Interesting! If battery manufacturers were made financially responsible for the recycling then there would be more motivation to standardize batteries for the recycling process.
maybe in the future the manufactureres will be recycling their own batteries so it could be easy to recycle them. Ex. Tesla having a recycling plant. They can automate the human labor part since they have a few types of batteries and it can easily be automated. They wouldn't have to worry about so many different type of batteries.
I think that's where government is need as an intermediary to create policies that standardize batteries for recycling process as well as balance for future innovation.
I agree. Most likely raise the price of batteries, maybe not double. I think it's a question of our societal values. Value short-term production at low expense or a long-term sustainable approach at a larger expense in the short-term. I think government should be involved, because I don't think industry would self initialize standards.
Here in Ukraine we are buying lots of damaged(totaled) Tesla cars from US. Some are restored others are dismantled to parts. Batteries often reused as home batteries or rebuilt as battery packs for FPV drones sent to unwanted guests coming from the east.
The process shown here are not unlike the process to turn the ore that's mined into the original raw materials, that's something that rarely is talked about. the main reason this can be more expensive than mining is that the process are not in scale yet
And they won't be in scale for quite some time. Because there is more ore to go around than discarded batteries. And there will be more ore than waste for _a long time._ Economies of scale will always work in favor of making brand-new goods as opposed to recycling old ones. Recycling can only be competitive when two conditions are met. Condition number one: recycling the material involved less expensive and complex steps than making new material from natural resources. Condition number two: the processes of recycling and producing material are similar enough that you can use much of the same refining equipment for both, even mixing scraps with raw materials in your batches. Glass, steel, and aluminium are among the few materials that fulfill both criteria. Plastics, fine chemicals, and alkaline metals (the critical component of batteries) do not.
@@augustovasconcellos7173at the moment, worldwide there is almost 200X the amount of battery waste compared to battery production capacity. Even the very first generation electric cars are still basically untouched, not being recycled at all. As of now, less than 2% of electric car batteries get recycled, and less than 1% of all total electric car batteries in history have been recycled.
@@augustovasconcellos7173 this is when regulations requiring batteries to be recycled can tip the balance, even if the market by itself would favour mining.
@@augustovasconcellos7173another condition: recycling gets mandatory by law.. (here in Italy the producers of plastic have to pay for recycling it as well, at least the recyclable ones)
Which company? What you do there? What's your name? (It's super easy to say stuff on the internet.) Also, how many processes does it take to recycle a gasoline car engine?
I worked in chemical recycling for 30 years, rogue materials in your inputs can play havoc with the process and can be very difficult to detect. We used shredders at the start of the process which worked very well until a drum of waste from say a car repair shop had a starter motor dropped in it and kiss goodbye to your shredder blades. The recycling industry is very innovative, and I am sure when there are enough scrap batteries available then the process will be sorted.
I have used several shredders for relatively soft material but they have low rpm and torque measurement on the motors so they stop instead of being damaged if there is some hard object that they can't chew.
@@3abxo390 probably the shaft and the bearings. those parts are usually made from hardened steel which can´t be shredded by the hardened steel shredder discs
@@shadowmistress999 yeah, that is absolutely what he meant, but the list on the screen showed sulfuric acid as (H2S). Which is different, but yes can reduce into that. HF would need fluorine (which I suppose can be present in the black mass).
I worked in R&D on this topic over 5 years. It should first be stated that Li ion batteries have been recycled from portable devices for many years using pyrometallurgy (smelting). The hydromet process described here is fairly conventional and nothing usual, those “hazards” are fairly common and manageable in industry. There are more chemically efficient methods that have been developed recently and you really need to be skilled in the art and read a lot. The main problem I heard was really the supply of batteries from eVs to drive the economics. Unlike a mine where the source of material is well defined, the source material for batteries must be sourced and I saw vertical integration and partnerships with manufacturers to source those batteries as important. There are many recycling companies battling it out right now. The dynamic nature of battery technology is also important, metal thrifting will be employed to lower costs and cheaper storage materials will be developed. This lowers the value of scrap. Most of the challenges lie in the economics and market, not technology.
Thank you for sharing what the actual process really looks like. We need to figure out how to make batteries, that are designed for recycling. maybe make recycling easier and safer for the workers. But recycling in general is a big step!
Have you heard that EU and Germany plan to mine lithium reserves out of Serbia? They partnered up with Rio Tinto to dig out lithium reserves in Serbia, and thus, cause ecoligical disaster... But no one cares, because Serbia is a cesspool of Europe, not enough woke for Europe 🎉
The fact so many batteries are findong a second life and being reused as home battery storage is really good! Certainly the question/challenge is in having an industry ready to recycle those batteries when they inevatibly need to be recycled.
This may be good for the environment but when they sell you a battery for your home, they don't tell you it's in fact a used battery, they still sell it as a new one for thousands of dollars. This can be considered a scam.
Laws should mandate battery form factors just as we have for 12v. Similarly 12v batteries have a high recycling rate, we can do this for EV batteries. Making them a closed loop
Here is a quite crazy idea: Develop und upscale it with constant government subsidies. In Germany, there are massive subsidies for coal, kerosine, I think even for the car industry.
That's a nice idea and I will get behind it however... You are assuming that it is possible to develop a commercially viable process for recycling, before we have a big problem with non recycled batteries and that might not be possible.... Or the process might end up being terrible for the environment...
Have you heard that EU and Germany plan to mine lithium reserves out of Serbia? They partnered up with Rio Tinto to dig out lithium reserves in Serbia, and thus, cause ecoligical disaster... But no one cares, because Serbia is a cesspool of Europe, not enough woke for Europe 🎉
As long as the EU allows one-way vapes and their lithium ion batteries being thrown away (and not recycled), they better come down from their high moral horse, keep their mouth shut and don't whine about percentages of recycled batteries.
So, from my humble perspective of a bachelors mechanical engineering student, the first logical step for me would be normalization- manufactures should agree on the sizes of the individual batteries, so the robots can be programmed and dismantle them- that would cut out the expensive manual labour. And then maybe, but ofcourse, I don't know how much competetive they want to be, they should agree on which types of the battery fillings to use. I feel like if there will be just few simillar types, that this challenge can be overcome too. But again, I am writing this here just because norms at my field usually do a pretty good job at lowering the cost and effort of designing, manufacturing and selling certain parts....
@@Netherlands031 It depends on so many factors and can be different from mine to mine and recycling center to recycling center; and different materials are easier or harder to recycle. Steel is super easy and cheap to recycle, so is aluminum. Both of those metals are recycled all over the world super efficiently because it's cheaper and easier to recycle than it is to mine and refine. This video we are commenting on explains how difficult all these specific materials from batteries are to recycle. They're not like the steel and aluminum that can just be melted down. The biggest reason that it's easier and cheaper to mine is that the industrial infrastructure is already in place at scale and well understood. Nothing new has to be built, it's already in use all over the world. Perhaps in the future when there are more batteries to recycle economies of scale will make it cheaper and easier to recycle these battery components.
@@Netherlands031 The mines produce streams that have a more consistent impurity profile. Also, no one is expecting mines to recover 99 percent of the metal in the ore, if it is not profitable. Practical recycling would be roughly separate the components in the black mass and take the most valuable stream back into the plants that refine the ore at the right spot. You probably wouldn't even remove the acid, since the same acids are probably used in the refining process.
If there aren't that many batteries to recycle yet, and the materials aren't that expensive, that's actually sort of good news, means there is more time to spend on perfecting the recycling technology, and we aren't anywhere close to hitting the limits of how many EVs can be made. A lot of people in the past claimed that there isn't such and such material to transform all cars to electric, for example. Whether or not that is true, we are clearly not yet hitting those limits, as the materials are still so cheap as to not make recycling that profitable.
@@timothykeith1367 could become more costly? where? in fossil fantasy land? battery prices have been falling like a stone. latest BYD and CATL LFP batteries are being priced at $60/kWh. 10 years ago NMC pack was at $400/kWh.
