[HN Gopher] The biggest EV battery recycling plant in the US is ...
___________________________________________________________________
The biggest EV battery recycling plant in the US is open for
business
Author : orangebanana1
Score : 332 points
Date : 2023-04-10 15:38 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.canarymedia.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.canarymedia.com)
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| The moment I read this headline I went straight to comments to
| find the 20 people decisively declaring it completely useless.
| Classic HN
| HopenHeyHi wrote:
| [flagged]
| jamespo wrote:
| Why should anyone spend their time trying to persuade a 20
| day old account on here?
| HopenHeyHi wrote:
| Look at the numbers and think it through on your own, don't
| need to persuade me or anybody of anything. You should do
| that if you care whether or not the idea/numbers add up at
| all for your own sake. Persuade yourself. As you care about
| the truth.
|
| Right?
|
| ..
| [deleted]
| nicenewtemp84 wrote:
| I wonder how they are able to shred batteries safely, but we hear
| that an accident that leads to pack deformation can easily start
| a massive fire.
| vrglvrglvrgl wrote:
| [dead]
| Tagbert wrote:
| There are other companies working on these processes.
|
| US increases EV battery recycling capacity with new AL facility
| processing up to 10K tonnes annually
| https://electrek.co/2022/10/14/us-increases-ev-battery-recyc...
|
| Redwood Materials recovers ~95% of metals from EOL battery packs
| https://www.teslarati.com/redwood-materials-metal-recovery-e...
| m463 wrote:
| A lot of old ev batteries are snatched up by people who want to
| use them in whole-house battery systems.
|
| I wonder if recycling of ev batteries might be premature for some
| or many cells?
| jeffbee wrote:
| A lot? I bet the number of EV battery packs that have been
| turned into whole-house batteries by individual homeowners is
| in the single digits and might be zero.
| jaberabdullah wrote:
| [flagged]
| jaberabdullah wrote:
| [flagged]
| xeromal wrote:
| Glad my homestate is making decent strides towards building new
| things. We just had a nuclear reactor come online, a rivian EV
| truck factory is here, and now this. We do a bunch of naughty
| things but I can be proud of these at least.
| cpursley wrote:
| There's a bunch of new plants and factories going up in Georgia
| (maybe there's a comprehensive list somewhere). Definitely
| bodes well for Georgia's future in terms of economics.
| xeromal wrote:
| Yeah, the news is pretty non-stop of new things opening up.
| Atlanta trying to become the new hollywood I think
| kickstarted all this at least in my head timeline but I'm
| sure some hardworking business owners and politicians really
| just focused on bringing in new work.
| blamazon wrote:
| I think it goes a lot further back, one semi-serious data
| point: the "Chamber of commerce runs Atlanta" meme was
| satirized by the TV show Futurama in the year 2000:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Deep_South_(Futurama)
|
| https://youtu.be/LeYihjMo0Bk
| megraf wrote:
| This is likely due to GA's extensive rail network[0].
|
| [0] -
| https://opendata.atlantaregional.com/datasets/GARC::railroad...
| kfajdsl wrote:
| Man, if only we could use some of that for passenger rail...
| Being able to go from Atlanta to Savannah without a car would
| be awesome.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| It's a nice idea but keep in mind that any freight which
| gets displaced from rail thanks to passenger cars would
| have to go by truck instead, probably with a massive
| increase in net emissions. Having passengers and freight
| share track in the US is probably not a win for the
| environment; passengers would need separate track instead.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| You have that backwards. Low occupancy vehicle travel is
| the most wasteful form of personal transit.
|
| Rail passengers displaced by freight become low occupancy
| vehicle trips.
|
| In my state, a commuter rail coach car has about 180
| seats. Let's be cautious and assume 50% occupancy.
|
| That's 90 people, and based off the US passenger car
| fleet averaging 25mpg, they collectively would have used
| 3.6 gallons of gas per mile.
|
| An eighteen wheeler gets 5-10 miles per gallon.
|
| Even assuming just 5mpg, the passengers in that one coach
| car would have used _eighteen times more fuel_ than the
| truck hauling a container would.
|
| Furthermore: freight and passenger use of rail are not
| mutually exclusive uses. Freight is in theory far less
| sensitive to scheduling, and like a lot of trucked
| freight, can happen during times passenger use is low.
| But because industry has squeezed their supply chains to
| the hair of breaking under "just in time delivery" to
| minimize warehouse space and the like...which bit us
| pretty severely in the pandemic...freight companies are
| optimizing for shareholder profits and own the tracks. So
| they prioritize their freight over passengers. Result?
| Passenger service is riddled with service issues, leading
| to less passenger use, which is fine as far as the
| freight companies are concerned, because they can move
| more freight.
|
| The core problem is that critical infrastructure is being
| run privately by for-profit publicly traded companies.
| TYPE_FASTER wrote:
| Adding passenger traffic does not necessarily require
| displacing freight traffic.
|
| Here's a document that contains a map of current rail
| density: https://www.dot.ga.gov/InvestSmart/Freight/Georg
| iaFreight/Ta...
| elif wrote:
| But things like "okay now wait on this random section of
| tracks for 3 hours because of a pass and traffic down
| stream" are routine on freight lines, but obviously not
| desirable for passenger rail.
| babypuncher wrote:
| So you build more rail
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _build more rail_
|
| Passenger rail doesn't tend to break even on long-
| distance dedicated routes, even taking into account
| externalities.
| bluGill wrote:
| But it does very well at medium distances while you find
| all over.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _it does very well at medium distances_
|
| Depending on density. I'd wager the Atlanta metropolitan
| area is just about crossing that threshold, _i.e._ they
| should built it now.
| danielvf wrote:
| Atlanta does have trains, and in fact has the 8th most
| annual riders of any US city, right behind the Bay Area.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARTA_rail
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| I guess MARTA is between municipal and regional rail,
| sort of like BART. I meant for connecting the Atlanta
| metropolitan area to its region, not intraconnecting.
| elif wrote:
| 91,000 daily riders according to that link
|
| 2,000,000 daily vehicles on this Atlanta transit system
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_285_(Georgia)
| bluGill wrote:
| Roughly speaking the density of the US east of the
| Mississipi and the far west coast is dense enough. The
| rocky mountains and Alaska really bring our average
| density down.
| grogenaut wrote:
| In like 1/3rd or less of the land mass of the us yes.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| It doesn't have to. How much do our freeways cost us? esp
| with externalities?
