Recycling batteries
Recycling Batteries.
The world is going electric.
Batteries will do for electrification, what the refrigerator did for fruit.
Batteries allow us to take clean energy, to where we need it, and when we need it.
If we approach battery manufacturing the wrong way,
we will end up repeating mistakes of the past.
These mistakes are at the heart of the climate and environmental crisis that we see today.
Historically till now, we have been mining oil, from the Earth’s crust,
with little concern for the long term effect.
We have been extracting oil, where it is economically possible, we refine it, burn it,
and it ends up in the atmosphere.
Our model is extract, use, and discard.
Mistakes are ok, if we learn from them.
When we are evolving, and building things from scratch,
we should think twice and do it right this time.
There are two things we need to know about batteries.
One is they require enormous amount of energy to produce.
The second, they are made from minerals.
These minerals require global mining, refining, processing,
and long and complex supply chains.
If we start with energy, the battery factory is a very large and complex operation.
It requires large amounts of heat and electricity to produce.
It starts with a chemical plant, then follow long coating machines.
After that we have cell assembly which is fine electronic equipment that require,
clean and dry rooms.
At the end of this process each and every battery needs to be charged and discharged,
in certain patterns to gain its properties.
If we put this kind of factory under a fossil fuel grid, we will end up with a carbon foot print, which is the bench mark today, of around 100 kgs, of carbon dioxide,
per kilowatt-hour of battery produced.
22 to 30 years of battery manufacturing, will give the total footprint,
of about half the size of Germany’s carbon footprint.
That would be a big mistake.
Luckily we can slash that footprint by about 67%,
if we put the same operation on the renewable energy grid, which is what is done in Sweden.
This leaves us with the remaining footprint, the last one third,
coming from everything outside the factory.
The lion’s share of this comes from the supply chain.
This leads to the second topic, which is the minerals.
Batteries are made of minerals like nickel, cobalt, and lithium.
The way we approach this, is going to determine,
how much we can further slash that common footprint.
If we approach it the right way with sustainable mining, and a lot of recycling,
we can significantly reduce the footprint.
One tonne of battery grade lithium requires 750 tonnes of brine, or 250 tonnes of lithium ore.
For one tonne of battery grade cobalt, we need to mine 300 tonnes of cobalt ore.
When we mine metals they are in elemental form.
If we can get the elements back to their elemental form, they are just as good as new.
This is the fundamental difference between the combustion engine history,
and the new electric vehicle industry.
At the end of the life cycle, we can bring back from the market,
and use them again and again.
In Sweden, they have developed a recycling process,
where the batteries are brought back from the market.
They are discharged fully, and the aluminium casing is taken away.
The cells and the module are taken out, along with some waste material,
and put into a big shredder.
The copper foil, aluminium foil and some plastic are taken out.
What is left is something called the black mass.
This black mass is a fine black powder.
It consists of everything that was coated on the electrodes in the factory.
It comprises of graphite from the anode, and nickel, cobalt, manganese,
and lithium from the cathode.
The black mass is passed into a hydrometallurgical process.
Hydrometallurgy means treating metal in liquid form.
Different pressure changes, temperature changes and pH are used,
to separate one material from the other.
It is then refined and made into a form required for production.
Salts for nickel, cobalt and manganese, and hydroxides for lithium.
This is sent straight into production.
This results in a circular battery economy.
We should do this not only for batteries, but for wind turbines, for solar panels,
and for everything else.
This is what is required for a transformation into a fully circular economy.