In 20 minutes I know more about the chemical composition than in 2 days of searching anywhere else. One of the most useful videos for researchers. Hat off and subscribed.
@@SoundGrooveRemix I personally found that I had no problem understanding his accent. His accent reminds of the stereotypical "mad scientist" shtick. Delightfully so, because of its pairing with his channel content. Lol Besides this guy has an amazing knack for simplifying the subject matter. Genius is simplifying the complex. Out of curiosity, what elements of his speech did you find made it hard to follow?
fun fact: lead/sulfuric acid batteries are arguably the most recycled items by consumption. everything except some of the paper linings can get reprocessed and made into new ones and the practice is so robust that almost every battery you find in places like america are made from some recycled batteries
@@SolRC EnerSys, Panasonic, Exide Industries, Teledyne Technologies would be some of the larger companies that participate in lead-acid battery processing
This is the first video I've found on this topic with sound chemistry and decent results with a real yield. Thank you for documenting your process and translating it to English, much appreciated.
So after all that, the commercial recycling of lithium batteries is actually just melting them into an alloy used for what other purposes? Does not sound too green to me unless I missed something.
@Andrynor Ω Most of the components of "green" wind turbines are not recycleable and will end in landfills. I suspect the same is true of solar cells. This "green clean" narrative is mainly BS. But the uninformed buy into it and feel good about themselves.
@Andrynor Ω it is pretty frustrating yeah, just today i was watching Real Time with Bill Maher, he had a guest on that said, unfortunately because of a handful of nuclear accidents, people mistakenly think that nuclear energy is less safe than coal. Coal is polluting us every day with every breath we take, but because it doesn't create headlines of terrible disasters, people don't realize it as the killer that it is, it kills more people very year than covid has so far. I mean, that in itself is not a shocking revelation, we all kinda knew this, but what i find frustrating is that Bill doesn't jump in on the nuclear, there was no response, he only wanted to hear about coal killing more than covid, but it does not seem that he is for nuclear energy. Nuclear energy is like airplanes, if one or two go down, people get scared and will avoid it like the plague, but the actual plague, eh, who cares.
I think the reason why people are so scared of nuclear is because we as citizens don't control energy production and "green" energy is a nice-sounding alternative. With something as potentially destructive as uranium/plutonium reactors its easy to see why people are scared. This was pretty apparent when the public learned that thorium could be used in reactors.
A video with an important question posed the beginning. With many governments pushing for a full switch to EVs, it's important to ask what can be done with the e-waste they will create. That's ignoring issues with the availability of raw materials and emissions produced from their production.
🤦🏻♀️ EV's are only being pushed upon us because politicians are universally corrupt and green tech is big, big money. Green initiatives/technology exist for the sole purpose of making money and the 'green' phenomena has nothing do with 'saving the planet' and never has. Oh and E-waste recycling is a total lie, so don't expect anyone to do anything about it other than sweep it under the carpet for as many decades as can be got away with. 😹
E-waste is a resource. All those batteries contain highly refined metals of known concentrations that are much easier to extract than from minerals. Basically baterries are like high grade ore.
This is one of your best videos yet. Thanks. And I enjoyed it because I am in the middle of a project doing exactly the same thing. Those cylindrical batteries are really tough!
Actually acting more like a big electrolytic capacitors- a slow leak capacitor. I love your channel and learn an amazing amount from your channel and videos. Absolutely wonderful‼️
As somebody who is dealing daily with Li-Ion batteries, you are very brave to dismantle them like this. There could be a fire easily. On the other hand, love the research.
Excellent recycling it's got to be scaled up to recycle all the new batteries that is being manufactured so it doesn't go in the landfill and reused material for new batteries
@@ChadDidNothingWrong doesn't have to you can burn methane you can burn hydrogen you can use Renewables wind solar why does it have to burn oil that can pump that back down in the ground where they got it from
@@ChadDidNothingWrong and stop cutting so many trees were running low on O2 if you pull up a satellite picture of the u.s. from 1960 to 2021 and look at how Brown it got instead of being green
@@ChadDidNothingWrong if it keeps going the way it's going we're all going to have to wear space suits to breathe Outdoors from all the ozone building up
The methods and the beginnings of the infrastructure are set up for Li-Ion recycling, but car batteries have proven to be much longer lived than manufacturers expected since they are much better managed than laptop and phone batteries. And then they have a second life as stationary storage.
And just yesterday I was wondering how to recover the lithium from these batteries. Given the chemicals, energy, and time required it hardly seems worth it for a few grams of metal. Which is why I expect them all to become landfill for the foreseeable future.
Sometime I don't understand the trend for big electric cars, when something like a closed golf car could be a lot more ecological and make more sense for small everyday travel. I've seen video of such a car sold by Chinese for 600$.
