LITHIUM, enough resources for all electric vehicles?

[Christophe]

How does the lithium from used batteries get recycled?

[ENERC]

How does the lithium from used batteries get recycled?

No one cares about recycling lithium.
The kg of lithium carbonate was at $ 13 per kg in 2019 (source Statistica 2020)
It takes 600 grams of Lithium carbonate per kWh, or $ 390 for a 50 kWh battery.
At twice the price of copper .... it is not profitable.

To recover it I think the recycling process for low temperature batteries is preferable. But there will be impurities, and therefore an unprofitable process at present. There is astronomical quantity of lithium in the oceans (230 billion tonnes of lithium in seawater at a concentration of about 1,8 mg per liter).

We will run out of petroleum long before we run out of Lithium.

[moinsdewatt]

No one cares about recycling Lithium.

Declaration a very stupid cookie cutter.

Of course not.

To USA

Ex-Tesla exec aims to build world's top battery recycler

Reuters | October 8, 2020

Tesla co-founder JB Straubel wants to build his startup Redwood Materials into the world's top battery recycling company and one of the largest battery materials companies, he said at a technology conference Wednesday.

Straubel aims to leverage two partnerships, one with Panasonic Corp, the Japanese battery manufacturer that is teamed with Tesla at the Nevada gigafactory, and one announced weeks ago with e-commerce giant Amazon.

With production of electric vehicles and batteries about to explode, Straubel says his ultimate goal is to “make a material impact on sustainability, at an industrial scale.”

Established in early 2017, Redwood this year will recycle more than 1 gigawatt-hours' worth of battery scrap materials from the gigafactory - enough to power more than 10,000 Tesla cars.

That is a fraction of the half-million vehicles Tesla expects to build this year. At the company's Battery Day in late September, Chief Executive Elon Musk said he was looking at recycling batteries to supplement the supply of raw materials from mining as Tesla escalates vehicle production.

Redwood's partnership with Panasonic started late last year with a pilot operation to recover materials at Redwood's recycling facilities in nearby Carson City, according to Celina Mikolajczak, vice president of battery technology at Panasonic Energy of North America.

Mikolajczak, who spent six years at Tesla as a battery technology leader, said: “People underestimate what recycling can do for the electric vehicles industry. This could have a huge impact on raw material prices and output in the future. ”

Straubel's broader plan is to dramatically reduce mining of raw materials such as nickel, copper and cobalt over several decades by building out a circular or “closed loop” supply chain that recycles and recirculates materials retrieved from end-of-life vehicle and grid storage batteries and from cells scrapped during manufacturing.

In September, Redwood said it received funding from Amazon's Climate Pledge Fund, following an investment by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, backed by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

“I'm excited about the work we can do together,” Straubel said of Amazon. “They have batteries in many devices,” from consumer electronics to data centers, as well as future electric delivery vehicles and drones.

https://www.mining.com/web/ex-tesla-exe ... -recycler/

[moinsdewatt]

A team of US and Chinese researchers say they succeed in recovering the Nickel and Cobalt mixture from the batteries without trying to isolate them separately.

It is possible to recover lithium cobalt oxide from spent batteries - study

Valentina Ruiz Leotaud | September 21, 2020

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, published a study where they show that it is possible to regenerate the complete lithium cobalt oxide compounds in lithium-ion batteries, as opposed to recovering individual elements and then putting them together.

In detail, the team led by environmental engineer Zhen He used an electrodeposition process where they deposited an additional amount of lithium-ion on waste electrodes. This process was driven by the electricity that creates the electric field to absorb the ion onto the electrode. By doing this, the researchers were able to get a complete formula that allowed them to reuse a good amount of the materials inside the battery.

According to the scientists, the driving force behind this work was their concern about the generation of secondary pollutants that results from existing battery recycling processes, most of which extract the materials separately through mechanical methods and require additional reagents.

Because of this and due to the fact that batteries are inexpensive, there is little incentive to recycle, so only about 5% of lithium-ion batteries are recycled.

Zhen He pointed out that in China only, about 2.5 billion end-of-life lithium-ion batteries from portable electronics such as smartphones and laptops will be generated by the end of 2020. Thus, the researcher believes that recovering and recycling critical elements from these devices will play a key role in the sustainability of resource use.

https://www.mining.com/it-is-possible-t ... ies-study/

[sicetaitsimple]

Just one question: there was a lot of talk 2 or 3 years ago of a possible "second life" of battery cells from EVs to stationary storage systems, especially for individuals. I don't remember which car manufacturer (s) even made announcements.
It doesn't seem technically stupid as a stationary storage will be much less strained in power variations than an EV battery. But economically, can that make sense?
What do you think?
PS: I am talking about an industrial deployment, not installations of inventive handymen as we can find on Youtube.

