16 ms·

Study: Recycled Lithium Batteries as Good as Newly Mined

635 points by mpweiher 5y ago

kazinator 5y ago
What a headline, yikes! How about: Recycled Material Lithium Batteries Just As Good
- earleybird 5y ago
  I need to find that battery mine . . . sorry, leaving now :-)
mgamache 5y ago
I don't see anyone calling BS on this, so I will point out the conflict of interest. This is a startup claiming their solution is better than anything you've seen before using in-house 'research'. FTA: A new study by Wang... The cathodes were made using a patented recycling technique that Battery Resourcers, a startup Wang co-founded, is now commercializing.
xojoc 5y ago
Other threads: https://www.reddit.com/r/futurology/comments/qc5teb https://www.reddit.com/r/futurology/comments/qc5teb [2021-10-20] (772 comments) https://www.reddit.com/r/upliftingnews/comments/qc0rej https://www.reddit.com/r/upliftingnews/comments/qc0rej [2021-10-20] (31 comments) All discussions: https://discussions.xojoc.pw/q/https%3A//spectrum.ieee.org/recycled-batteries-good-as-newly-mined https://discussions.xojoc.pw/q/https%3A//spectrum.ieee.org/r... Discussions with similar title: https://discussions.xojoc.pw/q/Study%3A%20Recycled%20Lithium%20Batteries%20as%20Good%20as%20Newly%20Mined https://discussions.xojoc.pw/q/Study%3A%20Recycled%20Lithium... Archive: https://archive.md/newest/https://spectrum.ieee.org/recycled-batteries-good-as-newly-mined https://archive.md/newest/https://spectrum.ieee.org/recycled...
soperj 5y ago
Process being commercialized by researcher tested and found to be very very good by same researcher. Colour me a least a little skeptical here.
- KennyBlanken 5y ago
  Do you have any training in the field or is this just a baseless ad hominem attack? Do you have literally any evidence from a reputable source that the parties involved falsified results? Among other things, the testing was done by a different company, A123 systems - and his company has been selling the cathode material to manufacturers.
  - AlexanderDhoore 5y ago
    A certain amount of scepticism is needed if you want to survive on the internet :)
    - parksy 5y ago
      Source?
      - cvs268 5y ago
        Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28922027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28922027
      - HideousKojima 5y ago
        "Everything you read on the internet is true" - Abraham Lincoln
  - tehjoker 5y ago
    A promising sign, but the GP's points are a reason to be skeptical until we see evidence of scale up. There could be issues or limitations that are not obvious to non-experts. That is the case with almost every news story like this.
  - scotty79 5y ago
    How's that ad hominem? He just said that single, non-independent research is not enough to convince him. Which is very reasonable thing to say.
throwawaysea 5y ago
Exciting news but there are a lot of missing details. The differentiation seems to be that they can output ready to use cathode material (NMC) instead of raw elements, and that those materials may perform as good or better than new materials. I’m curious what this process takes in terms of energy and inputs like acid. And what about the rest of the battery? And then there are the policy and cost questions to make it all economically viable compared to new material.
- Zigurd 5y ago
  Lead acid batteries have a high rate of recycling in part because there are a limited number of standardized sizes, and a lot of each size. EVs have not yet achieved as much volume and settled on standards. But that will change. Probably quickly at current growth rates.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    And the fact that the various materials are fairly easily separated from each other certainly helps.
kfprt 5y ago
Isn't most recycling just breaking down batteries to their elemental state? That would imply there couldn't possible be a difference between new and recycled.
- R0b0t1 5y ago
  In many recycling processes it's typical that there are pollutants that are not cost effective to remove. You can apply metallurgical techniques to reclaim the metals from a battery, so I don't see how this would apply, but not everyone knows that.
  - kfprt 5y ago
    I don't know enough about battery chemistry specifically but I don't see how separating from a rich ore could be more expensive than a mined ore.
    - parksy 5y ago
      Intuitively I agree, from a different angle although I don't know about chemistry either, but from a supply chain perspective, for generations it's all been about optimising delivery to a consumer. Supply lines point directly at households and beyond that point it's a bit of a dark web. Random piles of crap end up... somewhere? If the consumer became a supplier of raw recyclable materials, and those materials had value, they deserve to be compensated, and will probably be more engaged in the sorting and quality control processes. I drink a lot of beer - that makes me a great supplier of ready-made glass bottles to anyone that wants them. Rather than bulk collecting a random pile of potentially recyclable material, here's a bunch of sorted glass bottles each quarter. Anyone that can hook into that kind of idea and find some kind of economy of scale might make a killing.
