Workplace injuries are all too common in warehouses, and battery maintenance for material handling equipment is a typical culprit. The ongoing maintenance required to keep flooded lead-acid batteries running presents a danger to the workers tasked with charging, watering, and changing batteries. Batteries come in power equipment on construction sites, in tractors, trucks, and automobiles, and most of them contain hazardous substances like lead and sulfuric acid. Unless workers who maintain, recharge, and operate batteries know the risks and how to mitigate them, they can suffer severe workplace injuries.
For both our employees and community, I want to address the health, safety, and environmental problems with Lead Acid. The single biggest environmental issue with Lead-acid batteries involves the Lead component of the battery. Lead is a heavy metal with dangerous health impacts. Ingestion of Lead is especially dangerous for young children because their brains are still developing and Lead is a neurotoxin. Historically, sources included Leaded gasoline, Lead-based paints, and tin/lead solder used in electronics manufacturing, pipes, and building construction, but those have largely been eliminated over the years. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), today around 85% of the world’s Lead consumption is for the production of Lead Acid batteries.
To mitigate the risk of the toxic impact, the often-cited claim is that Lead-acid batteries are 99% recyclable. However, Lead exposure that takes place during the mining and processing of the Lead, as well as during the recycling steps is the very source of environmental contamination and human exposure. There are many places where the process is poorly controlled often carried out without the necessary processes and technologies to control Lead emissions.
The California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) has written extensively on the case of Exide Technologies, a Lead-acid battery manufacturing company. Exide had to close down a large battery recycling plant in California after it failed to meet emission controls and waste management standards. California regulators believe as many as 10,000 homes could be contaminated with Lead from the plant. The cleanup will take many years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. As a business, Exide has gone through multiple bankruptcies due to the environmental impact cost of Lead. Battery recycling plants in other states have also been cited for contaminating the environment with Lead.
The WHO has reported cases where contamination from Lead-acid battery recycling resulted in a number of negative health effects — including harm to children. Thus, while the 99% recycling claim sounds impressive, it understates the problem of Lead contamination via the recycling process. The situation would be much worse if these batteries are not recycled, as a single Lead-acid battery in a landfill has the potential to contaminate a large area and cause harm to thousands of people. The health, safety, and environmental risk of Lead recycling far outweigh the benefit, particularly now that Lithium offers a clean, safe, and cost-effective alternative. From a productivity point of view, distribution centers that use electric lift trucks go through so many complicated steps to make Lead Acid work, including:
● Battery change rooms
● Extra batteries needed to support high volume operations
● Safety equipment for acid spills (spill kits, eyewash, protective clothing, and PPE)
● Blood testing of employees for Lead poisoning
● Watering
● Equalizing
● Fumes
● Long charge times, waiting, and downtime
● Maintenance on the added equipment and process steps
● Inaccurate fuel gauges and unknown cycle life due to deep discharge effects
Li-ion batteries are becoming more and more common because of their long cycle life and short charge times, but they also greatly reduce the risk to the workforce when they are implemented in a warehouse environment. Li-ion batteries are made up of cells, just like lead-acid batteries. The cells have an anode and a cathode with a separator and electrolyte in between. Unlike flooded lead-acid cells, the li-ion cells are sealed and have many safety factors designed in them. The cathode material is the main determining factor in the cell’s performance. In the battery power market today, there is a myriad of available battery cathode chemistries to choose from. It is a critical decision that not only impacts how well the product will operate but also how safely it can operate. Factors such as how much power is required, the time required to charge, operating temperatures, operating environment, packaging dimensions, and weight are all examples of key parameters that must be considered.
While higher energy li-ion chemistries are available, Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) is safest with the longest cycle life due to its stable chemical make-up. A demonstration of how much more stable the LFP chemistry is compared to the high energy Lithium Cobalt Oxide (LCO), used in consumer electronics, is to compare the thermal runaway temperatures- the high temperatures at which the chemistries begin to become unstable and volatile. LCO has a much lower thermal runaway temperature of 150°C (302°F) compared to LFP’s thermal runaway temperature of 270°C (518°F). This large difference shows LFP to be the much safer of the two lithium chemistries. The physical construction of the cell also affects its safety. All lithium batteries contain a critical component called the separator, which is placed in between the anode and cathode layers in the electrode. The separator limits the chemical reaction of the electrode and helps to prevent thermal runaways by closing its porous structure at high temperatures. The safest Li-ion cells incorporate ceramic separators. The ceramic material is resilient at high temperatures and helps prevent the breakdown of the separator that occurs during a thermal runaway event. The electronics of the Li-ion battery also provide protection against safety events, with incorporated fuses and protection against over-charge, over-discharge and high and low-temperature charging. These battery “smarts,” combined with the long cycle life and short charge time seamlessly integrate with the material handling equipment. The fact that the battery is virtually maintenance-free over the lifetime of the truck, eliminates the possibility for user error and greatly reduces the risks in the workplace.
With our customers, this means providing clean reliable energy storage and motive power for industrial applications. It’s well past time for Lead-Acid to have a place in the real world of industrial energy storage and motive power applications. It’s time to get the Lead out of batteries and the contamination of our environment from the Lead recycling process. It’s time to move to BSLBATT Lithium Battery and the opportunity to realize the benefits of clean, reliable, innovation.
