The problem is, it's only economical for cobalt and nickel. If the metal is cheap to pull out of the ground, it's hard to justify recycling it when the cost is more expensive. That's the catch,” Srinivasan said. “This is the kind of conundrum that we've always faced: economics versus the environmental benefit.”

To solve that problem, Srinivasan said Argonne is looking at ways to make the recycling process cost-effective for every element of a battery, therefore incentivizing companies to extract everything from a battery and bring it back into the manufacturing supply.

Chargers

While Srinivasan is looking into building and recycling batteries at the energy storage center, other scientists at Argonne are tackling the challenges with charging them.

Thomas Wallner, interim director at the Center for Transportation Research, looks at how we can design a system of chargers that is accessible and doesn't overwhelm the electrical grid.

While the charging technology for passenger vehicles essentially is fully developed, the challenge in grid storage is preparing for surges in the demand for electricity.

An ideal grid is a balanced one in which we consume energy as it becomes available, and there aren't large spikes that could disrupt the system, Wallner said. For example, if millions of EVs are on the road over a holiday weekend, the grid may not be able to handle those surges in electricity usage.

One method with which Argonne is experimenting handling the spikes is by using energy storage units that can hold several cars' worth of charge. Rather than getting electricity directly from the grid, EVs would pull power from the storage units, which then slowly would recharge in between uses.

Another consideration in developing charging infrastructure is how chargers should be accessed: Should they be centralized similar to gas stations, available curbside for street parking or a mix?

At Argonne's energy plaza — a former gas station turned into an EV charging hub — Wallner's team collects data on how frequently and how often employees and visitors of the national laboratory use the chargers. It's one way to begin informing what infrastructure might need to look like at the mass scale.

“The system has a lot of opportunity for optimization, but we're still in the infancy stages,” Wallner said.

• Jenny Whidden is a Report For America corps member covering climate change and the environment for the Daily Herald. To help support her work, click here to make a tax-deductible donation.