How Does Lithium-Ion Battery Recycling Work?

[@EngineeringwithRosie]

Go to magicmind.com/engwithrosie ROSIE20 gets you up to 48% off your first subscription for the next 10 days or 20% off for a one time purchase

[@deadasfak]

I don't know if this product is legit or not, but they couldn't have chosen a more snake oil sounding product name than that.

[@ChrisBigBad]

Is there a double-blind study that verifies the claims made? 7 days of n=1 might be a placebo. Yes: bills. But: no.

[@LK-jl3pc]

I dont think you are up to date on wind turbine blade recycling. At least both Siemens-Gamesa and Vestas has made significant progress in this area. Vestas has developed a new process with industry partners that allows reuse of blades as raw material for new blades.

[@mtpaley1]

Integrity in sponsors is vital to integrity of the channel. Just mentioning it.

[@John_Ridley]

One of the biggest wastes of lithium batteries right now is vape pens. They're mostly not rechargable so they get used once, but they do contain rechargable lithium ion cells because that's the cheapest thing to use. The estimates I've seen are that enough pens get used once and thrown away (usually just in the street it seems) to make 200 EV car battery packs EVERY DAY. Even just in my rural area I pick up enough old vape pens, crack them open and harvest the (used once) LiIon cell out to keep me in hobbyist electronics batteries forever.

[@nigels.6051]

The single use vapes have started washing up on beaches, they need to be banned from sale, for several reasons. It’s not like they are a great benefit to humanity!

[@gregorymalchuk272]

​@@nigels.6051We don't need more government behavior control.

[@Broken_robot1986]

​@@nigels.6051it's blowing my mind that there is no regulation at all here in the US at least. We have to get money out of politics or were doomed.

[@nigels.6051]

@@Broken_robot1986 I think New Zealand has already banned disposable vapes, and the batteries must be easily replaceable now. Here in the UK, disposable vapes will be banned next April. USA appears to lag behind on many important issues, I suspect I will be collecting USA vape pens off our UK beaches for many years. It is up to you to reform your government, not me, so I won't say any more!

[@NJ-wb1cz]

​@@nigels.6051so iPhones are banned in New Zealand now because they don't have easily replaceable batteries?

[@ronvandereerden4714]

15:17 "keep an ion"... a perfect pun for this video.

[@EngineeringwithRosie]

Inadvertent! Thanks for pointing it out 😊

[@martinmurer4954]

Hi Rosie, as a non native speaker I watch your videos at 1.25 times the speed and I am able to follow just fine.

[@carlbennett2417]

Personally, I find the delivery speed too fast. KZbin isn't Tiktok. I resist the 'everything fast now' mindset as that's just another manifestation of the suicidal growth economy.

[@wilinthegreat]

Cost of recycling should "just" be included in the cost of manufacturing for all products. If it costs too much to recycle, it should not be made.

[@nc3826]

Yes, but at the same time all negative externality should be included in the price of products.... Such as the negative effects of any form of pollution. But good luck getting that legislation passed.

[@anguscampbell1533]

@@nc3826 Even better luck getting CO2 emissions listed as pollution.

[@kitten_processing_inc4415]

If you care about the environment you should think your proposition through. What's actually wrong with single use materials if they are more efficient for the environment? For example, you can't recycle the thin metallised plastic films used in food packaging but they embody far, far less environmental impact than making and recycling the old school foil and paper you'd otherwise need to do the same job.

[@anguscampbell1533]

@@kitten_processing_inc4415 In an ideal world the secret is to reduce the amount of waste to a bare minimum but we don't live in a perfect world. Plastic film can be burned to produce electricity and heat for other purposes though. It isn't an ideal solution but it is better than sending these materials to a dump. Sweden is a leader in this area BTW.

[@johnway9853]

That's a GREAT idea. Imagine, governments collecting a fee, safely holding onto it for a decade or more and never even considering plundering a gigantic pile of cash for political purposes. That has gone so very well in the past, I mean, 1000% of gas taxes go to roads, Income tax is only for the war. There's never been any dipping into environmental funds for purely partisan political reasons. Especially since most government terms are about 30-40% as long as the lifespan of a battery pack. Yup, that's going to go great.

[@RichardCostello-wj8gy]

Hi Rosie, thanks for another informative video, I am sure you are aware that " End of Life" for an EV battery just means it"s usefulness in a vehicle is not viable. However, as a house or stationary battery the battery will give years more service and still be recycled. In the US used Nissan Leaf batteries are being used to power small towns .

[@Danger_mouse]

'Leaf batteries are being used to power small towns'... Fact check please! I'm unable to find reference to what you mention here searching online. What I did find was an article titled 'Used Nissan Leaf batteries to light up Japanese town'... they have made some battery banks from used batteries and are powering street lamps with them - Useful, but hardly powering a town. There's also an NZ company making a 240kwh battery bank.

