On 12/28/20 05:29, Brandon Martin wrote:
Interestingly, the Lithium content is the, in theory, valuable part of
it. There's not actually much Li in a typical Li-Ion rechargeable
battery (much less than a Li metal primary cell), but my understanding
is that it's enough to have people interested considering that we're
already basically consuming the world's Lithium supply just about as
fast as we can economically mine and refine it. However, that may
account for the apparently low recyleable content of a given battery.
By mass and volume, it's mostly electrodes, which are common metals,
and paper separator which is worthless.
I would imagine that, as "dead" Li-Ion cells become more available and
demand presumably continues to rise (absent a better battery tech),
folks will get more serious about recycling the electrolyte.
A lot of the development of Li-Ion batteries has gone into cost
reduction. Very little of that has been spent on recyclablity. The lack
of regulation around this hasn't helped either.
However, there are a number of initiatives afoot that may see this
improve in the next decade. Moreover, the theory is that the nickel,
cobalt, manganese and lithium available in spent batteries is not unlike
highly-enriched ore. If these metals can be recycled at scale, it lowers
the environmental impact (less need to mine natural ores), as well
reduce the cost of the new batteries.
It's one area to watch.
For the moment, Li-Ion batteries are not terribly clean from a
recyclability standpoint. But as renewable storage goes, it's the least
of all evils that has great potential to be cleaner from ongoing
development.
Mark.