| waterheater wrote:
| >How much do our freeways cost us? esp with
| externalities?
|
| Rail also has cost, including externalities. For example,
| as a wise person on the Internet once said, "Trains take
| you from a place you don't live to a place you're not
| going to." The "last-mile problem" is a non-trivial
| factor to building train networks which by definition is
| not solvable by more rail.
|
| You're considering a cost analysis. A more complete
| analysis is the benefit-cost analysis (BCA). If the
| benefits outweigh the costs, the project is a net
| positive for society. Asking only how much our freeways
| cost us avoids consideration of the known benefits.
| Here's a BCA from 2021 which investigates a highway
| project, so you can see exactly how much freeways benefit
| and cost us:
| https://www.mdot.maryland.gov/OPCP/I-81BCA_Report.pdf
|
| >It doesn't have to.
|
| That's a nice sentiment, but sometimes the energy
| required to reform is higher than expected losses. The
| entire Amtrak network is kept afloat because of a handful
| of lines in New England between DC, New York, and Boston.
| Amtrak basically runs a loss everywhere else.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > The "last-mile problem" is a non-trivial factor to
| building train networks which by definition is not
| solvable by more rail.
|
| The trivial answer is to build out last-mile services:
| trams, buses, actually usable bike lanes, and something
| that could perfectly well work in US suburbia hell (wide,
| but barely frequented streets): automated "people
| movers".
| waterheater wrote:
| You say last-mile services are trivial, but they
| absolutely are not trivial in the slightest, and assuming
| they are demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding
| of how change gets made in a democratic, even republican,
| manner.
|
| Changing the primary transportation mode of a population
| requires a cultural shift to adopt the new mode. The
| population must be willing to forgo what they already
| have in favor of something new. You are saying that
| automated "people movers" (which is an emotional sketch
| rather than an defined policy item) will work well in
| car-ubiquitous US suburbia, but these folks live in
| suburbia specifically because of low population density
| and general quality-of-life. They explicitly enjoy being
| around people they know and not being around people they
| don't know. Any solution you're proposing must respect
| their existing values while providing an alternative
| option.
|
| Your examples of last-mile services aren't really last-
| mile services, save for the final one:
|
| >trams
|
| Since it seems infeasible to allow anyone to board a tram
| at any point on its journey, tram stops will be
| necessary. Perhaps you now face a last-quarter-mile
| problem, which is better but still may not be good enough
| for that specific population. Track maintenance may be
| significantly lessened by using a "trackless tram", but
| such would have severe challenges in a snowy climate.
| Trams only work in dense urban environments.
|
| >buses
|
| Buses have been used in cities for many decades, so our
| understanding of them is that they work generally well.
| Buses are common in suburban environments with many low-
| income residents. The benefit of buses is their limited
| amount of supporting infrastructure and route
| adaptability. However, similar to the tram situation, a
| bus still does not get you directly to your home.
|
| >actually usable bike lanes
|
| Bike lanes in dense urban environments are almost always
| a net positive. What constitutes an "actually usable"
| bike lane depends on an individual's risk tolerance. As a
| last-mile problem, not all people are physically able to
| bike from a train station, though ebikes do help. Again,
| weather can impact people being willing to bike, let
| alone leave the house.
|
| >automated "people movers"
|
| This service is more conceptual, but I imagine you're
| thinking of a Waymo-style service, where you can summon
| an autonomous vehicle which will pick you up at home and
| take you to-and-from the station. The main issues here
| are availability and reliability. If addressed, you'll
| likely crack the suburban transportation nut, but such
| individualized transportation in cities isn't
| sustainable.
| babypuncher wrote:
| > Trains take you from a place you don't live to a place
| you're not going to.
|
| Airplanes have the exact same problem, but I don't see
| people saying we should stop investing in airports.
|
| For long distance travel, I don't think it's a huge
| problem that you might need multiple modes of transit to
| get all the way from A to B.
| bluGill wrote:
| Trains are too slow for long distance travel. They are
| useful for short and medium distance travel, but for such
| trips travel time to the station becomes more important.
| If this isn't made convenient people will quickly decide
| their car is better: it goes when they want to go, and
| goes directly to where they want to be.
| TylerE wrote:
| Different model. Planes have much greater network
| effects. Consider a trip between New York and Dallas. A
| plane can fly a direct route, and will if there is much
| demand.
|
| A train system can't do that... in my example you'll end
| up either going South along the coast and then west
| through New Orleans to San Antonio, and then back north
| to Dallas, or the same but reach Mew Orleans via Chicago.
|
| Trains work well when there is a large central(ish) city
| that can act as a hub? Like London, Paris, or Berlin. Not
| so well in the US where the population is heavily biased
| towards the outer rim, with a relatively a gaunt desert
| of nothing in the middle.
| waterheater wrote:
| >Airplanes have the exact same problem, but I don't see
| people saying we should stop investing in airports.
|
| Fair point. We should then see if air travel holds a key
| advantage over rail travel in the USA. As I see it, the
| answer is in both space and time savings, both of which
| minimize cost and maximize benefit. The time savings are
| particularly pronounced, especially over distances
| greater than, say, a few hundred miles. Happy to
| elaborate on the savings in more detail, if you desire
| such.
|
| >For long distance travel, I don't think it's a huge
| problem that you might need multiple modes of transit to
| get all the way from A to B.
|
| That is, of course, your opinion. I'm sure there are
| tens, if not hundreds, of millions of Americans who will
| strongly disagree with you because they are, in no
| particular order: feeble, disabled, terrified of a
| particular mode of transit, hurried, cost-conscious,
| traveling with multiple young children, etc.
| cyberax wrote:
| Freeways are amazingly cheap. 1 mile of new 6-lane
| freeway on level terrain is about 3 million:
| https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/1/27/how-much-
| does-...
|
| Amazingly, railroads are not much cheaper. The current
| costs of tracks are estimated at about $2 million per
| mile, and this is without taking into account all other
| necessary rail infrastructure (such as sorting yards,
| maintenance facilities, etc.).
|
| And CO2 emissions are being fixed by switching from gas
| cars to EVs.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| The problem is that 1 mile of rail can move a lot more
| passengers than 1 mile of road.
| cyberax wrote:
| The calculations on that page are not correct. First, the
| average car occupancy is not 1, it's 1.5 on average.
