8 ms·

Efficient recovery and recycling of cobalt from spent lithium-ion batteries

187 points by Jimmc414 3y ago

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
gardenfelder 3y ago
Clickbait? The link does not take us to a document of that title; the term "urine" is nowhere to be found there.
- Jimmc414 3y ago
  This article illustrates where the term "urine" came from, but to avoid the appearance of clickbait I removed the word from the title. https://www.thecooldown.com/green-tech/ev-battery-recycling-urine-lithium-cobalt/ https://www.thecooldown.com/green-tech/ev-battery-recycling-... It would have been more accurate to say "using ingredients commonly found in urine", but that is more words that can be used in an HN title even though that is the entire point of the post.
tgtweak 3y ago
I don't really get the impression that current recycling techniques are lacking... typically the battery packs are immersion-shred and separated into the metal, plastic and the cathode "paste" which is a mix of lithium, mangagnese, nickel and cobalt. The recovery from there is pretty high - up to 95%. The percentage of cobalt in modern lithium ion batteries (ie: tesla/panasonic's nmc-811 cells) is only 8% of the battery material. It's almost entirely Nickel now (72%) with traces of manganese (8%) and cobalt (9%). Even the lithium percentage is down to ~11%. I was under the impression that the biggest issue right now was scaling up recycling facilities and recycling pathways back to those facilities so that they can handle the huge influx of batteries anticipated in the next 3-4 years. I don't think recovering 97% vs 95% of 8% of the material is going to change the economics of battery recyling. The more interesting breakthroughs seem to be low-temperature, safe-chemical extraction. Let's not forget the advancements in cell composition that will lead to longer lifespans (2-3x higher cycle counts) - which not only reduces the waste from battery packs but also that from devices that use them.
- tooltalk 3y ago
  >> The percentage of cobalt in modern lithium ion batteries (ie: tesla/panasonic's nmc-811 cells) << Tesla uses Panasonic's NCA-9 mostly for North America; LG's NCM811 for Europe/China. Recycling nickel-based batteries are already profitable[1]. [1] Financial viability of electric vehicle lithium-ion battery recyclingVolume 24, Issue 7, 23 July 2021, 102787, Journal home page for iScience
- vinni2 3y ago
  > I don't think recovering 97% vs 95% of 8% of the material is going to change the economics of battery recyling. Not yet but as more and more EVs reach end of life and these rare earth metals become rarer then it starts make a difference.
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    Neither nickel nor cobalt are rare earth metals. They may be somewhat rare, and they come from the earth, but that's not what "rare earth" means.
    - tgtweak 3y ago
      at $28,000/MT it's rare enough to worry about - for context it looks like a model 3 has about 4.5KG of cobalt in it's entire pack, or around ~$130 at current spot rate.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - pfdietz 3y ago
        Totally irrelevant to the point I was making.
    - ajross 3y ago
      This is like arguing with an astronomer about what a "metal" is. The colloquial definition of "rare earth element" when talking about industry and not chemistry generally means anything you mine that isn't an already-concentrated ore.
superkuh 3y ago
Here's the article mirror for anyone like me getting blocked by cloudflare no matter what buttons pressed or captchas solved: https://web.archive.org/web/20240223190753/https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsomega.2c07780 https://web.archive.org/web/20240223190753/https://pubs.acs.... BTW, the N-methylurea used in this is extremely mutagenic in humans.
- pfdietz 3y ago
  Are you confusing that with N-nitroso-N-methylurea?
overstay8930 3y ago
There’s no breakthrough until a business plan exists to resell for a profit, otherwise it’s as recyclable as plastic.
- sojournerc 3y ago
  You don't think there is a market for recovered cobalt? I see your point regarding recyling, but plastic just isn't as valuable as cobalt, given the relative difficulty of extraction.
  - overstay8930 3y ago
    Of course there’s a market for it, but if you can’t sell it for a profit then it doesn’t matter how much of a breakthrough your recycling project is. Plastic is trivial to recycle but it’s cheaper to buy new plastic than to buy recycled plastic.
StarterPro 3y ago
If only we could find a child-slavery free way to extract and process the cobalt.
- thebruce87m 3y ago
  There are LFP batteries that don’t use cobalt if you want to use less of it. It’s used for refining crude oil so you can’t get away from it completely.
- morepork 3y ago
  We can, it's just more expensive, so capitalism does its thing https://www.npr.org/2023/12/14/1219246964/cobalt-is-important-for-green-energy-so-why-has-americas-only-coablt-mine-closed https://www.npr.org/2023/12/14/1219246964/cobalt-is-importan...
- genman 3y ago
  We can, but it happens that one country prone to child labor usage happens to have large deposits of it with everything it entails.
krmblg 3y ago
Disclaimer: didn’t read the paper and only have a very basic understanding of chemistry (and sorry for simplifying a complex topic), but started wondering whether we should be able to discover useful reactions via pure calculation by now (ignoring quantum effects)? Despite being a specific domain, wouldn’t reasoning about reactions (and their efficiency in an industrial, large-scale setting) be something that "models" should be able to do quite "easily" (given the fact that bonding forces, energy requirements and catalytic effects are sort of well-known, i.e. just some more dimensions to deal with)?
- spenczar5 3y ago
  Yes, but its not easy. The devil is in the details. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_chemistry https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_chemistry
- philipkglass 3y ago
  The only kind of bonds we can model reasonably well while ignoring quantum effects are hydrogen bonds. Hydrogen bonds can be modeled as parameterized effects in Newtonian mechanics, and molecular dynamics simulations using Newtonian mechanics can reproduce some interesting properties of molecules in solution. The vast majority of chemical reactions involve changes in electronic configuration that are only described by quantum mechanics. The most accurate algorithmic approximations of electron quantum mechanics have terrible scaling properties - O(N^7) or worse. Due to that terrible scaling, the largest high-accuracy calculations that are tractable now are not that much larger than those that could be completed in the 1990s, despite much greater processing power. There are other ways of approximating quantum effects in chemistry that scale better, but they all have tradeoffs and weaknesses of their own. They can used in limited domains or used to guide experimental design, but they're not accurate enough to discover useful reactions via pure calculation. They need to work in tandem with experimental validation and it requires domain experts in both the experimental and theoretical work. The methods are not simple enough for a bench chemist to use them as a black box for reaction discovery.
  - krmblg 3y ago
doctorhandshake 3y ago
As is often the case, there’s a good Volts about the economics (and chemistry / physics) of battery recycling: https://www.volts.wtf/p/electrifying-battery-recycling https://www.volts.wtf/p/electrifying-battery-recycling
- falserum 3y ago
  > it effectively replaces fire and chemicals with clean, cheap renewable electricity Does it mean it can work on intermittent electricity? (Cheapest renewable is intermittent)
baseline-shift 3y ago
The energy use is the issue because fossil fuels supply the heat for the thermochemistry (like with most industrial processes). But direct solar heat could be used instead - this heat is supplied by concentrated solar thermal in a novel process https://www.solarpaces.org/solar-pyrolysis-to-recycle-lithium-ion-batteries-aces-proof-of-concept/ https://www.solarpaces.org/solar-pyrolysis-to-recycle-lithiu...
Donberry 3y ago
[dead]

