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DixenSyder t1_j6fjyip wrote

Reply to comment by For_All_Humanity in Scientists lower price of lithium's best competition - flow batteries - by 20%. Makes the battery effectively equal to or cheaper than lithium ion when spread over 30 years (flow battery lifetimes are effectively infinite with light repowering efforts). by PorkyPigDid911

The lithium article says something I already knew, that it is recyclable, but that process is extremely difficult and costly. Are there any advancements on this front? And it’s not the recycling of cobalt so much as the horrendous conditions present at the cobalt mines that I speak of. Cobalt mining will have to continue even though we can recycle a lot of what was already mined.

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chin-ki-chaddi t1_j6gx7dt wrote

You really think it will be costlier to extract those metals from the used batteries than from Earth? Lithium, for example, is 7% of battery's weight. Guess the Lithium concentration in the brine they extract it from? They are lucky to get 1%.

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