| Second, the lane capacity is 1900 cars per hour (that's
| maximum at around 45 mph, btw). So this works out to 8550
| people per hour.
|
| A realistic scenario for commuter trains (that would
| replace a freeway) is 1 train every 10 minutes, and even
| this is pretty tough. So you have 6 trains per hour, and
| to match the throughput you'd need 1425 people per train.
|
| Most train platforms are maxed out at well below 10 cars
| (Caltrain is 6 cars), 20 car trains are just pure
| nonsense for commuting. So for 10 car trains it'll be
| around 150 people per car. Caltrain cars are 130 seats
| per car ( https://www.greencaltrain.com/2014/05/keeping-
| up-with-caltra... ), with another 40 standing places.
|
| Basically, a perfectly run commuter train system is
| _just_ barely comparable with a regular 6-lane freeway.
|
| Sorry train fans, but trains are not that great for
| commuting.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Correction, trains specifically. Subways and light rail
| are immensely higher ROI (as in, benefit vs cost) within
| a city since it effectively forces people close together,
| while a 6-lane-on-each-side highway isn't economically
| feasible for all of the high-traffic areas.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| BART has a capacity of 200 passengers per car in their
| legacy fleet, 241-256 for their new fleet, and regularly
| has 10 cars per train during peak hours [1] and travels
| 80mph.
|
| [1] https://wbcapp.oaklandnet.com/cs/groups/public/docume
| nts/pro...
| richardw wrote:
| > Sorry train fans, but trains are not that great for
| commuting.
|
| Quick comparison: more people (3.6m) go through Shinjuku
| Station in Tokyo than the daytime population of
| Manhattan, at 3.1m. Only half of those travel into
| Manhattan, using all modes of transport. When things get
| extreme it's hard to just double the road network and
| parking into a single location.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinjuku_Station
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| What is the route capacity for a lane of freeway vs a
| rail line? I assumed it's the opposite, since a freeway
| has continuous throughout while a rail line is discrete,
| but I don't have a good intuition for comparing the scale
| of each mode.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > What is the route capacity for a lane of freeway vs a
| rail line? I assumed it's the opposite, since a freeway
| has continuous throughout while a rail line is discrete
|
| According to this book (which provides assumptions and
| calculations supporting) [0], 10:1 in favor of rail, as a
| conservative estimate.
|
| https://eng.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Industrial_and_Sys
| tem....
| cyberax wrote:
| > A rush-hour train may consist of 20 cars
|
| The author is smoking some hard crack.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Well, BART has no problem running 9-car trains. I don't
| know if that's rush hour or not, but I've seen them. If
| the rest of the math is right, that still gets you
| 4.5-to-1 in favor of rail.
| bluGill wrote:
| How do you calculate capacity? Safety engineers keep
| yelling that drivers need to keep 3 seconds between cars,
| but in reality they most drive about .3 seconds from the
| car in front. There is nearly a 10x difference in freeway
| capacity between just those two.
|
| Trains tend to maintain longer distances, but if you want
| to ignore safety we can follow a lot closer.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > And CO2 emissions are being fixed by switching from gas
| cars to EVs.
|
| Not reall, rail is 9 times more energy efficient than
| road vechicles. Thats why its cheaper to have a diesel
| locomotove move freight than to pour the same diesel into
| trucks.
|
| The whole reason rail exists is thsa its the most
| efficient form of tranportation on land.
| bluGill wrote:
| There are a lot of assumptions in the idea that trains
| are more efficient than road vehicles. Trains tend to
| carry more heavy bulk goods like coal, if they had more
| light things the numbers would change. Trains get a lot
| of efficiency from running very long trains, but that
| only works out when you have a lot of things going the
| same way, if you had smaller trains from each warehouse
| (which now is done by truck) that would reduce th
| efficiency.
|
| Yes trains have some efficiency advantages, but in
| similar service the difference is small. You only get
| those advantages when you use trains for things that
| trucks cannot do at all.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| The very long trains of mostly goods like coal are not an
| inevitability, though-- it's a result of rail companies
| implementing PSR in response to some pretty specific
| incentives, see:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/09/opinion/business-
| economic...
|
| A number of YouTube video essays argue the sides of this
| as well, here's one based around Sen. Sanders confronting
| a rail CEO in the wake of the recent Ohio derailment:
| https://youtu.be/e4w0q5NzCwA
| babypuncher wrote:
| You're comparing dollars-per-mile of infrastructure when
| the more important metric is dollars-per-passenger-mile.
| You can build 1 mile of freeway for not much more than 1
| mile of rail, but that mile of rail can serve
| considerably more passengers.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Two other factors that aren't coming up in this analysis
| are long term maintenance costs (highways in Ontario are
| constantly being resurfaced) and land use opportunity
| costs (it's simply not viable to run six lanes of freeway
| into most CBDs, and doing it with grade separation leads
| to raised highway eyesores or insanity like Boston's Big
| Dig).
|
| In any case, as others have pointed out, we don't have to
| argue hypotheticals here-- China, Japan, France, Germany,
| etc have all shown that frequent-service electrified
| passenger rail is perfectly possible and an incredible
| public good.
| samstave wrote:
| Yah, but youre still in gorgia
| xeromal wrote:
| I grew up near one of those major lines, the one that goes
| along 515. We used to try to get a train to flatten a penny
| for us or race it on our fourwheelers. Never got a flattened
| penny though. lol
| bluGill wrote:
| I used to get lots of flattened pennies. The trains throw
| them so you have to spend a lot of time searching the
| gravel around the tracks. Be sure to watch for other trains
| so you don't get hit.
| redundantly wrote:
| Gotta tape the coin to the track so it doesn't rattle off
| before the train gets to it, or use chewing gum.
| xeromal wrote:
| I was around 5 years old so my logic was pretty simple. I
| think I tried a heavy rock lol
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Where the heck are they going to find feedstock? Renault found
| that the batteries don't wear out, they just keep running, going
| on 10 years.
| to11mtm wrote:
| I'm guessing at least some consumer batteries (i.e.
| laptop/phone/ebike/etc) can also be recycled at the same
| facilities; These are often of similar chemistry but may have
| lower lifespans and there would be no reason the facility could
| not process them. [0]
|
| [0] - A good example would be 18650 batteries; these are used
| by Tesla but are found in lots of other things.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| I suspect, eventually mostly insurance writeoffs, wrecks etc.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| I guess the Nissan Leaf might single handedly provide for
| enough initial feedstock, considering how quickly their
| batteries degrade. Just awful battery management from Nissan on
| that car.
