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Non-FungibleMan t1_jeex3ly wrote

Reply to comment by skedeebs in Inexpensive and environmentally friendly mechanochemical recycling process recovers 70% of lithium from batteries by chrisdh79

Redwood Materials is already recovering 95% of all battery minerals, and is already scaling. The electric vehicle future will be almost entirely closed loop, with little mining needed.

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RiiCreated t1_jef8vei wrote

That’s cool :) but to play Devils Advocate here, what incentive would the auto manufacturers have to switch to this method? I’m assuming 100% of EVs right now will come off the production line with brand new batteries, especially Teslas since they have a deal with Panasonic. How many will have to be manufactured with 100% mined lithium before we can close this loop? Wouldn’t everyone need to own at least one EV before this is possible?

Also, the cost and energy required to recycle these things. Who’s paying for it? And once enough lithium is mined to have a closed loop, how will we offset the damage and pollution caused by raw mining and how long will that take?

Genuine questions, not trying to sound like a bad guy.

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DM_me_ur_tacos t1_jefbrxf wrote

Lithium is lithium. As recycled lithium comes onto the market there will be increasing opportunity for battery manufacturers to use it.

There are already robust salvage markets for copper, steel, aluminum and other valuable, recyclable metals. Auto manufacturers do not necessarily have to do this themselves.

Yes it will cost energy to recycle lithium batteries, and that cost is expected to be small compared to the value of the recovered material.

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[deleted] t1_jefgujd wrote

[removed]

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reven80 t1_jeflbed wrote

Large car batteries are made of tiny cells. Its a matter of connecting them together and putting them in a protective case.

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AviMkv t1_jeftgis wrote

What do you think is cheaper, refining mud full of random shit to lithium or refining a battery made of 4-5 high quality materials including high amounts of lithium?

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AlbertVonMagnus t1_jegnq01 wrote

You could ask this about most products with salvageable materials, but you'd be surprised how often the answer is that the former option is cheaper.

It's a matter of the cost of the salvaging process compared to the value of salvaged materials, versus the cost-value from fresh mining.

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AviMkv t1_jegrpym wrote

Untrue, did you just pull this out your ass?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2096232021000287

Why do you think apple makes their MacBooks out of 100% recycled aluminium, certainly not to save the planet. It's just cheaper.

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AlbertVonMagnus t1_jegvtkk wrote

As I said, it depend entirely on the products in question as well as the market. Aluminum is valuable enough to more than pay for salvaging costs for most products that contain a meaningful amount.

Glass meanwhile is currently not cost-effective because the value of salvaged glass has recently fallen below the salvaging cost, even though glass recycling was quite cost-effective in the past. The market is just as important as anything else here.

Solar panels are not cost effective at all to salvage as their components are not particularly valuable but are quite costly to salvage from the panels. Thus they are piling up in landfills wherever there are no regulations that require proper recycling.

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DonQuixBalls t1_jeflb7d wrote

It should be significantly cheaper to recycle than dig it up.

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Bensemus t1_jeguo1j wrote

> I’m assuming 100% of EVs right now will come off the production line with brand new batteries

The batteries will always be new. The lithium used to make those batteries will either come from mines, the sea, or recycling.

It's the same with aluminum cans. Every coke can is new but the aluminum in that can might have been mined 50 years ago or a few months ago.

> How many will have to be manufactured with 100% mined lithium before we can close this loop? Wouldn’t everyone need to own at least one EV before this is possible?

The loop will never be closed. Again using aluminum as the example. Despite how easy it is to recycle, new aluminum is always needed. Recycling just greatly reduces how much mining is needed.

> Also, the cost and energy required to recycle these things. Who’s paying for it?

The people who need to buy lithium. They will either pay for the cost to mine it or they will pay the cost to recycle it.

> And once enough lithium is mined to have a closed loop, how will we offset the damage and pollution caused by raw mining and how long will that take?

Mining lithium really isn't that bad and you have to contrast it with oil extraction as that's what EVs are replacing. Oil extraction and subsequent burning of oil is so bad we might have completely fucked ourselves for centuries. People are completely numb to how insanely dirty fossil fuels are as it's all they've ever known.

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AussieOsborne t1_jegxqb0 wrote

These are the genuine questions asked about any sustainable method. It's cheaper to level a forest than it is to recycle paper, so why shouldn't we just do that instead, always?

The answer is that it isn't going to always be possible. That's what sustainability means.

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rafa-droppa t1_jega0kd wrote

It depends on the future of course, but like how lithium first showed up in phones, then laptops, then larger and larger things - if something comes out to replace lithium in certain use cases, say iron batteries for grid storage, then all that lithium can be recycled back into the mix.

Or if there's an expensive but newer medium that starts going in phones, then tablets, then laptops, then power tools, and so on - all those batteries get recycled back into the lithium pool

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cloudinspector1 t1_jefxmex wrote

Govts would have to mandate all products contain a mix of recycled and aluminum. Probably coax with tax breaks then it becomes something you can build a business on and then it gets created. Then you close the loop when it can be closed, I guess, by mandating increasing percentages of recycled aluminum as capacity rises.

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FillThisEmptyCup t1_jefmzk5 wrote

You'll need a ton of mining just to get there, for many decades.

Plus if it's 95% of lithium recovered (idk), for 1 billion cars that's still effectively needing lithium for 50 million cars every turnover (however long the avg battery car lasts).

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csiz t1_jegh5e4 wrote

You need about 3 times more mining/drilling and processing of oil if we don't get there. Going to EVs is a net reduction in overall mining operations, but it shifts the demand to processing more lithium, copper, some nickel and some rare earth metals for magnets.

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findingmike t1_jefvcpv wrote

Global production of new cars is 80 million per year, so you are talking about a 12 year time span, correct? Also population will start falling around 2050-2060, so production should slowly fall too.

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FillThisEmptyCup t1_jefz2gb wrote

Not if the avg standard of living keeps going up.

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Vitztlampaehecatl t1_jegp1xd wrote

If the standard of living goes up fast enough, developing nations can leapfrog past car-dependency and save their battery capacity for highly battery-efficient micromobility vehicles like ebikes, etrikes, and escooters.

An ebike equipped with a 1KWh battery can go 30 to 50 miles on a charge with throttle alone, while a Tesla Model 3 with 70KWh of battery capacity can go 300 to 375 miles on a charge. That's 70 times as much lithium for only ~8x as much distance, which means that hauling a whole car around with you is about ten times less efficient than an ebike.

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what595654 t1_jeg7uya wrote

If we are playing the what if game. What if more technological advancements are made?

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gophergun t1_jeg9213 wrote

We obviously are, considering it's /r/futurology and predictions about the future are inherently a what if game.

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FillThisEmptyCup t1_jegi9zg wrote

It’s not a big what if because that’s exactly what’s been happening since WW2 globally. Chinese wages went from $0.50 an hour 15 years ago to over $8.

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what595654 t1_jegpl1h wrote

The same could be said for technological advancement. My point is, your data point is not relevant in a vacuum. You have to consider all the other variables to even start any kind of useful analysis.

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Bosco_is_a_prick t1_jegctjx wrote

Also electric cars are expected to last longer as they are much simpler machines compared to ICE cars

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Kruzat t1_jefdow7 wrote

Same with Licycle and Lithion here in Canada!

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usugarbage t1_jegmtq0 wrote

Same with ABTC. They’ve got a similar approach and are working their facility setup.

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usugarbage t1_jegn2so wrote

A closed loop recycling/downcycling will be critical as too many inefficient vehicles are on the horizon of being made.

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