I remember when I took apart a charged lithium ion battery the anode (copper sheet) was getting warm to the touch indicating that there was lithium in the graphite. It was oxidising in air.
Very interesting. I have a feeling a punch is used to push the jellroll out after both ends are cut off on a auto bandsaw that is sprayed with cooland to prevent thermal runaway ! A big conveyor belt is full of cells getting the top and bottom cut !
Great show. This reminds me the 1950s lead acid batteries and a removable top and you could unbolt a cell then replace it. Not as light but a lot more servicable.
I was looking for the formula of the lithium battery, but I did not find it, now you have discovered the secret of this phenomenon, thank you very much and great channel😍❤
Yeah as you discovered here, one needs to use relatively sharp pipe cutters and cut EXTREMELY slowly else it binds the inside. When done really slowly that will not be so much of a problem.
Remember folks, there are two additional factors to consider before dismantling batteries. One is just because it can output the amps needed for your device doesn't mean its drained. Two is surface charge exists, ground the batteries with a specialized device for your cells, using a ground rod can cause thermal runaway.
Three is to use a plastic or wooden tool to remove the spot welded strips from the cells. This way you don't arc the cell even if there is or isn't any charge in it. Tip: Put some heat shrink around the tip of some needle nose pliers to help remove the strips and not arc the cell.
Well you only filtered half the cobalt nickel lithium solution, so you would have gotten closer to 13g. I always lose a lot of product in the filter discs because I am too lazy to scrape it all off. Assuming you did the same you could probably have gotten closer to 14 total. I think a few steps could be improved at scale and also cheaper reactions used, and then it would be worth recycling.
Interesting video, but you should look at Tesla's recycling process. No need to wait a decade for efficient recycling because they have solved it already. The trick is to not restore the substances into they element form but isolate and reuse materials as they are. Most degredation is caused by mechanical cracking of graphite or silicon, which isolates part of the material from charging cycle. Chemically it is still intact. Sometimes there are dendrite Chrystal's from metallic lithium but typically it indicates a battery abuse like too deep cycles or charging in cold.
Great video! very interesting Thoisoi2 !! Looks like a very, very complicated process nevertheless. No wonder LiOn batteries get thrown away. Personally, I can't find a single place in my region that takes them for recycling. The single company I've found that will take them charges a processing fee leading me to conclude that is not economically feasible for them to do it (yet). One would think that with all this green push the manufacturers would've come up with a practical methods of recycling lion batteries, but no. I fear this will be a big issue soon and we are literaly trading fossil fuel energy independence for rare-earth dependence mostly coming from China.
@@Fred82ndAbn basically at some point if we can't find better methods, then stripping asteroids and planets in the solar system of materials might be the only solution in a long while. It'd be great if we made more breakthroughs in nuclear energy it's by far the best source of fuel and we can literally solve the coming water crises by using the passive heat from nuclear reactors to boil and make ocean water drinkable which has been done already and shown to be very effective
So where does the economically FEASIBLE Lithium occur? Afganistan and the Atacama as far as I know.... and the excrements od psychotics prescribed the carbonate salts🙄😆
Is it a scam if your interest is in 1 or 2 of the 60 interactive courses? Or are you upset that they didn't offer course 76 because you really wanted to do course 76?
@@marcelgaddis9319 idk what that guy is on about but brilliant honestly is kind of a scam. I checked out some of their courses and it’s really not at all what they advertise, it’s basically just a strictly worse khanacademy where you learn general overviews of stuff but not how to actually do any of it. I don’t think it’s the worst thing ever, but it’s learning in the same way watching edutainment RUclips videos is learning.
oh man that accent! i've been trying to master it for like 2 years and still can't even come close i love it it's hilarious!!! especially with the terrible dubbing mixed with great content. you nailed it, bravo dude. my hats off to you sir!
Nice experiment! So it sounds like the most economical way of recycling these now is freezing them, then shred and pulverize. Easier to separate the raw elements that way apparently, and freezing the batteries is easy and is supposed to make sure no reactions will occur while shredding. Now you have high quality already refined rare earth materials that just need to be separated out. This is what I have seen recently anyway and obviously has to be done in large scale with the right equipment. Redwood Recycling says they can recover 90% of usable materials already. If true, that's pretty good. If they really have this figured out, there's going to be big money in recycling this stuff when it catches on.
Could you have taken a different approach @11:11 ? Instead of using NaOH you could have started with HCl(aq) to transfer the different ions (Al3+, Li+, Co2+) into solution and, after vacuum filtering, let them cristalyze. Lithium chloride has a solubility of around 80 g/l , whereas cobalt(II)chloride of 529 g/l , aluminium chloride of 458 g/l each at 20°C. So you could filter lithium chloride out quite well, before the others start to cristallyze.