      - kfprt 5y ago
        I call this entropy. Once the products are dispersed it takes a lot of energy to bring them back together like they were in the supply chain. I'm not sure it will ever be solved purely because of the physics.
acd 5y ago
We need to design devices such as batteries for recycling and long life from the design phase of the products. Solid-state Lithium batteries will probably be easier to recycle due to no sandwiching. "The immediate benefit of switching from a liquid to solid electrolyte is that the energy density of the battery can increase. This is because instead of requiring large separators between the liquid cells, solid state batteries only require very thin barriers to prevent a short circuit." This separator material complicates recycling in conventional Lithium ion batteries. Instead of assuming we have endless resources we should design all products to recyclable from the start design phase. This is to lessen global warming and environmental impact.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Absolutely. A friend - who has passed away - had a great idea: tax companies for resources consumed. That would go a long way towards treating everything that we mine as precious, rather than just those items that we can already see the bottom of the barrel on (and taking into account that mining is creating an enormous amount of pollution). Properly designed items should be easier, cheaper and quicker to recycle than to start with a mining step. One of the important bits here is now the various materials are joined, specifically, gluing is a barrier to recycling, as are various surface coatings. This is where I think we could make a very quick step in the right direction by designing not just for manufacturing costs but also for the cost of breaking the produced item up into its constituent elements. Penalties for the fraction that can not be reliable returned to its pre-manufacture state, as well as an automatic obligation to take back and recycle any product produced.
  - dsego 5y ago
    Sounds like Georgism.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - djur 5y ago
    You could get a lot of the way there if governments didn't sell or lease extraction rights at a bargain. And they do that for a number of reasons, but mostly because extraction and processing of natural resources is good for local economies. This is what ended up causing the "Sagebrush Rebellion" in the western United States, which is an ongoing political issue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagebrush_Rebellion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagebrush_Rebellion
14 5y ago
We should put a deposit on all batteries. I will admit I am guilty of taking my dead batteries and just throwing them out vs recycling them. We should incentivize the recycling of all batteries.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Please don't do this with batteries, they are not only toxic but can also be a fire hazard if not disposed of properly, this goes especially for Lithium-Ion based batteries.
  - Pxtl 5y ago
    I'm scrupulous about extracting batteries from my electronics for proper disposal, personally... But realistically, without a cash incentive to get people to pull out the screwdriver, many folks won't do it and they'll end up in the garbage. This needs to be a deposit-based program. E-recycle fee upfront at purchase, rebate at proper disposal.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      Where I live such waste is collected separately (small chemical waste), you get a little box for it and you can drop it off for free at the local garbage disposal/sorting facility.
      - culopatin 5y ago
        Meanwhile in the US some recycling circuits have stopped because of “labor shortage”
      - Pxtl 5y ago
        Similar here, but my point is that many won't do the hassle of extracting a screwed-in battery from an electronic device rather than throwing it straight into the opaque trash-bag. A fee-and-rebate program would provide a cash incentive to properly sort your batteries out of trash. It works for refillable liquor bottles.
The_Beta 5y ago
Does the lithium, cobalt, etc. not undergo a material change as the battery is used? Meaning, is the lithium in a brand new battery the same as the lithium in a battery that's been used for years?
- sonium 5y ago
  The stoichiometry stays exactly the same, just shred the battery and feed the result back to the beginning of the e.g cobalt mining operation operation. Better however if you somehow manage to roughly separate it into lithium, cobalt and so on and use the result instead of the respective ore.
  - The_Beta 5y ago
    So why does a battery wear out after an extended number of uses?
    - sonium 5y ago
      It’s the “arrangement” of elements in the simplest terms, like changes in crystal structure.
      - The_Beta 5y ago
