Feature: Energy Harvesting
Fig.1: Because batteries’ components are hard to recycle, large amounts of e-waste end up in a landfill
A new safe, non-toxic supercap: Lessons learned from the creation of
a sustainable electronics component By John Söderström, Marketing Director, Ligna Energy
T
he electronics industry has a problem with its use of toxic substances and forever chemicals, and its huge contribution to the mountains of electronic
waste dumped in landfill sites. Te pollution problem is bad for the
industry’s reputation. It’s bad for the bottom line too: society is losing patience, and is increasingly legislating to curb the industry’s use of some materials, and to increase the cost of using others. In the past, the industry’s approach has too oſten been to defer the implementation of solutions by reducing harms rather than by eliminating them. But this is not a good look. When a smoker consults a medical practitioner about their health, the advice is not to reduce cigarette consumption, it is to stop smoking altogether. Likewise, the
16 April 2025
www.electronicsworld.co.uk
electronics industry’s goal should not be to reduce the environmental harm caused by the use of pollutants such as heavy metals and PFAS, it should be to eliminate the harm entirely. Te example of Ligna Energy’s development of a safe, recyclable supercapacitor shows how this can be done.
Storing up environmental dangers Te problem of the incorporation of harmful chemicals in a product’s composition is particularly acute in the energy storage sector of the electronics industry. Batteries are commonly made with dangerous chemicals including lithium, manganese and cobalt. Aside from the effect of these chemicals when released into the environment on disposal, even their extraction as raw materials from the earth is oſten damaging, especially when mining takes place in regions of the world
that experience armed conflict. It is hard to overstate the scale of the problem of e-waste, according to the European Commission, 244,000 tonnes of portable batteries were sold in the European Union in 2022. In the same year, only 111,000 tonnes of used portable batteries were collected for recycling (see Figure 1). In response, governments worldwide are
imposing increasingly stringent regulations on the makers of products that contain a battery. For example, Te European Union’s latest Batteries Regulation 2023/1542 is aimed at ensuring that, ‘in the future, batteries have a low carbon footprint, use minimal harmful substances, need less raw materials from non-EU countries, and are collected, reused and recycled to a high degree in Europe’, according to the European Commission. In 2023, the US Environmental Protection Agency proposed
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46