I was thinking about that yesterday but they have holes only small enough for lithium ions which are very small but hydrogen will still get through i think . Amazing material engineering in it self !
Not sure why one wouldnt use Ceramic for semi permeable membranes. The work great and mixing is minimal at best and can be all but mitigated with the most minor effort of loading the membrane first in which you basically pump it full of the ions you expect to come from the cell so what you get is ion migration but no actual mixing of the two fluids.
@@seditt5146 ceramic is only usable for some processes and can be degraded by others. Partially dechlorinated PVC is generally superior, and also not too hard to make.
Yes, I have used the plastic film membranes out of larger lithium polymer battery's for remote control toys , planes etc. I took a plastic vessel and cut a square hole in it, about 15 square centimeters and then sealed the hole with a sheet of the battery separator, I used silicone glue to hold it over the square hole, with about a centimeter of overlap between the vessel plastic and the separator, so it was basically like a sealed window. The rest is fairly obvious. The plastic separator material is just like ordinary plastic, fairly tough stuff, not at all fragile. Some cautions though, I found that pushing more than around 6 amps across can weaken it to the point it leaks from tiny pores forming in it, heat is an issue, an active cooling system is needed when pushing high current.
This is why I'm surprised we aren't switching to graphene batteries. They are SO much easier to recycle and they hold a lot more (and charge faster too).
One of your better videos and that it saying a lot! Don't sell yourself short about yield. You actually achieved a yield about twice what you thought you did at 18:40 At 17:50 you say that you leave about half of that superfine precipitate behind to avoid burning out your vacuum pump so the yield of Lithium carbonate is the yield from about 5 cells not the ten you started with.
you can reuse cycled batteries for lower power consuming processes, if you drain a used battery slowly enough, you will get nearly the same capacity, it's just that internal resistance rises, the method of recycling in the video is only needed after the batteries are completely unusable most batteries are not fully cycled, for example in a laptop, if you use the battery for long enough, one of the cells or the bms might break and the rest of the cells are sent to recycling even though they can be reused
Really well done man. You just explained a very complex scientific idea to a complete dummy (me) in your second language. Takes a really smart dude to do that. Sports figures and movie stars don't impress me...smart people like you do. Please keep up the great work my friend.
To anyone replicating this: although those high-current, medium-capacity batteries extracted from the Hilti battery pack were probably indeed an NMC chemistry (that is, lithium-nickel-manganese-cobalt oxide), the more recent 3000mAh and higher capacity cells are usually NCA, which also contains aluminum.
You are among my favorite educators. Thank you for you high level content. I respect your service to our scientific knowledge. Good Fortunes Great Successes and Many Blessings.
A better term for your "accumulator" is a cell, cells comprise a battery. Often even individual cells like 18650 cells are also still called batteries (albeit technically incorrectly) especially if used individually instead of part of a pack of cells.
I love how much I love your videos that I hit like and then watch the entire thing without worrying about anything at all. Now.. My comment is concluded. I got a video to watch 👍✨
If you just want to recycle the battery into a new battery, you can use the same ratio of metal oxides as the original, so you don't need to separate each metal. I would try to skip the sulfuric acid step and burn off the carbon in a hot, high oxygen environment. Maybe a good application for a tube furnace. There might be some lithium in the graphite coating on the copper anode as well, but I'm not sure if it would be enough to worry about. That might depend on whether it's fully discharged.
Sounds like a great research project. Target minimal processing over purification for a new product. Surely, surely, oodles of people are working on that. Surely?? A big hurdle would be to ensure end-of-life returns to manufacturer. I've heard of only one company that has that goal.
@@chrisking7603 The recycling pipeline would at least need a way to separate different brands or compositions of batteries. It may be possible robotically to flick them into different bins based on the print, if it's still readable. Or you could just break them all down, measure what you get, and add enough new material to get the ratio of metals you need. In any case, the main thing is just getting people to recycle their batteries, however it goes from there.
@16:50 It's not primarily for cost-cutting, rather, nickel oxide can actually withstand a higher current as well as pack more lithium ions for higher capacity than cobalt oxide. (Manganese is even better at handling high current, at the expense of capacity.)
i think the industrial recycling version of this will simply grind them up in an argon atmosphere (to skip the need to discharge them and limit the fire) and then a magnet removes the steel casing bits and other steps removing the lithium/cobalt/copper/etc. Of course given the difficulty and chemical processing needed unless lithium prices rise high enough to make recycling profitable no one it's going to spend money on trying to recycle them if it's cheaper to simply ship it as e-waste to Africa. I imagine some sort of industrial electrolysis/centrifuges will make it more practical from a chemical use standpoint, though on a large scale that will rival aluminum production in electriciy use (kinda pointless if coal is still the main fuel for that, might as well just go back to coal-powered steam boilers in cars and skip the power grid energy loss).