        So how does recycling revert this back to the original structure? Is it just basically melting it?
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  Lithium and cobalt are both elements. Getting them to be something else would require a nuclear reaction.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    Both chemically combine with other atoms to form molecules - that is how a battery works. If they combine with the wrong thing it can be a lot harder to separate them again (not nuclear level, but harder)
elihu 5y ago
> The team tested batteries with recycled NMC111 cathodes, the most common flavor of cathode containing a third each of nickel, manganese, and cobalt. The cathodes were made using a patented recycling technique that Battery Resources, a startup Wang co-founded, is now commercializing. That seems like a waste of cobalt. I think modern cells are usually something more like NMC811 (80% nickel, 10% each of manganese and cobalt). You could use the cobalt from the old cells to make more than three times as many new cells, though you'd need a lot more nickel. I'm hoping most mass-market EVs switch over to using lithium iron phosphate, which doesn't use nickel or cobalt. Supposedly there are some major LFP patents expiring soon; maybe that'll increase the number of factories outside of China producing them.
- wffurr 5y ago
  LiFePO4 also has lower energy density, and non Tesla EV makers seem to be making really inefficient EVs (less than 3 miles per kWh in the new Volvo and BMW!) and just putting in a huge battery pack to "compensate". Which the buyer gets the privilege to pay for with up front cost, charging time, and less range than they ought to have. I am impressed so far with my new-to-me Chevy Bolt getting 4.5 mi/kWh and squeezing a respectable range (250 mi) out of a smallish battery (55 kWh). But when BMW puts in an 88 kWh battery in their i4 but it only gets 2.3 mi/kWh, there's no way they could accept the lower power density of lithium iron phosphate batteries.
  - elihu 5y ago
    LFP has lower energy density, but it's still good enough to be usable, and the technology keeps getting better. I think recently-made LFP cells tend to be somewhere around 150 wh/kg, which is equivalent to older-generation regular lithium-ion cells. Tesla has been using LFPs in some of their model 3s; I'm not sure if that's just their China-market version or if that's worldwide. I think LFP is a good option for getting mass-produced EVs to the point where they're approximately cost-competitive with gas-powered cars. Energy density isn't amazing, but the materials they're made from are cheaper and more readily available, they're easier to recycle, they can last a very long time, and they're quite a bit safer. I expect regular lithium ion will continue to be used in high-end vehicles until some battery technology comes along that's better and cheaper, or cobalt and nickel get so expensive that it's not worth the cost. That's interesting that the BMW is that much less efficient than a Chevy Bolt. I wonder if that's due to aerodynamics, weight, drivetrain efficiency, or something else?
spaetzleesser 5y ago
I always thought EVs are more environmentally friendly and that batteries would be recycled but from what I have read that is not really the case. It seems that batteries are a similar scam like plastic recycling where industry put out a lot of propaganda to make people believe that things would be recycled. But in reality only a very small percentage gets recycled.
- pornel 5y ago
  What about reuse of batteries for grid storage? Weight/capacity ratio doesn't matter for something sitting on the ground. I presume that with economics of solar you could use even almost-dead batteries profitably. ---- EVs are still better than ICE cars, so don't take any EV problems as an excuse to keep producing ICE cars. E.g. even if the grid was entirely oil-powered, large plants burn oil more efficiently and cleanly than ICE, and keep emissions away from cities. But cars as a form factor are still inherently inefficient for moving people. It doesn't matter if they're electric, taxis, or self-driving: compared to trains they have low road throughput, depend on tires with much higher rolling resistance, and particles from tire wear are another source of pollution.
- starbase 5y ago
  Probably depends on the facility. Tesla recycles 100% of used batteries it receives, presumably by redeploying good cells as stationary storage and recycling the ones that are too far gone. At the Nevada plant in 2020, every 1000kWh of unusable batteries yielded materials to produce 921kWh of new cells.[0] With that said, many Teslas that are totaled have their batteries sold on the secondary market for classic car EV conversions and DIY home energy storage. [0] https://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/2020-tesla-impact-report.pdf https://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/2020-tesla-impact-report.pdf
- mlindner 5y ago
