I understand that these batteries can be recycled. But how many actually are ? Not repurposed but broken down to individual metals ?
Car batteries in general are recycled at a pretty good rate.
The EV battery recycling is actually geared up and ready but only smallish number have entered the recycling stream as only the early Prius & Honda Insights are just now beginning to fail. The reports are coming in that average life of these batteries is around 150,000 miles instead of the original 100,000.
The batteries have valuable metals in them that recyclers want. So companies like Umicore are already prepared in the US and many other countries for when the 10000s of batteries start to fail.
Unlike plastics, but like aluminum this is a recycling area where there is real money to be made by the recyclers.
I believe there was a total of just over 50000 Priuses and Insights sold by end of 2003. I can’t find any stats of how many of these are now out of service or what percentage got recycled.
There are new plants for recycling opening at this point. Rochester, NY is getting a new plant this year. The expect to handle 25 metric kilotons of input material, recovering 95 percent or more of the cobalt, nickel, lithium, and other valuable elements through the company’s zero-wastewater, zero-emissions process. “We’ll be one of the largest domestic sources of nickel and lithium, as well as the only source of cobalt in the United States,” says Ajay Kochhar, Li-Cycle’s cofounder and CEO.
I fixed some glaring spelling & grammar mistakes, the 2nd vaccination had me a little wiped out and groggy
Am glad to hear that they are highly recyclable.
Wanted to see if any actual recycling was happening - but don’t see any (yet)!! It’s a long journey from “can be” to actually doing it!!
Sorry, I was a little wiped earlier and didn’t directly address that part.
Recycling is already happening. Two of the companies I did mention are part of that effort and there are many more.
You might want to read through this article.
It is potentially a big business and has a lot of players in it.
At the same time another large number of companies are working on batteries that use a much lesser amount of valuable metals.
Read through the report and seems following are the companies profiled : “ A. The major companies profiled in the report include ACCUREC Recycling GmbH, American Manganese Inc., Battery Solutions, LI-CYCLE CORP., G & P Service , Recupyl, Retriev Technologies, SITRASA, SNAM S.A.S., and Umicore“
Didn’t see any reports on the internet of these companies actually recycling the batteries. Can you give a cite ?
I thought I read that after batteries are removed from an electric car, they can still be used for electricity storage in things like the Tesla Powerwall.
Sure, I call that repurpose and I clarified in the original post that this thread was about actually recycling the metals in the battery - not just repurposing it !!
They’re already doing so in Canada and soon in Rochester, NY. I can’t find a cite to see if they’re recycling for metals or repurposing at this point or just collecting for when there is enough to sustain the recycling program.
Some of the manufacturers in China are recycling already.
This link has some details and 14 projects listed.
Brunp Recycling Technology Co. : A subsidiary of the leading Li-ion battery maker CATL, Brunp is the largest recycler of those batteries in Asia (and therefore the world). Its new plant in China’s Hunan province reportedly can recycle 100,000 metric tons of lithium-ion battery scrap per year.
The entire industry is still at its very beginning as the batteries to recycle just don’t add up to much yet. Even by 2025 they’re expecting it to really ramp up and by 2040 they expect there to be a huge amount of batteries to recycle.
I think EVs haven’t been sold for long enough that there are many batteries that are at the recycling stage.
I presume it helps that EVs are relatively new and recycling has been a goal from the beginning. So many economies of scale require the infrastructure to support it; might as well start the recycling infrastructure now.
I wouldn’t be against a “tax” on the disposal of vehicle batteries to encourage recycling.