A lot of the problems you mentioned are reduced when you take SMSs approach (the plant you showed footage of) and sell the plants to the manufacturer. Eg Mercedes has a base level of feedstock, deconstructing their own packs is standard, and they are users of the end product and only need to make a smaller profit on the process as it’s part of an integrated lifecycle with more stable economics.
There is so much activity happening in the battery recycling space, so companies are limiting what information they release to prevent competitors from taking their ideas. Universities are looking for industrial sponsors so they are more open in getting the information about their process out there.
Answer is obvious - STANDARDIZE. Lets begin with clearly labeling battery cells of what is inside them and in what ratios. In a decade or two we can pick a battery chemistry that is good enough for most use cases, declare is as the only acceptable battery chemistry and optimize our recycling processes for it. Should work fine.
That is one of the goals of the EU standard for battery 'passports'; to ensure each cell is labelled (most likely with a QR code) so that the origin and chemistry can be read at end of life.
Starting by chucking the battery in a shredder, doesn't exactly sound great... Batteries need to be made to be more easily dismantled, and just generally have recycling in mind, during the design.
I agree in principle the batteries (indeed all electronic devices) should be made with recycling in mind. to a certain degree. But shredding the batteries followed by density separation (like the way LiCycle does it) is probably much more economical in long term and at mass scale. Because if there is too much pre-dismantling required then labor costs go up and labor is not cheap especially in western countries.
Many recycling operations start with a shredder, it is often more cost effective than manual dismantling. Cars, domestic appliances, electronics, car tyres etc. I used them for many years.
@@SocialDownclimber 1. All parts are physical 2. How is shredding everything (and thereby mixing everything together) a good way of separating the different materials? 3. How/why is a more destructive method, perfect?
@@SocialDownclimber They are components, they're physical, they're physical components. _"Shredding is a good way of separating materials because the materials are separated chemically"_ How is it not way better, to separate them physically, without having to bother with the chemical stuff? _"A 'more destructive' method is perfect because it extracts a higher proportion of the valuable materials."_ How is destroying and mixing materials, something that lets you get more of the separate materials?
@@SocialDownclimber _"No, they are not physical components. They are chemical components."_ ...which are physical. As all chemical components are. _"Destroying the materials allows them to be chemically extracted"_ Why do that *_with the whole battery,_* rather than separating the separate components? And then deal with the separate pieces, which have mostly X element, which will then be far easier to extract, than if you mixing everything together, and have to separate a great multitude of elements, from the same mixed pile. How you have failed to get, that this is my whole point and/or refuse to address this point... _"it really seems like you are one of those people who doesn't want to understand reality, but instead wants to publicly misunderstand reality in the face of the facts, for whatever reason."_ ...says the person who can't explaining anything, or understanding a word I've said? It seems you accusing others, of what it is actually you who are doing... _"I'll go find one of those people now."_ I always find it rather pathetic, when people *_CLAIM_* that they are leaving a conversation ...when the fact that they wrote a long response, before making that claim, proves that statement to be a lie.
You should also discuss the relative challenges for mining and separating/purifying the materials. Recycling is challenging but is mining a challenge as well? Even if it is challenging, it appears all the technically issues are solved since it is done on a daily basis already. The one telling comment was that if you get the material for free, you can make lots of profit. If that is the case, it is economically feasible. The cost of the material can be settled by the market. The cost of disposal is either free to dispose of the battery or you potentially get some money for the used battery. No matter how you cut it, it is way better than dumping tons of CO2, toxins and carcinogens into the atmosphere. I would also like to hear what the carbon footprint of recycling is compared to mining.
This is a relatively new industry, and it's only just ramping up as lots of different vehicle manufacturers are moving from petrol to electric vehicles, and same as with any other new technology that came before, it needs to be standardized
The even more important question is how much energy does it take to recycle sulfuric acid. Creating brand new sulfuric acid doesn't require a lot of energy since there is energy available in burning sulfur. In addition, processing H2S recovered from desulfurization is a burning process. But recycling acid by burning it to break it back down to SO2 requires an external heat source, like using natural gas to evaporate the water.
Sulfuric acid is one of the most produced commodity chemicals on the planet. The production of it is highly optimized. You typically start from elemental S and react it with O2 which produces lots of heat, so energy input should be relatively low. For a battery recycling process that uses it there are likely ways to purify the solvent at some point, and even recover some from the sulfur containing of-gases to make more Sulfuric acid.
Have you heard that EU and Germany plan to mine lithium reserves out of Serbia? They partnered up with Rio Tinto to dig out lithium reserves in Serbia, and thus, cause ecoligical disaster... But no one cares, because Serbia is a cesspool of Europe, not enough woke for Europe 🎉
In my opinion, profitability should not be the determining factor. When a company produces something, it has a responsibility to the environment to ensure its products can be recycled, thereby preventing environmental harm. I believe we humans need to adopt a different mindset: we must stop doing things without considering the consequences and then dealing with the problems later. This way, we avoid situations where 'it is not profitable to…', as profitability should not even be a topic of concern. Inevitably, we end up questioning the value of the environment or life itself, which should never be the case.
Regarding the basic economics. No, it's not about "how much do you pay when you acquire the material" (8:10) At least not for the overall profitability of recycling. You only pay a lot if other recycling companies are profiting from it. If there is no one who can make use of the old batteries, the price is zero or negative (cost for the waste). Only if the recycling process itself (without the price of the old batteries) is more expensive than the market value of the metals, then there will be no one who would like to recycle it.
Have you heard that EU and Germany plan to mine lithium reserves out of Serbia? They partnered up with Rio Tinto to dig out lithium reserves in Serbia, and thus, cause ecoligical disaster... But no one cares, because Serbia is a cesspool of Europe, not enough woke for Europe 🎉
Its all about business: its more ecological to use rechargable batteries for 10-15 years, but using active balancers to improve their durability, but not to throw them after 2-5 years of expluatation and then recycle.
Have you heard that EU and Germany plan to mine lithium reserves out of Serbia? They partnered up with Rio Tinto to dig out lithium reserves in Serbia, and thus, cause ecoligical disaster... But no one cares, because Serbia is a cesspool of Europe, not enough woke for Europe 🎉
The problem is: solvents and materials used in the recycling process also need to be recycled. Well initially there is a nice concentrate sulfuric acid but after the process it is dirty and diluted. What to do with it ? To recycle at the place or neutralize with other materials, e.g. limestone and take to landfill behind a factory ( ? ). And don't forget about water which such factories use in large quantities. It also need to be recycled. To recycle water filters are needed. These filters after some time need to be recycled. See where this is going ? To recycle one thing it is needed to recycle six other things. It will be very expensive. Or there could be the other way: all wasted materials dropped to landfills and in waste waters.
When I see images of old batteries being shredded I always think the same, ¿Wouldn't be better to disasemble it piece by piece? I mean, every piece is made of separated elements, why shred the battery as a whole, when you could treat each of the separated pieces? A lot of energy was used in separate those elements to make those different parts and components during the fabrication process, why mix all of that together again, just to separate the elements again shortly after. I can't believe that it's cheaper this way, to be honest... 🤔
Safety issues, time, cost, energy consumed during the process. Have you ever dismantled a large battery? It's not ment to come apart 😂 it's hard work and potentially dangerous
It's cheaper to mine at the moment, I should think. Luckily, batteries seem to have very long lives, and EV batteries have a full life after their use in their original role (in static applications).
Except China has almost monopoly on the mining. Recent events have told how much danger there is in becoming dependent on another country for your energy needs. And there are a lot of alternatives for static applications, but not for vehicles
@@dogsbodyish8403 companies make all sorts of announcements. Not necessarily that will be successful. We can't plan on the assumption that will even be commercialised. That would be like divesting from renewables while we wait for nuclear fusion
@@itsmegiorgio CATL are the biggest and most respected supplier of EV car batteries, and their track record for living up to their claims is second to none. You should consult the Electric Viking for more info, but 400k miles is already becoming commonplace anyway, using existing batteries (which have obviously been around for quite a while, so aren't exactly anything new).
