20 ms·

It really should not be surprising that we can get very high recovery percentages from batteries -- we do not mine elemental lithium, so the processes we use fo

by cyphar 3mo ago

It really should not be surprising that we can get very high recovery percentages from batteries -- we do not mine elemental lithium, so the processes we use for extraction are already designed to extract lithium from fairly low-purity sources. In contrast, lithium batteries are an incredibly high-purity source of lithium. The main question is when it will become cost-effective to create recycling pipelines. Lead acid batteries had a similar trajectory and modern lead acid batteries are effectively 100% recycled.

JumpCrisscross 3mo ago
> It really should not be surprising that we can get very high recovery percentages from batteries -- we do not mine elemental lithium Plenty of substances we don't mine elementally are not worth recycling. The main advantage with lithium is it tends to go into large volumes of standardised chemistries.
leonidasrup 3mo ago
U.S. lead acid baterries recycling has been outsourced. " As the United States tightened regulations on lead processing to protect Americans over the past three decades, finding domestic lead became a challenge. So the auto industry looked overseas to supplement its supply. In doing so, car and battery manufacturers pushed the health consequences of lead recycling onto countries where enforcement is lax, testing is rare and workers are desperate for jobs. " https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/20/world/americas/car-batteries-lead-mexico.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/20/world/americas/car-batter... https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/11/18/world/africa/lead-poisoning-car-battery.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/11/18/world/africa/...
- t_mahmood 3mo ago
  Yeah, too many lead batteries here, and there are a lot of battery recycle factories. It's been a health and environment concern for a while. And these batteries allowed to put motors on rickshaw, we call them "Tesla", And they are also another hazard, and menace for the price of faster transportation.
- dv_dt 3mo ago
  Don't get on such a high horse about US regulatory effectiveness. This is recently (2010) in California even: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exide_lead_contamination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exide_lead_contamination Still, the overall benefit might be seen as positive for lithium from shifting widespread air pollution from combustion engines to more localized pollution. Though obviously the world needs to work on better processes for the local pollutants.
  - dtech 3mo ago
    The "advantage" is that in contrast to heavy metals like lead lithium is a lot less toxic as far as we know. Not 0, but not in the same league.
    - Danox 3mo ago
      Anything that you can dig/pump out of the ground is toxic, particularly to water resources, and if you don’t recognize upfront that, be it the military, companies or government, you have to be prepared to clean up your mess, in short, factor in cleanup and the cost of using rare earths or any other item you can dig up on land or pump from the sea or land, but worldwide, mankind is still not quite there in terms of recognizing all of the ramifications up front, short-term thinking is the curse of mankind. One example I can give of that is the fact that Alaska is home for the largest salmon fishery in the world, a fishery that is more valuable as a food resource than any gold you can extract from the headwaters of Lake Iliamna.
      - iso1631 3mo ago
        > Anything that you can dig/pump out of the ground is toxic Carrots?
        ufocia 3mo ago
        Poison hemlock is a carrot. Socrates and I would consider it toxic.
        3mo ago
- qsera 3mo ago
  >countries where enforcement is lax As an Indian this is exactly one of the reasons why I am afraid of EV boom. All of that bad stuff, which we are mostly unfamiliar with (in terms of how to handle it properly, because battery tech is always changing) is going to dumped in places like India. And would silently sustain the bad effects for many decades or even more, until it (the bad stuff) somehow reaches some developed country (probably never).
  - worldsayshi 3mo ago
    > places like India I had the impression that India is quickly turning rich enough to say no to things like this.
    - anal_reactor 3mo ago
      Never underestimate the poverty of India. India is huge and while in some places there are bubbles of wealth, it's still a third-world country.
    - orwin 3mo ago
      India is a lot like Russia in that its people and standards of living are very different from place to place. China, despite a larger size and similar population is more culturally uniform than India, especially once you go in more remote areas. (this is not a diss on India, i think that make the country much more interesting)
      - lostlogin 3mo ago
        > China, despite a larger size and similar population is more culturally uniform than India If rumour is to be believed, this isn’t a coincidence and had been done by the regime.
        willy_k 3mo ago
        Yes but this sentiment has held true since before the CCP.
protocolture 3mo ago
>Lead acid batteries had a similar trajectory and modern lead acid batteries are effectively 100% recycled. Getting rid of all that waste material from Galena was maybe a different incentive structure but yeah.
vasco 3mo ago
If you've ever seen a video of Nigerians "recycling" lead batteries you'd be hard pressed to call it that. Katana in one hand, bucket on the floor, no shoes, let's go.
- JuniperMesos 3mo ago
  I confess I am not sure what role the katana plays in Nigerian lead battery recycling.
  - vasco 3mo ago
    Take battery box, hack it with katana, stuff from inside goes into bucket (and some splashes on you), repeat. Look up videos there's plenty.
legitster 3mo ago
This is probably somewhat true, but also I suspect there might be an order of magnitude difference from extracting trace lithium from inert rock vs collecting it as a salt from amongst a medley of very refined metals. Case in point - lead acid batteries are not a fair comparison. A lead acid battery is so robust you can separate the cathodes and anodes with your (gloved) hands. Getting the elements out of a lead battery is like picking pieces of pepperoni off of a pizza. Whereas taking lithium out of a lithium cell is like pulling only a certain protein out of a roll of bologna. And the protein catches fire in contact with air.
- Alpha3031 3mo ago
  > And the protein catches fire in contact with air. FWIW neither lithium metal nor most Li-ion electrode chemistries autoignite in air at STP. The fire hazard is primarily due to heating up to the ignition temperature through short circuits though there are also exothermic reactions with e.g. water that can heat things up sufficiently. Being the eager electron donor it is, once it is on fire it is very hard to put out, of course.
- lstodd 3mo ago
  What is more fun is that it reacts with water (and all air has some moisture) which then leaves hydrogen to catch fire and explode. One can replace air with pure nitrogen for example, but that complicates things.
- ErroneousBosh 3mo ago
  As late as the early 80s and probably later there was a guy in the city I live near that had a battery recycling company where they did just that - melted the pitch to extract the cells from the battery "bucket", cut the old cells off and melted them down, cast new grids and put new lead oxide in, and sealed it all up again. My dad bought a recycled lorry battery off them in the late 70s, and I remember going to the place to pick it up. I can't imagine it was a very safe place to work, and I expect that was pretty much a maximum lifetime exposure to lead in one hit ;-)
  - lostlogin 3mo ago
tpm 3mo ago
I think the issues with recycling lithium from electrolyte containing lithium hexafluorophosphate in solvents is more the hexafluorophosphate part; it's highly reactive, hygroscopic and releases (toxic, corrosive) hydrogen fluoride upon contact with water. So purely from economic perspective it's possibly not worth it unless we are very lithium-constrained. Of course it should be done anyway as there will be a lot of used batteries in near future. The article doesn't really give us the details which is a pity.
- ufocia 3mo ago
  > Of course it should be done anyway as there will be a lot of used batteries in near future. The necessity for recycling those batteries, without more, does not logically follow from their relative abundance in view of the purely economic perspective you posit. Why not just bury them? It may be the scarcity of lithium that may drive us to take otherwise expensive steps to recycle such batteries. The conclusory "of course" sets the argument up for a failure from the outset. Though it is not the only flaw.
  - tpm 3mo ago
    here in densely populated parts of the world we don't prefer burying toxic waste close to our homes.
Danox 3mo ago
Since Japan is an island country and they have relatively limited lithium rare earth resources, probably, it makes sense for them to look into recycling, and the same would apply to many other countries that don’t have a huge landmass like Canada, United States, China, Australia, and Russia. It makes sense to try an recycle rare earths or many other types of metals that you may be short of, and I would say for a country like Japan, Holland, Switzerland, Germany, it would make sense to make the effort. I would think price would be no object if you want to maintain some independence, it’s probably why Switzerland and Denmark are teaming up on Thorium research currently.