187 points by Jimmc414 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

gardenfelder 3y ago

Clickbait? The link does not take us to a document of that title; the term "urine" is nowhere to be found there.

Jimmc414 3y ago
This article illustrates where the term "urine" came from, but to avoid the appearance of clickbait I removed the word from the title. https://www.thecooldown.com/green-tech/ev-battery-recycling-urine-lithium-cobalt/ https://www.thecooldown.com/green-tech/ev-battery-recycling-... It would have been more accurate to say "using ingredients commonly found in urine", but that is more words that can be used in an HN title even though that is the entire point of the post.

tgtweak 3y ago

I don't really get the impression that current recycling techniques are lacking... typically the battery packs are immersion-shred and separated into the metal, plastic and the cathode "paste" which is a mix of lithium, mangagnese, nickel and cobalt. The recovery from there is pretty high - up to 95%. The percentage of cobalt in modern lithium ion batteries (ie: tesla/panasonic's nmc-811 cells) is only 8% of the battery material. It's almost entirely Nickel now (72%) with traces of manganese (8%) and cobalt (9%). Even the lithium percentage is down to ~11%. I was under the impression that the biggest issue right now was scaling up recycling facilities and recycling pathways back to those facilities so that they can handle the huge influx of batteries anticipated in the next 3-4 years. I don't think recovering 97% vs 95% of 8% of the material is going to change the economics of battery recyling. The more interesting breakthroughs seem to be low-temperature, safe-chemical extraction. Let's not forget the advancements in cell composition that will lead to longer lifespans (2-3x higher cycle counts) - which not only reduces the waste from battery packs but also that from devices that use them.

tooltalk 3y ago
>> The percentage of cobalt in modern lithium ion batteries (ie: tesla/panasonic's nmc-811 cells) << Tesla uses Panasonic's NCA-9 mostly for North America; LG's NCM811 for Europe/China. Recycling nickel-based batteries are already profitable[1]. [1] Financial viability of electric vehicle lithium-ion battery recyclingVolume 24, Issue 7, 23 July 2021, 102787, Journal home page for iScience
vinni2 3y ago
> I don't think recovering 97% vs 95% of 8% of the material is going to change the economics of battery recyling. Not yet but as more and more EVs reach end of life and these rare earth metals become rarer then it starts make a difference.
- pfdietz 3y ago
  Neither nickel nor cobalt are rare earth metals. They may be somewhat rare, and they come from the earth, but that's not what "rare earth" means.
  - tgtweak 3y ago
    at $28,000/MT it's rare enough to worry about - for context it looks like a model 3 has about 4.5KG of cobalt in it's entire pack, or around ~$130 at current spot rate.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - pfdietz 3y ago
      Totally irrelevant to the point I was making.
  - ajross 3y ago
    This is like arguing with an astronomer about what a "metal" is. The colloquial definition of "rare earth element" when talking about industry and not chemistry generally means anything you mine that isn't an already-concentrated ore.