@@dogsbodyish8403 that is really good and progress of any kind is always welcome, but I don't think that takes away anything from the fact that anything we produce should be recyclable, even after many reuses and how many miles you squeeze out of them. We're still dealing with finite resources and we've all seen how not taking that into consideration is going
No doubt. for years they also lied about recycling glass. We'd put the bottles in our recycling, or bring them in for deposite, and yet they'd still end up in the land fill for years. Then they finally scrapped glass bottles.
Have you heard that EU and Germany plan to mine lithium reserves out of Serbia? They partnered up with Rio Tinto to dig out lithium reserves in Serbia, and thus, cause ecoligical disaster... But no one cares, because Serbia is a cesspool of Europe, not enough woke for Europe 🎉
the difference is that soft plastics are challenging since new plastic is so cheap. at least with batteries, the cost of manufacturing new batteries are already very expensive, so there’s a good chance recycled batteries could potentially be cheaper than having to mine for new materials
In the UK, companies have regulatory pressure to bring down their Carbon Dioxide Equivalent emissions. They would be incentives to use these kinds of processing plants, and usually, you'd pay for commercial waste to be disposed of. So there's potential here for when/if plants were to become more common of companies to benefit and maybe give the batteries for free.
To be fair I think it makes much more sense to give car batteries a second life as grid storage as the performance requirements are lower, like obviously they will then come to end of life there and then actual recycling makes sense, and there will be some cells that wont meet the grade for a second life also.
I detect the intention of the writer to make the processes seem much more difficult and problematic than they actually are. With such pretense we could make any benign process seem insurmountably difficult.
"and recycling is better than mining them and just throwing them away" Why do you think that's the case? Its cheaper to mine than recycle for now, at some point that will change but not for now
I'm no battery scientist but why do we shred and mix everything down to powder form and then find ways to separate. Is it like impossible to separate cathode and anode? Just asking. Can't we just charge the battery 100% and recover Lithium Cathode? Idk I think physical separation might be expensive because of human intervention but it seems to be easier option to me.
Graphite can't recycled and is classified as finite material. Graphite is pretty complex. Natural graphite can vary much in it's quality. Synthetic graphite is better but dirty and energy demanding to make. Petcoke, tar and slack are blended together in steam heated blenders and during high temperatures and high currencies this plastic mass is turned into graphite. Right now there's no market for recycled lithium carbonate, It's thrown away like waste
Interesting. It might make more sense for companies like Tesla to recycle Tesla batteries. They are by far the largest manufacturers of EVs, and they know exactly the chemical composition and physical structure of their own batteries. They could even make them more recycling-friendly.
It isn’t very informative to visit a University rather than a commercial facility. Nobody would even expect a University to have solved scalability and efficiency issues.
Have you heard that EU and Germany plan to mine lithium reserves out of Serbia? They partnered up with Rio Tinto to dig out lithium reserves in Serbia, and thus, cause ecoligical disaster... But no one cares, because Serbia is a cesspool of Europe, not enough woke for Europe 🎉
Any recycling is driven by economics: if the recycled material is more expensive than the fresh material, it's not likely to be adopted ( unless it's a PR stunt, like plastic recycling)
The biggest differnce in price for battery materials is one that the consumers of these ressources, i.e. battery producers, don't really like to talk about. Materials recovery and battery recycling are, at least for the time being, developed and performed by highly skilled personnel in high-income regions. Mining of raw materials depends heavily on EXPLOITATION, not only of the Earth but also of the workers doing it. This, besides the technical challenges of recycling, is why mining is so profitable in comparison.
well yeah a chemical battery is not economically viable to recycle in any way whatsoever. Unlike lead acid that actually has value and is easy to recycle.
I think they said that's true for the lab and to get great results with low energy usage. Industrial scale processes may use more heat and energy and less chemicals.
Enjoyed the video again, so well done. If you follow the maxim of reduce, reuse and only last recycle, then it's good EV batteries are lasting longer and then being repurposed as home batteries. I'm hopeful the issues covered will be solved over time. Eventually we'll be driving a lot of EVs, so that is still a lot of material.
If there aren't many batteries to recycle because they're being reused, or because they last longer, then I'd say that's a good thing. Reusing is always better than recycling.
The Achilles' heel of lots of potentially revolutionary new tech: going from the lab proof-of-concept to sustainable, scalable and economically viable process or product.
Used engine oil is filtered and reused. By and large an ICE from a car is melted down and the metals separated out and it all gets fed back into the furnaces and reused. Very little of the engines goes to landfill. What hasn't rusted out of the body will also get smelted and reused. (Same as for a new generation EV.)
Thanks for talking about the stuff others do not. I'm tired of one side saying renewables and batteries won't work and the other side saying it's the perfect solution. I just want the real story.
My understanding is that they try not to separate the lithoum from the nickle, manganese and cobalt, jusr extract the carbin out and then try to market the resulting blend for use in similar technologies of batteeies or ti dilute it with fresh mayerial ti meet the blends needed for newer bayteey technologies that use different mixes. Of course there are other technologies that simply use blends of different elements all together such as the LiFePo batteeies popular with Chinese EV msnufacturers and the numerous upcoming technologies which have already showed in some production EV's such as sodium ion and solid state. Basically with the rapidly changing technologies, sure you could recycle the mayerials from a lithium ion battery but you may not have a market to sell what you teclaimed to once you've reclaimed it. And to those who say we recycle lead acid batteries effectively as an argument for recycling EV batteries, look at how we do so, we dump the electrolyte into a tank, wash and disassemble the plates and the container, file down the plates, replacing them if they can no longer be refurbished by filing them down, inspect and patch the case, replacing it if it's too damaged, reassemble, test the electrolyte, diluting with new electrolyte if there are too much impurities and pour the electrolytes back into the battery. The recycling simply isn't very sophisticated, it's not cradle to grave recycling and it's labour intensive. The recycling of lead acid batteries is not a metric that argues for recycling the batteeies in EV's and are only practical because lead acid battery technologies have not changed significantly in over a century.
We have used 12v batteries in our cars for decades now. AFAIK 12v batteries producers are equally interested in getting their batteries back to recycle the materials. I thought we had this figured out already. Why EV batteries are so different?
A lead acid car battery is really easy to recycle as it is very simple. The lead plates are melted down and reformed as new plates, The Sulphuric acid is recovered and refined and reused. Depending on the type of casing, some use thermoplastics that can be remelted, turned back onto pellets and then reused as a new case. So a traditional Pb acid battery can be be over 90% recycled. Lithium cells can be encased or in pouches. Usually 18650 use a stainless steel case, so you can laboriously extract the roll of the cell and recycle the SS case. The cell can then be turned into the black mass as in this video and then they have that chemically intense reduction and separation of the elements that were the active chemicals that made it an electric cell. As shown in the video, the mix of metals varies a lot. This is to give different energy densities and voltage and current behaviors.
What you missed is that it is far, far easier to recover the metals that are in a Li ion battery from a dead Li ion battery, than it is to recover those metals from any natural ore being mined on earth. For one thing, most of the very difficult separations have already been done. Li ion batteries for instance don't contain any Mg, Ca, K or Na, whereas Li brines contain these metals and a major part of the effort in recovering Li from brines is keeping the product from being contaminated by these metals. Furthermore, the mass of metal per tonne of "black mass" is far higher than the mass of metal per tonne of ore or even per tonne of ore concentrate from many mined ores. As someone quite familiar with the commercial production of Ni, Co, Cu and Li from their ores or brines, I'm not at all concerned about whether or not we can figure out how to achieve high recycling metal recovery rates from Li ion batteries. As to the economics, you did identify the real problem, which is that the supply of dead batteries will take a long time to materialize and hence it will be a long while until we have enough dead batteries to feed world-scale recycling facilities which achieve good economics for their owners.
I'm no scientist, but applying my basic high school-level knowledge of chemistry and physics to this video, I can see that the amount of energy it takes to recycle an electric vehicle's battery far outstrips the energy savings from driving said electric vehicle. That energy has to come from somewhere, and it's mostly coming from fossil fuel. So, ultimately, at least in their current form, electric vehicles have a far worse to the environment and the energy balance than even the most polluting ICE vehicles.
