Lithium-ion batteries can be recycled

[Joeboy]

The colbalt in some chemistries makes it profitable to recover, if it's a LFP cell then the lithium will always be cheaper, and less energy intensive to mine - LFP also no colbalt to boost the recovery value either.

We could recycle 100% of everything if we fired it into the sun, but again key is in the details and timeframe.

Many of these recycling schemes don't even need to run a TCLP. There is no way to lose! The nasty metals magically disappear! Conveniently avoiding the fact that "recycling "a battery requires so much more fossil energy than just making a new one.

Can you even imagine running a battery recycling operation? Who would insure you for fire? One incident and the entire benefit will be gone, ontop of making no profit unless subsidised.

The only successful recycling ever has been clean corrugated cardboard, aluminium and steel.

What about copper, gold & silver, these all recycle well and at profit? Sorry Swills, it's too broad and sweeping a statement for my taste. More akin to plain nonsense tbh.

I've seen plastic recycling working to support families in India slums, been in them watching it work. Sterling and chipboard, clothing recycling all the way down to rag bales. Every single compost heap that was turned onto a patch. Just a selection, my personal favourite is the eggshell waste from chickens.

I am optimistic for the LFP and similar recycling turning a profit and most of all landfill avoidance.

I would hope that a recycling plant running on a WT tarrif would be able to massively reduce the FF cost of the black mass extract. What percentage of the sulphuric acid and other chemical additions could be reused longterm, who knows. The industry appears to relatively young. I hope it grows well and increases its efficiency over time.

[Mart]

The colbalt in some chemistries makes it profitable to recover, if it's a LFP cell then the lithium will always be cheaper, and less energy intensive to mine - LFP also no colbalt to boost the recovery value either.

We could recycle 100% of everything if we fired it into the sun, but again key is in the details and timeframe.

Many of these recycling schemes don't even need to run a TCLP. There is no way to lose! The nasty metals magically disappear! Conveniently avoiding the fact that "recycling "a battery requires so much more fossil energy than just making a new one.

Can you even imagine running a battery recycling operation? Who would insure you for fire? One incident and the entire benefit will be gone, ontop of making no profit unless subsidised.

The only successful recycling ever has been clean corrugated cardboard, aluminium and steel.

What about copper, gold & silver, these all recycle well and at profit? Sorry Swills, it's too broad and sweeping a statement for my taste. More akin to plain nonsense tbh.

I've seen plastic recycling working to support families in India slums, been in them watching it work. Sterling and chipboard, clothing recycling all the way down to rag bales. Every single compost heap that was turned onto a patch. Just a selection, my personal favourite is the eggshell waste from chickens.

I am optimistic for the LFP and similar recycling turning a profit and most of all landfill avoidance.

I would hope that a recycling plant running on a WT tarrif would be able to massively reduce the FF cost of the black mass extract. What percentage of the sulphuric acid and other chemical additions could be reused longterm, who knows. The industry appears to relatively young. I hope it grows well and increases its efficiency over time.

A year or so back, he started making the claims that there wasn't enough material in the World to build the batteries we need.* Now, he's claiming there's so much, recycling isn't viable.

*That's when I decided 'not to feed him'.

[Joeboy]

The colbalt in some chemistries makes it profitable to recover, if it's a LFP cell then the lithium will always be cheaper, and less energy intensive to mine - LFP also no colbalt to boost the recovery value either.

We could recycle 100% of everything if we fired it into the sun, but again key is in the details and timeframe.

Many of these recycling schemes don't even need to run a TCLP. There is no way to lose! The nasty metals magically disappear! Conveniently avoiding the fact that "recycling "a battery requires so much more fossil energy than just making a new one.

Can you even imagine running a battery recycling operation? Who would insure you for fire? One incident and the entire benefit will be gone, ontop of making no profit unless subsidised.

The only successful recycling ever has been clean corrugated cardboard, aluminium and steel.

What about copper, gold & silver, these all recycle well and at profit? Sorry Swills, it's too broad and sweeping a statement for my taste. More akin to plain nonsense tbh.

I've seen plastic recycling working to support families in India slums, been in them watching it work. Sterling and chipboard, clothing recycling all the way down to rag bales. Every single compost heap that was turned onto a patch. Just a selection, my personal favourite is the eggshell waste from chickens.

I am optimistic for the LFP and similar recycling turning a profit and most of all landfill avoidance.

I would hope that a recycling plant running on a WT tarrif would be able to massively reduce the FF cost of the black mass extract. What percentage of the sulphuric acid and other chemical additions could be reused longterm, who knows. The industry appears to relatively young. I hope it grows well and increases its efficiency over time.

A year or so back, he started making the claims that there wasn't enough material in the World to build the batteries we need.* Now, he's claiming there's so much, recycling isn't viable.

*That's when I decided 'not to feed him'.

There's something mildly antagonistic and negative about his statements, not all but a fair skite of them.. I'm letting it slide for the moment. Eventually he'll get himself kicked. No worries. I believe in hearing everyone until they place themselves in that box. Ho hum.