  Your initial thoughts are correct but there just aren’t enough lithium ion battery waste yet to make it very profitable. Once more and more EVs start getting end of life it will become very profitable. Keep in mind that the cars currently going to landfill were made 10 or more years ago. There were very very few lithium ion batteries in cars 10+ years ago.
danans 5y ago
Just as important as recycling these batteries is making it possible for older EVs to have their batteries replaced years down the road with 3rd party batteries. In 2031, it should be possible to by a long-past-warranty 2021 EV, replace the battery pack (with one made from recycled EV batteries!), and have it just-work. Just like you can replace the engine of a classic car today if you are so inclined. It should be possible because the electrical connection of the batteries to EV drivetrains are relatively simple - although I'm sure that will take a lawsuit (like was launched against Nespresso to allow 3rd party coffee pods) for EV manufacturers to release the specs required for this to happen. It would be unfortunate if EV batteries were non-serviceable except by the manufacturer after they were out of warranty, like phones are today. Instead, battery replacement would potentially allow the tertiary used EV market to flourish, and make them more accessible to people of modest means.
- csours 5y ago
  Just got to make sure the DRM server is up.
- SECProto 5y ago
  > It should be possible because the electrical connection of the batteries to EV drivetrains are relatively simple While this could be true, I certainly wouldn't assume it to be so. I dunno how integrated the battery pack is to the system - when you press the gas, does the car do things like draw more from some cells and less from others based on their degradation and capacity? Certainly on the charge side of the system it's very integrated, with the charge curve changing as individual cells (or at least modules) age/degrade.
  - elihu 5y ago
    A battery pack on a modern EV is typically just a bunch of cells wired together in series, or a bunch of parallel groups of cells in series. There isn't anything to cause power to be pulled from one group of cells versus another -- if that happens, it's a problem because it would cause the cells to get out of balance. (You'd typically have a "battery management system" whose job is to monitor cell voltages and bleed off little power from cells that are reading too high to keep everything properly balanced. But that happens very slowly, and at low voltages and current.) As far as the motor controller is concerned, the battery might as well just be a single cell. If you change to a different kind of battery, you might need to change some of the motor controller's parameters (like maximum current limit) if those were designed around the limits of the old battery. edit to add: when it comes to the charger and BMS, that stuff might or might not have to be replaced depending on the extent to which it can be made to work with a different configuration. And just like replacing an engine in a modern gas-powered car, there's probably a host of sensors that will trigger a whole host of warnings if they aren't reconnected to equivalent new sensors or spoofed in some way.
lowbloodsugar 5y ago
These recycled batteries are just as good as new ones says new study written by person who makes and sells them. Is it really a study if its by the seller? Isn't it more of a brochure?
mensetmanusman 5y ago
Everything can be recycled with sufficient low cost energy. If we had 100x the available energy at 1/100 the cost, things that seem crazy become possible. E.g. deconstruction of an iPhone into piles of constituent elements.
esjeon 5y ago
This is about recycled "*NMC111 Cathode*", not recycled whole-batteries. Although cathode is expensive, lithium is the tough business that requires a new solution.
dukeofdoom 5y ago
There's videos on youtube of people fixing their electric bikes, by replacing a dead cell in the battery. This is probably the most common problem.
m0zg 5y ago
Why wouldn't they be? It's not like lithium goes bad or leaks out or anything.
godmode2019 5y ago
I have a question if someone can help with We talk about recycling, I'm concerned that it's the same chatter as we had from the plastic companies in the 80-90s who invented the reduce reuse recycle slogan so that they could get away with selling more plastic, when its much cheaper to produce new plastic than recycle. So the question is, is it cheaper to produced new batteries or recycle old ones? I feel lithium is a transition material, until we have more sustainable battery tech.
cmrdporcupine 5y ago
I just bought a Gen 1 Chevy Volt battery pack segment to use for DIY farm tools projects here. 8 years old still has 89% of capacity, a convenient form factor, convenient 48V, high current (dangerously so!), 2 kWh, and easily purchased from a local supplier. There is a lot of potential for re-use of battery packs, it will just take some time for the 3rd party industry to develop around it. Lots of use for these things for solar projects, especially. My point being that actual chemical level recycling is really last resort.

