10 ms·

Old electric cars are a raw material of the future

99 points by edward 5y ago

kragen 5y ago
https://archive.is/FVOLK https://archive.is/FVOLK See also my comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27163590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27163590.
kragen 5y ago
18 days ago, I posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26952544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26952544, "This battery waste problem has an epistemological status similar to that of dowsing and witchcraft." This article seems to vindicate the viewpoint I expressed in the comments there: electric vehicle waste can only pose a significant pollution problem if capitalism is somehow prevented from profiting from it. (There are problems that capitalism makes worse, but this is the kind of problem that capitalism is good at solving.) However, the reporters have acquired considerably more knowledge of the issues than I had. At that point I looked a bit into the hydrometallurgical processes that were available, enough to convince myself that there were no showstopper problems that would make recycling battery waste uneconomical. But I didn't know about the pyrometallurgical processes at all, and I found that aspect of the article very interesting. Nor did I know about the current business situation.
- crazygringo 5y ago
  > only pose a significant pollution problem if capitalism is somehow prevented from profiting from it. This is fundamentally false. The entire issue of environmental pollution exists because, or when, reuse isn't profitable. If new raw materials are cheaper than reusing, then capitalism will absolutely result in dumping old materials and increasing pollution. Why would you think otherwise?
  - gilbetron 5y ago
    You are agreeing with the OP, you know. "somehow prevented" = we put dumb regulations in the way or the entire process of lithium extraction can't be made profitable.
    - crazygringo 5y ago
      No, I'm disagreeing, you know. What "dumb regulations" are you referring to specifically? Tons of things aren't profitable even with zero regulations. That's my entire point -- not profitable even before any regulations. Though regulations also exist for some pretty important reasons -- like prohibiting cheap child labor, requiring worker safety protections, etc.
    - andrepd 5y ago
      On the contrary. There is a lack of regulations that properly price externalities and make the people profiting from them pay for the shit they pollute.
      - kragen 5y ago
        While this is true in general, in this case recycling the waste is more profitable than discarding it, even without regulations. Of course, you could still produce more pollution during the recycling process, a point touched on in the article.
  - greggyb 5y ago
    You're arguing past one another. The parent's working assumption is that concentrated lithium is much cheaper to harvest than trace lithium in natural deposits. You seem to be assuming that it is cheaper to mine trace minerals than harvest from existing batteries. Absent any domain knowledge regarding the cost of these two sources of lithium, neither of you can presume to be correct. The only fundamental thing here is that, absent any external pressure, in a capitalistic system, we will see suppliers of lithium prefer the source that is cheaper for them to utilize.
    - kragen 5y ago
      In my comment, I said, "At that point I looked a bit into the hydrometallurgical processes that were available, enough to convince myself that there were no showstopper problems that would make recycling battery waste uneconomical." That seems to be the "domain knowledge" you're referring to? So I didn't presume I was correct; I investigated and found out what was correct. This article has much better domain knowledge than what I was able to dig up at the time, though. I don't think we're arguing past one another at all. The central point of my comment was that people often made the error that crazygringo made; I explained why it was an error. Then, crazygringo responded, reiterating the error. I think my comment was rather precisely targeted at his comment, even though I made it earlier.
  - kragen 5y ago
    Yes, in many cases polluting is profitable because the economy doesn't internalize the negative externality of pollution (and Coase's Theorem fails to hold for various reasons). That's part of what I meant by "There are problems that capitalism makes worse." This is not one of those cases, precisely because (refining from) new raw materials is not cheaper than recycling waste.
samat 5y ago
https://outline.com/9sEHNG https://outline.com/9sEHNG
WJW 5y ago
Pretty much everything is a raw material of the future. Even household waste has much higher concentrations of metals than most ore deposits.
- plebianRube 5y ago
  That sandwich you're eating? Made from old recycled half eaten sandwiches.
  - kragen 5y ago
    Actually your sandwich is made from poop. The poop fertilized plants, the plants were harvested, some of them were turned into bread, others fed a pig, and that's what you're eating. Some of the poop decayed and was released as gases into the air, which were then recaptured by the plants, by bacteria in the roots of soybeans, and by Haber-Bosch factories (confusingly also called plants) which made synthetic fertilizer to fertilize the plants further. You are recycling your sandwich, made from poop, into more poop. This is the reflection on the disgusting nature of food and its link to the interdependent arising of all things. Your existence is inextricably linked to the existence of the pig and the poop. They are not separate processes; they are different focuses in the same process.
