“The process starts with old batteries being separated and burned to strip away non-metal components. What’s left gets crushed into something called black mass. This is essentially a powder packed with recoverable metals. From there, a water-based chemical treatment called hydrometallurgy pulls the lithium out. One clever distinction in this new process is that the recovered lithium hydroxide actually replaces a chemical traditionally used during refining. This cuts the carbon footprint by about 40% compared to older methods.”
Article also said that previous methods got about 45% of the lithium from recycling.
Dumb question… how are they burning them? I thought controlling lithium battery fires was difficult?
They are hard to put out, but if you want them to burn all you really need is a safe place to do it. So in a big crucible with some type of fume extraction so they aren’t crazy polluting the air. As long as the heat has somewhere safe to go and there isn’t anything else to catch on fire, burning things is easy.
Jerry Rigs Everything Video about lithium recycling to black mass.
Recycled lithium uses 70% less energy than virgin freshly mined lithium, and lithium, like aluminum, in infinitely recyclable.
Assholes like Jeremy Clarkson don’t get this.
Jeremy Clarkson rims goats. Fuckin tail-lifter.
He’s an alcoholic Boomer comedian and opines on things he has no clue about.
Around the time that MH370 was missing and I was still on Twitter. Clarkson posted a picture from his plane showing oxygen masks down and saying something like i hope we don’t die or something.
I called him out for being insensitive due tonMH370. He replied saying something like I’m on a plane dummy how am I supposed to know, but he was on Twitter from the plane and so did have internet.
That was then the catalyst for me receiving thousands of inboxes and DMs from his stans calling me an idiot for daring to call out JC.
I’ve never liked him since then. Then he punched someone on Top Gear and got fired. Now he’s a moaning farmer, right wing, alcoholic.
For a second here, I thought Jerry’s channel had taken on a new format. I realize, now, this is referring to a materials part of the recycling process.
Ok it needs to be said. The smart play is to have governments to subsidize this process and build up the raw inventory for lithium. That way, ie (US) could have tons and tons of raw lithium without having to mine it.
Wouldn’t it be smarter to use old EV batteries for grid storage?
Why not both? Downcycle the old EV batteries for grid storage, then when they reach the end of useful life, recycle them. We need to resurrect the first 2 R’s (Reduce, Reuse) to be able to survive on this planet.
They are listed in order of importance… reduce first, if you can’t, then reuse. If you can’t reuse, then recycle.
Problem is, we saw “recycle” and thougt “infinite resources” and ditched the other two… turns out that most things cant really be recycled, so now it’s just landfill all the way
I wish I could remember where I read it, but the focus on just Recycle was encouraged as the main narrative by corporations which didn’t want to give up the myth of endless growth.
The batteries don’t last forever, eventually, they need to be dealt with somehow.
Also grid storage doesn’t have the sort of deep, rapid discharge/charge cycles that EVs go through. Once an EV battery is no good in the car, it still has about 80% of it’s useable capacity left. Meaning, there will always be a need for “new” EV batteries, but grid storage would saturate and leave surplus batteries. Not to mention, as the grid storage batteries fall out of their useful life for that purpose, they can be recycled into new EV batteries and begin the cycle anew.
Not if they are not holding energy any more.
That’s great and all, but not all batteries need lithium. When another battery technology gets mature enough to surpass lithium based batteries, then we’ll still be stuck on old tech cause the government is subsiding it.
This also reduces the incentive for making more lithium efficient batteries.
Subsidies can help, but they need to be more generalized so they don’t create issues moving past current tech. Heck, look at how much trouble we’re having getting past oil, that’s a perfect example.
Under modern physics, Lithium is pretty much the best possible chemical to build batteries out of. Anything else that might be better won’t be a chemical battery, and it’s not like there’s any reason to suspect some new magic thing will be created like a pocket-size fusion reactor that will make chemical batteries totally obsolete any time soon. Decades more of lithium batteries being relevant are as close to guaranteed as can be.
Lithium is pretty much the best possible chemical to build batteries out of.
Depends on how you define “best”. Likely the highest possible short-term energy density, yes, but that isn’t the only thing we might want out of a battery. “Doesn’t catch fire” is one of the areas where the highest-energy lithium battery chemistries are far from the best, for instance.
Lithium’s energy density is largely the cause of its flammability - if you accept density and capacity comparable to another battery chemistry, you can get it down to a comparable fire risk, even if there’s not much point bothering.
Sodium batteries? Of course it depends on their use a bit.
Those are not “better” batteries chemically or electrically. They are just cheaper and don’t use lithium which is considered a feature.
Cheaper is a kind of better.
Cheap, high longevity, high capacity. You can’t have all three.
What’s better depends on application. I don’t want a cheap battery in my car if I only get 80 miles on a charge.
What’s better depends on application
Go reread the thread. You’re (hopefully unintentionally) arguing against using sodium batteries for grid storage because lithuim has more energy density.
