Reduction of the CO2 emission from battery electric cars

Abstract

Nowadays, it is known that climate change is a serious environmental problem around the world. The CO2 emission of transport occupies a part of the total emission amount, which contributes majorly to increase the average temperature of Earth. Through investigation, it is found that the so-called ‘zero emission’ electric vehicles actually emit CO2 gas., mostly due to the production process. Thus, it is necessary to reduce the amount of CO2 emission from electric cars. By researching the amount of CO2 produced from making each component of battery electric cars, it is found that the emission from producing lithium-ion batteries stands for a very big proportion of the sum of CO2 emission. In order to improve the situation, the author searched and assessed some relevant solutions that had been provided by other researchers to find out feasible and useful ways to reduce the CO2 emission from operation and disposal electric cars. Through the research, one efficient way is to improve the recycle of LiCoO2 batteries by a green deep eutectic solvent (DES) of LiCl-CH4N2O. This way is both low-cost and helpful to reduce CO2 emission from recycling batteries. Because it saves some valuable metals extracted from the old batteries and consumes low energy. Another approach is to use photovoltaic-energy storage charging station to charge electric cars. One of the most predominant benefits of this type of stations is that it is much safer than other general charging stations, as it reduces the intensity of grid operation by constructing a energy storage system. At the same time, it is helpful to reduce the greenhouse gas from electric cars by encouraging drivers to use solar energy to charge their vehicles. Therefore, these two ways are both efficient to reduce CO2 emission from electric cars.