This is early days in battery recycling. Every new industrial process had its teething problems. Even at its present state, only paper can be more effectively recycled than batteries. That certainly does't apply to all kinds of plastic, we all collect and deposit in recycling bins. As for recyclers paying for old batteries, the EU already has regulatory solutions in other areas: manufacturers are responsible for recycling, or risk large fines. Some might even _pay_ for recycling of their old batteries. Sometimes not everything can be left to market and speculators who operate there.
Title could also have been: The progress being made in recycling car batteries. But no, always negativity with very normal scaling issues. Fossil fuel companies happy again.
Reuse as static, say solar storage, is not always as easy as it sounds. They should do story on that. Anyway it just postpones, the need to dump or recycle.
rmember the 3 R's. Reduce Reuse Recycle Before Recycling we should think about Reducing using less batteries, better technologies and longer lifespans. Before Recycling we should also think about Reusing, use the old batteries for other purposes such as toys, grid storage, solar arrays and others. After all this then we can talk about Recycling.
Just like the input cost for recycling determines its viability, we can increase the input cost of mining with taxes to make mining unviable as compared to recycling.
Taxing mining doesn't make recycling more viable. It takes money from one group for what ever public purpose that are recipients. And it increases the cost to society as folks do something less efficient rather than more. If there are externalities that are being ignore, economic theory suggests that the system becomes more efficient because of appropriate taxation. But absent that connection, it just makes the system less efficient.
😄 you certainly have suggested a backwards way to go about it. However that would be an issue for a very long time. We can't get it out the ground quick enough.
Many thanks for your video. I just realised that recycling used-battery is not so easy on the commercial scale including the feedstock of used battery for raw material. Also the profit is too small... 😒
Simple answer: have an environmentally focused world that values survival and a better future over profit. In this case battery manufacturer's are mandated to recover their batteries materials no matter the cost. Meaning make batteries and processes where All the costs are factored in!
Well, not to be disagreeable but, spent fuel rod can also be recycled. 90% of the potential energy still remains. Some of the current reactors use spent fuel .
Bottomline, the battery industry is still not fixed, we still don't have the perfect battery (and probably never will because each have a strengh and weakness, so likelly we will always have different types of batteries). So, only once the industry can settle on which of each different compositions we should "standardize" batteries, we will have a proper recycling. However, I must say that for all the Eco-green talk, asking companies to turn a profit from recycling is a little strong, Governments should subsidize recycling.
Have you heard that EU and Germany plan to mine lithium reserves out of Serbia? They partnered up with Rio Tinto to dig out lithium reserves in Serbia, and thus, cause ecoligical disaster... But no one cares, because Serbia is a cesspool of Europe, not enough woke for Europe 🎉
'reuse' over recycle. An 80% ex car battery makes a great home battery storage system. LFP is safest in the lithium range, but Sodium-Ion and solid state are coming in.
Agree, but the original electrolyte should be replaced with one that favours deep cycling. Otherwise the battery will sulphate up very quickly since it is 20% gone already.
10:10 - Well, it's good we have _that_ problem: we get more from every kilogram of raw materials we put into batteries. This only means that the industrial scale recyclers will come online a bit later.
Looks like we need to make mining more expensive - and tax the extraction companies to ensure ecological clean up is possible once a mine closes, and to subsidise recycling.
Careful where you tread, nominally, a 10% increase in the cost of mining the raw ores is likely to lead to a 100% increase in the cost of the refined mineral. The costs of the final item continues to escalate until it is unaffordable and the whole chain dissolves. The paradox is that even paying what in western terms are subsidence "wages" to the miners in third world countries, it is an income that they would not otherwise have. Their costs of living are also very low and hence can evolve a better standard of living for the whole village. Whilst many mines look unpleasant when viewed close up, in a global context that are but a bucket of sand on a 100km beach. When left along nature can and does reclaim what man has done. In Australia all new mines must have very carefully controlled environmental impact mitigation with end of mine remediation plans. Curiously they are far more strict on such mines as coal than on diamonds and gold.
Interesting! If battery manufacturers were made financially responsible for the recycling then there would be more motivation to standardize batteries for the recycling process.
Except that the current 'free enterprise' corporate mentality despises standardization over proprietarization.
maybe in the future the manufactureres will be recycling their own batteries so it could be easy to recycle them. Ex. Tesla having a recycling plant. They can automate the human labor part since they have a few types of batteries and it can easily be automated. They wouldn't have to worry about so many different type of batteries.
I think that's where government is need as an intermediary to create policies that standardize batteries for recycling process as well as balance for future innovation.
Makes these expensive batteries even more expensive. Probably double the price 😆
I agree. Most likely raise the price of batteries, maybe not double. I think it's a question of our societal values. Value short-term production at low expense or a long-term sustainable approach at a larger expense in the short-term. I think government should be involved, because I don't think industry would self initialize standards.
Here in Ukraine we are buying lots of damaged(totaled) Tesla cars from US. Some are restored others are dismantled to parts. Batteries often reused as home batteries or rebuilt as battery packs for FPV drones sent to unwanted guests coming from the east.
Unwanted guests comming from the west. I found this comment funny, but sad at the same time.
@@vidpetrovic8907from the EAST!
@@vidpetrovic8907 East, not West
@@vidpetrovic8907 from the east.
@@vidpetrovic8907 No, from the east just as he said.
The process shown here are not unlike the process to turn the ore that's mined into the original raw materials, that's something that rarely is talked about. the main reason this can be more expensive than mining is that the process are not in scale yet
And they won't be in scale for quite some time. Because there is more ore to go around than discarded batteries. And there will be more ore than waste for _a long time._ Economies of scale will always work in favor of making brand-new goods as opposed to recycling old ones.
Recycling can only be competitive when two conditions are met. Condition number one: recycling the material involved less expensive and complex steps than making new material from natural resources. Condition number two: the processes of recycling and producing material are similar enough that you can use much of the same refining equipment for both, even mixing scraps with raw materials in your batches.
Glass, steel, and aluminium are among the few materials that fulfill both criteria. Plastics, fine chemicals, and alkaline metals (the critical component of batteries) do not.
@@augustovasconcellos7173at the moment, worldwide there is almost 200X the amount of battery waste compared to battery production capacity. Even the very first generation electric cars are still basically untouched, not being recycled at all. As of now, less than 2% of electric car batteries get recycled, and less than 1% of all total electric car batteries in history have been recycled.
@@augustovasconcellos7173 this is when regulations requiring batteries to be recycled can tip the balance, even if the market by itself would favour mining.
@@augustovasconcellos7173another condition: recycling gets mandatory by law.. (here in Italy the producers of plastic have to pay for recycling it as well, at least the recyclable ones)
@@adrianthoroughgood1191 Agreed, we need regulations on two fronts: Disassembly procedures and put a cost on discarding batteries without recycling.
I work in One of European battery recycling company and i can confirm that it’s quite a lot of a process :)
The Chinese do it the best
@@larryc1616 No, the Chinese TELL us that they do it best, which is different.😵💫
@martythemartian99 that would be everyone else. China just do not tell
@@larryc1616 True they keep a lot of secrets, but they do love to constantly tell us how great they are. You know... like the Americans do.
Which company? What you do there? What's your name? (It's super easy to say stuff on the internet.) Also, how many processes does it take to recycle a gasoline car engine?
I worked in chemical recycling for 30 years, rogue materials in your inputs can play havoc with the process and can be very difficult to detect.
We used shredders at the start of the process which worked very well until a drum of waste from say a car repair shop had a starter motor dropped in it and kiss goodbye to your shredder blades.
The recycling industry is very innovative, and I am sure when there are enough scrap batteries available then the process will be sorted.
We do not expect starter motors to mixed in with electric car batteries.
What part of starter motors breaks shredder blades? 😮
I have used several shredders for relatively soft material but they have low rpm and torque measurement on the motors so they stop instead of being damaged if there is some hard object that they can't chew.
