“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.
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.
Also for aluminum it’s cheaper to recycle aluminum than to produce it from raw ore.
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.
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.
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.
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.
is it a rant if you’re just stating facts?
both haha
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.
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
Can these not be used for grid storage?
“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!