[@Jawst]

There are so many vape pens going into landfill, there isn't much information but I wouldn't be surprised if the equivalent of a few vehicles worth of batteries go to landfill everyday from the UK alone

[@nickwinn7812]

Yeah, and I've run out of things I can do with the cells from the ones I've picked up on the street. Vapers just don't seem to care, even about their immediate environment.

[@custos3249]

I think we should take a page from aluminum can deposits adding a small charge the consumer can get back by properly recycling the item. If people cate that much about $0.05-0.10, I'd bet they'd care a lot about $5-10. I'd mention adding a charge to manufacturers too to cut down on the cost of recycling (ideally split between a manufacturer tax and consumer deposit), but without effective price regulation, it'll just get push onto consumers regardless.

[@kitten_processing_inc4415]

Excellent video Rosie. Recycling is one of my areas of expertise and it is delightful how clearly you articulate the factors which govern its viability and impact, such clarity on the subject is rare.

[@SocialDownclimber]

You didn't cover lead from lead acid batteries which is over 99% recycled! Would have loved for you to mention this, since the recycling rate is due to strict government legislation due to the health hazards posed by soluble lead compounds like the ones in lead acid batteries.

[@nc3826]

Lead acid batteries 99% recycle rate is primarily due to the fact that it's profitable, to recycle them. Since most lead acid batteries have a very simple construction And therefore the cost of recycling is relatively low. In addition lead is a valuable commodity. Nice try, but government regulation just isn't a major factor in this particular case.

[@SocialDownclimber]

@@nc3826 I'll take "citation needed" for 200 Alec.

[@EngineeringwithRosie]

I had that example in an earlier draft but removed it as I felt the video was getting too long!

[@t1n4444]

@@EngineeringwithRosie Don't you worry yourself on that score young lady, we'll be the best judge of that. You just set out your stall and leave us to feel the width. Can't say fairer than that. And, word of caution to the wise ... suggest you very carefully check to see which other platforms give you a mention ... some sites like to claim affiliation with all sorts to boost their "credibility" ... at the cost of your own. Write that down.

[@w0ttheh3ll]

Lead acid batteries have very simple construction and chemistry that makes recycling very easy. Not at all the case with current Li-Ion batteries.

[@mururoa7024]

I hear a lot of inaccurate information in this video. I work with SNAM and Eramet in France. My company is a customer of them. They recycle combined 70Kt of EV batteries per year. They are at full capacity, they are profitable and are looking to expand their operations. My contacts in other battery metals recycling companies in Europe tell me the same. EVs are not the only source of batteries and the market is growing. You mentioned startups struggling: yes they are but not because of the metals market, only because they lack the investment need to build their factory at a larger scale. All of the companies which are turning a profit from battery recycling didn't start from scratch, they were already operating for decades in other recycling markets and already had the infrastructure to expand in the battery market. For future videos I would suggest reaching out to recycling companies to gather information instead of jumping to conclusions.

[@beatreuteler]

Recycling is not allowed to be an economical question. Recycling is a must because most materials we use are not available in unlimited quantities. Therefore "is it worth it" is the wrong question right from the start. The question that needs to be asked is "what is the best way to recycling" and then the next one is "how are we going to make it happen".

[@gregorymalchuk272]

What if recycling creates more pollution than production from new materials? 🤔

[@carlbennett2417]

​@@gregorymalchuk272 fantastic questions in this thread. Ultimately, we don't want to be producing any waste. So one resolution to the conundrum is redesign for recyclability, which can either be legislated or priced. Then the onus is on the manufacturer to produce the goods in accordance with ecological reality.

[@NJ-wb1cz]

​@@carlbennett2417 yep, and they will find ways to game the system and pollute while investing in lobbying to prevent the rules from being changed and sponsoring studies that "prove" that what they are doing is completely fine. We've been through that before, we are going though that right now, we will be going through that I'm the future

[@beatreuteler]

@@gregorymalchuk272 Typically this is not the case and provided the limited abundance of close to any materials my provisional point would be that recycling is mandatory even in such exceptional cases.

[@lowrads3653]

It's pretty easy to treat vapes as a "deposit return" if you want to collect a lot of cells or pouches.

[@Jawst]

I have a huge pile of copper in my garden I'm keeping as a rainy day fund 😂 it's value has already increased by a few thousand $ since I started the pile😊

[@windgassen]

If you ever make it over to the USA, I would love to come and hear you speak. You really do have a knack for explaining things in a very good way. Your speaking speed is fine BTW !

[@jfolz]

Recycling is simply a necessity if we want to have any hope of ever powering the world with batteries.

[@Schinkeldink]

if your goal is to do that for a very long time, very well, you are right. But no one ever really thinks in the long term, at least the people in control. Or how would you explain that our economic system is built around eternal growth. Which seems stupid as we live in a confined and limited universe. Well we strive to be better, so maybe sustainability in the sense of non self-destructiveness will gain worth in our societies... Who knows

[@rickrys2729]

Great to see you digging into the chemical engineering!