@@skunkjobb Low torque? I'm perplexed about that part. Torque and hp are related, but a shredder seems like a high torque device.
@@3abxo390 probably the shaft and the bearings. those parts are usually made from hardened steel which can´t be shredded by the hardened steel shredder discs
H2S is not sulfuric acid (So4), but hydrogen sulfide, which evolves when sulfuric acid (or sulfates) is reduced in low oxygen environments.
@@shadowmistress999 yeah, that is absolutely what he meant, but the list on the screen showed sulfuric acid as (H2S). Which is different, but yes can reduce into that. HF would need fluorine (which I suppose can be present in the black mass).
Thanks for spotting this! You're right, at 3:54 we wrote Sulphuric Acid (H2S). But we meant Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S). Apologies for the mistake.
@@DWPlanetA
@@DWPlanetA No worries at all. :)
@@DWPlanetA Back to the editing room!
I worked in R&D on this topic over 5 years. It should first be stated that Li ion batteries have been recycled from portable devices for many years using pyrometallurgy (smelting). The hydromet process described here is fairly conventional and nothing usual, those “hazards” are fairly common and manageable in industry. There are more chemically efficient methods that have been developed recently and you really need to be skilled in the art and read a lot. The main problem I heard was really the supply of batteries from eVs to drive the economics. Unlike a mine where the source of material is well defined, the source material for batteries must be sourced and I saw vertical integration and partnerships with manufacturers to source those batteries as important. There are many recycling companies battling it out right now. The dynamic nature of battery technology is also important, metal thrifting will be employed to lower costs and cheaper storage materials will be developed. This lowers the value of scrap. Most of the challenges lie in the economics and market, not technology.
Thanks
BS
❤
I work at a new state of the art battery recycler. While I can't go into details this isn't close to new technology.
What is it called please?
Thank you for sharing what the actual process really looks like. We need to figure out how to make batteries, that are designed for recycling. maybe make recycling easier and safer for the workers.
But recycling in general is a big step!
Glad it was helpful!🤞 If you want to see more videos like these, subscribe to our channel, we post new videos every Friday 😊
Have you heard that EU and Germany plan to mine lithium reserves out of Serbia? They partnered up with Rio Tinto to dig out lithium reserves in Serbia, and thus, cause ecoligical disaster...
But no one cares, because Serbia is a cesspool of Europe, not enough woke for Europe 🎉
The fact so many batteries are findong a second life and being reused as home battery storage is really good! Certainly the question/challenge is in having an industry ready to recycle those batteries when they inevatibly need to be recycled.
This may be good for the environment but when they sell you a battery for your home, they don't tell you it's in fact a used battery, they still sell it as a new one for thousands of dollars. This can be considered a scam.
Dw: how are we going to recycle all these batteries.
Also dw: there are not that many batteries around to make large scale recycling viable.
1:46 blackmass 8:43 many battery chemistries 10:12 old EV batteries being used in second-life applications,👍 delaying need for recycling
Absolutely - I'd love to have a set of those used Li batteries for our stand-alone solar system!
Yeah, if the batteries are lasting longer and being used, that shoudln't be considered a problem, that is actually good news.
Alright, who paid you to post this? Like there's no way Vox uploads same thing within the same minute.
is this a coincidence
@@samuel-oh7qg I think more like just another checkmark on the agenda before the annual illuminati meeting.
an even CNA insider post the same theme in the same minute
The German government does and It's pretty clear they made it a few weeks ago.
The Democrats
Laws should mandate battery form factors just as we have for 12v. Similarly 12v batteries have a high recycling rate, we can do this for EV batteries. Making them a closed loop
Here is a quite crazy idea: Develop und upscale it with constant government subsidies. In Germany, there are massive subsidies for coal, kerosine, I think even for the car industry.
That's a nice idea and I will get behind it however... You are assuming that it is possible to develop a commercially viable process for recycling, before we have a big problem with non recycled batteries and that might not be possible.... Or the process might end up being terrible for the environment...
Have you heard that EU and Germany plan to mine lithium reserves out of Serbia? They partnered up with Rio Tinto to dig out lithium reserves in Serbia, and thus, cause ecoligical disaster...
But no one cares, because Serbia is a cesspool of Europe, not enough woke for Europe 🎉
As long as the EU allows one-way vapes and their lithium ion batteries being thrown away (and not recycled), they better come down from their high moral horse, keep their mouth shut and don't whine about percentages of recycled batteries.
yeah that is just as bad. It just shows you how cheap it is to make these batteries and how expensive it would be to try to recycle them.
At least someone is being honest about the challenges.
Glad you liked our video 🤞 and if you like it subscribe to our channel, we post new videos every Friday ✨
So, from my humble perspective of a bachelors mechanical engineering student, the first logical step for me would be normalization- manufactures should agree on the sizes of the individual batteries, so the robots can be programmed and dismantle them- that would cut out the expensive manual labour. And then maybe, but ofcourse, I don't know how much competetive they want to be, they should agree on which types of the battery fillings to use. I feel like if there will be just few simillar types, that this challenge can be overcome too. But again, I am writing this here just because norms at my field usually do a pretty good job at lowering the cost and effort of designing, manufacturing and selling certain parts....
So how does recycling compare to mining? Surely to extract high purity metals from ore is even more difficult
Mining is much much easier and cheaper. And well established.
@@philbiker3 what makes it easier and cheaper? You probably also have to dissolve the minerals and purify then in some way
@@Netherlands031 It depends on so many factors and can be different from mine to mine and recycling center to recycling center; and different materials are easier or harder to recycle. Steel is super easy and cheap to recycle, so is aluminum. Both of those metals are recycled all over the world super efficiently because it's cheaper and easier to recycle than it is to mine and refine. This video we are commenting on explains how difficult all these specific materials from batteries are to recycle. They're not like the steel and aluminum that can just be melted down. The biggest reason that it's easier and cheaper to mine is that the industrial infrastructure is already in place at scale and well understood. Nothing new has to be built, it's already in use all over the world. Perhaps in the future when there are more batteries to recycle economies of scale will make it cheaper and easier to recycle these battery components.
@@Netherlands031The massive quantity being mined makes it cheap
@@Netherlands031 The mines produce streams that have a more consistent impurity profile. Also, no one is expecting mines to recover 99 percent of the metal in the ore, if it is not profitable. Practical recycling would be roughly separate the components in the black mass and take the most valuable stream back into the plants that refine the ore at the right spot. You probably wouldn't even remove the acid, since the same acids are probably used in the refining process.
If there aren't that many batteries to recycle yet, and the materials aren't that expensive, that's actually sort of good news, means there is more time to spend on perfecting the recycling technology, and we aren't anywhere close to hitting the limits of how many EVs can be made. A lot of people in the past claimed that there isn't such and such material to transform all cars to electric, for example. Whether or not that is true, we are clearly not yet hitting those limits, as the materials are still so cheap as to not make recycling that profitable.
The "cheap" materials is a reason for the high costs of EV batteries - which could become more costly. M
@@timothykeith1367 could become more costly? where? in fossil fantasy land? battery prices have been falling like a stone. latest BYD and CATL LFP batteries are being priced at $60/kWh. 10 years ago NMC pack was at $400/kWh.
A lot of the problems you mentioned are reduced when you take SMSs approach (the plant you showed footage of) and sell the plants to the manufacturer. Eg Mercedes has a base level of feedstock, deconstructing their own packs is standard, and they are users of the end product and only need to make a smaller profit on the process as it’s part of an integrated lifecycle with more stable economics.
This is crazy. It's like we are trying to fix a problem, but in the process of fixing it we generate another problem. And the cycle continues.
Second life batteries are the most important in my opinion. Reuse rather than recycle
The Companies making money from manufacturing the EV batteries. Should be the ones that have the Companies that recycle the EV batteries
There is so much activity happening in the battery recycling space, so companies are limiting what information they release to prevent competitors from taking their ideas. Universities are looking for industrial sponsors so they are more open in getting the information about their process out there.
That or the recycling efforts are absolutely worse than acquiring new resources.
