News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
The US Department of Energy awarding Tennessee Tech a $4.8 million federal grant to continue work on recycling electric vehicle batteries.
Tennessee Tech Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Pingen Chen said Tech began recycling electric vehicle batteries about five years ago and is one of the leading universities taking on the initiative. Chen said the grant will help the university create a mobile pre-processing hub to reduce transportation costs that come with recycling electric vehicle batteries.
“We can take the vehicles and the pre-processing hub to the collection point and perform pre-processing, disassembly, and then some of those shredding,” Chen said. “Then we will take those shredded materials to the recycling plant.”
Chen said electric vehicles have cheaper transportation costs compared to other forms of transportation. Chen said the university is making an effort to recycle electric vehicle batteries to help rural communities cut down on transportation costs.
“We are not only just a studying university,” Chen said. “We also focus on applying the technologies to improve the quality of rural communities and create a positive impact like reducing transportation costs.”
Chen said electric vehicles are currently more expensive than gasoline vehicles. He said the battery is a big reason. Chen said recycling batteries can bring the cost of batteries and electric vehicles down in the future.
“The battery costs itself accounts for about a third of the overall electric vehicle costs,” Chen said. “If you think about it we can improve the supply chain by recycling the materials from the electric vehicle battery through recycling. this can help significantly reduce supply chain costs.”
Chen said he is an advocate for electric vehicles and said that recycling batteries will not alone reduce the costs of electric vehicles but will play a vital role. Chen said electric vehicles are cheaper in the long run as it is cheaper to charge your electric vehicle overnight than the reoccurring visit to the pump. Chen said recycling batteries will also reduce the amount of materials that are imported into the United States.