    - Reason077 5y ago
      "The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of star stuff." —Carl Sagan
      - kragen 5y ago
        Yes. Also poop. (Though the atomic nuclei didn't originate in the poop; they were just passing through. But cobalamin molecules, for example, do originate in poop pretty often.)
      - ajross 5y ago
        FWIW: Sagan was poetic but the intuition turns out to have been wrong. Models are still not super convincing, but supernovae alone aren't enough to explain the abundance of heavy elements. A big chunk of the rare earth nuclei we apply in industry today seem likely to be tiny remnants of neutron stars that were thrown off in a merger event with another neutron star or black hole.
baybal2 5y ago
I would very much like to see where they got their breakdown. The "electrical vehicles by weight" looks pretty much like Tesla Model S breakdown. Tesla is alone in choosing aluminium, while the rest of the industry goes with steel. The engine block is the heaviest part in an ICE vehicle, but it's usually made of grey iron, and not really steel, with German cars some times using silicon-aluminium, or much rarely magnesium alloy.
- speedgoose 5y ago
  Not alone. The BMW i3 has an aluminum frame. The Tesla model 3 and model y are steel by the way.
- sidewndr46 5y ago
  I don't know how you come to this conclusion, but the engine block in a modern passenger car is definitely not the heaviest part. The engine block itself is often incredibly light, even a V8 made from cast iron would only be a few hundred pounds. The body (or unibody) of any modern car is far heavier, given that it has so many functions and safety features as part of its design.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    If you count body as a part, then yes.
- kingsuper20 5y ago
  > Tesla is alone in choosing aluminium, while the rest of the industry goes with steel. Somebody better tell the F150 designers.
jillesvangurp 5y ago
Lithium is a valuable resource. EV batteries have lots of it. Therefore EV batteries are valuable even after they stop working. Lithium is valuable because extracting it from naturally occurring salt deposits is a lot of work. These salt deposits are mostly not Lithium. We are talking trace amounts here. To extract it, you have to process vast amounts of brine. Boil of the water, separate it from other materials, etc. That's a lot of work and energy. Recycling a battery with high concentrations of Lithium is probably a lot less work. For that reason, lithium is a lot more expensive than other materials. Melting old ice cars to recover the steel is already a thing. The steel has a value. All you need to do is melt it and reuse it. So, we already have existing practices for recycling old vehicles and companies specializing in that. The only thing that changes is that those companies will be dealing with very valuable batteries as well. Lithium is of course quite a bit more lucrative than steel. If it works for steel, it's going to work a lot better for lithium. Because it has a lot more value.
- GordonS 5y ago
  I had always assumed that when a lithium battery didn't work any more, the lithium was somehow "depleted", or had been charged chemically somehow?
  - yomly 5y ago
    Matter cannot be created nor destroyed. And elemental conversion is a big deal - usually involving nuclear fission or fusion. Batteries do become depleted but the lithium never disappears, I guess simply put a reverse potential is no longer able to reverse the battery equation back to the energy storing state. Presumably because there is some third reservoir state that a potential cannot reverse (without delving into the chemistry). Don't be mistaken into thinking that because a charger cannot reverse the battery reaction that the lithium itself is gone, or that there does not exist some completely unrelated process that can recover the lithium - separate from the immediate battery ecosystem
    - alisonkisk 5y ago
      > Matter cannot be created nor destroyed. It certainly can, E=mc^2. But it's an incredible amount of energy for how much matter you get.
JudasGoat 5y ago
Having researched Tesla battery packs, failure occurs when one cell goes into high resistance state. There is a Company that repairs battery packs by cutting the bad cell out of the circuit. They charge approx $5k to do this. I am guessing that low resistance (shorted) cells take themselves out by blowing their individual fuse. It seems as though addressable fuses could deal with this
- adammunich 5y ago
  I’d love to learn more about what you dug up on this
mastrsushi 5y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20210515014653if_/https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2021/05/13/old-electric-cars-are-a-raw-material-of-the-future https://web.archive.org/web/20210515014653if_/https://www.ec...
jakobdabo 5y ago
Another raw material source are the catalytic converters [1] of the exhaust system. Thieves are targeting them, and there are "shops" where you can "donate" your converter, get a free emulator instead, and receive money. Which, of course, is bad for environment. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalytic_converter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalytic_converter
ImNotSurprized 5y ago
This doesn't surprize me.
zafka 5y ago
Buckminster Fuller Said it quite a few years ago. If Society did not socialize the expense of cleaning up the environment for industry we would be much farther down the road to closed loop manufacturing.
- zafka 5y ago
  For those not inclined to Google: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller
neonate 5y ago
https://archive.is/FVOLK https://archive.is/FVOLK