by cyphar 3mo ago

JumpCrisscross 3mo ago

> It really should not be surprising that we can get very high recovery percentages from batteries -- we do not mine elemental lithium Plenty of substances we don't mine elementally are not worth recycling. The main advantage with lithium is it tends to go into large volumes of standardised chemistries.

leonidasrup 3mo ago

U.S. lead acid baterries recycling has been outsourced. " As the United States tightened regulations on lead processing to protect Americans over the past three decades, finding domestic lead became a challenge. So the auto industry looked overseas to supplement its supply. In doing so, car and battery manufacturers pushed the health consequences of lead recycling onto countries where enforcement is lax, testing is rare and workers are desperate for jobs. " https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/20/world/americas/car-batteries-lead-mexico.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/20/world/americas/car-batter... https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/11/18/world/africa/lead-poisoning-car-battery.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/11/18/world/africa/...

t_mahmood 3mo ago
Yeah, too many lead batteries here, and there are a lot of battery recycle factories. It's been a health and environment concern for a while. And these batteries allowed to put motors on rickshaw, we call them "Tesla", And they are also another hazard, and menace for the price of faster transportation.
dv_dt 3mo ago
Don't get on such a high horse about US regulatory effectiveness. This is recently (2010) in California even: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exide_lead_contamination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exide_lead_contamination Still, the overall benefit might be seen as positive for lithium from shifting widespread air pollution from combustion engines to more localized pollution. Though obviously the world needs to work on better processes for the local pollutants.
- dtech 3mo ago
  The "advantage" is that in contrast to heavy metals like lead lithium is a lot less toxic as far as we know. Not 0, but not in the same league.
  - Danox 3mo ago
    Anything that you can dig/pump out of the ground is toxic, particularly to water resources, and if you don’t recognize upfront that, be it the military, companies or government, you have to be prepared to clean up your mess, in short, factor in cleanup and the cost of using rare earths or any other item you can dig up on land or pump from the sea or land, but worldwide, mankind is still not quite there in terms of recognizing all of the ramifications up front, short-term thinking is the curse of mankind. One example I can give of that is the fact that Alaska is home for the largest salmon fishery in the world, a fishery that is more valuable as a food resource than any gold you can extract from the headwaters of Lake Iliamna.
    - iso1631 3mo ago
      > Anything that you can dig/pump out of the ground is toxic Carrots?
      - ufocia 3mo ago
        Poison hemlock is a carrot. Socrates and I would consider it toxic.
      - 3mo ago
qsera 3mo ago
>countries where enforcement is lax As an Indian this is exactly one of the reasons why I am afraid of EV boom. All of that bad stuff, which we are mostly unfamiliar with (in terms of how to handle it properly, because battery tech is always changing) is going to dumped in places like India. And would silently sustain the bad effects for many decades or even more, until it (the bad stuff) somehow reaches some developed country (probably never).
- worldsayshi 3mo ago
  > places like India I had the impression that India is quickly turning rich enough to say no to things like this.
  - anal_reactor 3mo ago
    Never underestimate the poverty of India. India is huge and while in some places there are bubbles of wealth, it's still a third-world country.
  - orwin 3mo ago
    India is a lot like Russia in that its people and standards of living are very different from place to place. China, despite a larger size and similar population is more culturally uniform than India, especially once you go in more remote areas. (this is not a diss on India, i think that make the country much more interesting)
    - lostlogin 3mo ago
      > China, despite a larger size and similar population is more culturally uniform than India If rumour is to be believed, this isn’t a coincidence and had been done by the regime.
      - willy_k 3mo ago
        Yes but this sentiment has held true since before the CCP.

