Displaying items by tag: car battery

Tuesday, 16 February 2021 05:44

Is it possible to drive a car without a battery?

Judging by the fierce discussions on specialized forums, the issue of battery-free driving haunts many curious minds. Common sense dictates an instant answer that on modern cars, full of electronics prone to breakdowns, it is better not to subject the vehicle to such experiments and that the risk of a photo of a breakdown on one of the systems is too high. But is it really dangerous to drive a car without a battery? Let's try to answer this question a little more meaningfully.

Life writes novels and you are never sure what tomorrow will bring you. Today, we are interested in this topic out of purely academic motives, out of curiosity or curiosity, and as much as, God forbid tomorrow, by an unfortunate coincidence we can get into a situation to test our knowledge in practice.

"What has to happen to me to have to drive a car without a battery?" Well, imagine a battery falling into a coma due to a short circuit or some other unfortunate set of circumstances. You do not have the ability to quickly replace the device with a correct one, but you urgently need a car.

After all, someone can steal a battery, and then what do we do?

 The first problem that a driver who is determined to drive a car without voltage will probably face is how to start the engine. The chances of waking up the engine as illustrated in the photo, that is, "on the gurk" are small: a discharged battery will not excite the starter winding. You can rely on the self-propelled starter, but the car will have to push or go downhill for a long time - at least up to 3,000 rpm.

Another option is to connect the start-up cables to another, working battery and wake it up. But this is extremely dangerous regardless of whether the "donor" battery is completely correct or not. This can be dangerous for both our car and the "donor". That is why it is best to use a fast, that is, smart charger in such a situation. The main thing is to charge the battery and produce a current of at least 300A. This of course depends on the characteristics of the unit in our vehicle.

Suppose we managed to start the engine. What's next, can I go? If the answer is yes, then the question remains, how long can I drive like this?

 Here, it is important to keep in mind that the battery has a charge, not only to supply consumers, but also to equalize the voltage, equalize the current fluctuations. Driving without a battery in a prehistoric car with a minimum of electronics is not fatal and is generally not questionable. As for modern cars, everything is much more complicated here: in the worst case, the "brain of the vehicle" can fail due to an electric shock, and that will undoubtedly cost the owner a considerable figure.

For this reason alone, it is better not to drive without a battery. However, if there is no other way out, then you need to pay special attention to the insulation of the positive end from the body. The inclusion of all possible consumers of electricity will help minimize the effects of voltage surges: lighting devices, multimedia, heated rear window, heated seats. And don't try to set a record in the distance traveled without a battery: head to the nearest auto parts store for a new battery.

As practice shows, a lot here depends not only on the design characteristics of the car and the condition of the device, but also on the actions of the driver and mere, banal luck. For example, one curious experimental character who shared his experience on the Internet successfully drove a ten-year-old Renault Megane without a battery. And the other - he managed to burn the ignition coil on the VAZ "kopeck" 15 minutes after the start.

AutoRepublika

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Volkswagen's Group Components division has opened its first plant to deal exclusively with car battery recycling.

The plant is located in the German city of Salzgitter and has started a recycling pilot project. The goal of the project is to take old lithium-ion batteries used in cars and extract useful raw materials such as lithium, nickel, manganese and cobalt, and to extract aluminum, copper and plastic. In this way, in the ideal scenario, up to 90% of all battery components could be recycled.

Only car batteries that can no longer be used for any other purpose will be recycled in this plant. Namely, during this kind of ecological care, an analysis will be conducted. It will show whether the used battery is still capable of providing enough voltage for its "second life" in long-term energy storage systems, mobile vehicle charging stations and the like. If the analysis shows that the battery is no longer suitable for that, it will be sent for recycling to Salzgitter.

For now, as part of the pilot project, it is possible to recycle up to 3,600 batteries from electric cars a year in this plant. As e-vehicles gain in representation, so will the recycling drive, designed so that its capacity can be increased. Only by the end of this decade, they say from Volkswagen, will the recycling of batteries be carried out in significant quantities here.

What is important for this process is that it is in line with the environmental goals of the Volkswagen Group. VW plans to thoroughly discharge the batteries in the recycling process and disassemble them into their component parts. They are then ground into granules and dried, resulting in the so-called. "black powder" - composed of lithium, nickel, manganese, cobalt and graphite. These elements are separated from the powder by chemical hydrometallurgical processes, dissolution in water and chemicals, which will be carried out by several partners for Volkswagen.

In the end, raw materials for the production of new battery cathodes will be obtained from valuable materials from old batteries. VW calculates that by using recycled materials and renewable energy sources when making a new average car battery, with a capacity of 62 kWh, it will save 1.3 tons of CO2 that will not end up in the atmosphere.

Author: SEEbiz / Bug.hr

Published in Blog/News

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