Yea, those pipe cutters crimp the tube and lock the roll in. I use sidecutters to clip the top off and then peel the casing down until it's loose. Anyone planning on doing that, be prepared to lose some blood. It's inevitable.
sorry for coming off rather rude, but what is up with the voice-over, I find it a tad bit jarring since it doesn't match up well with lip movement, any reason for voice-over instead of recorded voice?
I'd really like to see you separating Nickel and Cobalt. As for the Lithium... how about dissolving it (with proper precautions!) in plain water in the very first step of processing? Or possibly after roasting/ashing the cathode marerial.
In 20 minutes I know more about the chemical composition than in 2 days of searching anywhere else. One of the most useful videos for researchers. Hat off and subscribed.
How did you learn? This need a subtitle!
@@SoundGrooveRemix I personally found that I had no problem understanding his accent.
His accent reminds of the stereotypical "mad scientist" shtick.
Delightfully so, because of its pairing with his channel content. Lol
Besides this guy has an amazing knack for simplifying the subject matter.
Genius is simplifying the complex.
Out of curiosity, what elements of his speech did you find made it hard to follow?
@@SoundGrooveRemix skill issue
@@darthlogicus agree 😂
Maybe you need to work on your research skills?
The first time that I have seen recycling method for lithium ,good done o'man
HOLY SHIT I was not expecting that voice when he swooped around with the scooter.
lol agreed
Funny you say that. I got caught up by his voice too when he swooped in. I clicked this video before realizing it was a Thoisoi video.
Struth!
Only if you never saw his other videos
What accent is that? I know it's European but can't exactly place it for some reason.
fun fact: lead/sulfuric acid batteries are arguably the most recycled items by consumption. everything except some of the paper linings can get reprocessed and made into new ones and the practice is so robust that almost every battery you find in places like america are made from some recycled batteries
Genius
Do you have a company name? I am interested in the mass recycling of batteries. I would love to see a facility that only does battery reuse.
@@SolRC EnerSys, Panasonic, Exide Industries, Teledyne Technologies would be some of the larger companies that participate in lead-acid battery processing
Just like water.
Sssssssssssssss. That's what I call a response he wasn't expecting or wanting to hear. Lol. Love it
This is the first video I've found on this topic with sound chemistry and decent results with a real yield. Thank you for documenting your process and translating it to English, much appreciated.
There's no doubt going to be major disasters at future car scrap-yards (~5 to 10 years) when the battery packs aren't handled properly.
This right here. A true environmental disaster awaits us.
That's a really good point....very true and scary.
Someone smart will come up with a scalable Lithium ion battery recycling process in the near future.
@@vorpalinferno9711 factories recycling these batterie already exist. The more batteries become available the more recycling factories will come.
These are as bad as spent nuclear waste. They auto-ignite, unless buried deep into the earth.
I just love thio's voice, his facial expressions and simplicity when it comes to making a video.
If that intro wasn’t smooth, I don’t know what is
I haven't seen anything that cool for years. All it was missing was flame stickers and explosion.
Came to express similar sentiments. Dude is king of cool in my mind.
Eating a bunch of peanut butter the night before
So after all that, the commercial recycling of lithium batteries is actually just melting them into an alloy used for what other purposes? Does not sound too green to me unless I missed something.
its only green as long as its working, before and after its the biggest bullshit
@Andrynor Ω Most of the components of "green" wind turbines are not recycleable and will end in landfills. I suspect the same is true of solar cells. This "green clean" narrative is mainly BS. But the uninformed buy into it and feel good about themselves.
@Andrynor Ω it is pretty frustrating yeah, just today i was watching Real Time with Bill Maher, he had a guest on that said, unfortunately because of a handful of nuclear accidents, people mistakenly think that nuclear energy is less safe than coal.
Coal is polluting us every day with every breath we take, but because it doesn't create headlines of terrible disasters, people don't realize it as the killer that it is, it kills more people very year than covid has so far.
I mean, that in itself is not a shocking revelation, we all kinda knew this, but what i find frustrating is that Bill doesn't jump in on the nuclear, there was no response, he only wanted to hear about coal killing more than covid, but it does not seem that he is for nuclear energy.
Nuclear energy is like airplanes, if one or two go down, people get scared and will avoid it like the plague, but the actual plague, eh, who cares.
