The Effect of EV Battery Metals on River Microbial Systems

Papers in the past have investigated the effects of Lithium on bacterial respiration. However, few to none have studied the impacts on microbial colonies as a whole, and fewer still have examined these effects in the frame of Lithium EV batteries. Here we report that the introduction of Cobalt, Nickel, Manganese and Lithium ions into microbial systems had adverse impacts on bacterial growth with Cobalt having the highest effect on bacterial growth. In this experiment, solutions of agar and metal ions (selected from a previous study on battery leaching) at varying concentrations were plated. Microbiome samples taken from Carnegie Lake were incubated in these agar plates for a day. The bacteria were scraped from the plates and their DNA was extracted using a Qiagen DNA Extraction kit. Subsequently, the DNA was replicated through a polymerase chain reaction (PCR). This DNA was then analyzed through the use of an Oxford Nanopore Flongle. Due to the high sensitivity of the Nanopore device, the number of colonies were counted. Knowing the impacts of metals commonly found in lithium batteries can help future assessments on the environmental impacts of technologies such as EV Cars, and storage of power created from renewable sources.