| foolfoolz wrote:
| given the u. s. goals of evs and energy storage recycling
| batteries domestically instead of shipping the metals off to
| cheaper destinations is going to become a matter of national
| security as we won't produce enough metals on our own
| pkaye wrote:
| The infrastructure bill had funding for domestic extraction and
| processing of critical minerals. Also US has been encouraging
| Canada to do the same including providing some grants to
| Canadian companies to get started. Below is the list of
| minerals.
|
| https://www.usgs.gov/news/national-news-release/us-geologica...
| legitster wrote:
| Super cool development. Love seeing people actually acting on the
| laws of of supply and demand.
|
| > The scrap and used batteries go through mechanical shredding
| and sieving, which produces "black mass." Ascend extracts lithium
| carbonate from the mass; the remaining mass contains materials
| such as graphite, nickel, cobalt and manganese.
|
| The article brags about the input, but is cagey on the details of
| the about. Of the 30k tons processed in a year, what percentage
| is reconstituted?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| We have a dearth of battery-grade metals refining in America.
| Battery plants need specialised powders to do their work. Making
| them isn't easy.
|
| Many aspiring refiners brand themselves as recyclers, since
| turning metals and old batteries into battery-grade powder is
| more similar than one would expect. (Lithium carbonate.)
| Vt71fcAqt7 wrote:
| That's interesting. Can you expound on this?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Can you expound on this?_
|
| Which part?
| Vt71fcAqt7 wrote:
| >turning metals and old batteries into battery-grade powder
| is more similar than one would expect.
| bluGill wrote:
| I'm not really an expert, but one obvious thing is you
| need to take non-pure metals and purify them. Recyclable
| batteries fail when the chemicals instead chemically
| combine with something other what you intend them to,
| crystalize, or otherwise become not the pure metal you
| start with. That impure metal is not conceptually
| different from ore, and the same process to turn ore into
| battery material must be done.
|
| Note that ore is more complex as you need to remove a lot
| more non-battery stuff, while in a used battery what you
| want is still in fairly high concentration, just not in
| the form a battery needs.
| samstave wrote:
| As an ignoramous ; what is it about Lithium specificall
| that makes it special to batteries?
|
| Is is that it freely ejects electrons at a higher rate
| than other materials, given a certain catalyst?
| bluGill wrote:
| That was covered in my college chemistry class, but I
| took it 25 years ago and don't really remember the
| details. Electro negativity comes to mind, but I might
| have the terms wrong. In any case the laws of chemistry
| apply.
| sethhochberg wrote:
| Generally yeah - it is both willing to give up and take
| back electrons pretty easily (so, discharging and
| charging) but in the modern era another really important
| factor is that it balances having these properties and
| also being very light relative to the amount of energy it
| can hold in a battery. Good for portable applications
| like cell phones, cars, etc.
| [deleted]
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Lithium is at the top, so you get the most voltage per
| molecule.
|
| Then there's other factors like discharge recharge,
| temperatures, all that, but lithium is basically the best
| if you can get the other factors to play nice too:
|
| http://hyperphysics.phy-
| astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Tables/electpot.h...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Recycling batteries involves shredding them into black
| mass [1] and then extracting lithium carbonate from it.
| This is the same stuff lithium from mines and brine
| fields is processed into [2]. (Carbonate is processed
| into lithium hydroxide [3], the stuff we trade [4] and
| mix in batteries.)
|
| In summary, they all start with pulverized stuff from
| which lithium carbonate is extracted and turned into
| lithium hydroxide. The fact that it's batteries versus
| rock just changes the front end; nothing downstream could
| care less.
|
| [1] https://catalysts.basf.com/blog/lets-talk-recycling-
| what-is-...
|
| [2] https://samcotech.com/what-is-lithium-extraction-and-
| how-doe...
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_hydroxide
|
| [4] https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/metals/battery-
| metals/lithi...
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Hmmm so they don't really disassemble the batteries. They
| just grind them all up and then use physical and chemical
| processes to filter the bits they want?
|
| I guess this makes sense at scale. I'm not sure what I
| was picturing.
| nine_k wrote:
| I suppose they disassemble large racks of batteries, to
| remove the strong structural metal which us hard to
| shred, and maybe copper wires that are expensive. But not
| farther.
|
| Individual cells are shredded, the cover metal is removed
| by magnets, anything soluble is removed by water or other
| solvents, whatever remains possibly may be further
| processed, or can go safely to a landfill.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Generally, all forms of recycling that reauire manual
| dis-assebly don't really work. Labour cost is too much.
| Broken and damaged items dont dissasemble. each itme is
| unique, that sort of thing. Thats why plastic recycling
| and electribics recycling doesn't work.
|
| Recycling of metals and glass succeedd because you can
| just grind and melt everything.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| So when I'm asked to obsessively clean out my aluminum
| recycling, I've always assumed that's just a favour to
| their equipment. But surely the process expects FOD and
| messy cans.
| maxerickson wrote:
| It's staged and transported. So like the less food there
| is at the collection site the less stink and rodents
| there will be.
| yurishimo wrote:
| I've always wondered this. In my small town in The
| Netherlands, plastic and metal go in the same recycling
| sack. They specifically state that you don't need to
| obsessively clean the containers, but they should be
| "empty". I'm sure I've accidentally tossed some paper in
| there, but I assume that gets burned away at some point.
|
| But how they sort it afterwards? I have no idea. Not all
| metal is conductive, though I have to assume they do some
| magnetized sorting. Plastic can probably be blown away
| for sorting further down the line.
|
| Might need to explore this more in the near future!
| Scoundreller wrote:
| My thought was the melting process burns most of it off
| and then the ash gets skimmed off the top.
|
| not worth it to clean yourself.
| dlkasajiewo wrote:
| Nooooo! you can't use wikipedia as a source it's not
| reliable >:(
|
| jkjk. Thanks for sharing!
| boshomi wrote:
| Shanghai Metal Market lists used Lithium-ion battery
| material/battery scrap
|
| https://www.metal.com/price/New%20Energy/Used-Lithium-ion-Ba...