I think the reason why people are so scared of nuclear is because we as citizens don't control energy production and "green" energy is a nice-sounding alternative. With something as potentially destructive as uranium/plutonium reactors its easy to see why people are scared. This was pretty apparent when the public learned that thorium could be used in reactors.
@Andrynor Ω I don't think the environmentalists are the real problem. They're just a demographic. The real problem are the people selling it to them.
A video with an important question posed the beginning. With many governments pushing for a full switch to EVs, it's important to ask what can be done with the e-waste they will create.
That's ignoring issues with the availability of raw materials and emissions produced from their production.
🤦🏻♀️ EV's are only being pushed upon us because politicians are universally corrupt and green tech is big, big money. Green initiatives/technology exist for the sole purpose of making money and the 'green' phenomena has nothing do with 'saving the planet' and never has. Oh and E-waste recycling is a total lie, so don't expect anyone to do anything about it other than sweep it under the carpet for as many decades as can be got away with. 😹
I think this video proves there is no such thing as a circular economy.
@@MrBrelindm huh really
@@Catsincages totaly aggree
E-waste is a resource. All those batteries contain highly refined metals of known concentrations that are much easier to extract than from minerals. Basically baterries are like high grade ore.
This is one of your best videos yet. Thanks.
And I enjoyed it because I am in the middle of a project doing exactly the same thing. Those cylindrical batteries are really tough!
Actually acting more like a big electrolytic capacitors- a slow leak capacitor. I love your channel and learn an amazing amount from your channel and videos. Absolutely wonderful‼️
As somebody who is dealing daily with Li-Ion batteries, you are very brave to dismantle them like this. There could be a fire easily.
On the other hand, love the research.
I think the insulation was as if new. I do get freaked out a few times at how he treats those 18650s!
@@rogerwilco8146 If the batteries are fully discharged there is no fire risk
That was an awesome insight into the potential future and risks with EV ideals. Messy business, thank you for sharing.
Good to see you back!!
He never left! 😛
I wish you gave the link for the paper you used. We need more videos like this.
Thank you, so learnful. I hope they will find a more effecient
way to recycle our batteries :)
you have invented a new word ! learnful ! nice...
Your professionalism has changed so much over the years I've watched you, really enjoyed this video!
Excellent recycling it's got to be scaled up to recycle all the new batteries that is being manufactured so it doesn't go in the landfill and reused material for new batteries
Recycling burns oil
@@ChadDidNothingWrong doesn't have to you can burn methane you can burn hydrogen you can use Renewables wind solar why does it have to burn oil that can pump that back down in the ground where they got it from
@@ChadDidNothingWrong and stop cutting so many trees were running low on O2 if you pull up a satellite picture of the u.s. from 1960 to 2021 and look at how Brown it got instead of being green
@@ChadDidNothingWrong if it keeps going the way it's going we're all going to have to wear space suits to breathe Outdoors from all the ozone building up
The methods and the beginnings of the infrastructure are set up for Li-Ion recycling, but car batteries have proven to be much longer lived than manufacturers expected since they are much better managed than laptop and phone batteries. And then they have a second life as stationary storage.
Someone should make a cell casing that is (relatively) easy to open and reuse. It would make the recycling process much more feasible at scale.
And just yesterday I was wondering how to recover the lithium from these batteries. Given the chemicals, energy, and time required it hardly seems worth it for a few grams of metal. Which is why I expect them all to become landfill for the foreseeable future.
Sometime I don't understand the trend for big electric cars, when something like a closed golf car could be a lot more ecological and make more sense for small everyday travel.
I've seen video of such a car sold by Chinese for 600$.
I remember when I took apart a charged lithium ion battery the anode (copper sheet) was getting warm to the touch indicating that there was lithium in the graphite. It was oxidising in air.
Science knows no borders! love from the UK
Love from BD
@@asifalamgir4788 - Peace and love to you!
Excellent and interesting video with some really relevant topics today!
Very interesting. I have a feeling a punch is used to push the jellroll out after both ends are cut off on a auto bandsaw that is sprayed with cooland to prevent thermal runaway ! A big conveyor belt is full of cells getting the top and bottom cut !
What if we just ground off the edge of both top & bottom cylinder faces to keep insides fully intact?
Great show. This reminds me the 1950s lead acid batteries and a removable top and you could unbolt a cell then replace it. Not as light but a lot more servicable.
John B. Goodenough did not want to just be good enough, his batteries are still the best we have!
Glad internet was made and people like Thoisoi is sharing free knowledge for people
I was looking for the formula of the lithium battery, but I did not find it, now you have discovered the secret of this phenomenon, thank you very much and great channel😍❤
Yeah as you discovered here, one needs to use relatively sharp pipe cutters and cut EXTREMELY slowly else it binds the inside. When done really slowly that will not be so much of a problem.
