Life Analysis of Battery Systems

If the total energy and emissions of a battery during its entire lifetime production, use, maintenance and disposal are established, then divided by the total lifetime energy of the battery, the total emissions per kilowatt-hour of energy may be derived. These are separated into specific materials, usually elements, compounds or groups of compounds, for which specific environmental and/or human health impact assessment values are available. Utilizing these values, the overall relative life cycle environmental impact of a particular battery system may be established and compared to other battery systems. As previously discussed, these analyses involve many assumptions and 

Waste Generated, grams per KW-hr Element Highest Energy Lowest Energy 

The human health and environmental factors are then multiplied by the exposure potential which includes parameters expressing biological oxygen demand half-life, hydrolysis half-life and an aquatic bioconcentration factor. It is felt that this system is probably one of the better impact assessment systems available today because it assigns impact values based on quantitative scientific data rather than subjective concern over a chemical which is often based on perception rather than scientific data. On the other hand, the bioaccumulation and persistence factors have already been shown to be not particularly relevant to metals per se. In the future, alternative evaluation systems such as solubility and transformation characteristics of metals and metal compounds, and models such as the biotic ligand model will be found to be much more appropriate for evaluating the human health and environmental impacts of battery metals. 

Chandler 1995, Cadmium in Municipal Solid Waste Management Systems, Sources of Cadmium in the Environment, Inter-Organization Programme for the Sound Management of Chemicals (lOMC), Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Paris, France. 

Cook and Morrow 1995, Anthropogenic Sources of Cadmium in Canada, National Workshop on Cadmium Transport Into Plants, Canadian Network of Toxicology Centres, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, June 20-21,1995. 

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