While good to have I wonder about the utility long term with changing battery chemistries. At least cobalt has other uses in alloys even if it becomes completely obsolete in batteries.
Without detailed knowledge, I've been a bit puzzled by this. As far as I understand, the inputs to manufacturing of the cells (as opposed to their packaging) are all elements and oxides of elements and/or similar. Not complex molecules that can be difficult to construct.
Given enough energy, and time to find optimal processes, I don't understand why these cells aren't essentially fully recyclable.
In the meantime, if we can't do so or do so profitably, yet, segregate them from the waste stream for the day when we can and/or economics makes this profitable.
I guess this is more "planning" and consistency than most societies today are capable of.
But, our existing processes don't "destroy" the lithium, nor the cobalt. It's there, already mined, refined, and now used once. Waiting for recovery.
Perhaps we need some standards and regulations regarding packaging, both of cells and cells within their devices, to help facilitate recovery. And that could get involved, trying not to end up limiting technical and design advances.
But you could say, whatever one ends up building, the battery components have to be recoverable to X extent -- that must be a factor in your design, whatever your form-factor.
And up to this point, a lot of consumer designs are packaging multiples of more or less standard cell designs. So...
I see three factors that together have prevented recycling:
1. quickly raising demand (this means the recycling pool is small relative to production)
2. low cost of the mined source materials
3. established processes
Oh I forgot number four the human factor: general shortsightedness.
As the supply of old cells grows relative to newly produced cells, the incentives will change. Especially if we hit supply shortages that increase prices.
It averages about 25 parts per million in the Earth's crust, a bit more common than lithium at 20 ppm. Gold is 4 parts per billion yet no one seems to be predicting the end of gold supplies.
i suspect that ordinary price signals will drive better utilization, newer chemistries, political will to recycle more, etc.
That wasn't what the article said. If you truncate sentences in both directions to make a distorted point, you might as well stop. The rest of the sentence reads:
> ... cobalt, a metal found in finite supplies and concentrated in one of the globe's more precarious countries.
It was a general point about how there are endless articles predicting that there will not be enough of element X when that element is in fact not rare, merely energetically costly to refine, and in fact currently so common as to not drive effective recycling or conservation.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 37.4 ms ] threadHere's an archived copy that works:
https://archive.is/PaAIm
Given enough energy, and time to find optimal processes, I don't understand why these cells aren't essentially fully recyclable.
In the meantime, if we can't do so or do so profitably, yet, segregate them from the waste stream for the day when we can and/or economics makes this profitable.
I guess this is more "planning" and consistency than most societies today are capable of.
But, our existing processes don't "destroy" the lithium, nor the cobalt. It's there, already mined, refined, and now used once. Waiting for recovery.
Perhaps we need some standards and regulations regarding packaging, both of cells and cells within their devices, to help facilitate recovery. And that could get involved, trying not to end up limiting technical and design advances.
But you could say, whatever one ends up building, the battery components have to be recoverable to X extent -- that must be a factor in your design, whatever your form-factor.
And up to this point, a lot of consumer designs are packaging multiples of more or less standard cell designs. So...
1. quickly raising demand (this means the recycling pool is small relative to production)
2. low cost of the mined source materials
3. established processes
Oh I forgot number four the human factor: general shortsightedness.
As the supply of old cells grows relative to newly produced cells, the incentives will change. Especially if we hit supply shortages that increase prices.
Apparently, this method avoids taking the cathode materials back to their raw state so a lot of the work doesn’t need to be redone.
It averages about 25 parts per million in the Earth's crust, a bit more common than lithium at 20 ppm. Gold is 4 parts per billion yet no one seems to be predicting the end of gold supplies.
i suspect that ordinary price signals will drive better utilization, newer chemistries, political will to recycle more, etc.
> ... cobalt, a metal found in finite supplies and concentrated in one of the globe's more precarious countries.
Notice how it reads differently.