Recycled Aluminum Offers Energy, Emissions and Electric Vehicle Battery Range Savings

 PNNL Lab News Release:

The new manufacturing process produces high-strength aluminum vehicle parts that lower costs and are more environmentally friendly

Media contact: Karyn Hede, PNNL

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April 18, 2023

RICHLAND, Wash.—Scrap aluminum can now be collected and transformed directly into new vehicle parts using an innovative process being developed by the automotive industry, in particular for electric vehicles. Today, the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, in collaboration with leading mobility technology company Magna, unveils a new manufacturing process that reduces more than 50% of the embodied energy and more than 90% of the carbon dioxide emissions by eliminating the need to mine and refine the same amount of raw aluminum ore. Lightweight aluminum can also help extend EV driving range.   This patented and award-winning Shear Assisted Processing and Extrusion (ShAPE™) process collects scrap bits and leftover aluminum trimmings from automotive manufacturing and transforms it directly into suitable material for new vehicle parts. It is now being scaled to make lightweight aluminum parts for EVs.   The most recent advancement, described in detail in a new report and in a Manufacturing Letters research article, eliminates the need to add newly mined aluminum to the material before using it for new parts. By reducing the cost of recycling aluminum, manufacturers may be able to reduce the overall cost of aluminum components, better enabling them to replace steel.   “We showed that aluminum parts formed with the ShAPE process meet automotive industry standards for strength and energy absorption,” said Scott Whalen, a PNNL materials scientist and lead researcher. “The key is that ShAPE process breaks up metal impurities in the scrap without requiring an energy-intensive heat treatment step. This alone saves considerable time and introduces new efficiencies.”

Automakers’ aluminum scrap transforms into new vehicle parts with the PNNL-patented ShAPE manufacturing process. Heat and friction soften the aluminum and transform it from rough metal into a smooth, strong uniform product without a melting step. (Animation by Sara Levine | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)

The new report and research publications mark the culmination of a four-year partnership with Magna, the largest manufacturer of auto parts in North America. Magna received funding for the collaborative research from DOE’s Vehicle Technologies Office, Lightweight Materials Consortium (LightMAT) Program.   “Sustainability is at the forefront of everything we do at Magna,” said Massimo DiCiano, Manager Materials Science at Magna. “From our manufacturing processes to the materials we use, and the ShAPE process is a great proof point of how we’re looking to evolve and create new sustainable solutions for our customers.”   Aluminum advantages Besides steel, aluminum is the most used material in the auto industry. The advantageous properties of aluminum make it an attractive automotive component. Lighter and strong, aluminum is a key material in the strategy to make lightweight vehicles for improved efficiency, being it extending the range of an EV or reducing the battery capacity size. While the automotive industry currently does recycle most of its aluminum, it routinely adds newly mined primary aluminum to it before reusing it, to dilute impurities.   Metals manufacturers also rely on a century-old process of pre-heating bricks, or “billets” as they are known in the industry, to temperatures over 1,000°F (550°C) for many hours. The pre-heating step dissolves clusters of impurities such as silicon, magnesium or iron in the raw metal and distributes them uniformly in the billet through a process known as homogenization.   By contrast, the ShAPE process accomplishes the same homogenization step in less than a second then transforms the solid aluminum into a finished product in a matter of minutes with no pre-heating step required.   “With our partners at Magna, we have reached a critical milestone in the evolution of the ShAPE process,” said Whalen. “We have shown its versatility by creating square, trapezoidal and multi-cell parts that all meet quality benchmarks for strength and ductility.”

Extrusions made from AA6063 industrial scrap by ShAPE producing (a) circular, (b) square, (c) trapezoidal, and (d) two-cell trapezoidal profiles. (Image courtesy Scott Whalen | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)

For these experiments, the research team worked with an aluminum alloy known as 6063, or architectural aluminum. This alloy is used for variety of automotive components, such as engine cradles, bumper assemblies, frame rails and exterior trim. The PNNL research team examined the extruded shapes using scanning electron microscopy and electron backscatter diffraction, which creates an image of the placement and microstructure of each metal particle within the finished product. The results showed that the ShAPE products are uniformly strong and lack manufacturing defects that could cause parts failure. In particular, the products had no signs of the large clusters of metal—impurities that can cause material deterioration and that have hampered efforts to use secondary recycled aluminum to make new products.   The research team is now examining even higher strength aluminum alloys typically used in battery enclosures for electric vehicles.   “This innovation is only the first step toward creating a circular economy for recycled aluminum in manufacturing,” said Whalen. “We are now working on including post-consumer waste streams, which could create a whole new market for secondary aluminum scrap.”   In addition to Whalen, the PNNL research team included Nicole Overman, Brandon Scott Taysom, Md. Reza-E-Rabby, Mark Bowden and Timothy Skszek. In addition to DiCiano, Magna contributors included Vanni Garbin, Michael Miranda, Thomas Richter, Cangji Shi and Jay Mellis. This work was supported by DOE’s Vehicle Technologies Office, LightMAT Program.   The patented ShAPE technology is available for licensing for other applications.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory draws on its distinguishing strengths in chemistry, Earth sciences, biology and data science to advance scientific knowledge and address challenges in sustainable energy and national security. Founded in 1965, PNNL is operated by Battelle for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, which is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. DOE’s Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://energy.gov/science. For more information about PNNL, visit PNNL's News Center. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.