Answer is obvious - STANDARDIZE. Lets begin with clearly labeling battery cells of what is inside them and in what ratios. In a decade or two we can pick a battery chemistry that is good enough for most use cases, declare is as the only acceptable battery chemistry and optimize our recycling processes for it. Should work fine.
That is one of the goals of the EU standard for battery 'passports'; to ensure each cell is labelled (most likely with a QR code) so that the origin and chemistry can be read at end of life.
Starting by chucking the battery in a shredder, doesn't exactly sound great...
Batteries need to be made to be more easily dismantled, and just generally have recycling in mind, during the design.
I agree in principle the batteries (indeed all electronic devices) should be made with recycling in mind. to a certain degree. But shredding the batteries followed by density separation (like the way LiCycle does it) is probably much more economical in long term and at mass scale. Because if there is too much pre-dismantling required then labor costs go up and labor is not cheap especially in western countries.
Many recycling operations start with a shredder, it is often more cost effective than manual dismantling. Cars, domestic appliances, electronics, car tyres etc. I used them for many years.
@@SocialDownclimber 1. All parts are physical 2. How is shredding everything (and thereby mixing everything together) a good way of separating the different materials? 3. How/why is a more destructive method, perfect?
@@SocialDownclimber They are components, they're physical, they're physical components.
_"Shredding is a good way of separating materials because the materials are separated chemically"_
How is it not way better, to separate them physically, without having to bother with the chemical stuff?
_"A 'more destructive' method is perfect because it extracts a higher proportion of the valuable materials."_
How is destroying and mixing materials, something that lets you get more of the separate materials?
@@SocialDownclimber _"No, they are not physical components. They are chemical components."_
...which are physical. As all chemical components are.
_"Destroying the materials allows them to be chemically extracted"_
Why do that *_with the whole battery,_* rather than separating the separate components?
And then deal with the separate pieces, which have mostly X element, which will then be far easier to extract, than if you mixing everything together, and have to separate a great multitude of elements, from the same mixed pile.
How you have failed to get, that this is my whole point and/or refuse to address this point...
_"it really seems like you are one of those people who doesn't want to understand reality, but instead wants to publicly misunderstand reality in the face of the facts, for whatever reason."_
...says the person who can't explaining anything, or understanding a word I've said?
It seems you accusing others, of what it is actually you who are doing...
_"I'll go find one of those people now."_
I always find it rather pathetic, when people *_CLAIM_* that they are leaving a conversation ...when the fact that they wrote a long response, before making that claim, proves that statement to be a lie.
You should also discuss the relative challenges for mining and separating/purifying the materials. Recycling is challenging but is mining a challenge as well? Even if it is challenging, it appears all the technically issues are solved since it is done on a daily basis already. The one telling comment was that if you get the material for free, you can make lots of profit. If that is the case, it is economically feasible. The cost of the material can be settled by the market. The cost of disposal is either free to dispose of the battery or you potentially get some money for the used battery. No matter how you cut it, it is way better than dumping tons of CO2, toxins and carcinogens into the atmosphere. I would also like to hear what the carbon footprint of recycling is compared to mining.
This is a relatively new industry, and it's only just ramping up as lots of different vehicle manufacturers are moving from petrol to electric vehicles, and same as with any other new technology that came before, it needs to be standardized
"Low energy " - how much energy is necessary to make sulfuric acid?
The even more important question is how much energy does it take to recycle sulfuric acid. Creating brand new sulfuric acid doesn't require a lot of energy since there is energy available in burning sulfur. In addition, processing H2S recovered from desulfurization is a burning process. But recycling acid by burning it to break it back down to SO2 requires an external heat source, like using natural gas to evaporate the water.
Sulfuric acid is one of the most produced commodity chemicals on the planet. The production of it is highly optimized. You typically start from elemental S and react it with O2 which produces lots of heat, so energy input should be relatively low. For a battery recycling process that uses it there are likely ways to purify the solvent at some point, and even recover some from the sulfur containing of-gases to make more Sulfuric acid.
Have you heard that EU and Germany plan to mine lithium reserves out of Serbia? They partnered up with Rio Tinto to dig out lithium reserves in Serbia, and thus, cause ecoligical disaster...
But no one cares, because Serbia is a cesspool of Europe, not enough woke for Europe 🎉
@@jpcool95480yeah and sulphur grows on trees
In my opinion, profitability should not be the determining factor. When a company produces something, it has a responsibility to the environment to ensure its products can be recycled, thereby preventing environmental harm. I believe we humans need to adopt a different mindset: we must stop doing things without considering the consequences and then dealing with the problems later. This way, we avoid situations where 'it is not profitable to…', as profitability should not even be a topic of concern. Inevitably, we end up questioning the value of the environment or life itself, which should never be the case.
If not for the profit what will be the incentive?
Secrets are why we're still in the dark ages.
I'd be happy to "recycle" any "free" EV batteries for my Ebike and solar power system without having to use any toxic chemicals to process it.
What do we do when it's no longer good for your bike or solar power system?
Regarding the basic economics.
No, it's not about "how much do you pay when you acquire the material" (8:10)
At least not for the overall profitability of recycling. You only pay a lot if other recycling companies are profiting from it. If there is no one who can make use of the old batteries, the price is zero or negative (cost for the waste). Only if the recycling process itself (without the price of the old batteries) is more expensive than the market value of the metals, then there will be no one who would like to recycle it.
Have you heard that EU and Germany plan to mine lithium reserves out of Serbia? They partnered up with Rio Tinto to dig out lithium reserves in Serbia, and thus, cause ecoligical disaster...
But no one cares, because Serbia is a cesspool of Europe, not enough woke for Europe 🎉
Wait we're supposed to recycle these? I thought we were just throwing them in the ocean to recharge the eels!
3:52 H₂S is not sulfuric acid but hydrogen sulfide. In addition, numbers in chemical formulae should be subscript.
Its all about business: its more ecological to use rechargable batteries for 10-15 years, but using active balancers to improve their durability, but not to throw them after 2-5 years of expluatation and then recycle.
Oddly no consideration of the environmental effects of mining, as if the minerals came out of the ground pure and didn't need many similar processes.
Have you heard that EU and Germany plan to mine lithium reserves out of Serbia? They partnered up with Rio Tinto to dig out lithium reserves in Serbia, and thus, cause ecoligical disaster...
But no one cares, because Serbia is a cesspool of Europe, not enough woke for Europe 🎉
The problem with recycling has always been that, in most cases, it cost more than buying new.
The problem is: solvents and materials used in the recycling process also need to be recycled. Well initially there is a nice concentrate sulfuric acid but after the process it is dirty and diluted. What to do with it ? To recycle at the place or neutralize with other materials, e.g. limestone and take to landfill behind a factory ( ? ). And don't forget about water which such factories use in large quantities. It also need to be recycled. To recycle water filters are needed. These filters after some time need to be recycled. See where this is going ? To recycle one thing it is needed to recycle six other things. It will be very expensive. Or there could be the other way: all wasted materials dropped to landfills and in waste waters.
When I see images of old batteries being shredded I always think the same, ¿Wouldn't be better to disasemble it piece by piece? I mean, every piece is made of separated elements, why shred the battery as a whole, when you could treat each of the separated pieces? A lot of energy was used in separate those elements to make those different parts and components during the fabrication process, why mix all of that together again, just to separate the elements again shortly after. I can't believe that it's cheaper this way, to be honest... 🤔
Safety issues, time, cost, energy consumed during the process. Have you ever dismantled a large battery? It's not ment to come apart 😂 it's hard work and potentially dangerous
It's cheaper to mine at the moment, I should think. Luckily, batteries seem to have very long lives, and EV batteries have a full life after their use in their original role (in static applications).
Except China has almost monopoly on the mining. Recent events have told how much danger there is in becoming dependent on another country for your energy needs. And there are a lot of alternatives for static applications, but not for vehicles
@@itsmegiorgio I see CATL has announced an LFP battery which is guaranteed for 1.24 million miles. So even lees need for recycling.
