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Tesla's lithium refinery discharges 231,000 gallons of polluted wastewater a day

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Re: Tesla's lithium refinery discharges 231,000 gallons of polluted wastewater a day

#121

Post by phkahler »

Waterluvian wrote: post #11
porphyra wrote: post #4

Obviously, discharging "dark and murky" polluted water is bad. But some of the figures from the lab report don't seem that terrible: * Hexavalent chromium at 0.0104 milligrams per liter, just above the lab’s reporting limit of 0.01 mg/L. Hexavalent chromium is classified as a known human carcinogen by the US National Toxicology Program. It is the substance the Erin Brockovich case was built around. * Arsenic at 0.002…

If I wanted to fall under that reporting limit, can I just dilute my wastewater a bit more?

>> If I wanted to fall under that reporting limit, can I just dilute my wastewater a bit more?

It said the permit is for up to a certain amount of water per day. If you're at the volume limit there's no way to dilute by just adding more water.

Re: Tesla's lithium refinery discharges 231,000 gallons of polluted wastewater a day

#122

Post by bluGill »

riversflow wrote: post #43
porphyra wrote: post #4

Obviously, discharging "dark and murky" polluted water is bad. But some of the figures from the lab report don't seem that terrible: * Hexavalent chromium at 0.0104 milligrams per liter, just above the lab’s reporting limit of 0.01 mg/L. Hexavalent chromium is classified as a known human carcinogen by the US National Toxicology Program. It is the substance the Erin Brockovich case was built around. * Arsenic at 0.002…

nah, there is no reason they should be discharging any hexavalent chromium, we have better, less insanely toxic ways of chroming things. trivalent chromium is much less toxic, hexavalent chromium should be banned world-wide. what's more, i'm not finding a reason that tesla would need hexavalent chromium in battery production, which leads me to speculate that this is waste from one of their other car factories where t…

I used to work in a factory that did chrome plating (I didn't work in that area, but since it was the same building), as part of my mandatory training before I was allowed to step foot in the building I had to learn there was a sewage plant just for the output of that line and if I had to dispose of waste water for any reasons I had to make sure I got it into the right system. Our sewage system couldn't treat toilet water, the city system can't treat chrome waste. (my waste disposal was limited to toilet and washing my hands - as you would expect from an engineer, but I still had to know about the system just in case)

Re: Tesla's lithium refinery discharges 231,000 gallons of polluted wastewater a day

#123

Post by MisterTea »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #88
MisterTea wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is how car manufacturers worked around the old tail pipe emission laws. They added air pumps plumbed to the exhaust manifold(s) to increase the exhaust mass diluting the stream enough to pass emissions tests. Problem solved!

>That is how car manufacturers worked around the old tail pipe emission laws. They added air pumps plumbed to the exhaust manifold(s) to increase the exhaust mass diluting the stream enough to pass emissions tests. Problem solved! I'm sure that people of a certain bent will eat your comment up but that's just not true. Air pumps were for catalyst efficiency. The old ones needed extra oxygen molecules floating around…

> Air pumps were for catalyst efficiency. The old ones needed extra oxygen molecules floating around for the big stuff (hydrocarbons) to oxidize with until the catalyst was up to operating temp and working at peak-ish efficiency.

My experience comes from driving and working on a 1988 GMC 6000 truck with an anemic 350 small block with a Muncie SM465 behind it. There was no catalytic converter, only a muffler. It featured not one, but two air pumps, each feeding a set of pipes that led to metal tubes which entered the exhaust manifold opposite each exhaust port. Another odd thing about that truck was it had a choke lever, something I thought was long gone by 1988, and was a pain to start in the winter.

Perhaps other vehicles had a cat but this truck certainly did not.

Re: Tesla's lithium refinery discharges 231,000 gallons of polluted wastewater a day

#124

Post by john_strinlai »

semiquaver wrote: post #117
giarc wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP but, half truth is here "remains in complete compliance with all requirements of its state-issued wastewater discharge permit" and yet... "Neither hexavalent chromium nor arsenic appears in Tesla’s TCEQ discharge permit as an allowable pollutant." Both which were found in the waste water. The original test did not test for those, so I guess what the guy was saying was true at a time?

The permit also didn’t list strawberry bubblegum. The levels of these pollutants were found to be similar to background levels. Where do you think arsenic comes from? If the Texas regulators are asleep at the wheel then be mad at them. Businesses are guided by laws, but there’s no allegation any laws were broken. I’m no Tesla partisan but this just feels like mindless ragebait.

neat trick is to realize you dont have to pick sides.

you can get mad at tesla for dumping wastewater with stuff they dont have a permit for, and you can be mad at the regulators failing to regulate.