[Swwils]

You have listed "recycling" chains that do happen but are not energy efficient whatsoever, there is a difference between material smart or cost efficient. Sure you can recycle a cell, then what you now have a generally poor quality, highly energy intensive cell. At best you will have a quality cell that has again a huge attached energy ecumbance to manufacture.

No UK battery recycling program stands on its own legs, it's all subsidised, or trials. You have to be realistic when entering into this market.

If you want to sit in an echo chamber of similar options with detached realities, like these battery recycling plants, then go for it - the whole point of a forum is to open your mind to different thinking.

For instance that veolia plant has processed almost nothing, claims it will reduce battery production co2 by 50% with only 500,000 gallons of water. It completely forgets to put the energy required for such activities back upstream to the end products themselves. A recycled battery has so much energy attached to it's production it completely ruins any viability calculation for it's intended use... but you don't need to do or mention that to grab your cash.

But hey ho let's ignore that and just say that recycling is great. My point is all these things are not assessed on their merits. It's not assessed at the energy level at all.

Yes we recycle copper, but there really isn't alot of usable copper around in the first place. It's very different from cardboard, aluminium, steel.

Even steel "recycling" requires incredible lime mining, again all hidden from your usual take.

I'm not saying that a avoiding all cell, panel etc to landfill isn't a worthy goal, I am saying that is very very very challenging, especially if you consider the whole point of it all. The energy.

Not meant to be antagonistic and negative but maybe slightly push towards eye opening and appreciative of the nuances - which might be uncomfortable for some.

If you want a great example, Tesla claim to fully recycle all of their packs. Well that's true for internal vehicles but not customer ones lol.

[Moxi]

I don’t think 7 tonnes of lime per 210 tonnes steel refined is a lot of lime ?

Moxi

[Joeboy]

I don't see the energy as being the main goal. Especially if that energy is green in nature and abundant at time of use. I see the goal being maximising the use of finite substances while avoiding further polluting and disturbance of the planet on any scale that is achievable.

The time may come when we have enough WT output to crank up recycling processes to better use excess wind energy in particular Winter.

There's nothing uncomfortable here. I have decided that I can't be bothered providing a soapbox for negativity. If I notice multiples of on a reasonable timeline. I'll mention it as a 1st instance. I'm a sunnyside up kind of fella and I find repeated negativity to be corrosive. Echo chamber, eh? Eh? Eh?

[Moxi]

I agree with the abundance of green energy statement and have used that suggestion before in this forum as a way to allow the UK to become a manufacturer of value goods, I think I used the steel industry as an example where rather than switching off wind turbines in a blow, get the heavy industries to run flat out making goods with free electric. That free or really cheap power would give the British goods produced with it a very real economic edge in the international market.

Its a bit like the 80's onwards where due to the cost of wages and energy all manner of manufacturing was "offshored" which caused all sorts of global problems both for us and for other countries who got saddled with sweat shop labour regimes etc as a result.

So lets not switch of the cheap power when its available, lets not waste an opportunity lets think like a country and produce materials, be it recycled raw material, semi finished or finished goods. It just needs some good governance to make it happen - oh wait now i see the flaw in my plans ..........



Moxi

[Joeboy]

Again, popped up in a newsfeed. Mind-boggling volume of phones binned each year. I go about 4 years between phones?

https://news.sky.com/story/what-happens ... t-12946627

[Swwils]

I don’t think 7 tonnes of lime per 210 tonnes steel refined is a lot of lime ?

Moxi

Yes it's great but often people complain about the mining not even considering the process chain or the output it replaced.

Many of these processes just cannot be flexible to capacity that wind provides and if you try the result is deindustrialization.

[Moxi]

I don't agree that many process are not aligned with flexibility of power production, much of the metallurgical recycling industry is ideal for this as long as they have the guarantees from government that excess power is always diverted their way rather than curtailed I reckon you would see them all jump at the opportunity to cut their production costs and increase their profitability.

Electric Arc Furnaces can always speed up to cast more raw steel, Electric Arc Ladle furnaces can then take on the refining and holding ready for casting, weather prediction coupled with grid interfaces would allow additional units to be brought online or where reduction was required the furnaces can be tapped down to reduce power and maintain the melt, in the most extreme case the EAF can be switched off altogether or left blowing on oxygen only. Steel makers could cast, ingot, bloom and billet stock in high output winter periods ready to reheat and roll at the required time ready for delivery. Reheat furnaces in the rolling mills that currently fire on natural gas could have auxiliary electric elements or they could use induction heating in some applications the thing that's missing in all this is the Governance making sure that the lose ends are tied up, agreements are put in place and that the benefit of the cheap/ free power is shared equitably between all the parties to ensure a fair system that doesn't favour just the shareholders of a particular company.

As for the mining element - a half a million tonnes of steel takes around 16,700 tonnes of lime which is not a massive amount and is locally sourced in the UK so its favourable in my mind and better than bringing millions of tonnes of iron ore from Brazil and tens of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of Coke from China to make virgin Iron via the BF/BOS route.

Moxi