After being stabilized in an ambulance as he struggled to breathe, Jonathan Harter hit a low level. It was 2020, he was very sick with COVID-19, and his job as a recycling lab technician at Oak Ridge Nationwide Laboratory was ending alongside along with his analysis funding.
Jonathan Harter, a technical skilled in ORNL’s Power Science and Expertise Directorate, makes use of a robotic and different automated strategies to disassemble electrical car batteries for recycling or reuse within the electrical grid. Picture credit score: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Power
“It was a bizarre state of affairs the place I felt just a little bit powerless — once more. I believed, ‘If I don’t create a chance for myself, I’m completed,’” he mentioned.
Harter had been in difficult spots earlier than. A primary-generation school scholar from the native Tennessee hamlet of Walland, Harter was chosen for an ORNL robotics internship in 2016 that helped pay his means by means of close by Pellissippi State Neighborhood School.
When the internship ended, he needed to persuade his ORNL supervisor to fund him for the primary time by means of one other internship.
It labored, and Harter has continued tackling powerful challenges at ORNL ever since. His initiative and perseverance have incessantly enabled him to show lifeless ends into potentialities. At the moment he’s a technical skilled within the Power Science and Expertise Directorate, specializing in electronics recycling and high-voltage applied sciences.
Jonathan Harter applications an autonomous guided car that tows lithium-ion batteries, supplies and methods across the battery recycling and reuse lab in GRID-C. Credit score: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Power
“I knew I may study shortly. I simply wanted just a few folks to imagine in me and belief me to do essential issues,” mentioned Harter. “For those who throw me into the fireplace, I determine it out.”
The primary handy Harter a giant project was now-retired ORNL senior researcher Tim McIntyre, who was creating automation processes and controls for recovering important supplies from onerous drives and electrical car, or EV, batteries.
Harter credit McIntyre with offering him alternatives as an intern for significant accountability and analysis, together with creating initiatives and inventing disassembly strategies and processes.
After Harter turned a lab technician, McIntyre helped him enhance his technical communication expertise by sharing presentation and reporting duties.
McIntyre inspired Harter to behave as a liaison with recycling firms to study extra about their wants, the know-how they may undertake and particulars of their enterprise operations. In lots of circumstances, firms indicated they have been shredding total batteries or onerous drives for disposal with out separating parts for reuse.
Charging an electrical automobile battery – illustrative picture. Picture credit score: dcbel through Unsplash, free license
Automated disassembly is safer and improves the standard and worth of extracted supplies resembling copper and aluminum.
“We like to speak about recovering the worth as a substitute of recycling,” mentioned Harter, who earned two patents within the course of.
McIntyre and Harter demonstrated the quick, environment friendly restoration of uncommon earth magnets from onerous drives for direct reuse, which is the aim for each profitability and environmental profit. They also developed automated processes to get well supplies and parts from EV drivetrains and automotive lithium-ion batteries.
The guts of the method is a big six-axis industrial robotic arm with customized tooling. The duo selected an older, off-the-shelf robotic to indicate that the method might be reasonably priced for scrap retailers, enabling extra widespread adoption of superior recycling.
The robotic’s pivoting, vivid blue arm, with an “elbow” that bends above Harter’s head, is guided by a controller and machine imaginative and prescient because it unscrews the bolts on an energized EV battery meeting.
Lithium-ion battery pack in Nissan Leaf. Picture credit score: Tennen-Fuel through Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
For Harter, who takes all the protection coaching he can, working with the automated robotic was interesting partly as a result of its use may defend staff in salvage yards and upkeep retailers from dealing with harmful voltages.
Harter nonetheless hadn’t given up on the classroom. Instructional and profession steering throughout highschool and school have been scarce. Though he had accomplished affiliate’s levels in electrical engineering know-how and industrial automation, Harter found he had not been in the correct tutorial monitor to switch to the College of Tennessee.
He persevered, enjoying catch-up by taking extra programs whereas working full time. However then the automation initiatives started winding down and McIntyre retired.
That’s when Harter got here down with COVID whereas contemplating job choices. He was ending venture reviews when he obtained the decision from Madhu Chinthavali, then a gaggle chief in ESTD. Chinthavali had taken notice of Harter’s initiative and provided him the prospect to strive a brand new analysis path.
“He learns quick,” mentioned Chinthavali, now head of the Power Methods Integration and Controls Part. “This atmosphere wants folks like him, as a result of when analysis morphs, he has the aptitude and mindset to adapt to these wants and take full possession of the issues he’s chargeable for.”
Engaged on energy electronics, Harter started making a take a look at mattress for grid methods parts and including automation capabilities to the Grid Analysis Integration and Deployment Middle, or GRID-C. However he additionally helped rise up the ability in the course of the COVID shutdown with the assistance of just a few colleagues working on-site.
“That’s what’s actually enjoyable about this place: I get to do some grunt work, which I take pleasure in, and I additionally get to develop lab area and invent new know-how,” mentioned Harter, who has additionally labored jobs in building, reworking and carpentry. “I can take the initiative to pursue the issues I need.”
Now a technical skilled after finishing his bachelor’s diploma final 12 months, Harter is recycling his personal expertise by making use of his high-voltage information to automation.
At the moment he leads a multifaceted new sequence of initiatives associated to automated recycling of lithium-ion batteries, which is important to making sure environmental profit all through their life cycle and past.
For instance, Harter is specializing in superior diagnostics to establish particular person or failing cells among the many a whole bunch to hundreds inside a single EV battery stack. And since used batteries typically nonetheless retain helpful capability — even when not sufficient to run a automobile — Harter is creating strategies for combining them to construct residential vitality storage models.
These battery clusters may present a secondary dwelling vitality supply when excessive demand causes a spike in electrical energy costs, resembling throughout warmth waves.
“I’m excited that automated battery disassembly is lastly beginning to be acknowledged extra broadly as an essential alternative,” Harter mentioned. “I can’t wait to develop new tooling to defeat sure becoming a member of applied sciences, take batteries aside actually quick, and put collectively all of the automation items. That’s going to be enjoyable.”
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Division of Power’s Workplace of Science, the one largest supporter of primary analysis within the bodily sciences in the US. The Workplace of Science is working to handle a few of the most urgent challenges of our time. For extra info, please go to energy.gov/science.
Supply: Oak Ridge National Laboratory
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