|
| About 95% of Lithium can be reused.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Adding to this, a reminder that lithium ion batteries contain
| very little lithium, and it's not elemental - an extremely
| common misconception leading to people thinking that they can't
| use water to stop a pack undergoing thermal runaway / on fire -
| something that can _only_ be stopped via the cooling effect of
| water.
| samstave wrote:
| So aside from the lithium, what is causing the runaway
| thermal to fire/explosion??
| [deleted]
| rootusrootus wrote:
| The electrolyte is very flammable and a short circuit
| provides the temperature to ignite it. Some lithium battery
| chemistries (LFP is probably the most common, but LTO as
| well) are much less likely to burn when they fail
| catastrophically.
| boshomi wrote:
| Nickel and Cobalt. This metal oxids creates molecular
| oxigen.
|
| This oxygen feeds the fire and make it hard to fight.
|
| Lithium iron phosphate do not show this kind of reaction.
| peteey wrote:
| Yes and no. Lithium metal is the highly reactive element
| in batteries.
|
| Similar to Hydrogen and Sodium, elements in the first
| column of the periodic table are highly reactive
| (flammable) because they readily give away their single
| electron in the outermost orbital.
|
| Some Lithium battery variants might have marginally safer
| properties, but they are fundamentally volatile at full
| charge.
| philipkglass wrote:
| Commercial lithium ion batteries do not contain metallic
| lithium in the charged or uncharged state. They have
| lithium ions intercalated into the anode material in the
| charged state.
|
| Primary (disposable) lithium batteries do contain
| metallic lithium in the charged state, and there are
| efforts to develop rechargeable batteries using pure
| lithium metal at the anode. Rechargeable batteries that
| contain metallic lithium anodes would be able to store
| more energy, but they are also more hazardous and
| currently have low cycle life.
| decide1000 wrote:
| Is this different from how they recycle EV batteries in Europe?
| ChancyChance wrote:
| How many EV batteries are decommissioned each year, i.e., could
| be recycled? This company can handle 70,000 per year according to
| the article, but what is that number out of?
|
| Side note about consumer lithium batteries: The nearest lithium
| recycling near me is 40 miles away, and it costs $$ to drop of
| your stuff. I can afford that, but I doubt most Americans
| properly dispose of their batteries. Heck, I have a neighbor who
| burns his trash near the road and one time saw him burning a few
| car batteries in the pile.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Not many. Not including a few larger recalls (Hyundai Kona for
| example), the battery replacement percentage for EVs is under
| 5%. The rest are still running on the original battery.[0]
|
| This is the biggest limit for re-using and recycling EV
| batteries, the damn things just won't die.
|
| [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/electric-car-battery-
| models-...
| elihu wrote:
| From the article, they actually get most of their waste
| material from battery factories, which is interesting.
|
| > "That's not to say there are enough old batteries coming in
| to fill the factory. Currently, 80 to 90 percent of what's
| going into Ascend's Covington facility is scrap materials from
| battery factories, including SK Battery America's plant in
| Commerce, Georgia."
|
| Eventually we'll have a lot more end-of-life batteries, but for
| now most of the EV battery packs that have ever been made are
| still in the middle of their respective bathtub curves.
| acyou wrote:
| Pretty pathetic "recycling": 1. 80-90% of input is not even
| batteries, it's scrap from woefully inefficient and low yield
| battery cell manufacturing 2. "Recycling" consists of mechanical
| shredding to combine all of the copper, aluminum, steel, cathode
| materials, anode materials 3. A single extraction process pulls
| out lithium carbonate, the rest is saved for the future as "black
| mass" for as yet nonexistent processes to pull out the valuable
| cobalt, nickel, manganese, phosphorus, graphite.
|
| The approach taken is practical, but kind of stupid. We want to
| physically separate these materials, so let's grind them into a
| well mixed aqueous slurry, then let the process chemists loose to
| solve it with science.
|
| Particulate contamination of new or recycled battery materials
| with iron particles is a particular concern. Grinding the steel
| battery casings will not help.
|
| The failure isn't with the battery recyclers, we shouldn't blame
| them. The issue is that consumers pay $0.05 per cell to recycle
| cells which at the moment are not recyclable, and we all see it
| as OK. I got my Tesla, ... you. So, as a result, there is zero
| incentive to consider the full product life cycle when designing
| cells.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Input volume is low because vehicle batteries last forever.
| Importantly, we can ramp on QA rejects, salavaged vehicles, etc
| before there are tens of millions of EVs out there (not to
| mention stationary storage that will eventually EOL) needing
| waste management. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.
|
| https://cleantechnica.com/2022/09/21/surprise-nissan-leaf-ba...
|
| Not super familiar with Ascend ground truth, but very familiar
| with Redwood Materials state of the art.
| mikestew wrote:
| _Input volume is low because vehicle batteries last forever._
|
| I am not sure of your meaning. Because, taken literally, our
| 2011 Nissan Leaf would like a word with you.
| kccqzy wrote:
| I'm guessing the battery in your Nissan Leaf only has maybe
| 60% of its capacity when new? That's not so bad that a
| battery would be deemed unusable. If you didn't want that
| battery, that battery probably would not end up in a
| recycling site but reused in other low energy-density use
| cases.
| greenthrow wrote:
| My 2014 Nissan Leaf still had great battery life when we
| finally traded it in last year.
|
| Often times a Leaf's entire pack can substantially recover
| capacity by replacing a single problematic cell.
| r00fus wrote:
| Nissan for whatever reason never chose to do (and still
| doesn't do in 2023) active battery thermal management that
| every other EV manufacturer does - I have a Ford Focus EV
| (2017) and despite being a complete econobox compliance
| vehicle (which I still love) it actively manages battery
| heat.
|
| Luckily Leafs are a minority of all EVs so the point still
| stands - EV batteries will likely outlive the car.
| nkingsy wrote:
| OG leaf battery design was legitimately flawed.
|
| I had one for a while and watched the range drop from 50-40
| "miles" (half that really) over less than 10k miles of
| usage before I sold it.
| nicenewtemp84 wrote:
| Chevy Volt batteries are holding up great even in 2012
| models. There are definitely people experiencing failures
| of a cell leading to bricking the car, or even a temp
| sensor failure in the pack leading to the vehicle bricking
| itself, but for 95%+ of people it seems like a decade old
| battery is doing great. I've got 170k miles on my decade
| old Volt and everything seems good as new for now.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I figure that over 10 years later, the fact that the only
| example that consistently comes up is the Nissan Leaf means
| we've made excellent progress on EV batteries. It's the
| exception proving the rule.