I love your channel! I am a Chemical Engineering by education and really enjoy your content
I come for the science. I stay to see the kitty. :3
like an at home sperm donor
@@ArtFiendz what you talking about
@@yooltube2022 think about it
@@chubetube shush
lmaooo 😭💀
Lithium recycling should be on every researcher's mind, at least in the background, where some great innovations have occurred.
Thanks for an interesting breakdown of these modern lithium-ion batteries. I found it well presented and accurate.
Thank you for all the hard work you put into this video. It’s a topic I have always been interested in and it’s very important for our future.
*Purification of metals exists*
Conc. H2SO4: Did someone just call me???
I do not understand all of the chemistry but I enjoy watching you do it.
This was amazing. Subbed. Got me really thinking and yeah, what a nightmare this is to work with after these batteries lives are done.
Ok, for your next project, separate PU239 from spent uranium fuel rods.
Lol
I want to thank you for answering the questions I've always had but people are too afraid to find out
Remember folks, there are two additional factors to consider before dismantling batteries.
One is just because it can output the amps needed for your device doesn't mean its drained.
Two is surface charge exists, ground the batteries with a specialized device for your cells, using a ground rod can cause thermal runaway.
Three is to use a plastic or wooden tool to remove the spot welded strips from the cells. This way you don't arc the cell even if there is or isn't any charge in it.
Tip: Put some heat shrink around the tip of some needle nose pliers to help remove the strips and not arc the cell.
Well you only filtered half the cobalt nickel lithium solution, so you would have gotten closer to 13g. I always lose a lot of product in the filter discs because I am too lazy to scrape it all off. Assuming you did the same you could probably have gotten closer to 14 total. I think a few steps could be improved at scale and also cheaper reactions used, and then it would be worth recycling.
Interesting video, but you should look at Tesla's recycling process. No need to wait a decade for efficient recycling because they have solved it already.
The trick is to not restore the substances into they element form but isolate and reuse materials as they are. Most degredation is caused by mechanical cracking of graphite or silicon, which isolates part of the material from charging cycle. Chemically it is still intact. Sometimes there are dendrite Chrystal's from metallic lithium but typically it indicates a battery abuse like too deep cycles or charging in cold.
great experiment...even the goal is not fully reached but it really highlight the process
Fantastic video! The topic is super interesting and there are companies that are recycling batteries on commercial scale. Best regards!
Great video! very interesting Thoisoi2 !! Looks like a very, very complicated process nevertheless. No wonder LiOn batteries get thrown away. Personally, I can't find a single place in my region that takes them for recycling. The single company I've found that will take them charges a processing fee leading me to conclude that is not economically feasible for them to do it (yet). One would think that with all this green push the manufacturers would've come up with a practical methods of recycling lion batteries, but no. I fear this will be a big issue soon and we are literaly trading fossil fuel energy independence for rare-earth dependence mostly coming from China.
At the same time, there are much less rare-earth elements than oil, coal and gas.
@@marcusmt4746 stripping the earth for these minerals are very very impactful to the env, but is forbidden to question tech nowadays.
@@Fred82ndAbn basically at some point if we can't find better methods, then stripping asteroids and planets in the solar system of materials might be the only solution in a long while. It'd be great if we made more breakthroughs in nuclear energy it's by far the best source of fuel and we can literally solve the coming water crises by using the passive heat from nuclear reactors to boil and make ocean water drinkable which has been done already and shown to be very effective
So where does the economically FEASIBLE Lithium occur? Afganistan and the Atacama as far as I know.... and the excrements od psychotics prescribed the carbonate salts🙄😆
Coming from China & South America from mines that have a negative impact on people working in them and on the environment.
Good work! That took somewhat process i didnt know. Your videos are the besT! :)
One of the very few Channels I enjoyed watching. 👏👏
Subtitles: This advertiser only has a tiny number of 60 interactive courses but until now as many as 8 million people fell for this scam.
Is it a scam if your interest is in 1 or 2 of the 60 interactive courses? Or are you upset that they didn't offer course 76 because you really wanted to do course 76?
Care elaborate about what Ur talking about
@@marcelgaddis9319 idk what that guy is on about but brilliant honestly is kind of a scam. I checked out some of their courses and it’s really not at all what they advertise, it’s basically just a strictly worse khanacademy where you learn general overviews of stuff but not how to actually do any of it. I don’t think it’s the worst thing ever, but it’s learning in the same way watching edutainment RUclips videos is learning.
Brilliant is pretty bad but it's not a scam per-say. It's just not a good deal.