99 points by edward 5y ago

https://archive.is/FVOLK https://archive.is/FVOLK See also my comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27163590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27163590.

kragen 5y ago

18 days ago, I posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26952544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26952544, "This battery waste problem has an epistemological status similar to that of dowsing and witchcraft." This article seems to vindicate the viewpoint I expressed in the comments there: electric vehicle waste can only pose a significant pollution problem if capitalism is somehow prevented from profiting from it. (There are problems that capitalism makes worse, but this is the kind of problem that capitalism is good at solving.) However, the reporters have acquired considerably more knowledge of the issues than I had. At that point I looked a bit into the hydrometallurgical processes that were available, enough to convince myself that there were no showstopper problems that would make recycling battery waste uneconomical. But I didn't know about the pyrometallurgical processes at all, and I found that aspect of the article very interesting. Nor did I know about the current business situation.

crazygringo 5y ago
> only pose a significant pollution problem if capitalism is somehow prevented from profiting from it. This is fundamentally false. The entire issue of environmental pollution exists because, or when, reuse isn't profitable. If new raw materials are cheaper than reusing, then capitalism will absolutely result in dumping old materials and increasing pollution. Why would you think otherwise?
- gilbetron 5y ago
  You are agreeing with the OP, you know. "somehow prevented" = we put dumb regulations in the way or the entire process of lithium extraction can't be made profitable.
  - crazygringo 5y ago
    No, I'm disagreeing, you know. What "dumb regulations" are you referring to specifically? Tons of things aren't profitable even with zero regulations. That's my entire point -- not profitable even before any regulations. Though regulations also exist for some pretty important reasons -- like prohibiting cheap child labor, requiring worker safety protections, etc.
  - andrepd 5y ago
    On the contrary. There is a lack of regulations that properly price externalities and make the people profiting from them pay for the shit they pollute.
    - kragen 5y ago
      While this is true in general, in this case recycling the waste is more profitable than discarding it, even without regulations. Of course, you could still produce more pollution during the recycling process, a point touched on in the article.
- greggyb 5y ago
  You're arguing past one another. The parent's working assumption is that concentrated lithium is much cheaper to harvest than trace lithium in natural deposits. You seem to be assuming that it is cheaper to mine trace minerals than harvest from existing batteries. Absent any domain knowledge regarding the cost of these two sources of lithium, neither of you can presume to be correct. The only fundamental thing here is that, absent any external pressure, in a capitalistic system, we will see suppliers of lithium prefer the source that is cheaper for them to utilize.
  - kragen 5y ago
    In my comment, I said, "At that point I looked a bit into the hydrometallurgical processes that were available, enough to convince myself that there were no showstopper problems that would make recycling battery waste uneconomical." That seems to be the "domain knowledge" you're referring to? So I didn't presume I was correct; I investigated and found out what was correct. This article has much better domain knowledge than what I was able to dig up at the time, though. I don't think we're arguing past one another at all. The central point of my comment was that people often made the error that crazygringo made; I explained why it was an error. Then, crazygringo responded, reiterating the error. I think my comment was rather precisely targeted at his comment, even though I made it earlier.
- kragen 5y ago
  Yes, in many cases polluting is profitable because the economy doesn't internalize the negative externality of pollution (and Coase's Theorem fails to hold for various reasons). That's part of what I meant by "There are problems that capitalism makes worse." This is not one of those cases, precisely because (refining from) new raw materials is not cheaper than recycling waste.

samat 5y ago

https://outline.com/9sEHNG https://outline.com/9sEHNG

WJW 5y ago

Pretty much everything is a raw material of the future. Even household waste has much higher concentrations of metals than most ore deposits.

plebianRube 5y ago
That sandwich you're eating? Made from old recycled half eaten sandwiches.
- kragen 5y ago
  Actually your sandwich is made from poop. The poop fertilized plants, the plants were harvested, some of them were turned into bread, others fed a pig, and that's what you're eating. Some of the poop decayed and was released as gases into the air, which were then recaptured by the plants, by bacteria in the roots of soybeans, and by Haber-Bosch factories (confusingly also called plants) which made synthetic fertilizer to fertilize the plants further. You are recycling your sandwich, made from poop, into more poop. This is the reflection on the disgusting nature of food and its link to the interdependent arising of all things. Your existence is inextricably linked to the existence of the pig and the poop. They are not separate processes; they are different focuses in the same process.
  - Reason077 5y ago
    "The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of star stuff." —Carl Sagan
    - kragen 5y ago
      Yes. Also poop. (Though the atomic nuclei didn't originate in the poop; they were just passing through. But cobalamin molecules, for example, do originate in poop pretty often.)
    - ajross 5y ago
      FWIW: Sagan was poetic but the intuition turns out to have been wrong. Models are still not super convincing, but supernovae alone aren't enough to explain the abundance of heavy elements. A big chunk of the rare earth nuclei we apply in industry today seem likely to be tiny remnants of neutron stars that were thrown off in a merger event with another neutron star or black hole.