[moinsdewatt]

Just one question: there was a lot of talk 2 or 3 years ago of a possible "second life" of battery cells from EVs to stationary storage systems, especially for individuals. I don't remember which car manufacturer (s) even made announcements.
It doesn't seem technically stupid as a stationary storage will be much less strained in power variations than an EV battery. But economically, can that make sense?
What do you think?
PS: I am talking about an industrial deployment, not installations of inventive handymen as we can find on Youtube.

Yes, example:

Recycling of Volvo bus batteries for energy storage.

Stena gives second life to Volvo bus batteries

Martijn Reintjes - September 11, 2020

Volvo and Stena Recycling subsidiary Batteryloop of Sweden are working together to refurbish batteries from electric buses. After the batteries are removed from Volvo's buses, they can be reused as energy storage units in buildings and charging stations for a number of years.
'In our electromobility operation we are creating a new circular business cycle and this cooperation is truly a major step in the right direction,' says Håkan Agnevall, president of Volvo Buses.

Bus batteries are used for many years in regular traffic before they need to be replaced. However, when new batteries are fitted to the vehicle, the replaced ones retain considerable capacity. This capacity is not efficient enough to drive a bus but is more than adequate for energy storage.


'We are delighted and proud that Batteryloop has the opportunity to buy the used batteries and develop this solution together with Volvo Buses,' adds Rasmus Bergström, president of Batteryloop. 'In addition to reuse, we also guarantee safe and environmentally suitable recycling when the batteries come to the end of their second life as energy storage units.'

More e-buses on the road

The recently signed agreement has a global reach and covers all electric buses for which Volvo Buses is responsible. To date, most electrified buses are in Europe but the number on other continents is expected to increase, says Volvo. 'We see a steadily increasing demand for electric buses from cities all over the world and, since we entered the electric bus market early, the numbers of used batteries are set to increase,' Agnevall explains.

Energy storage to rise

The demand for local energy storage units is also expected to grow. They offer fresh scope for storing renewable energy, which can be used to meet peaks in electricity demand. Surplus energy can be sold and delivered straight into the grid.

An energy storage unit is therefore like a large power bank that gives the user considerable flexibility and can generate income. 'We see a fast-growing market in different kinds of properties and also as charging stations for electric vehicles both in industry and in society,' says Bergström. 'Our cooperation with Volvo Buses will provide a valuable contribution to the development of the infrastructure that needs to be built up.'

gothenburg pilot

Batteryloop and Volvo Buses have already previously been involved in a joint project with Stena Fastigheter, whereby bus batteries are used as energy storage units to provide electricity to the Fyrklövern residential area in Gothenburg. Electricity stored in these units comes from roof-top solar panels.

https://recyclinginternational.com/batt ... ies/31495/

[Remundo]

"recycling" is not the appropriate word when batteries are reused as-is in less demanding applications. The term "second life" would be more appropriate here.

He is interesting in terms of resources to know the recovery rate of Lithium, which I could call T

If we arbitrarily extract 1 kg from the mine, we then benefit from T, T², T ^ 3, T ^ N at the end of the Nth recycling of the materials.

it is a geometric sequence whose sum is (1 - T ^ (N + 1)) / (1-T)

assuming a very large number of cycles, the limit is 1 / (1 - T):
if we recycle at T = 0%, the resource is worth 1
if we recycle at T = 50%, the mining resource is multiplied by 2
if we recycle at T = 80%, the mining resource is multiplied by 5
if we recycle at T = 90%, the mining resource is multiplied by 10
if we recycle at T = 99%, the mining resource is multiplied by 100

at this time, it would appear that the relatively low lithium mining costs are not a big boost to recycling.

[ENERC]

No one cares about recycling Lithium.

Declaration a very stupid cookie cutter.

Of course not.

To USA

Ex-Tesla exec aims to build world's top battery recycler

Reuters | October 8, 2020

Tesla co-founder JB Straubel wants to build his startup Redwood Materials into the world's top battery recycling company and one of the largest battery materials companies, he said at a technology conference Wednesday.