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How Technoeconomic Analyses Pave the Way to a Low-Carbon Future

 Berkeley Lab News Release:

Berkeley Lab’s expertise in environmental and economic modeling strengthens development of emerging energy technologies and climate change mitigation strategies

MEDIA RELATIONS | (510) 486-5183 | APRIL 6, 2023

(Credit: metamorworks/Shutterstock)

Levels of planet-warming carbon dioxide in the air continue to rise. Cutting emissions by moving away from fossil fuels is a priority – but so is removing carbon that's already been emitted. Of the many emerging technologies on the table, which ones will be most effective, and where? What about costs? What kinds of investments will have the most impact? Scientists at the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) are answering these kinds of questions with technoeconomic analysis, a data-driven way to predict the best routes to decarbonization.  "Berkeley Lab is building many clean energy technologies that could have an enormous impact on our path to a low carbon future. Technoeconomic analysis helps us to focus our research on those technologies that are most likely to be developed into successful and affordable products," said Berkeley Lab Director Mike Witherell.  A Bridge From Innovation to Mature Technology Technoeconomic analysis uses computer models to evaluate the cost implications and potential environmental impacts of emerging technologies. These models can build on initial research results for a technology and calculate the costs of scaling it up. This type of predictive analysis can be used to support decision-making by researchers, industry stakeholders, regulators, and policy-makers. A combination of robust computing power and more sophisticated techniques have made technoeconomic analysis an increasingly powerful approach. Accordingly, Berkeley Lab's team, centered in the Lab’s Energy Technologies Area with staff across the Earth & Environmental Sciences and Biosciences Areas, has expanded to include 20 scientists from a broad range of disciplines who work in partnership with teams across Berkeley Lab and with other institutions. The research often requires a blend of engineering design, process design and simulation, cash flow analysis, life-cycle assessment, and geospatial analysis.  “With a novel technology, we can’t just take an analogy for an industry and guess at how it performs. We really need to be building brand new engineered systems and the process models around them,” said Hanna Breunig, Berkeley Lab research scientist. “This requires team science and new computational approaches to start predicting performance.” Whereas earlier technoeconomic analysis projects generally relied on existing software with limited inputs and outputs, today Berkeley Lab researchers are creating tailored, multilayered computer models to get a more complete picture of a technology. Even more importantly, the team has been bolstering these models with data from early-stage research at the Lab. This creates a feedback loop where the data strengthens the models, and vice versa.

Berkeley Lab’s history of technoeconomic analysis over the past two decades is now proving useful in a variety of key climate change mitigation strategies. This includes negative emissions technologies such as direct air capture and enhanced weathering, a process that speeds up chemical reactions that remove carbon naturally. It also includes decarbonizing manufacturing; biofuels and bioproducts; hydrogen production and storage; and methods to support a circular economy where more materials can be recycled, avoiding the need to make new ones. “When technologies are so nascent and they are being commercialized rapidly, we are getting data from all directions,” said Corinne Scown, a Berkeley Lab staff scientist. “So we have to get a handle on what the major drivers are for costs, energy balances, and emissions really quickly. That requires the kind of technological expertise and abilities that we've been building.”