@@dogsbodyish8403 companies make all sorts of announcements. Not necessarily that will be successful. We can't plan on the assumption that will even be commercialised.
That would be like divesting from renewables while we wait for nuclear fusion
@@itsmegiorgio CATL are the biggest and most respected supplier of EV car batteries, and their track record for living up to their claims is second to none. You should consult the Electric Viking for more info, but 400k miles is already becoming commonplace anyway, using existing batteries (which have obviously been around for quite a while, so aren't exactly anything new).
@@dogsbodyish8403 that is really good and progress of any kind is always welcome, but I don't think that takes away anything from the fact that anything we produce should be recyclable, even after many reuses and how many miles you squeeze out of them.
We're still dealing with finite resources and we've all seen how not taking that into consideration is going
We can't even recycle sorted plastics efficiently. I am not holding my breath on battery recycling coming anywhere near economical viability.
No doubt. for years they also lied about recycling glass. We'd put the bottles in our recycling, or bring them in for deposite, and yet they'd still end up in the land fill for years. Then they finally scrapped glass bottles.
Have you heard that EU and Germany plan to mine lithium reserves out of Serbia? They partnered up with Rio Tinto to dig out lithium reserves in Serbia, and thus, cause ecoligical disaster...
But no one cares, because Serbia is a cesspool of Europe, not enough woke for Europe 🎉
the difference is that soft plastics are challenging since new plastic is so cheap. at least with batteries, the cost of manufacturing new batteries are already very expensive, so there’s a good chance recycled batteries could potentially be cheaper than having to mine for new materials
2:42 Little Timmy was a chemist. Little Timmy is no more. For what he thought was H2O was H2SO4.
I learned it as "Little Ricky's dead and gone, his face we'll see no more. For what he thought was H2O was H2SO4."
In the UK, companies have regulatory pressure to bring down their Carbon Dioxide Equivalent emissions. They would be incentives to use these kinds of processing plants, and usually, you'd pay for commercial waste to be disposed of. So there's potential here for when/if plants were to become more common of companies to benefit and maybe give the batteries for free.
To be fair I think it makes much more sense to give car batteries a second life as grid storage as the performance requirements are lower, like obviously they will then come to end of life there and then actual recycling makes sense, and there will be some cells that wont meet the grade for a second life also.
I detect the intention of the writer to make the processes seem much more difficult and problematic than they actually are. With such pretense we could make any benign process seem insurmountably difficult.
Focusing on recycling and ignoring the reduction and reusage of products is counterproductive AF.
"and recycling is better than mining them and just throwing them away"
Why do you think that's the case?
Its cheaper to mine than recycle for now, at some point that will change but not for now
Exactly my thoughts otherwise they would be showing their full method and these recyling centers would be popping up all over.
I'm no battery scientist but why do we shred and mix everything down to powder form and then find ways to separate. Is it like impossible to separate cathode and anode? Just asking. Can't we just charge the battery 100% and recover Lithium Cathode? Idk I think physical separation might be expensive because of human intervention but it seems to be easier option to me.
Graphite can't recycled and is classified as finite material. Graphite is pretty complex. Natural graphite can vary much in it's quality. Synthetic graphite is better but dirty and energy demanding to make. Petcoke, tar and slack are blended together in steam heated blenders and during high temperatures and high currencies this plastic mass is turned into graphite. Right now there's no market for recycled lithium carbonate, It's thrown away like waste
Interesting. It might make more sense for companies like Tesla to recycle Tesla batteries. They are by far the largest manufacturers of EVs, and they know exactly the chemical composition and physical structure of their own batteries. They could even make them more recycling-friendly.
It isn’t very informative to visit a University rather than a commercial facility. Nobody would even expect a University to have solved scalability and efficiency issues.
Have you heard that EU and Germany plan to mine lithium reserves out of Serbia? They partnered up with Rio Tinto to dig out lithium reserves in Serbia, and thus, cause ecoligical disaster...
But no one cares, because Serbia is a cesspool of Europe, not enough woke for Europe 🎉
The taxpayers can always pick up the tab for the excess costs! They do for everything else so why not!
Why not use AI robots to take apart different types of batteries?
Any recycling is driven by economics: if the recycled material is more expensive than the fresh material, it's not likely to be adopted ( unless it's a PR stunt, like plastic recycling)
The biggest differnce in price for battery materials is one that the consumers of these ressources, i.e. battery producers, don't really like to talk about.
Materials recovery and battery recycling are, at least for the time being, developed and performed by highly skilled personnel in high-income regions.
Mining of raw materials depends heavily on EXPLOITATION, not only of the Earth but also of the workers doing it.
This, besides the technical challenges of recycling, is why mining is so profitable in comparison.
Not sure how man individuals are get exploited no doubt some but lol.
Scale you don't have enough volume to recycle on any scale.
When it comes to recycling batteries, we dont do it because of the environment, we do it because of limited amount of materials
Interesting and disappointing that this video does not discuss the main fate of most EV battery "black mass": burning in smelters
well yeah a chemical battery is not economically viable to recycle in any way whatsoever. Unlike lead acid that actually has value and is easy to recycle.
Thank you. suprised to know there is only chemical process of getting the basic elements back from the batteries.
I think they said that's true for the lab and to get great results with low energy usage. Industrial scale processes may use more heat and energy and less chemicals.
The real question is how much energy is used to recycle a battery and if that is actually economically justified.
Battery manufactures should pay for all this to happen so margins aren’t so small
Enjoyed the video again, so well done.
If you follow the maxim of reduce, reuse and only last recycle, then it's good EV batteries are lasting longer and then being repurposed as home batteries.
I'm hopeful the issues covered will be solved over time. Eventually we'll be driving a lot of EVs, so that is still a lot of material.
Hey lawrence! Glad you liked it! Subscribe to out channel, we post new videos every Friday ✨
If there aren't many batteries to recycle because they're being reused, or because they last longer, then I'd say that's a good thing.
Reusing is always better than recycling.
10:11 A good thing for both consumers and giving the battery recycling industry more time to improve processes en route to a circular supply chain.
What about appliance batteries? I.e., batteries from devices and AA, AAA, C, D, 9V, etc.
How much of the fuel we pump into our fuel tanks is recycled?🤔😉
All of it, it becomes Co2 which we use to heat up the planet!
@@exeexecutor 🤣 True. Lots of it even becomes Carbon Monoxide.☠
This was very informative and helpful in understanding some of the byproducts and risks of Electric Vehicles. Well done.
The Achilles' heel of lots of potentially revolutionary new tech: going from the lab proof-of-concept to sustainable, scalable and economically viable process or product.
To balance out this content, may be you should report on which part of internal combustion engine cars are recycled and reused again.
Used engine oil is filtered and reused. By and large an ICE from a car is melted down and the metals separated out and it all gets fed back into the furnaces and reused. Very little of the engines goes to landfill. What hasn't rusted out of the body will also get smelted and reused. (Same as for a new generation EV.)
Thanks for talking about the stuff others do not.
I'm tired of one side saying renewables and batteries won't work and the other side saying it's the perfect solution.
I just want the real story.
My understanding is that they try not to separate the lithoum from the nickle, manganese and cobalt, jusr extract the carbin out and then try to market the resulting blend for use in similar technologies of batteeies or ti dilute it with fresh mayerial ti meet the blends needed for newer bayteey technologies that use different mixes. Of course there are other technologies that simply use blends of different elements all together such as the LiFePo batteeies popular with Chinese EV msnufacturers and the numerous upcoming technologies which have already showed in some production EV's such as sodium ion and solid state. Basically with the rapidly changing technologies, sure you could recycle the mayerials from a lithium ion battery but you may not have a market to sell what you teclaimed to once you've reclaimed it.
And to those who say we recycle lead acid batteries effectively as an argument for recycling EV batteries, look at how we do so, we dump the electrolyte into a tank, wash and disassemble the plates and the container, file down the plates, replacing them if they can no longer be refurbished by filing them down, inspect and patch the case, replacing it if it's too damaged, reassemble, test the electrolyte, diluting with new electrolyte if there are too much impurities and pour the electrolytes back into the battery. The recycling simply isn't very sophisticated, it's not cradle to grave recycling and it's labour intensive. The recycling of lead acid batteries is not a metric that argues for recycling the batteeies in EV's and are only practical because lead acid battery technologies have not changed significantly in over a century.