Re: Tesla's lithium refinery discharges 231,000 gallons of polluted wastewater a day

#125

Post by semiquaver »

john_strinlai wrote: post #124
semiquaver wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The permit also didn’t list strawberry bubblegum. The levels of these pollutants were found to be similar to background levels. Where do you think arsenic comes from? If the Texas regulators are asleep at the wheel then be mad at them. Businesses are guided by laws, but there’s no allegation any laws were broken. I’m no Tesla partisan but this just feels like mindless ragebait.

neat trick is to realize you dont have to pick sides. you can get mad at tesla for dumping wastewater with stuff they dont have a permit for, and you can be mad at the regulators failing to regulate.

But there is no evidence that they are dumping stuff they don’t have a permit for. Finding 1% over background levels in a sample tells you literally nothing.

Industrial waste is called such for a reason.

Re: Tesla's lithium refinery discharges 231,000 gallons of polluted wastewater a day

#126

Post by bluGill »

semiquaver wrote: post #83
TheJoeMan wrote: post #53

[flagged]

How is that a half truth? If you read the article it’s clear that this discharge is fully permitted and legal. All the substances they portray so shockingly were found at barely detectable levels. I read the whole article and I don’t really understand what is being criticized, if not manufacturing itself. Do people think it’s possible to make a massive battery factory with zero industrial waste water output? Or do th…

There is my question - is this really normal or not? Tesla gets a lot of hate in the press (their CEO is a jerk), but that doesn't mean everything they do is evil. If these are things that come in via their drinking water system and then go out then I'm fine (it would be better if they would filter this but it is unreasonable to ask them to), if there are things they are adding they need to take care.

Re: Tesla's lithium refinery discharges 231,000 gallons of polluted wastewater a day

#127

Post by jandrewrogers »

SoftTalker wrote: post #73
porphyra wrote: post #4

Obviously, discharging "dark and murky" polluted water is bad. But some of the figures from the lab report don't seem that terrible: * Hexavalent chromium at 0.0104 milligrams per liter, just above the lab’s reporting limit of 0.01 mg/L. Hexavalent chromium is classified as a known human carcinogen by the US National Toxicology Program. It is the substance the Erin Brockovich case was built around. * Arsenic at 0.002…

What about: Strontium at 1.17 mg/L That seems like a misprint? Strontium is a fission byproduct. And that seems like a high amount if that's milligrams per liter.

It is a normal metal. For example, the intense red color in fireworks is commonly strontium nitrate.

I think it is used in small quantities for industrial applications like welding, which seems a more likely source here.

Re: Tesla's lithium refinery discharges 231,000 gallons of polluted wastewater a day

#128

Post by john_strinlai »

semiquaver wrote: post #125
john_strinlai wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

neat trick is to realize you dont have to pick sides. you can get mad at tesla for dumping wastewater with stuff they dont have a permit for, and you can be mad at the regulators failing to regulate.

But there is no evidence that they are dumping stuff they don’t have a permit for. Finding 1% over background levels in a sample tells you literally nothing. Industrial waste is called such for a reason.

>But there is no evidence that they are dumping stuff they don’t have a permit for

well, except for the hexavalent chromium and arsenic findings. but yeah, more testing is needed, and the article is premature.

Re: Tesla's lithium refinery discharges 231,000 gallons of polluted wastewater a day

#129

Post by sandworm101 »

phkahler wrote: post #121
Waterluvian wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I wanted to fall under that reporting limit, can I just dilute my wastewater a bit more?

>> If I wanted to fall under that reporting limit, can I just dilute my wastewater a bit more? It said the permit is for up to a certain amount of water per day. If you're at the volume limit there's no way to dilute by just adding more water.

Unless you run it along a ditch so much of the water, and bad stuff, soaks into the soil before "discharge" at the property line.

Re: Tesla's lithium refinery discharges 231,000 gallons of polluted wastewater a day

#130

Post by ninalanyon »

nutjob2 wrote: post #42

There is a reason China does so well refining metals like lithium and rare earths: it's difficult, resource intensive and polluting. They have about a 80% global share in lithium processing. That doesn't matter under a communist dictatorship, but in more civilized countries people don't want it in their backyard.

There is very little that is communist left in China.
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