User:Crazytwin21/sandbox

History
Gaston Plante created the first rechargeable battery, the lead acid battery in 1859, which would go on to be used in cars 56 years later. The lead acid battery is still in use today in our cars. As times progressed the first sealed car battery was created in 1971. This type of battery is a lead acid battery like the one Plante made, however it does not have water inside of it. This alone helped with the efficiency of the battery because the corrosion problem the first model had was removed.

Materials
The materials needed to make a car battery are Terminals, galvanic cells, casings, a lead plate, lead dioxide plate, and sulphuric acid. The terminals are located on top of the battery and are where the electricity leaves the galvanic cells. The casing is where the six galvanic cells are held in position by non-reactive materials (plastic composite). Then you have the lead plates which are negatively charged and react with the sulphuric ions to produce hydrogen ions and lead sulphate (the lead dioxide plate reacts similarly).

Process
The lead acid battery powers your car by undergoing 6 chemical reactions, which produce the 12.6V of electricity. This process is due to 6 galvanic cells each submerged in an electrolyte solution (sulphuric acid and water) in series. This type of acid bath triggers a chemical reaction producing ions and lead sulphate. When the sulphuric ions come in contact with the negatively charged lead plate they produce hydrogen ions and lead sulphate. Once this chemical reaction occurs, it generated electrons which can flow out a conductive terminal as electricity to power the car.

Environmental Impact
While the use of electric cars over gas engine vehicle does have less of an impact on our environment, the production of electric cars has a greater impact than the production of gas engine vehicles. This is largely due to the mining of the materials in batteries (i.e. graphite). The mining process for graphite “generates toxic fugitive dust and requires corrosive chemicals” to process it into a useful state. Tesla has developed a “local sourcing strategy” to aid in the reduction of this harmful processing stages by building a factory that produces synthetic graphite. The production of synthetic graphite on a large scale in comparison with natural graphite would cause less environmental pollution. Along with this Tesla would recycle old batteries to cut down on the materials needed to produce batteries.

Advancements
As fuel economy and environmental efficiency become more and more desired advancements in car batteries is a must. One of the biggest advancements in batteries is the start-stop system which uses an absorbed glass mat battery or AGM. This system stops your engine when you are stationary, and restarts your engine when you begin to move again. This system has cut down on pollution and saved on fuel economy. However, this system requires batteries with a much greater power output than the conventional car battery. This is due to the constant demand for restarting your engine. Other advancements in batteries include lithium ion, solid state, aluminum ion, lithium sulfur ion, and metal air batteries. These batteries all provide some type of advantage in fuel economy, pollution reduction, cost efficiency, etc. These advancements are still in testing staged due to problems with overheating, low cyclability (number of recharges), and cost.

Alternative Power Sources
Moving into the future the big question is “What will replace fossil fuels”? Will it be the electric car or some other form of energy powering our cars? There is no straight answer for that question, but car companies are researching new alternative sources of power today. Some of these alternative sources are hydrogen fuel cells or biofuels. Hydrogen fuel cells produce more energy per kilogram than petroleum or electric cars. This is a major advantage over other fuel sources, but becomes a major drawback as well. Since there are no large natural deposits of hydrogen on our planet we have to produce it. This becomes a problem because it takes large amounts of energy to produce the hydrogen which in return adds much more pollution to our atmosphere. Biofuels on the other hand are in production today and have a promising outlooks. Biofuels can be made out of any biological material on our planet which leaves us with plenty of options to choose from. However, if we convert over to biofuels we face the problem of tapping into our food supply. Researchers have looked into the use of cellulose (the non-edible part of a pant) to make biofuels because it is the “most abundant biological material on earth”.