baybal2 5y ago

I would very much like to see where they got their breakdown. The "electrical vehicles by weight" looks pretty much like Tesla Model S breakdown. Tesla is alone in choosing aluminium, while the rest of the industry goes with steel. The engine block is the heaviest part in an ICE vehicle, but it's usually made of grey iron, and not really steel, with German cars some times using silicon-aluminium, or much rarely magnesium alloy.

speedgoose 5y ago
Not alone. The BMW i3 has an aluminum frame. The Tesla model 3 and model y are steel by the way.
sidewndr46 5y ago
I don't know how you come to this conclusion, but the engine block in a modern passenger car is definitely not the heaviest part. The engine block itself is often incredibly light, even a V8 made from cast iron would only be a few hundred pounds. The body (or unibody) of any modern car is far heavier, given that it has so many functions and safety features as part of its design.
- baybal2 5y ago
  If you count body as a part, then yes.
kingsuper20 5y ago
> Tesla is alone in choosing aluminium, while the rest of the industry goes with steel. Somebody better tell the F150 designers.

jillesvangurp 5y ago

Lithium is a valuable resource. EV batteries have lots of it. Therefore EV batteries are valuable even after they stop working. Lithium is valuable because extracting it from naturally occurring salt deposits is a lot of work. These salt deposits are mostly not Lithium. We are talking trace amounts here. To extract it, you have to process vast amounts of brine. Boil of the water, separate it from other materials, etc. That's a lot of work and energy. Recycling a battery with high concentrations of Lithium is probably a lot less work. For that reason, lithium is a lot more expensive than other materials. Melting old ice cars to recover the steel is already a thing. The steel has a value. All you need to do is melt it and reuse it. So, we already have existing practices for recycling old vehicles and companies specializing in that. The only thing that changes is that those companies will be dealing with very valuable batteries as well. Lithium is of course quite a bit more lucrative than steel. If it works for steel, it's going to work a lot better for lithium. Because it has a lot more value.

GordonS 5y ago
I had always assumed that when a lithium battery didn't work any more, the lithium was somehow "depleted", or had been charged chemically somehow?
- yomly 5y ago
  Matter cannot be created nor destroyed. And elemental conversion is a big deal - usually involving nuclear fission or fusion. Batteries do become depleted but the lithium never disappears, I guess simply put a reverse potential is no longer able to reverse the battery equation back to the energy storing state. Presumably because there is some third reservoir state that a potential cannot reverse (without delving into the chemistry). Don't be mistaken into thinking that because a charger cannot reverse the battery reaction that the lithium itself is gone, or that there does not exist some completely unrelated process that can recover the lithium - separate from the immediate battery ecosystem
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
    > Matter cannot be created nor destroyed. It certainly can, E=mc^2. But it's an incredible amount of energy for how much matter you get.

JudasGoat 5y ago

Having researched Tesla battery packs, failure occurs when one cell goes into high resistance state. There is a Company that repairs battery packs by cutting the bad cell out of the circuit. They charge approx $5k to do this. I am guessing that low resistance (shorted) cells take themselves out by blowing their individual fuse. It seems as though addressable fuses could deal with this

adammunich 5y ago
I’d love to learn more about what you dug up on this

mastrsushi 5y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20210515014653if_/https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2021/05/13/old-electric-cars-are-a-raw-material-of-the-future https://web.archive.org/web/20210515014653if_/https://www.ec...

jakobdabo 5y ago

Another raw material source are the catalytic converters [1] of the exhaust system. Thieves are targeting them, and there are "shops" where you can "donate" your converter, get a free emulator instead, and receive money. Which, of course, is bad for environment. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalytic_converter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalytic_converter

ImNotSurprized 5y ago

This doesn't surprize me.

zafka 5y ago

Buckminster Fuller Said it quite a few years ago. If Society did not socialize the expense of cleaning up the environment for industry we would be much farther down the road to closed loop manufacturing.

zafka 5y ago
For those not inclined to Google: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller

neonate 5y ago

https://archive.is/FVOLK https://archive.is/FVOLK