The lucrative industry behind waste lithium batteries: the recycling market alon
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2020/12/16 17:14:57
More than half a million tons of lithium batteries are now discarded globally each year, much of it from small electronics.But as the world shifts to an electric economy, global demand for lithium-ion batteries, mostly for electric cars, is expected to increase tenfold by 2030, and the number of discarded batteries will soar.
Many in the industry see waste lithium batteries as both a major environmental issue to be addressed and a new opportunity to replace the current fragile and controversial supply chain with a "recyclable system" that makes new batteries from recycled materials.It is estimated that the market for recycled lithium-ion batteries alone could be worth $18 billion a year by 2030, up from $1.5 billion in 2019.
Because the market is so promising, companies including Amazon, Panasonic and a number of start-ups are targeting lithium-ion battery recycling.Leading the way in the U.S. is Redwood Materials, the latest joint venture from Tesla co-founder JB Straubel.Since 2017, the company has set up two plants that are currently handling all used and defective batteries from nearby Panasonic and Tesla plants.Redwood Materials also recently partnered with Amazon to dispose of batteries from the retail giant.
Ultimately, Redwood Materials can recycle 95 to 98 percent of the nickel, cobalt, aluminum, graphite and more than 80 percent of the lithium in a battery.Most of these materials were sold back to Panasonic to make new Tesla batteries.
In a similar vein, co-founder and executive chairman Tim Johnston created Li-Cycle, whose business structure is built around a "center and spoke" model.Li-cycle intends to collect the batteries at a local "spoke" facility and divide them into three parts: the plastic casing, the mixed metal (such as foil), and the active material at the core of the battery.Li-cycle can sell the materials directly, or take them to a "hub" factory in a center and soak them in liquid at room temperature to extract 90 to 95 percent of the metal.
Li-cycle currently has two "spoke" facilities in operation, one in Ontario, Canada, and one in Rochester, New York, USA, which can split 10,000 tons of lithium-ion batteries annually.Like Redwood Materials, it wants to expand quickly and has raised about $50m so far.
But looking ahead, the researchers point out that the long-term profit margin for recycling batteries in atomic-decomposition mode could become extremely slim.After all, the battery's chemical structure changes every year, and Panasonic, for example, slashed the amount of cobalt in Tesla's batteries by 60 percent between 2012 and 2018.These changes may require constant tweaking of the recycling process and may also reduce profits.
A more efficient approach might be to recycle batteries at a higher level, using their larger molecular structures rather than atoms.Steve Sloop, a chemist and founder of the battery research company On Technology, compared batteries to apartment buildings.Instead of tearing down wood and bricks, why not renovate them?Slope hopes to restore the battery's active substances to their original state by soaking them in lithium-rich tanks.
Beyond technology, scaling up will be a major challenge for all recycling initiatives.In the lab, it is relatively easy to convert batteries into atoms or replace lithium.But collecting, transporting, sorting, disassembling, processing and redistributing the millions of tonnes of material that are to come is anything but.
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