635 points by mpweiher 5y ago

kazinator 5y ago

What a headline, yikes! How about: Recycled Material Lithium Batteries Just As Good

earleybird 5y ago
I need to find that battery mine . . . sorry, leaving now :-)

mgamache 5y ago

I don't see anyone calling BS on this, so I will point out the conflict of interest. This is a startup claiming their solution is better than anything you've seen before using in-house 'research'. FTA: A new study by Wang... The cathodes were made using a patented recycling technique that Battery Resourcers, a startup Wang co-founded, is now commercializing.

xojoc 5y ago

Other threads: https://www.reddit.com/r/futurology/comments/qc5teb https://www.reddit.com/r/futurology/comments/qc5teb [2021-10-20] (772 comments) https://www.reddit.com/r/upliftingnews/comments/qc0rej https://www.reddit.com/r/upliftingnews/comments/qc0rej [2021-10-20] (31 comments) All discussions: https://discussions.xojoc.pw/q/https%3A//spectrum.ieee.org/recycled-batteries-good-as-newly-mined https://discussions.xojoc.pw/q/https%3A//spectrum.ieee.org/r... Discussions with similar title: https://discussions.xojoc.pw/q/Study%3A%20Recycled%20Lithium%20Batteries%20as%20Good%20as%20Newly%20Mined https://discussions.xojoc.pw/q/Study%3A%20Recycled%20Lithium... Archive: https://archive.md/newest/https://spectrum.ieee.org/recycled-batteries-good-as-newly-mined https://archive.md/newest/https://spectrum.ieee.org/recycled...

soperj 5y ago

Process being commercialized by researcher tested and found to be very very good by same researcher. Colour me a least a little skeptical here.

KennyBlanken 5y ago
Do you have any training in the field or is this just a baseless ad hominem attack? Do you have literally any evidence from a reputable source that the parties involved falsified results? Among other things, the testing was done by a different company, A123 systems - and his company has been selling the cathode material to manufacturers.
- AlexanderDhoore 5y ago
  A certain amount of scepticism is needed if you want to survive on the internet :)
  - parksy 5y ago
    Source?
    - cvs268 5y ago
      Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28922027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28922027
    - HideousKojima 5y ago
      "Everything you read on the internet is true" - Abraham Lincoln
- tehjoker 5y ago
  A promising sign, but the GP's points are a reason to be skeptical until we see evidence of scale up. There could be issues or limitations that are not obvious to non-experts. That is the case with almost every news story like this.
- scotty79 5y ago
  How's that ad hominem? He just said that single, non-independent research is not enough to convince him. Which is very reasonable thing to say.

throwawaysea 5y ago

Exciting news but there are a lot of missing details. The differentiation seems to be that they can output ready to use cathode material (NMC) instead of raw elements, and that those materials may perform as good or better than new materials. I’m curious what this process takes in terms of energy and inputs like acid. And what about the rest of the battery? And then there are the policy and cost questions to make it all economically viable compared to new material.

Zigurd 5y ago
Lead acid batteries have a high rate of recycling in part because there are a limited number of standardized sizes, and a lot of each size. EVs have not yet achieved as much volume and settled on standards. But that will change. Probably quickly at current growth rates.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  And the fact that the various materials are fairly easily separated from each other certainly helps.

kfprt 5y ago

Isn't most recycling just breaking down batteries to their elemental state? That would imply there couldn't possible be a difference between new and recycled.

R0b0t1 5y ago
In many recycling processes it's typical that there are pollutants that are not cost effective to remove. You can apply metallurgical techniques to reclaim the metals from a battery, so I don't see how this would apply, but not everyone knows that.
- kfprt 5y ago
  I don't know enough about battery chemistry specifically but I don't see how separating from a rich ore could be more expensive than a mined ore.
  - parksy 5y ago
    Intuitively I agree, from a different angle although I don't know about chemistry either, but from a supply chain perspective, for generations it's all been about optimising delivery to a consumer. Supply lines point directly at households and beyond that point it's a bit of a dark web. Random piles of crap end up... somewhere? If the consumer became a supplier of raw recyclable materials, and those materials had value, they deserve to be compensated, and will probably be more engaged in the sorting and quality control processes. I drink a lot of beer - that makes me a great supplier of ready-made glass bottles to anyone that wants them. Rather than bulk collecting a random pile of potentially recyclable material, here's a bunch of sorted glass bottles each quarter. Anyone that can hook into that kind of idea and find some kind of economy of scale might make a killing.
    - kfprt 5y ago
      I call this entropy. Once the products are dispersed it takes a lot of energy to bring them back together like they were in the supply chain. I'm not sure it will ever be solved purely because of the physics.