(Left to Right) Corinne Scown, Peng Peng, and Hanna Breunig. (Credit: Thor Swift/Berkeley Lab)

High-Temperature Thermal Energy Storage In a recent study, Breunig and colleagues presented a concept for a high-temperature thermal energy storage system that could bank large amounts of energy for periods of weeks to months. Breunig and study co-author Sean Lubner, a Berkeley Lab affiliate, hypothesized that new composite materials could be engineered to meet the needs of such a system. The systems analysis was used to reverse-engineer targets for key material parameters such as electrical conductivity, material price, and durability from a system’s levelized cost target. The result was both a patent on the integrated system and candidate materials, and a prototype based on the most promising material. Infinitely Recyclable Plastics Other recent technoeconomic analysis work has focused on an infinitely recyclable plastic called poly(diketoenamine), or PDK. The material was invented at Berkeley Lab a few years ago. Now researchers including Baishakhi Bose, a postdoctoral scholar at Berkeley Lab, are conducting analyses to zero in on the most cost-effective versions of the material, as well as where the material might work best (mattresses and automotive parts are two candidates). “With technoeconomic analysis, we can generate scenarios that can help us determine whether PDK compounds being explored in the lab would be cost-competitive with plastic compounds currently in the market,” Bose said. “The technoeconomic analysis studies are also helping us understand which stages of the PDK production process need improvement.”  Removing Carbon from the Air Breunig and colleagues in the Earth & Environmental Sciences Area are developing best practice guidance for a technique called enhanced weathering, where pulverized rocks are added to soil, to maximize carbon removal and potentially improve soil quality and boost crop yields.  Researchers at Berkeley Lab, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and several other labs and universities are collaborating on a forthcoming report, Roads to Removal, that will evaluate the prospects for both engineered and nature-based methods to take carbon dioxide out of the air. Given that concentrations of carbon dioxide have risen 50% in less than 200 years, the world needs viable removal options such as direct air capture, biomass carbon removal and storage (BiRCS), and improved forest and cropland management practices. “The report has the potential to be really impactful, not just because of our ability to say how much carbon we think we could remove up to 2050, but also where infrastructure investments like carbon dioxide pipelines will be most needed,” Scown said.  Hydrogen Production & Storage In ongoing work for DOE’s HyMARC program, Berkeley Lab Research Scientist Peng Peng and Breunig are developing a computational approach for evaluating sorbent materials for hydrogen storage applications. Their work has been used by colleagues in Material Sciences and elsewhere to begin co-designing the sorbents and engineered storage system for target applications such as backup power systems to replace diesel generators. Biofuels & Bioproducts In the case of biofuels, a technoeconomic analysis could tell you the minimum price a particular biofuel would need to deliver a solid return on investment. Or it could predict how the cost and emissions impact would change at an ethanol biorefinery if the facility were also to make biogas from manure and food waste. The carbon intensity of bio-based products and fuels is the most critical metric for securing tax incentives, but requires careful life-cycle assessment and carbon accounting of supply chains and processes that can be highly spatially and temporally heterogeneous. Scientific Basis for Policy Decisions In addition to lighting the path toward commercial development of emerging technologies, analyses like these provide key information for researchers, policymakers, and industry as they allocate resources to develop and deploy climate solutions.  “It wasn’t until technoeconomic analysis started coming out that it became clear hydrogen has a strong role to play in supporting power grids, heavy duty vehicles, and shipping,” Breunig said. “That view emerged directly from looking at the technical performance and cost compared with other technologies like batteries.” Public-private partnerships are also an important way to strengthen technoeconomic analysis and help move technologies forward. “It works best if you’re able to partner with companies and make sure that you are incorporating some of their lessons learned back into the modeling,” Scown said.  In a project with the California-based Zero Waste Energy Development Company (ZWEDC), Berkeley Lab researchers studied the carbon and air pollutant emissions impacts for different ways of managing organic municipal solid waste, such as landfilling, composting, and anaerobic digestion.  As part of the project, they modeled operations of the ZWEDC facility in San Jose and then explored alternative strategies for that facility. The results revealed just how beneficial it is to divert organic waste from landfills from a climate standpoint, but also some of the air quality challenges composting can present. Going forward, the team is exploring options for using manure to generate energy and opportunities for carbon sequestration. Analyses can also estimate effects that are critical to the wellbeing of local communities such as local job creation, changes in criteria air pollutants, and effects on water systems. Other effects captured in analyses include risks to the supply chain for critical materials, product recyclability, among many other insights. Technoeconomic analysis helps in assembling a road map that spans the near- and long-term opportunities. The results can build a strong case for moving ahead with the “low hanging fruit,” Scown says, of solutions like biomass for carbon removal that are ready to deploy today. On the other end of the spectrum, technoeconomic analysis can play a central role in charting the path forward for early-stage technologies like those for direct air capture and hydrogen.  “This is going to be a multi-decade issue to solve,” Breunig said. “There’s great value in having the computational skills and the diversity of team members to support an innovation pipeline.”  This research was primarily funded by DOE's Office of Science and Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and the California Energy Commission. Some projects were supported in part by the Joint BioEnergy Institute, a DOE Bioenergy Research Center managed by Berkeley Lab.

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