We have used 12v batteries in our cars for decades now.
AFAIK 12v batteries producers are equally interested in getting their batteries back to recycle the materials.
I thought we had this figured out already.
Why EV batteries are so different?
A lead acid car battery is really easy to recycle as it is very simple. The lead plates are melted down and reformed as new plates, The Sulphuric acid is recovered and refined and reused. Depending on the type of casing, some use thermoplastics that can be remelted, turned back onto pellets and then reused as a new case. So a traditional Pb acid battery can be be over 90% recycled.
Lithium cells can be encased or in pouches. Usually 18650 use a stainless steel case, so you can laboriously extract the roll of the cell and recycle the SS case. The cell can then be turned into the black mass as in this video and then they have that chemically intense reduction and separation of the elements that were the active chemicals that made it an electric cell. As shown in the video, the mix of metals varies a lot. This is to give different energy densities and voltage and current behaviors.
What you missed is that it is far, far easier to recover the metals that are in a Li ion battery from a dead Li ion battery, than it is to recover those metals from any natural ore being mined on earth. For one thing, most of the very difficult separations have already been done. Li ion batteries for instance don't contain any Mg, Ca, K or Na, whereas Li brines contain these metals and a major part of the effort in recovering Li from brines is keeping the product from being contaminated by these metals. Furthermore, the mass of metal per tonne of "black mass" is far higher than the mass of metal per tonne of ore or even per tonne of ore concentrate from many mined ores.
As someone quite familiar with the commercial production of Ni, Co, Cu and Li from their ores or brines, I'm not at all concerned about whether or not we can figure out how to achieve high recycling metal recovery rates from Li ion batteries. As to the economics, you did identify the real problem, which is that the supply of dead batteries will take a long time to materialize and hence it will be a long while until we have enough dead batteries to feed world-scale recycling facilities which achieve good economics for their owners.
The leader of this team is Herr Solvent.
You should try using the exhaust gases, which contain a lot of energy, for other energy intensive processes.
3:57 The chemical compound H2S is Hydrogen sulfide not sulfuric acid. Guys check your stuff twice!
Thanks for spotting this! You're right, we wrote Sulphuric Acid (H2S). But we meant Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S). Apologies for the mistake. 🤞
I'm no scientist, but applying my basic high school-level knowledge of chemistry and physics to this video, I can see that the amount of energy it takes to recycle an electric vehicle's battery far outstrips the energy savings from driving said electric vehicle. That energy has to come from somewhere, and it's mostly coming from fossil fuel. So, ultimately, at least in their current form, electric vehicles have a far worse to the environment and the energy balance than even the most polluting ICE vehicles.
I'm hearing a lot of chemicals that also are used/present in the oil and gas extraction/production
Dude at 3:50 ripped one in the lab but denied it with chemibabble
Guess it is time for EU to make a law that only a few kinds of batteries can be produce.
This is early days in battery recycling. Every new industrial process had its teething problems. Even at its present state, only paper can be more effectively recycled than batteries. That certainly does't apply to all kinds of plastic, we all collect and deposit in recycling bins.
As for recyclers paying for old batteries, the EU already has regulatory solutions in other areas: manufacturers are responsible for recycling, or risk large fines. Some might even _pay_ for recycling of their old batteries.
Sometimes not everything can be left to market and speculators who operate there.
Fascinating. 2nd use is probably more important than recycling right now.
Title could also have been: The progress being made in recycling car batteries.
But no, always negativity with very normal scaling issues. Fossil fuel companies happy again.
Reuse as static, say solar storage, is not always as easy as it sounds. They should do story on that. Anyway it just postpones, the need to dump or recycle.
When you interview people, turn down the MUSIC!!
Maybe recycling should have been figured out , before millions of EV’s were produced. Ya think? 🤔
Good reporting👍🏻
rmember the 3 R's.
Reduce
Reuse
Recycle
Before Recycling we should think about Reducing using less batteries, better technologies and longer lifespans.
Before Recycling we should also think about Reusing, use the old batteries for other purposes such as toys, grid storage, solar arrays and others.
After all this then we can talk about Recycling.
What about the PFAS in the batteries? Your only talking about the metal recovery.
Just bumped a byproduct in the ocean like that all day
Just like the input cost for recycling determines its viability, we can increase the input cost of mining with taxes to make mining unviable as compared to recycling.
Taxing mining doesn't make recycling more viable. It takes money from one group for what ever public purpose that are recipients. And it increases the cost to society as folks do something less efficient rather than more. If there are externalities that are being ignore, economic theory suggests that the system becomes more efficient because of appropriate taxation. But absent that connection, it just makes the system less efficient.
😄 you certainly have suggested a backwards way to go about it. However that would be an issue for a very long time.
We can't get it out the ground quick enough.
Many thanks for your video. I just realised that recycling used-battery is not so easy on the commercial scale including the feedstock of used battery for raw material. Also the profit is too small... 😒
Glad it was helpful!✨
Simple answer: have an environmentally focused world that values survival and a better future over profit. In this case battery manufacturer's are mandated to recover their batteries materials no matter the cost. Meaning make batteries and processes where All the costs are factored in!
that was the case the batteries would be so expensive to the consumer that no one would buy them.
@@funnycatvideos5490 I love a dead world for somebody else profit :)
Well, not to be disagreeable but, spent fuel rod can also be recycled. 90% of the potential energy still remains. Some of the current reactors use spent fuel .
Bottomline, the battery industry is still not fixed, we still don't have the perfect battery (and probably never will because each have a strengh and weakness, so likelly we will always have different types of batteries). So, only once the industry can settle on which of each different compositions we should "standardize" batteries, we will have a proper recycling. However, I must say that for all the Eco-green talk, asking companies to turn a profit from recycling is a little strong, Governments should subsidize recycling.
Have you heard that EU and Germany plan to mine lithium reserves out of Serbia? They partnered up with Rio Tinto to dig out lithium reserves in Serbia, and thus, cause ecoligical disaster...
But no one cares, because Serbia is a cesspool of Europe, not enough woke for Europe 🎉
Recycling is always labor intensive. Car batteries should be refurbished, or used as a home battery.
Thank you for that sanitised/patronising statement of the bloody obvious.
'reuse' over recycle. An 80% ex car battery makes a great home battery storage system. LFP is safest in the lithium range, but Sodium-Ion and solid state are coming in.
Agree, but the original electrolyte should be replaced with one that favours deep cycling. Otherwise the battery will sulphate up very quickly since it is 20% gone already.
Sodium will not be suitable for EV's because of it low energy content and higher weight.
10:10 - Well, it's good we have _that_ problem: we get more from every kilogram of raw materials we put into batteries. This only means that the industrial scale recyclers will come online a bit later.
It very easy to solve. Goverment implement laws that force you to do it if posible and problem solve. Recycling is always like this.
Looks like we need to make mining more expensive - and tax the extraction companies to ensure ecological clean up is possible once a mine closes, and to subsidise recycling.
Lol that's a long way off.😂 as for clean up mine after. Yes we already do rehabilitation.
Careful where you tread, nominally, a 10% increase in the cost of mining the raw ores is likely to lead to a 100% increase in the cost of the refined mineral. The costs of the final item continues to escalate until it is unaffordable and the whole chain dissolves.
The paradox is that even paying what in western terms are subsidence "wages" to the miners in third world countries, it is an income that they would not otherwise have. Their costs of living are also very low and hence can evolve a better standard of living for the whole village.
Whilst many mines look unpleasant when viewed close up, in a global context that are but a bucket of sand on a 100km beach. When left along nature can and does reclaim what man has done.
In Australia all new mines must have very carefully controlled environmental impact mitigation with end of mine remediation plans. Curiously they are far more strict on such mines as coal than on diamonds and gold.
Great video, thanx for the insights!
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