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Metal recycling is critical for both the metal resources themselves and the carbon reduction. Secondary aluminum production is much less carbon intense than pri

by klysm 2y ago

Metal recycling is critical for both the metal resources themselves and the carbon reduction. Secondary aluminum production is much less carbon intense than primary. New sorting technologies have been developed which enable fine separation of aluminum alloys. LIBS and XRF backscattering should enable the industry to take a step forward and get low quality Twitch products into higher quality fast and wrought products. The industry has been slow to adopt these technologies because it’s hard! Sorting is difficult work and sensor based sorting opens up massive decision spaces.

vel0city 2y ago
It is definitely hard work, and it is even harder to make the economics work when you don't really have much of an easy to acquire steady source of materials. It is hard to scale when there just aren't the incoming materials yet. I think we'll see a lot more growth in the recycling of EV batteries once more of this current generation of EVs are actually sent to recycling. They're just not very old yet, so there's not large flows of recyclable materials coming in quite yet. The first Model 3's came out in 2017. I'd argue EV mass production wasn't really a thing until after that car's release and market acceptance. Not even a decade old yet for those cars, and it took a bit of time for those to really start shipping in volume. Model Y's only came out in 2019 and took time to be delivered in volume. Mach E's started in 2021. Many of the other big legacy auto makers have really only started to ship decent volumes of EVs in the past few years.
- klysm 2y ago
  > It is hard to scale when there just aren't the incoming materials yet. There are a huge number of businesses already doing this today - there is plenty of incoming materials from just old cars alone. The amount of aluminum in this stream will be increasing in the years to come however. > I think we'll see a lot more growth in the recycling of EV batteries once more of this current generation of EVs are actually sent to recycling. They're just not very old yet, so there's not large flows of recyclable materials coming in quite yet. Battery recycling is very important, and one of the obvious consequences of EVs becoming more prevalent. Several companies are already tackling this at scale though. The carbon impact of _aluminum_ recycling is much more significant than battery recycling. That's what I was referring to in my previous comment. LIBS/XRF backscattering are fairly new technologies that enable fine grained sorting of aluminum alloys which should enable much more secondary aluminum to be used for high grade alloys.

by klysm 2y ago

vel0city 2y ago

It is definitely hard work, and it is even harder to make the economics work when you don't really have much of an easy to acquire steady source of materials. It is hard to scale when there just aren't the incoming materials yet. I think we'll see a lot more growth in the recycling of EV batteries once more of this current generation of EVs are actually sent to recycling. They're just not very old yet, so there's not large flows of recyclable materials coming in quite yet. The first Model 3's came out in 2017. I'd argue EV mass production wasn't really a thing until after that car's release and market acceptance. Not even a decade old yet for those cars, and it took a bit of time for those to really start shipping in volume. Model Y's only came out in 2019 and took time to be delivered in volume. Mach E's started in 2021. Many of the other big legacy auto makers have really only started to ship decent volumes of EVs in the past few years.

klysm 2y ago
> It is hard to scale when there just aren't the incoming materials yet. There are a huge number of businesses already doing this today - there is plenty of incoming materials from just old cars alone. The amount of aluminum in this stream will be increasing in the years to come however. > I think we'll see a lot more growth in the recycling of EV batteries once more of this current generation of EVs are actually sent to recycling. They're just not very old yet, so there's not large flows of recyclable materials coming in quite yet. Battery recycling is very important, and one of the obvious consequences of EVs becoming more prevalent. Several companies are already tackling this at scale though. The carbon impact of _aluminum_ recycling is much more significant than battery recycling. That's what I was referring to in my previous comment. LIBS/XRF backscattering are fairly new technologies that enable fine grained sorting of aluminum alloys which should enable much more secondary aluminum to be used for high grade alloys.