4 ms·
recycling economics is largely a product of material value, homogeneity, and technical feasibility. Look at some classic examples: Steel: high value, reasonabl
by SECProto 4y ago
recycling economics is largely a product of material value, homogeneity, and technical feasibility. Look at some classic examples:
Steel: high value, reasonably homogeneous, easier than raw ore --> almost all get recycled.
Paper: low value, moderately homogenous (different fibre lengths can't easily be separated), quite feasible but results in lower quality of material than inputs.
Plastic: low value, very heterogenous, complex organic chemistry means significant manual segregating of inputs is needed making financials not work.
Lithium: Very high value, reasonably homogeneous, technical details not fully worked out but I expect low difficulty - no complex long chain organic compounds to worry about maintaining.
- adgjlsfhk1 4y agoThe hard part of recycling lithium will be doing it reliably in safe and low labor. It's totally possible, and possible to do profitably, but it will just be really complicated to do it cheaply and reliably.
- bryanlarsen 4y agoHigh labor costs for recycling are almost entirely due to heterogeneity. In the future, car batteries will be quite homogeneous. Currently Lithium isn't recycled because there's not much of it in a battery, and it used to be cheap. Nickel was what was driving the economics AFAICT. Today's high Lithium price is changing that.
- SECProto 4y agoLooking at it another way, the value of plastic and wood/paper comes from the molecular structures. The value of steel, aluminum, lead (from lead acid batteries), and in future lithium/nickle/cobalt (from LiIon batteries) comes from the raw elements. The latter tend to be economically recyclable, the former do not.