@@MrKhaz101 oh ok
very similar to mine but I forgot a lot of details. Your videos are perfect
oh man that accent! i've been trying to master it for like 2 years and still can't even come close i love it it's hilarious!!! especially with the terrible dubbing mixed with great content. you nailed it, bravo dude. my hats off to you sir!
Nice experiment! So it sounds like the most economical way of recycling these now is freezing them, then shred and pulverize. Easier to separate the raw elements that way apparently, and freezing the batteries is easy and is supposed to make sure no reactions will occur while shredding.
Now you have high quality already refined rare earth materials that just need to be separated out. This is what I have seen recently anyway and obviously has to be done in large scale with the right equipment. Redwood Recycling says they can recover 90% of usable materials already. If true, that's pretty good.
If they really have this figured out, there's going to be big money in recycling this stuff when it catches on.
Could you have taken a different approach @11:11 ? Instead of using NaOH you could have started with HCl(aq) to transfer the different ions (Al3+, Li+, Co2+) into solution and, after vacuum filtering, let them cristalyze. Lithium chloride has a solubility of around 80 g/l , whereas cobalt(II)chloride of 529 g/l , aluminium chloride of 458 g/l each at 20°C. So you could filter lithium chloride out quite well, before the others start to cristallyze.
I'm curious how the process would differ for LiPo batteries
Is those polymeric separation membranes could be used as semi permeable membranes for electrolysis?
I was thinking about that yesterday but they have holes only small enough for lithium ions which are very small but hydrogen will still get through i think . Amazing material engineering in it self !
Not sure why one wouldnt use Ceramic for semi permeable membranes. The work great and mixing is minimal at best and can be all but mitigated with the most minor effort of loading the membrane first in which you basically pump it full of the ions you expect to come from the cell so what you get is ion migration but no actual mixing of the two fluids.
@@seditt5146 ceramic is only usable for some processes and can be degraded by others. Partially dechlorinated PVC is generally superior, and also not too hard to make.
Yes, I have used the plastic film membranes out of larger lithium polymer battery's for remote control toys , planes etc. I took a plastic vessel and cut a square hole in it, about 15 square centimeters and then sealed the hole with a sheet of the battery separator, I used silicone glue to hold it over the square hole, with about a centimeter of overlap between the vessel plastic and the separator, so it was basically like a sealed window. The rest is fairly obvious. The plastic separator material is just like ordinary plastic, fairly tough stuff, not at all fragile. Some cautions though, I found that pushing more than around 6 amps across can weaken it to the point it leaks from tiny pores forming in it, heat is an issue, an active cooling system is needed when pushing high current.
@@seditt5146 Porcelain is made especially for that purpose, Haldenwanger Porcelain I think.
It was cool to see you as a "regular" dude at the beginning! Great Video!
Chemistry is awesome! Thanks for the video
always interesting to watch your videos
This is why I'm surprised we aren't switching to graphene batteries. They are SO much easier to recycle and they hold a lot more (and charge faster too).
One of your better videos and that it saying a lot!
Don't sell yourself short about yield. You actually achieved a yield about twice what you thought you did at 18:40
At 17:50 you say that you leave about half of that superfine precipitate behind to avoid burning out your vacuum pump so the yield of Lithium carbonate is the yield from about 5 cells not the ten you started with.
no, he compensated for that, when he weight it it was 3g something and he multiplied it by the volume fraction
Excellent video. Seeing science in action on real world problems is very interesting. Thank you for the video.
I LOVE THIS CHANNEL!
you can reuse cycled batteries for lower power consuming processes, if you drain a used battery slowly enough, you will get nearly the same capacity, it's just that internal resistance rises, the method of recycling in the video is only needed after the batteries are completely unusable
most batteries are not fully cycled, for example in a laptop, if you use the battery for long enough, one of the cells or the bms might break and the rest of the cells are sent to recycling even though they can be reused
I love your videos so so much! Is there a chance we could get a version of the video with the original audio with subtitles?
His main channel is Thoisoi and is in Russian. Go watch it if you like. 🤷♂️
@@Burnt_Gerbil thanks! Does it have subtitles, though?
@@GuidoPerdomo - Nope. Either watch this video with English captions or the other one in Russian.
A great idea
Really well done man. You just explained a very complex scientific idea to a complete dummy (me) in your second language. Takes a really smart dude to do that. Sports figures and movie stars don't impress me...smart people like you do. Please keep up the great work my friend.
You are a seriously great scientist and teacher.
Best video i found for my research purpose 🙂, congrats bro you got new subscriber!!
To anyone replicating this: although those high-current, medium-capacity batteries extracted from the Hilti battery pack were probably indeed an NMC chemistry (that is, lithium-nickel-manganese-cobalt oxide), the more recent 3000mAh and higher capacity cells are usually NCA, which also contains aluminum.
