EV battery recycling has a math problem
For some electric vehicle batteries, it costs more to recycle them than they're worth. That creates all kinds of problems, which a new Colorado law aims to solve.
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What about fossil emissions recycling? Does it also have "a math problem"?
Just about all the plastic we produce has "a math problem" in the same sense that recycling is more expensive than mining virgin materials. Even paper and cardboard has "a math problem" in that way, being cheaper to cut down trees than recycle.
There are many examples of recycling: aluminium, lead from batteries, clothing, scrap metal, anything that composts, etc.
Even better than recycling is reusing. I'd love to see mod kits for changing these into fixed ESS for solar power or home battery back up. Who cares if it's only got 70-80% capacity if it's for a fixed system?
That's a temporary problem, while mining produces plenty for very cheap. Once the cheep and easy mines dry up, it'll shift.
On top of the relatively easy mining, there's the relatively low volume of batteries to recycle. If you can't keep a plant running all day you have a capital cost you can't reduce as fast. That will also be less of a problem in the future.
This is true of most manufactured things though, its misleading to single out "EV Batteries". Recycled products nearly always cost more.
I mean the obvious solution would be to make car manufacturers pay for the recycling. Thats not gonna happen of course, but it would make the most sense.
Each product, including car batteries, should have clear life cycle and it should include recycling as much as possible. This should be enforced by law, but who are we kidding, right.
The Green Dot system does this for packaging in the EU. The manufacturer is responsible for ensuring it is as reusable/recyclable/biodegradable as possible, and if not possible then they have to take responsibility for disposal.
If only this was done in other areas and for things other than packaging. Car products as you point out are one of the worst for externalising disposal costs of consumables like batteries, tyres, filters, etc.
Companies aren't going to do the best thing for the long term, they're sole purpose is to maximize what's best for the company. It's the role of society in the form of the government to constrict what they can do for the betterment of everyone. So anyone who complains about regulations are probably the same ones who complain about taxes. They don't understand their roles and complexities and just use the sound bites they've heard.
Here's a better way: make them pay a part of the recycling costs. The more complex the recycling process, the higher the costs. This will incentivise engineering things from the end of the lifecycle backwards, making components easier to repair and separate at EOL.
Some schemes like the EU packaging law have a variation on that. If it's not compostable or widely recyclable (paper and card, glass, clear PET, white HDPE) the manufacturer is responsible for disposing of it.
From what i have seen lithium battery packs just get dumped into huge shredders in one piece and turned into a big soup. From there everything gets physically and chemically separated. But maybe that isnt the most efficient way yeah.
It's not my exact area of chemistry, but lithium should very easy to separate physically and chemically - it's the lightest metal, and has a single valence electron so it reacts in very specific and predictable ways.
I'm not a chemist, but I've heard that a lot of substances (e.g. rare earths) are engineered into products in a way that makes them next to impossible to recycle. Which is bad because... it's in their name. 🤔
They're not actually rare, the name is historical.
Rare isn't a binary quality, true. But the name isn't meaningless either. They're rare enough that superpowers compete over mining sites.
To be pedantic, rich deposits of them are reasonably rare. But that's mostly due to capitalism making it unviable to process lower concentration deposits. The elements are otherwise pretty common.
This is true of a lot of modern materials. Plastics, alloys, and microelectronics. The advancements make them better than anything which would be easily reusable or recoverable, or repairable. But we pay the cost, both in them being disposable instead, and in the forced design of being throwaway and not lasting, so profitable to make this was for the companies.