acd 5y ago

We need to design devices such as batteries for recycling and long life from the design phase of the products. Solid-state Lithium batteries will probably be easier to recycle due to no sandwiching. "The immediate benefit of switching from a liquid to solid electrolyte is that the energy density of the battery can increase. This is because instead of requiring large separators between the liquid cells, solid state batteries only require very thin barriers to prevent a short circuit." This separator material complicates recycling in conventional Lithium ion batteries. Instead of assuming we have endless resources we should design all products to recyclable from the start design phase. This is to lessen global warming and environmental impact.

jacquesm 5y ago
Absolutely. A friend - who has passed away - had a great idea: tax companies for resources consumed. That would go a long way towards treating everything that we mine as precious, rather than just those items that we can already see the bottom of the barrel on (and taking into account that mining is creating an enormous amount of pollution). Properly designed items should be easier, cheaper and quicker to recycle than to start with a mining step. One of the important bits here is now the various materials are joined, specifically, gluing is a barrier to recycling, as are various surface coatings. This is where I think we could make a very quick step in the right direction by designing not just for manufacturing costs but also for the cost of breaking the produced item up into its constituent elements. Penalties for the fraction that can not be reliable returned to its pre-manufacture state, as well as an automatic obligation to take back and recycle any product produced.
- dsego 5y ago
  Sounds like Georgism.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- djur 5y ago
  You could get a lot of the way there if governments didn't sell or lease extraction rights at a bargain. And they do that for a number of reasons, but mostly because extraction and processing of natural resources is good for local economies. This is what ended up causing the "Sagebrush Rebellion" in the western United States, which is an ongoing political issue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagebrush_Rebellion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagebrush_Rebellion

14 5y ago

We should put a deposit on all batteries. I will admit I am guilty of taking my dead batteries and just throwing them out vs recycling them. We should incentivize the recycling of all batteries.

jacquesm 5y ago
Please don't do this with batteries, they are not only toxic but can also be a fire hazard if not disposed of properly, this goes especially for Lithium-Ion based batteries.
- Pxtl 5y ago
  I'm scrupulous about extracting batteries from my electronics for proper disposal, personally... But realistically, without a cash incentive to get people to pull out the screwdriver, many folks won't do it and they'll end up in the garbage. This needs to be a deposit-based program. E-recycle fee upfront at purchase, rebate at proper disposal.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Where I live such waste is collected separately (small chemical waste), you get a little box for it and you can drop it off for free at the local garbage disposal/sorting facility.
    - culopatin 5y ago
      Meanwhile in the US some recycling circuits have stopped because of “labor shortage”
    - Pxtl 5y ago
      Similar here, but my point is that many won't do the hassle of extracting a screwed-in battery from an electronic device rather than throwing it straight into the opaque trash-bag. A fee-and-rebate program would provide a cash incentive to properly sort your batteries out of trash. It works for refillable liquor bottles.

The_Beta 5y ago

Does the lithium, cobalt, etc. not undergo a material change as the battery is used? Meaning, is the lithium in a brand new battery the same as the lithium in a battery that's been used for years?