protocolture 3mo ago

>Lead acid batteries had a similar trajectory and modern lead acid batteries are effectively 100% recycled. Getting rid of all that waste material from Galena was maybe a different incentive structure but yeah.

vasco 3mo ago

If you've ever seen a video of Nigerians "recycling" lead batteries you'd be hard pressed to call it that. Katana in one hand, bucket on the floor, no shoes, let's go.

JuniperMesos 3mo ago
I confess I am not sure what role the katana plays in Nigerian lead battery recycling.
- vasco 3mo ago
  Take battery box, hack it with katana, stuff from inside goes into bucket (and some splashes on you), repeat. Look up videos there's plenty.

legitster 3mo ago

This is probably somewhat true, but also I suspect there might be an order of magnitude difference from extracting trace lithium from inert rock vs collecting it as a salt from amongst a medley of very refined metals. Case in point - lead acid batteries are not a fair comparison. A lead acid battery is so robust you can separate the cathodes and anodes with your (gloved) hands. Getting the elements out of a lead battery is like picking pieces of pepperoni off of a pizza. Whereas taking lithium out of a lithium cell is like pulling only a certain protein out of a roll of bologna. And the protein catches fire in contact with air.

Alpha3031 3mo ago
> And the protein catches fire in contact with air. FWIW neither lithium metal nor most Li-ion electrode chemistries autoignite in air at STP. The fire hazard is primarily due to heating up to the ignition temperature through short circuits though there are also exothermic reactions with e.g. water that can heat things up sufficiently. Being the eager electron donor it is, once it is on fire it is very hard to put out, of course.
lstodd 3mo ago
What is more fun is that it reacts with water (and all air has some moisture) which then leaves hydrogen to catch fire and explode. One can replace air with pure nitrogen for example, but that complicates things.
ErroneousBosh 3mo ago
As late as the early 80s and probably later there was a guy in the city I live near that had a battery recycling company where they did just that - melted the pitch to extract the cells from the battery "bucket", cut the old cells off and melted them down, cast new grids and put new lead oxide in, and sealed it all up again. My dad bought a recycled lorry battery off them in the late 70s, and I remember going to the place to pick it up. I can't imagine it was a very safe place to work, and I expect that was pretty much a maximum lifetime exposure to lead in one hit ;-)
- lostlogin 3mo ago

tpm 3mo ago

I think the issues with recycling lithium from electrolyte containing lithium hexafluorophosphate in solvents is more the hexafluorophosphate part; it's highly reactive, hygroscopic and releases (toxic, corrosive) hydrogen fluoride upon contact with water. So purely from economic perspective it's possibly not worth it unless we are very lithium-constrained. Of course it should be done anyway as there will be a lot of used batteries in near future. The article doesn't really give us the details which is a pity.

ufocia 3mo ago
> Of course it should be done anyway as there will be a lot of used batteries in near future. The necessity for recycling those batteries, without more, does not logically follow from their relative abundance in view of the purely economic perspective you posit. Why not just bury them? It may be the scarcity of lithium that may drive us to take otherwise expensive steps to recycle such batteries. The conclusory "of course" sets the argument up for a failure from the outset. Though it is not the only flaw.
- tpm 3mo ago
  here in densely populated parts of the world we don't prefer burying toxic waste close to our homes.

Danox 3mo ago

Since Japan is an island country and they have relatively limited lithium rare earth resources, probably, it makes sense for them to look into recycling, and the same would apply to many other countries that don’t have a huge landmass like Canada, United States, China, Australia, and Russia. It makes sense to try an recycle rare earths or many other types of metals that you may be short of, and I would say for a country like Japan, Holland, Switzerland, Germany, it would make sense to make the effort. I would think price would be no object if you want to maintain some independence, it’s probably why Switzerland and Denmark are teaming up on Thorium research currently.