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Europe is gradually catching up, both in terms of battery production and recycling, with automakers leading the way in reclaiming valuable materials. The IEA predicts that recycling could meet up to 12 percent of the EV industry’s demand for materials such as lithium, nickel, copper and nickel. Cobalt by 2040.
The Volkswagen Group, which includes Audi, Porsche and other brands, is recycling up to 3,600 batteries a year in a pilot phase at a new factory in Salzgitter in northern Germany. Mineral processors have also expressed interest in entering the market. Australian minerals company Neometals has partnered with Germany’s SMS Group to build an industrial-scale factory for battery crushing, also based in Germany. Considering this country is in Europe, it is an appropriate choice of location. The largest automobile manufacturer.
“Our sense of urgency to advance recycling is much higher than many people think,” says EIT InnoEnergy, an EU-funded industry accelerating sustainable innovation company. Bo Normark, head of strategy, said: Lithium-ion batteries have a lifespan of over 10 years, so it takes time for them to charge up. But long before that, “actually today,” Nomark says, we’ll need to recycle scrap from battery manufacturing. These scraps include trimmings and other waste generated during the manufacturing process, or batteries that fail quality tests.
But before expanding battery recycling, the industry needs to rethink its approach. Today’s recycling methods are crude and designed to extract only high-value materials from cells. Gavin Harper, a researcher at the University of Birmingham, uses the analogy of the board game Snakes and Ladders to explain how lithium-ion batteries are currently produced and recycled. Players start with raw materials at the bottom of the board, move up the board to produce batteries, and aim to finish at the top of the board with a completely recycled battery. The snakes that cause players to slide several squares across the board are of different lengths and accommodate different recycling methods.
In the first step, recyclers typically grind the cathode and anode materials from used batteries into a powdered mixture called black mass. In a board game analogy, Harper explains, this would be the first thing you do is slide down on a snake. The black mass is then processed by him in one of two ways to extract valuable ingredients. One method, called pyrometallurgy, involves smelting the black mass in a fossil fuel-powered furnace. Although this is a relatively inexpensive method, large amounts of lithium, aluminum, graphite, and manganese are lost in the process.
Another method, hydrometallurgy, involves dissolving the black mass in acid or other solvents to leach the metal. Harper said this method is the equivalent of a short snake in the board game, as more materials can be recovered. Set back, but not as many squares as when using pyrometallurgy. However, this process consumes large amounts of energy and produces toxic gases and wastewater.
“The holy grail of recycling is this idea of direct recycling, which just takes us a little bit further down the line,” Harper says. Simply put, the cathode is separated from the battery cell, regenerated through a chemical process, and then returned to the cell. “It’s certainly something that’s been proven to be possible and is effective. There’s a lot of hard work being put into research and technology,” Harper said of the American collaboration focused on battery recycling. He mentioned the ReCell Center, an agency funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. Similar efforts are underway in the UK and Europe.
Some research institutes, companies, and startups are trying to find the best way to recycle lithium-ion batteries, while others are working on developing cheaper and more sustainable types of batteries. Chinese manufacturers CATL and BYD already produce cheaper, less toxic, cobalt-free lithium iron phosphate batteries. They are also looking to sodium-ion batteries, which use abundant sodium instead of relatively scarce lithium, as the next generation of EV batteries.
Baker says we should stop thinking of recycling as a process to extract precious metals from battery packs. “It’s not just the elements that have value; it’s the combination of those elements and how they are designed and put together,” Baker says. In other words, batteries may need to be completely redesigned from the ground up to properly recycle them.
Achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 will require innovative solutions on a global scale. In this series, WIRED, in collaboration with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, highlights individuals and communities working to solve some of the most pressing environmental challenges. Although produced in partnership with Rolex, all content is editorially independent. Find out more.
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