superkuh 3y ago

Here's the article mirror for anyone like me getting blocked by cloudflare no matter what buttons pressed or captchas solved: https://web.archive.org/web/20240223190753/https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsomega.2c07780 https://web.archive.org/web/20240223190753/https://pubs.acs.... BTW, the N-methylurea used in this is extremely mutagenic in humans.

pfdietz 3y ago
Are you confusing that with N-nitroso-N-methylurea?

overstay8930 3y ago

There’s no breakthrough until a business plan exists to resell for a profit, otherwise it’s as recyclable as plastic.

sojournerc 3y ago
You don't think there is a market for recovered cobalt? I see your point regarding recyling, but plastic just isn't as valuable as cobalt, given the relative difficulty of extraction.
- overstay8930 3y ago
  Of course there’s a market for it, but if you can’t sell it for a profit then it doesn’t matter how much of a breakthrough your recycling project is. Plastic is trivial to recycle but it’s cheaper to buy new plastic than to buy recycled plastic.

StarterPro 3y ago

If only we could find a child-slavery free way to extract and process the cobalt.

thebruce87m 3y ago
There are LFP batteries that don’t use cobalt if you want to use less of it. It’s used for refining crude oil so you can’t get away from it completely.
morepork 3y ago
We can, it's just more expensive, so capitalism does its thing https://www.npr.org/2023/12/14/1219246964/cobalt-is-important-for-green-energy-so-why-has-americas-only-coablt-mine-closed https://www.npr.org/2023/12/14/1219246964/cobalt-is-importan...
genman 3y ago
We can, but it happens that one country prone to child labor usage happens to have large deposits of it with everything it entails.

krmblg 3y ago

Disclaimer: didn’t read the paper and only have a very basic understanding of chemistry (and sorry for simplifying a complex topic), but started wondering whether we should be able to discover useful reactions via pure calculation by now (ignoring quantum effects)? Despite being a specific domain, wouldn’t reasoning about reactions (and their efficiency in an industrial, large-scale setting) be something that "models" should be able to do quite "easily" (given the fact that bonding forces, energy requirements and catalytic effects are sort of well-known, i.e. just some more dimensions to deal with)?

spenczar5 3y ago
Yes, but its not easy. The devil is in the details. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_chemistry https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_chemistry
philipkglass 3y ago
The only kind of bonds we can model reasonably well while ignoring quantum effects are hydrogen bonds. Hydrogen bonds can be modeled as parameterized effects in Newtonian mechanics, and molecular dynamics simulations using Newtonian mechanics can reproduce some interesting properties of molecules in solution. The vast majority of chemical reactions involve changes in electronic configuration that are only described by quantum mechanics. The most accurate algorithmic approximations of electron quantum mechanics have terrible scaling properties - O(N^7) or worse. Due to that terrible scaling, the largest high-accuracy calculations that are tractable now are not that much larger than those that could be completed in the 1990s, despite much greater processing power. There are other ways of approximating quantum effects in chemistry that scale better, but they all have tradeoffs and weaknesses of their own. They can used in limited domains or used to guide experimental design, but they're not accurate enough to discover useful reactions via pure calculation. They need to work in tandem with experimental validation and it requires domain experts in both the experimental and theoretical work. The methods are not simple enough for a bench chemist to use them as a black box for reaction discovery.
- krmblg 3y ago

doctorhandshake 3y ago

As is often the case, there’s a good Volts about the economics (and chemistry / physics) of battery recycling: https://www.volts.wtf/p/electrifying-battery-recycling https://www.volts.wtf/p/electrifying-battery-recycling

falserum 3y ago
> it effectively replaces fire and chemicals with clean, cheap renewable electricity Does it mean it can work on intermittent electricity? (Cheapest renewable is intermittent)

baseline-shift 3y ago

The energy use is the issue because fossil fuels supply the heat for the thermochemistry (like with most industrial processes). But direct solar heat could be used instead - this heat is supplied by concentrated solar thermal in a novel process https://www.solarpaces.org/solar-pyrolysis-to-recycle-lithium-ion-batteries-aces-proof-of-concept/ https://www.solarpaces.org/solar-pyrolysis-to-recycle-lithiu...

Donberry 3y ago

[dead]