| outworlder wrote:
| > Because, taken literally, our 2011 Nissan Leaf would like
| a word with you.
|
| 2011 was a particularly bad year for the Leaf. And they
| were not great (battery life-wise) before 2015 ('lizard
| pack').
|
| The newer ones are faring much better. Sure, this is of no
| consolation for your Leaf, but I'd keep an eye for a
| battery pack from a Leaf that's totaled for other reasons
| (minor accident causing airbag deployment, for example).
| You can even add a larger battery than the one your model
| came with.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > Many will be amazed to learn that Nic Thomas, Nissan's
| marketing director for the UK, told Forbes recently,
| "Almost all of the [EV] batteries we've ever made are still
| in cars, and we've been selling electric cars for 12 years.
| We haven't got a great big stock of batteries that we can
| convert into something else," he added. "It's the complete
| opposite of what people feared when we first launched EVs
| -- that the batteries would only last a short time."
|
| > In fact, many EV batteries may outlast the vehicles they
| are installed in, then enjoy a second life in a stationary
| storage application before finally being recycled,
| according to EVANNEX. "At the end of the vehicle's life --
| 15 or 20 years down the road -- you take the battery out of
| the car and it's still healthy with perhaps 60 or 70% of
| usable charge," Thomas said.
|
| > "It's more sustainable to take the battery pack out of
| the car after 20 years, recycle the car, and reuse the
| battery. By far the easiest thing to do is take the
| complete battery out of the vehicle, put it in a shipping
| container in a rack, and plug that into a solar farm."
|
| Can't speak to a Leaf, but I have fast DC charged my 2018
| Model S almost exclusively over the last 100k miles and its
| pack has degraded only 6%.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| The leaf is notorious for fast degradation in hot
| climates due to a poor cooling system. The model S, by
| 2018 anyway, sets the bar for both thermal and charging
| management. People outside of those climates mostly think
| about cold being a temporary range reducer, but if 40c is
| a normal or even cool summer day where you live, many EVs
| are simply off the table due to battery life concerns.
| The population of places with that sort of climate is
| growing faster than the others, so it really is worth
| addressing.
| luhn wrote:
| > many EVs are simply off the table due to battery life
| concerns
|
| What EVs would be off the table? The Leaf is notably bad
| in this regard, as you mention, because the battery is
| passively cooled. However, all the other EVs I'm aware of
| are actively cooled and should be fine in hot temps.
|
| It's an earnest question--I don't know anything except as
| a consumer who's shopped around for an EV, and as a
| resident of a hot climate I'd be interested in knowing
| what I need to look out for.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| The spot checks I've done mostly show everything but
| nissan and gm having active cooling beyond a fan. But
| even within liquid cooling not all use the ac to keep the
| pack below ambient temp nwhen it gets too hot. I think
| kia and tesla are the only two I decided I was sure would
| be ok.
| mikestew wrote:
| _" Almost all of the [EV] batteries we've ever made are
| still in cars."_
|
| That's because replacing the battery in a 2011 Nissan
| Leaf will likely "total" the car (in that, the
| replacement cost would be more than the car is worth).
| It's the boat we're in now. Five, six, eight grand to
| replace the battery for a car that even dealers are only
| asking $7K for. Where are the cheap replacement batteries
| that we were promised when we bought the car? My guess
| is, "we'd rather place those batteries in $70K cars, so
| those are the customers you're competing with for battery
| supply." So that's how we're going to replace the
| battery: with a new Hyundai IONIQ 5.
|
| _In fact, many EV batteries may outlast the vehicles
| they are installed in, then enjoy a second life in a
| stationary storage application before finally being
| recycled, according to EVANNEX._
|
| "May", or may not. We don't know, because despite the
| chatter, I'm not seeing this secondary car battery use.
| Probably because no one replaces the batteries,
| because...it's not worth it.
|
| _Can't speak to a Leaf, but I have fast DC charged my
| 2018 Model S..._
|
| Your Tesla also has the advantage of seven years of
| battery advancement over our Leaf, which has degraded
| 25%. And the Leaf battery thermal management is non-
| existent. OTOH, as my wife and I push up against
| retirement age, with a liquid-cooled battery pack and the
| 12 years of learning about battery management, I'm
| assuming that the battery in the new Ioniq 5 coming this
| week will outlive us.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > That's because replacing the battery in a 2011 Nissan
| Leaf will likely "total" the car (in that, the
| replacement cost would be more than the car is worth).
|
| Yeah, well, totalling shouldn't work like that. A car
| with a new battery should be worth several thousand more,
| and the totalling calculation for replacing the battery
| should be based on the post-work value, not the pre-work
| value.
| belval wrote:
| Yeah the Leaf ~2011 is infamous as an earlier "bad"
| battery design so I wouldn't extrapolate too much from
| it. The reality is also that as battery capacity
| increases, people simply won't notice 10-15% degradation
| of the pack because their commute is so much shorter than
| the vehicule's range.
| mikestew wrote:
| And I'm not really extrapolating too much from it, as I
| expect our soon-to-be-in-the-driveway Ioniq 5 to perform
| much better (as in, outlives me). The Leaf was the first
| mass-market electric car in, what, 100 years? Yeah, we
| expected some early-adopter teething pains (including a
| short-lived battery), and we have no complaints with the
| OG Leaf, enough so that we swore off ICE vehicles years
| ago and await our 2nd electric car.
|
| But at the same time, it's a counter to _Nissan marketing
| guy_ trying to mansplain to me about their battery
| lifecycle. I own one of your batteries, Marketing Guy,
| and I 'm detecting slight hints of marketing bullshit.
| neuronexmachina wrote:
| Is there a consumer market yet for buying/selling old EV
| batteries for stationary storage? Some quick googling
| isn't turning anything up.
| myself248 wrote:
| Batteryhookup and Jag35 are hobbyist-friendly places
| dealing in such things. Safety or documentation are very
| much YOYOMF.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| I can vouch for battery hookup, they even sell new/never
| used overstock sometimes. Pretty good way to build your
| own battery back up system, which has helped me a lot
| when we lost power here in quebec for 4 days last week.
