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The 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 r
by adgjlsfhk1 5y ago
The 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 5y 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 5y 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.