ENERC wrote:Christophe wrote: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.
good remarks from Enerc, even if I did not check the figures,
the ideas are good.
I recently saw a report on the recycling of Lithium batteries, the goal was to recover the Cobalt and Nickel (from memory).
At the end the journalist said to the technicians, "So we are going to make new batteries with?", Grimaces ... then answer ... well uh no there are impurities, the metal is not good enough for them. incorporate into the battery manufacturing process.
Technically it is not impossible to separate these metals at 99,9% because their melting points are very variable. But here it is: if we leave pure metal for less by mining in the broad sense ...
So recycling, and it's not specific to batteries, it's a matter of mining resources and comparative costs...
Without saying that also hovers above the shortage of energy, because the purification of metals is a very heavy industrial process, mainly boiled down to hydrocarbons, and also a little electricity if we do electrometallurgy.
But the energy shortage could make mining more expensive and orient on recycling ... if the present still seems voracious and without embarrassment, the future is in the recycling of metals, the question is to know when and for which metal. ..