| outworlder wrote:
| Probably not at scale due to all the different form
| factors. There are plenty of hobbyists doing that,
| however.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| You can buy old Tesla modules (typically from wrecked
| cars) on eBay. Once in a while I see people on the RV
| forums use them instead of LFP, though honestly I'd much
| rather have LFP for RV or home energy storage than
| regular lithium ion.
| acyou wrote:
| Yes, vehicle batteries and stationary storage are used in
| much more "forgiving" environments than laptops and power
| tools, when it comes to cell life. Lower power draw, better
| battery management systems, less temperature fluctuation,
| less physical impact.
|
| Battery production is still massively wasteful in terms of
| partially finished or finished products that need to be
| scrapped. The reason is that battery quality is _critical at
| every level_. One tiny piece of iron embedded in one battery
| out of a million can mean a catastrophic fire and tens of
| millions in damages. If there is a systemic defect that
| manifests during cell testing and is caught, the whole
| production batch should be scrapped. Most of this scrap
| happens before the batteries are shipped, and you never see
| it, except in this too-honest article. You see how this plays
| out in car fires, resulting from battery defects, resulting
| in large recalls.
|
| Run into defects in semiconductor manufacturing, and scrap
| cost is lower, and you don't have an obvious and direct link
| between the defects and catastrophic failure modes.
|
| Keeping iron particles and manufacturing defects out of
| batteries isn't a "solvable" problem. You try to minimize it
| and catch it. Without technical breakthroughs and using
| existing technologies, the higher the batteries' performance,
| the less the margin for error.
|
| We don't have a good baseline cultural understanding for what
| lithium-ion batteries are. In general, household batteries,
| AAs, AAAs, car batteries use a water-based electrolyte. They
| do not catch fire. Lithium-ion batteries use an organic
| solvent as electrolyte and when punctured, dropped, or just
| cycling in everyday use if defective, turn into red-hot self-
| propelled blowtorches.
| londons_explore wrote:
| > stationary storage that will eventually EOL
|
| I suspect stationary storage will never EOL. Even after tens
| of thousands of recharge cycles, the battery can still store
| _some_ energy, perhaps just 10% of the design capacity, but
| thats still worth something so it 's still worth running.
|
| The only time it is worth throwing out is if the land is
| valuable and you need it for another project.
|
| This does depend on there not being much 'parasitic load' -
| ie. fans and pumps which run 24x7 which cost money to run
| even when they aren't really needed when the battery capacity
| and charge/discharge speed is really low.
| peer2pay wrote:
| Eh not sure about this one.
|
| With SoH decreasing the internal resistance increases and
| the battery inherently becomes a fire hazard. At some point
| the energy required for cooling will not be justifiable and
| the battery will have to be decommissioned.
| londons_explore wrote:
| As internal resistance rises, you just need to charge
| slower...
|
| A battery that normally takes an hour to charge can
| charge 10x slower and take 10 hours to charge, and still
| be providing some useful value. (nearly everywhere will
| have a day/night power price discrepancy, as well as a
| weekday vs weekend discrepancy, and a hot/cold weather
| discrepancy - so there are lots of timescales over which
| money can be made)
| iseanstevens wrote:
| I think this is the state of the art at scale currently.
|
| I bet if you can execute better they would love to hire you! ;)
| acyou wrote:
| Yes, I think you're right that this is the state of the art
| at scale.
|
| I wish the article went into a little more detail on the
| extent of technical achievement that was reached in
| commissioning this facility. Never mind the core process, can
| only imagine the scale of the fire suppression system, dust
| and fume management, etc. It really is impressive. They
| should publish a video tour.
|
| I think that this recycling facility occupies a supply chain
| niche in a larger system: Dispose of old battery cells and
| preserve the rest of the materials as concentrated ores. The
| existing cells cannot be safely warehoused as cells, due to
| fire risk. The concentrated ores can be stored cheaply and
| safely and will maintain a stable or increasing indexed
| commodity value, proportionate to improvements in refining
| processes.
|
| I just think that getting the cell cores out intact and
| separate from the steel casings would be a great start for
| the subsequent materials separation processes. Imagine if the
| cathode and anode foils could be further separated at the
| time of cell disassembly, and you would have a few material
| streams that would be simpler to process downstream: steel
| casings contaminated with powder and maybe a little aluminum
| and copper, cathode foils with the bulk of the cathode
| powders and close to zero iron, anode foils with the bulk of
| the anode powders and close to zero iron, and mixed powder
| flakes with close to zero iron.
|
| I guess it's about where you move cost and complexity. I view
| the whole cell grinding as moving complexity downstream. Yes,
| it may end up being the right thing to do, but that will
| depend on future technological developments in metal
| refining, hydrometallurgical separation, and other
| techniques.
| coryrc wrote:
| Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
|
| You seem upset that "reuse" is a different word than "recycle".
| acyou wrote:
| We may or may not develop processes to efficiently recycle
| the "black mass". For now, these processes do not exist.
|
| Battery recycling may go in a different direction than it's
| currently heading. We may decide to focus on separating out
| the most valuable of these elements, or only elements from
| certain battery chemistries. We may even decide that it's not
| feasible to chemically separate ground battery materials
| containing iron, chromium, or other contaminants.
|
| In the short term, re-using lithium-ion cells is not
| particularly feasible due to issues with cell safety and
| handling. In my mind, re-use doesn't enter into the
| conversation. If cells are being decommissioned, they would
| ideally be at or near the end of their useful lives anyways.
| For instance, if a vehicle was in a car accident, you would
| never re-use the cells, due to concerns about acceleration
| damage.
| coryrc wrote:
| Re-use is happening all over. Used Nissan Leaf cells sell
| for almost new prices. I wish it wasn't true because I'd
| like a few packs myself.
| bromuro wrote:
| Recycling causes harm for the environment. It's not a viable
| solution in the middle terms.
| jabart wrote:
| How do you think they get it out of the ground with all the
| other contaminants? I'm making an educated guess that a
| recycling business has figured out how to make it economical at
| scale.
| acyou wrote:
| For each element, I believe there is a combination of
| electrolysis, electrowinning, leaching and other
| hydrometallurgical and refining processes that is used to
| refine from ore into a pure state.
|
| In the article, lithium is extracted from the recycled cell
| materials. Relatively cheap lithium can be extracted because
| it occupies position #3 in the periodic table and has very
| different chemical properties than most of the other
| elements. According to the article, the expensive elements,
| occupying positions #24 through #30 in the periodic table,
| are left together in the black mass and re-sold.