sonium 5y ago
The stoichiometry stays exactly the same, just shred the battery and feed the result back to the beginning of the e.g cobalt mining operation operation. Better however if you somehow manage to roughly separate it into lithium, cobalt and so on and use the result instead of the respective ore.
- The_Beta 5y ago
  So why does a battery wear out after an extended number of uses?
  - sonium 5y ago
    It’s the “arrangement” of elements in the simplest terms, like changes in crystal structure.
    - The_Beta 5y ago
      So how does recycling revert this back to the original structure? Is it just basically melting it?
AnthonyMouse 5y ago
Lithium and cobalt are both elements. Getting them to be something else would require a nuclear reaction.
- bluGill 5y ago
  Both chemically combine with other atoms to form molecules - that is how a battery works. If they combine with the wrong thing it can be a lot harder to separate them again (not nuclear level, but harder)

elihu 5y ago

> The team tested batteries with recycled NMC111 cathodes, the most common flavor of cathode containing a third each of nickel, manganese, and cobalt. The cathodes were made using a patented recycling technique that Battery Resources, a startup Wang co-founded, is now commercializing. That seems like a waste of cobalt. I think modern cells are usually something more like NMC811 (80% nickel, 10% each of manganese and cobalt). You could use the cobalt from the old cells to make more than three times as many new cells, though you'd need a lot more nickel. I'm hoping most mass-market EVs switch over to using lithium iron phosphate, which doesn't use nickel or cobalt. Supposedly there are some major LFP patents expiring soon; maybe that'll increase the number of factories outside of China producing them.

wffurr 5y ago
LiFePO4 also has lower energy density, and non Tesla EV makers seem to be making really inefficient EVs (less than 3 miles per kWh in the new Volvo and BMW!) and just putting in a huge battery pack to "compensate". Which the buyer gets the privilege to pay for with up front cost, charging time, and less range than they ought to have. I am impressed so far with my new-to-me Chevy Bolt getting 4.5 mi/kWh and squeezing a respectable range (250 mi) out of a smallish battery (55 kWh). But when BMW puts in an 88 kWh battery in their i4 but it only gets 2.3 mi/kWh, there's no way they could accept the lower power density of lithium iron phosphate batteries.
- elihu 5y ago
  LFP has lower energy density, but it's still good enough to be usable, and the technology keeps getting better. I think recently-made LFP cells tend to be somewhere around 150 wh/kg, which is equivalent to older-generation regular lithium-ion cells. Tesla has been using LFPs in some of their model 3s; I'm not sure if that's just their China-market version or if that's worldwide. I think LFP is a good option for getting mass-produced EVs to the point where they're approximately cost-competitive with gas-powered cars. Energy density isn't amazing, but the materials they're made from are cheaper and more readily available, they're easier to recycle, they can last a very long time, and they're quite a bit safer. I expect regular lithium ion will continue to be used in high-end vehicles until some battery technology comes along that's better and cheaper, or cobalt and nickel get so expensive that it's not worth the cost. That's interesting that the BMW is that much less efficient than a Chevy Bolt. I wonder if that's due to aerodynamics, weight, drivetrain efficiency, or something else?

spaetzleesser 5y ago

I always thought EVs are more environmentally friendly and that batteries would be recycled but from what I have read that is not really the case. It seems that batteries are a similar scam like plastic recycling where industry put out a lot of propaganda to make people believe that things would be recycled. But in reality only a very small percentage gets recycled.

pornel 5y ago
What about reuse of batteries for grid storage? Weight/capacity ratio doesn't matter for something sitting on the ground. I presume that with economics of solar you could use even almost-dead batteries profitably. ---- EVs are still better than ICE cars, so don't take any EV problems as an excuse to keep producing ICE cars. E.g. even if the grid was entirely oil-powered, large plants burn oil more efficiently and cleanly than ICE, and keep emissions away from cities. But cars as a form factor are still inherently inefficient for moving people. It doesn't matter if they're electric, taxis, or self-driving: compared to trains they have low road throughput, depend on tires with much higher rolling resistance, and particles from tire wear are another source of pollution.
starbase 5y ago
Probably depends on the facility. Tesla recycles 100% of used batteries it receives, presumably by redeploying good cells as stationary storage and recycling the ones that are too far gone. At the Nevada plant in 2020, every 1000kWh of unusable batteries yielded materials to produce 921kWh of new cells.[0] With that said, many Teslas that are totaled have their batteries sold on the secondary market for classic car EV conversions and DIY home energy storage. [0] https://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/2020-tesla-impact-report.pdf https://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/2020-tesla-impact-report.pdf
mlindner 5y ago
Your initial thoughts are correct but there just aren’t enough lithium ion battery waste yet to make it very profitable. Once more and more EVs start getting end of life it will become very profitable. Keep in mind that the cars currently going to landfill were made 10 or more years ago. There were very very few lithium ion batteries in cars 10+ years ago.