Cost, high longevity, and heat tolerance are way more important for grid storage than energy density. Sodium batteries are perfect for that, and were poised to start being supplied for that application until the price of lithium tanked at the start of the year.
Also, the sodium batteries that are (and were) about to go to market have enough energy density that manufacturers were considering adding them to cars by mixing and matching sodium and lithium cells in varying ratios to match various use cases. The two chemistries aren’t mutually exclusive in any field
I don’t want a cheap battery in my car if I only get 80 miles on a charge.
you can get as much range as you want with just making the battery bigger.
Sodium batteries are cheaper, safer, and last longer than lithium batteries. That’s exactly what you want for grid-scale energy storage. So yes, sodium IS better than lithium for grid-scale energy storage
They are also fine for cars that don’t need to have 1000km of range, for some stupid reason.
And you can even mix-and-match cells of both types in a vehicle to better fit a target demographic. It’s not simply one or the other.
That being said, it’s better to have a car with a 200 mile range sodium battery and a small range extender for that 2-4 times per year trip
Sodium battery performance is better in the cold.
Currently some sodium battery products are out in the market and aren’t appreciably cheaper yet and the answer to ‘why’ was ‘cold weather performance’.
That’s great for grid storage. Maybe one day for even EV use, emphasis on maybe. But you’ll never have a cell phone with a sodium battery
That day is already today. They need better density for digital devices, probably, but with all these advancements, who knows.
But you’ll never have a cell phone with a sodium battery.
This may be the only downside. The new sodium-ion battery weighs 350g (about 12.3 oz.), which is about 1.5 times heavier than an equivalent lithium-ion battery.
And that’s why I said it’s not happening. These batteries are far too heavy for cell phones. That’s an increase in weight I would gladly accept, but I don’t expect it to catch on.
Most of the weight in a phone is from the battery so to get an idea find a second cellphone and hold it with yours and that is the new weight. Ironically my cellphone is only 170g. Meaning that just the battery from your article is 2x the weight of my phone. I would gladly carry that for the increased battery life alone, but many will not.
Hope I’m wrong though and we do adopt it, or maybe they figure out how to make these batteries even lighter.
Lithium is pretty much the best possible chemical to build batteries out of.
Nickel iron batteries, while heavier and less energy dense have virtually infinite lifespan. As such it is a far better battery for home power walls than lithium.
Except nickel is fairly rare, driving up the costs. Sodium isn’t
Me when different solutions are optimal for different goals
Kickstarting new infrastructure is one place government money tends to work well. You can always phase out the subsidies and there is an argument that battery tech benefited from a feedback loop (used in phones until infra and tech was cheap enough for cars+) and something needs to kickstart that for their recycling, government stepping in to start that loop isn’t uncommon or as terrible as you seem to be making it out
How is that the perfect example?
Shouldn’t it open up the question “why do these subsidies still exist and can we phase them out” not “subsidies are bad”?
I’d rather we get rid of oil subsidies first
Ahh… “rather” reads as a point contrasted to the comment? So what are you expecting comes after questioning why the oil subsidies still exist?
We recover 99% of lead from car batteries. The same lead is used over and over.
Lead is much easier to purify than lithium.
Because we really have not tried.
You know what the richest ore for finding metals for new batteries is? Old batteries. Same applies to solar panels. This is great to see.
Yeah ive played rimworld too.
Also for aluminum it’s cheaper to recycle aluminum than to produce it from raw ore.
big oil’s about to start yet another denialism campaigh
I just want the fucking oil mafia to burn at sun’s temperature. They are such a fucking obstacle and disgrace to humanity’s development. Same goes for the big pharma. All the suffering just because of greed for a piece of paper with £/₹/$/€ on it.
Ok angry rant over.
Capitalism rewards profit. Imagine basing all aspects of life on profit making. Of course human needs, interests, environment health etc. take up a side-role in such a system.
Oil companies are today what the Catholic church were to science in the middle ages.
is it a rant if you’re just stating facts?
both haha
Lithium recycling has never been the problem. The problem is most EVs are new, and people aren’t buying enough of them, so there isn’t enough capacity of old batteries in the system yet for business to profit from building the plants to do the recycling. And now some stupid orange asshole has been sabotaging production, so we’re not going to hit that tipping point for decades.
That’s just the US and Canada.
tl;dr:
Rub them on a big piece of carpet.
I remember reading another article that said that their incinerated sewage waste had more gold per ton than their highest yielding mines.
Terrific. But, I suppose it won’t happen at scale until it’s cheaper than mining.
Because money is everything, and our environment is replaceable. /s
This is going to make it even less of a reason for companies to invest in sodium batteries
They have an entirely different use case.
Can these not be used for grid storage?
Not forever
“But but but! What about landfills? What lame excuse will I make up now that my delusions about batteries filling up landfills has been exposed?” 😭 🫏
F150 metals grow on trees!
