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Top Comments: Recycling Lithium-Ion Batteries [1]
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Date: 2025-02-09
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It may appear to be appropriate to file this recent study in the Captain Obvious file, but in addition to confirming the usual benefits of recycling lithium-ion batteries, the researchers actually quantified the benefits.
Recycling lithium-ion batteries to recover their critical metals has significantly lower environmental impacts than mining virgin metals, according to a new Stanford University lifecycle analysis published in Nature Communications. On a large scale, recycling could also help relieve the long-term supply insecurity—physically and geopolitically—of critical battery minerals.
Despite the intransigence of the fossil fuel industries and their champions, the future lies in renewable energy, and the current standard for storing that energy is the lithium-ion battery. Obtaining these metals in quantity is going to become increasingly competitive, and obtaining them through recycling is an obvious way to do so at lower cost and in an environmentally responsible way. In addition to lithium, the metals that can be recovered are copper, cobalt, nickel, manganese and aluminum. Some of these metals come to the U. S. from long distances (e. g. cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo, lithium from Australia and Chile, but both metals are refined in China). There is significant energy savings not just from not having to reprocess the recycled metals, but also that these substances don’t have to be transported halfway across the world.
The researchers partnered with a company called Redwood Materials in Nevada, which has the largest industrial-scale lithium-ion battery recycling plant in North America. The standard method for metals recovery is called pyrometallurgy, and requires high temperatures, most commonly obtained through the burning of fossil fuels. Redwood has pioneered a process called “reductive calcination” that operates at much lower temperatures, doesn’t use fossil fuels, and recovers more of the lithium than conventional techniques.
It turns out that these recycling efforts will turn out to be crucial to the lithium-ion battery industry in the near future.
"We're forecast to run out of new cobalt, nickel, and lithium in the next decade. We'll probably just mine lower-grade minerals for a while, but 2050 and the goals we have for that year are not far away," he said. While the U.S. now recycles about 50% of available lithium-ion batteries, it has successfully recycled 99% of lead acid batteries for decades. Given that used lithium-ion batteries contain materials with up to 10 times higher economic value, the opportunity is significant, Tarpeh said.
I’ll conclude by saying that the changes Trump’s vandals are making to research grants will hobble any scientific progress in this country, to the point of losing our standing in scientific research to other competitors (China for example). The vandals don’t care. As part of their war against education, they hate science, and they want to damage what they hate. It doesn’t help that most universities are centers of free thought, though the vandals are also trying to put an end to that. Given that this particular attack is just one of dozens currently emanating from the White House, it’s easy to lose track.
Comments below the fold.
Top Comments (February 8-9, 2025):
From a kossack who did not give his userid:
This comment from committed renaming Trump’s first 100 days, from Paul in Austin’s post reviewing the 37 lawsuits filed against the White House by Feb. 7.
From Puddytat:
Had a couple of chuckles at this comment from Stevoreno, and ontheleftcoast’s reply. From BrianMcFadden’s cartoon. ...and this comment by Tippy and Dad and replies, from the same diary.
Top Mojo (February 7, 2025):
Top Mojo is courtesy of mik! Click here for more on how Top Mojo works.
Top Mojo (February 7, 2025):
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