danans 5y ago

Just as important as recycling these batteries is making it possible for older EVs to have their batteries replaced years down the road with 3rd party batteries. In 2031, it should be possible to by a long-past-warranty 2021 EV, replace the battery pack (with one made from recycled EV batteries!), and have it just-work. Just like you can replace the engine of a classic car today if you are so inclined. It should be possible because the electrical connection of the batteries to EV drivetrains are relatively simple - although I'm sure that will take a lawsuit (like was launched against Nespresso to allow 3rd party coffee pods) for EV manufacturers to release the specs required for this to happen. It would be unfortunate if EV batteries were non-serviceable except by the manufacturer after they were out of warranty, like phones are today. Instead, battery replacement would potentially allow the tertiary used EV market to flourish, and make them more accessible to people of modest means.

csours 5y ago
Just got to make sure the DRM server is up.
SECProto 5y ago
> It should be possible because the electrical connection of the batteries to EV drivetrains are relatively simple While this could be true, I certainly wouldn't assume it to be so. I dunno how integrated the battery pack is to the system - when you press the gas, does the car do things like draw more from some cells and less from others based on their degradation and capacity? Certainly on the charge side of the system it's very integrated, with the charge curve changing as individual cells (or at least modules) age/degrade.
- elihu 5y ago
  A battery pack on a modern EV is typically just a bunch of cells wired together in series, or a bunch of parallel groups of cells in series. There isn't anything to cause power to be pulled from one group of cells versus another -- if that happens, it's a problem because it would cause the cells to get out of balance. (You'd typically have a "battery management system" whose job is to monitor cell voltages and bleed off little power from cells that are reading too high to keep everything properly balanced. But that happens very slowly, and at low voltages and current.) As far as the motor controller is concerned, the battery might as well just be a single cell. If you change to a different kind of battery, you might need to change some of the motor controller's parameters (like maximum current limit) if those were designed around the limits of the old battery. edit to add: when it comes to the charger and BMS, that stuff might or might not have to be replaced depending on the extent to which it can be made to work with a different configuration. And just like replacing an engine in a modern gas-powered car, there's probably a host of sensors that will trigger a whole host of warnings if they aren't reconnected to equivalent new sensors or spoofed in some way.

lowbloodsugar 5y ago

These recycled batteries are just as good as new ones says new study written by person who makes and sells them. Is it really a study if its by the seller? Isn't it more of a brochure?

mensetmanusman 5y ago

Everything can be recycled with sufficient low cost energy. If we had 100x the available energy at 1/100 the cost, things that seem crazy become possible. E.g. deconstruction of an iPhone into piles of constituent elements.

esjeon 5y ago

This is about recycled "*NMC111 Cathode*", not recycled whole-batteries. Although cathode is expensive, lithium is the tough business that requires a new solution.

dukeofdoom 5y ago

There's videos on youtube of people fixing their electric bikes, by replacing a dead cell in the battery. This is probably the most common problem.

m0zg 5y ago

Why wouldn't they be? It's not like lithium goes bad or leaks out or anything.

godmode2019 5y ago

I have a question if someone can help with We talk about recycling, I'm concerned that it's the same chatter as we had from the plastic companies in the 80-90s who invented the reduce reuse recycle slogan so that they could get away with selling more plastic, when its much cheaper to produce new plastic than recycle. So the question is, is it cheaper to produced new batteries or recycle old ones? I feel lithium is a transition material, until we have more sustainable battery tech.

cmrdporcupine 5y ago

I just bought a Gen 1 Chevy Volt battery pack segment to use for DIY farm tools projects here. 8 years old still has 89% of capacity, a convenient form factor, convenient 48V, high current (dangerously so!), 2 kWh, and easily purchased from a local supplier. There is a lot of potential for re-use of battery packs, it will just take some time for the 3rd party industry to develop around it. Lots of use for these things for solar projects, especially. My point being that actual chemical level recycling is really last resort.