[HN Gopher] Startups making lithium-ion battery recycling more p...
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Startups making lithium-ion battery recycling more profitable and
sustainable
Author : orangebanana1
Score : 62 points
Date : 2022-06-13 18:13 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.canarymedia.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.canarymedia.com)
| icameron wrote:
| There is a real need for this. Just today I was dropping the kids
| off at school and was diverted because a garbage truck had caught
| fire and had to dump its payload in the middle of the playground.
| A flaming pile of hot garbage. The firefighter said it was
| probably caused by a battery someone left in the dumpster...
| myself248 wrote:
| Funny, my dad used to work in the city garage fixing snowplows
| and garbage trucks, among other things. They had a few
| incidents of trucks catching on fire, long before the era of
| lithium batteries.
|
| Typically in those days it was someone discarding fireplace
| ashes that weren't dead-cold and thus contained a smoldering
| ember. It's surprisingly easy to sweep out such an ember from
| what appears to be a long-dead fire, but you'll discover the
| heat if you sift through the ashes with your hand, even
| casually.
| sumy23 wrote:
| I've always wondered about this. It seems like it would be
| quite common that someone would throw away a Li-ion battery. In
| garbage trucks that compact garbage (all of them?), it would be
| easy to damage the battery and cause a fire. On the other hand,
| there might not be a lot of oxygen in the compressed garbage to
| sustain the fire.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I think standard procedure for garbage trucks is to dump the
| load over a long area when this happens. There's probably
| thermal detectors in the bin that let them know pretty quick
| that something is up.
| dangrossman wrote:
| Lithium battery fires are extra dangerous because they
| produce their own oxygen, so they do not need an external
| oxygen source, and can even continue burning when completely
| submerged in water.
| markvdb wrote:
| I just read the EPA recommendation for dealing with old
| batteries [0]. Shocking quote: "In most communities, alkaline
| and zinc carbon batteries can be safely put in your household
| trash."
|
| [0] https://www.epa.gov/recycle/used-household-batteries
| bombcar wrote:
| Those are the little AAA and similar batteries, which don't
| spontaneously combust like lithium batteries can.
| lnsru wrote:
| Almost every shop in Germany has a box for collecting old
| batteries. There is even one in the office. I happily throw my
| old batteries there. It's so easy and convenient.
| spathi_fwiffo wrote:
| US has this too, most hardware stores, and some offices.
|
| Some people are just lazy or don't know.
| kxyvr wrote:
| I don't think it's this way everywhere, but I do worry that
| many of these store disposal options may not work
| particularly well. A few weeks ago, I had an argument with
| an employee at Home Depot. I was looking for the battery
| disposal area and the employee wanted to see what I wanted
| to deposit. I had a small CR2032 lithium and was told that
| they don't do the flat ones. That was news to me and my
| best guess was that the employee was confused about the
| kind of battery because many of the small batteries are
| alkaline, which my city has us dispose in the trash.
| Anyway, eventually management got involved and I was told
| to just deposit it because they'll throw it away later.
| After I deposited the battery, the employee opened the box
| in order to fish it out and the box was full of trash. At
| best, people were putting large numbers of AAA, AA, C, and
| D batteries in grocery bags and just throwing them in.
| Frankly, I think a good amount of it was just plain
| garbage. The point is that I think that particular Home
| Depot just takes most of what is in the battery disposal
| box and just puts it into the trash. I don't think they
| bother to identify the kinds of batteries in there and the
| employees I interacted with could not correctly identify
| battery type.
|
| I do believe strongly in battery and electronic disposal.
| However, I'm not convinced that all disposal places are
| created equal. In my area, I will no longer use the
| hardware stores.
| sydthrowaway wrote:
| Any of them hiring in California?
| oittaa wrote:
| Redwood Materials is super interesting since the founder JB
| Straubel was one of the key people at Tesla. There aren't many
| people on the planet who know more about battery production than
| him.
| orangebanana1 wrote:
| Investors think so too. As of last year had raised almost $800
| million: https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/28/redwood-materials-
| raises-7...
| lnsru wrote:
| I am just curious how these companies are going to acquire
| batteries for the recycling. Please correct me if I am wrong, but
| Tesla sold around two million cars in total. Majority of them in
| the last couple or so years. That means, these cars will be ready
| for recycling in 10 or more years (battery 5 years in a car and
| further as stationary batteries). Electric cars from other
| manufacturers have sick waiting times. Maybe it's all a bit too
| early? Venture capitalists are not going to wait for decades to
| make profit.
| gcheong wrote:
| " But this new cohort of recyclers doesn't have to wait for
| electric vehicles to hit critical mass. They've got plenty to
| hone their techniques on with existing consumer electronics
| waste, plus the scrap from new battery manufacturing. "
|
| Sounds like they're starting now because they need time to get
| things efficient enough for the day when EV recycling starts to
| be needed en mass?
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I'm assuming they'll be put in fixed applications where
| weight and max efficiency/charge aren't critical, unless
| they're already damaged. Pumped storage is economically
| viable at 70-80% efficient at each cycle after a big capital
| investment.
|
| It won't be EV battery recycling but just battery recycling.
| outworlder wrote:
| If they start to run short (unlikely) there are plenty of other
| applications that use similar/identical cells.
| dangrossman wrote:
| Redwood is recycling 60 tons of battery material a day already.
| The source is primarily the scrap from making batteries. As
| battery production is ramping up as fast as raw materials can
| be acquired all around the world, there will be a continual
| supply of scrap even before we have to worry about recycling
| the batteries from cars already on the road.
| vardump wrote:
| Battery production scrap / rejects is one additional source of
| material.
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