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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
by legitster 4y ago
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?
- cogman10 4y agoAlmost certainly a larger percentage than you'd imagine. LI ion batteries are composed mostly of Nickel and Steel. Both of which are highly recyclable. The fact that they are also able to pull out the lithium is really pretty impressive. The structure of a LI ion battery is essentially a steel case with a metal foil (iron or nickel) coated with a lithium/cobalt/silicon/carbon/phosphorous powder.
- noelherrick 4y agoI find this comment strange since TFA talks about investment from the US government. I guess if by supply and demand, you mean the government demands clean energy and then the market supplies it, that could work, but this decade has been all about the private sector whistling past the graveyard of climate change.