Straubel aims to leverage two partnerships, one with Panasonic Corp, the Japanese battery manufacturer that is teamed with Tesla at the Nevada gigafactory, and one announced weeks ago with e-commerce giant Amazon.

With production of electric vehicles and batteries about to explode, Straubel says his ultimate goal is to “make a material impact on sustainability, at an industrial scale.”

Established in early 2017, Redwood this year will recycle more than 1 gigawatt-hours' worth of battery scrap materials from the gigafactory - enough to power more than 10,000 Tesla cars.

That is a fraction of the half-million vehicles Tesla expects to build this year. At the company's Battery Day in late September, Chief Executive Elon Musk said he was looking at recycling batteries to supplement the supply of raw materials from mining as Tesla escalates vehicle production.

Redwood's partnership with Panasonic started late last year with a pilot operation to recover materials at Redwood's recycling facilities in nearby Carson City, according to Celina Mikolajczak, vice president of battery technology at Panasonic Energy of North America.

Mikolajczak, who spent six years at Tesla as a battery technology leader, said: “People underestimate what recycling can do for the electric vehicles industry. This could have a huge impact on raw material prices and output in the future. ”

Straubel's broader plan is to dramatically reduce mining of raw materials such as nickel, copper and cobalt over several decades by building out a circular or “closed loop” supply chain that recycles and recirculates materials retrieved from end-of-life vehicle and grid storage batteries and from cells scrapped during manufacturing.

In September, Redwood said it received funding from Amazon's Climate Pledge Fund, following an investment by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, backed by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

“I'm excited about the work we can do together,” Straubel said of Amazon. “They have batteries in many devices,” from consumer electronics to data centers, as well as future electric delivery vehicles and drones.

https://www.mining.com/web/ex-tesla-exe ... -recycler/

They talk about nickel, cobalt, and copper - not lithium.

From a technical point of view:

The pyrometallurgical processes consist in heating the residues at high temperature to separate the metals in the form of slag or alloys. They are energy intensive, requiring temperatures of up to 1475 ° C for 30 minutes. Very efficient at separating cobalt, nickel and copper, they allow half of the manganese and almost all of the lithium to pass through.

Hydrometallurgical processes rely on the use of liquid phase reagents to dissolve or precipitate metals. Traditional leaching uses strong acids as solvents, but there are also methods that use alkalis. The alkaline method is very effective in separating cobalt, copper and nickel, but less so for other metals.

Biometallurgical processes use microorganisms to transform insoluble substances into soluble products, which can then be separated by other methods. These are energy efficient processes, but can take up to a week and only work with very low concentrations of material to be recycled, which limits their usefulness. The recovered material rates are also too low to ensure profitability.

There are also methods using solvents and others seeking to induce precipitation by the use of various additives.

In fact, we don't have a real technical solution to recover lithium. If JB Straubel succeeds so much the better - he has a chance because he's a guy who's been working in the drums for a long time.

[ENERC]

Just one question: there was a lot of talk 2 or 3 years ago of a possible "second life" of battery cells from EVs to stationary storage systems, especially for individuals. I don't remember which car manufacturer (s) even made announcements.
It doesn't seem technically stupid as a stationary storage will be much less strained in power variations than an EV battery. But economically, can that make sense?
What do you think?
PS: I am talking about an industrial deployment, not installations of inventive handymen as we can find on Youtube.

Nissan made the announcement, but it's gone by the wayside. The few available batteries are removed to recover the good cells and repair the faulty packs. As the cells before 2014 are no longer manufactured, the used batteries therefore serve as spare parts.
The 2013 Nissan packs still over 75% of the initial capacity and therefore used in traction.

On Renault, I found this on bfmtv:

In this case Renault has found an unprecedented use by allowing them to be used to recharge other electric vehicles in public self-service terminals. To do this, the French manufacturer has joined forces with the British company Connected Energy. The two partners have installed two charging stations using the energy stored in Zoe's recycled batteries, at the edge of two highways, one in Belgium, the other in Germany.

Two charging stations

[sicetaitsimple]

Nissan had made the announcement, but it's gone by the wayside .........

I also have the impression that this concept of "second life" has gone by the wayside.
This is not necessarily surprising in a context of fairly continuous decline in the price of new.
To see in the future, there will perhaps be "niches" as in the example of Volvo buses cited by LessdeWatt.