Thanks very much bro, priviet! we needed a good video like this, finally!
The translator is using a fake accent and I'm here for it.
Love these videos. Keep up the good work
Thank you thoisoi! Recycling is the ultimate graal for tomorow. Great video. hope somebody find the right way. I 'll be the ultimate hero.
19:14 Charge $2 extra for a spoon of that guacamole and you'll make up the difference in lost Lithium.
🍻 cheers from Oregon! Thanks for the videos!!
Very well done, excellent analysis and conclusion, thumbs up and subscribed!
This guy is so clever that he speaks in cursive English
underrated comment alert- I told my mom your joke and she laughed :D
wow, that is some deep research, thank you!
We would be laughing if we could efficiency recycle Lithium from batteries. Your methods are precise and clear. Thanks for this video.
Thanks, that was indeed well put together.
You are among my favorite educators. Thank you for you high level content. I respect your service to our scientific knowledge. Good Fortunes Great Successes and Many Blessings.
Thank you , Mr.Scientist , I am enlightened.
A better term for your "accumulator" is a cell, cells comprise a battery. Often even individual cells like 18650 cells are also still called batteries (albeit technically incorrectly) especially if used individually instead of part of a pack of cells.
An accumulator stores energy fyi.
One of the best videos I have watched
First time i see a TV Shop dubbed video with something usefull in it.
I love how much I love your videos that I hit like and then watch the entire thing without worrying about anything at all. Now.. My comment is concluded. I got a video to watch 👍✨
Lithium is as common as dirt. Wouldn't it be more valuable to extract the cobalt?
You are the smartest person i have seen!
If you just want to recycle the battery into a new battery, you can use the same ratio of metal oxides as the original, so you don't need to separate each metal. I would try to skip the sulfuric acid step and burn off the carbon in a hot, high oxygen environment. Maybe a good application for a tube furnace. There might be some lithium in the graphite coating on the copper anode as well, but I'm not sure if it would be enough to worry about. That might depend on whether it's fully discharged.
Sounds like a great research project. Target minimal processing over purification for a new product. Surely, surely, oodles of people are working on that. Surely?? A big hurdle would be to ensure end-of-life returns to manufacturer. I've heard of only one company that has that goal.
@@chrisking7603 The recycling pipeline would at least need a way to separate different brands or compositions of batteries. It may be possible robotically to flick them into different bins based on the print, if it's still readable. Or you could just break them all down, measure what you get, and add enough new material to get the ratio of metals you need. In any case, the main thing is just getting people to recycle their batteries, however it goes from there.
@16:50 It's not primarily for cost-cutting, rather, nickel oxide can actually withstand a higher current as well as pack more lithium ions for higher capacity than cobalt oxide. (Manganese is even better at handling high current, at the expense of capacity.)
Congratulations for not giving up after obtaining the green solution :)
Oh and for filtering the green-paste solution you should look for proper dissolvent I think :) Just need to look in the tables :)
Your voice reminds me of Steven hawking's robotic voice ngl.
i think the industrial recycling version of this will simply grind them up in an argon atmosphere (to skip the need to discharge them and limit the fire) and then a magnet removes the steel casing bits and other steps removing the lithium/cobalt/copper/etc. Of course given the difficulty and chemical processing needed unless lithium prices rise high enough to make recycling profitable no one it's going to spend money on trying to recycle them if it's cheaper to simply ship it as e-waste to Africa. I imagine some sort of industrial electrolysis/centrifuges will make it more practical from a chemical use standpoint, though on a large scale that will rival aluminum production in electriciy use (kinda pointless if coal is still the main fuel for that, might as well just go back to coal-powered steam boilers in cars and skip the power grid energy loss).
I love this video because it sounds like Borat that is doin the video VoiceOver 👌🏼
Yea, those pipe cutters crimp the tube and lock the roll in. I use sidecutters to clip the top off and then peel the casing down until it's loose. Anyone planning on doing that, be prepared to lose some blood. It's inevitable.
I love this channel! I love his accent too!
I don't like the accent
Hello thoisoi from Australia I watch your channel every day. Your cat is cute I named it " neutrino ".
sorry for coming off rather rude, but what is up with the voice-over, I find it a tad bit jarring since it doesn't match up well with lip movement, any reason for voice-over instead of recorded voice?
Holy moly, Kreosan has been featured as well!
I'd really like to see you separating Nickel and Cobalt. As for the Lithium... how about dissolving it (with proper precautions!) in plain water in the very first step of processing? Or possibly after roasting/ashing the cathode marerial.
Woud be interesting to know how the lithium isotope composition is in this recovered lithium. Is it possible to isolate lithium 6 from the batteries?