|
| Separating elements #24 through #30 is not yet easy and
| economical. The central challenges are: A. The elements are
| all adjacent to one another in the periodic table B. The
| finished outputs must be extremely pure in order to be
| suitable for use in battery materials C. Centuries of
| advancement in mining, metallurgical and process research and
| development focuses (mostly) on how to get (mostly) pure
| elements from ores
|
| That's not to say we won't get there. I just think that
| opening a cell grinding and breakdown facility isn't a
| particularly large step in the right direction. I actually
| think it may be a step in the wrong direction, and that cell
| processing facilities should perhaps be focusing on
| complexity at the cell disassembly level, processing
| individual cells to mechanically separate elements, given
| that cells enter recycling facilities as attached/assembled
| but relatively nicely separated casings, cathode and anode
| foils, and cathode and anode powders.
|
| If there are large subsequent advancements in chemical
| refining processes for separating elements #24 through #30,
| my above assessments will be proven wrong.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| You seem to be adding some details not in the article. Are you
| familiar with them?
|
| > Currently, Ascend sells most of these substances to the
| market;
|
| I took that line to mean they sell the recycled materials. You
| seem to think they are storing them as a combined goop.
| acyou wrote:
| I do have a little familiarity with lithium-ion technologies,
| but no direct insight into battery recycling. Please correct
| me if I'm mistaken.
|
| I absolutely do think that "recycled" battery materials are
| being stored as combined goop or "black mass"! For the
| following reasons: 1. I'm not aware of a commodity spot price
| for battery sludge/powder 2. I'm not aware of any cell
| manufacturer using recycled materials in their cathode
| materials 3. I'm not aware of any cell manufacturer or
| recycler processing recycled battery sludge/powder and re-
| selling cathode materials made from recycled materials 4. I
| am well aware of the large technical and cost barrier to
| processing and separating this "black mass": The chemical
| elements occupy all of the positions from #24-#30 in the
| periodic table, and existing processes to separate the
| elements are expensive and resource-intensive.
|
| What I don't have insight into is: who is buying recycled
| battery material mixtures? If they are available cheaply, we
| could speculate on them and hold them, assuming that refining
| processes will grow cheaper over time, and that the value of
| the recycled material mixtures will increase.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Their website seems to be claiming they have some secret
| sauce:
|
| > Our advantage starts with a remarkable innovation: Other
| processes leach metals out of spent battery materials, but
| our patented Hydro-to-Cathode direct precursor synthesis
| process leaches out impurities, keeping the valuable metals
| in solution and eliminating multiple steps in the recycling
| flow.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I think the 'grind it up and use chemistry to extract the
| valuable bits' is the future of recycling.
|
| The reality is that lifespans of products is so long (eg. 30+
| years) that no recycling process wants to be built to fit
| standard mechanical designs from 30 years ago... and 20 years
| ago... and 10 years ago... Multiply by the number of different
| designs from different companies and different countries (even
| with regulation, it is unlikely we would get one global
| mechanically recyclable design).
|
| If process chemists can't extract everything, then you plasma-
| ionize what's left and now you just have plain old elements to
| deal with.
| acyou wrote:
| Chromium, manganese, iron, cobalt, nickel, copper and zinc
| are elements # 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30. The processes to
| separate them are currently resource-intensive and expensive.
| They need to be separated by conventional smelting and
| refining processes or hydro metallurgical processes, or some
| combination. These processes need to do a great job of
| purification for the materials to be battery grade.
|
| Plasma ionization, can it be cheap and scalable?
| makerdiety wrote:
| > I think the 'grind it up and use chemistry to extract the
| valuable bits' is the future of recycling. [...] If process
| chemists can't extract everything, then you plasma-ionize
| what's left and now you just have plain old elements to deal
| with.
|
| So high temperature applications which remove strong bonds
| and create programmable ions can lead to atomic elements?
| londons_explore wrote:
| steel recycling has the same concern.
|
| Sure, you can rip apart a building and say "ooh, thats a nice
| steel beam - we could reuse that for another building, or cut
| it into sheets to roll flat into something else"... But it is
| cheaper and easier just to chuck it into a furnace and melt
| it down and start from scratch.
| acyou wrote:
| This is the correct way of thinking, and is widely
| applicable to many commonly recycled materials. Wood,
| aluminum, steel, and some plastics can be efficiently
| processed in this way.
|
| Battery materials and applications are different. They
| cannot be cheaply and easily melted down and re-used. The
| main constituents are all very similar and difficult to
| separate, and need to be separated extremely well in order
| to be used in battery applications.
|
| The lithium carbonate extraction is very telling. Lithium
| is #3 in the periodic table. The remaining elements that we
| would want to extract occupy every number from #24 through
| #30. The reason that they are extracting cheap lithium and
| none of the heavy, expensive elements, is that more process
| development needs to be done.
|
| In light of the above, creating a facility to grind up
| batteries does not represent much progress towards the core
| problem, and is not a particularly large step in the right
| direction. It would be like making a facility to grind up
| plastic, without having a process in place to recycle the
| plastic. It's great, but you need more, much more.
| jgtrosh wrote:
| But that's not the same, the above process would be like
| melting the steel and glass and concrete from the building
| and hope future chemistry allows us to separate them
| rimunroe wrote:
| I'm not a chemist, but this is something we're already
| very good at, and have been for quite some time. Silicon
| oxides occur very commonly in iron ores, and are a major
| component of slag.
| WJW wrote:
| Current chemistry allows us to do that just fine. Glass
| melts at a much lower temperature and is much less dense
| than steel. Concrete is not as dense as steel, but melts
| at a much higher temperature. So, if you heat up the
| whole mixture to steel melting temperatures, the glass
| and steel will melt and can be poured off, while the
| concrete will stay solid. Then the molten mixture of
| steel and glass will naturally separate because the steel
| part is so much heavier than the glass part and they
| don't naturally mix all that well.
|
| (Fun fact, glass pane manufacturing is often done by
| floating the molten glass on a bath of molten metal so
| that the surface tension will make it flat. AFAIK they
| don't usually use molten steel as the metal though.)
| jopsen wrote:
| But if you can pull out the steel beams without all the
| concrete, melting it will be a lot cheaper.
|
| Imagine grinding up a bridge or tunnel and trying melt
| all the steel out of the concrete.
|
| That sounds expensive.
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