[@theheathkitshop2424]

Rosie, don't forget the good 'ol lead-acid battery with its claim of nearly 95% recycle rate. Granted, not seen in EV, but the lead-acid battery is still around. For stationary power, they work great.

[@dianapennepacker6854]

Lead acid are not great for a few reasons. They have low discharging traits which means they tend to deteriorate if you drain them too often. The levelelized cost isn't there either. It is okay when your alternator will cap it off in a car. Not so much at home. I have seen some online use huge banks of them for their home storage. I think used car batteries no less! Seemed to work to me, but I don't know enough about their particular set ups. So it definitely can be a solution, but honestly now there are a lot better ones especially for energy grid storage. Which I think will be dominated by other chemistries or battery types. Some redox batteries look promising. I will take a lead acid battery over cuckin Energy Vault gravity bricks!

[@theheathkitshop2424]

@@dianapennepacker6854 I disagree. I have been running my home with lead acid for decades. Oh course they are shitty for EVs and such but for high capacity stationary use, they are still very much usable. To get the longest life 50% is about all you should discharge. Sometimes 80% discharge is okay,too. The larger forklift batteries are so robust, they will last 20 plus years. Cold weather? No problem. They won’t supply the same high discharge when that cold, but no damage will happen, and you’ll get the power back when they warm up. Worried about an EMP pulse? Lead acid don’t care. The BMS used in lithium batteries might not survive an emp.

[@loicthierry7158]

You explained that some metals get lost in the recycling process, like lithium during the burning. But why and where does it go? It's not like the atoms get radioactive and decay, they should still be somewhere, shouldn't they?

[@CitiesForTheFuture2030]

In any product development process, it should always start with strategies such as cradle 2 cradle design & life cycle analysis awa 6Sigma & ISO 14000 standards etc. Companies, however, are not incentivized to do this as the cost of disposal is externalized to tax payers via the cost of waste collection & waste streaming, landfills or recycling facilities etc. The same applies to packaging - the cost of waste management is externalized elsewhere, usually via taxes.

[@justanumber427]

Feel better Rosie!!

[@AliHSyed]

Another fantastic video, you’re one of kind in the science communication field

[@vdivanov]

Engineering… 🤓

[@lindseyhatfield9017]

Have you slowed down - NO do you need to - NO ! It saves time

[@1964mcqueen]

My 2014 Nissan Leaf was assembled in Smyrna, Tennessee, 1500 KM from my home in Canada. The battery for that vehicle was built in Japan, from minerals sourced from all over the globe. When my battery reaches the end of its life as a car battery in another 5 -7 years, I plan to use it for stationary storage (connected to my own solar system or sold to a company that converts batteries for this purpose). At the end of its life in stationary storage, it will go to a recycling plant right here in my own city. The minerals from the cells will then be shipped a few hundred KM down the road to one of many battery manufacturers being established. Those batteries will be used in EVs being built in the area, to be sold back to people like me a few hundred KM away. The reuse of material, shortening of the supply chain and process improvements make our EVs cleaner as time goes by, unlike ICE which can only get dirtier as ever more harmful methods are used to extract oil from ever more sensitive areas of the globe. And, as we know, almost nothing from petroleum is recycled, as the majority is dumped into our oceans and atmosphere.

[@Dqtube]

The cost of these processes will be reduced. The current problem is that they cannot be expanded because there is not enough material. Nobody wants to spend hundreds of millions of euros on a facility with annual revenues in the millions. In the EU, for example, glass and plastics recycling is an economically sustainable business, but their capacity is in the millions of tonnes every year.

[@gregorymalchuk272]

Very skeptical about glass recycling or manufacturing of any kind when the fuel for the furnaces has been cut off by green nonsense. Recycling is by its nature energy intensive.

[@planesounds]

No Rosie, you won't be seeing any of us in your next video, but we may see you. Thank you for the discussion, do not dumb down your pace to those who have slow minds and comprehension. Your discussions are not examinable, neither open nor closed book after watching. Any viewer having trouble keeping up can always slow the video to suit their level and rate of absorption. Have to go back to high school chemistry? Really? First year Engineering had pretty comprehensive organic and in-organic chemistry components and were pre-requisites for subsequent year subjects. What happened there? The impression that I have got from reviews of the battery recovery and recycling industry is that many of the companies appear to be heavily Government subsidised and viability may be very dubious, as you say. The volatility of the entire chemistry industry, including the metals, and the difficulty in upscaling the processes should make any private investor very wary and hedge their bets. Have you done a blind placebo comparison of "magicmind" to confirm that it is really responsible for your enhanced pace? I will look forward to your future contributions.

[@crackerede]

Hello! Thank you for the valuable video ! I work in Europe, Belgium with EV Battery dismantling, testing, handling and reuse. It's crazy how costs of battery economics have changed. Here we have achieved 50% reUSE rate before end of life :) Ten years ago we had like 10t of Li-ion battery recycling feedstock now we have like 10000t and will have 1000000000t or whatever. Issues in quality, processing and manufacturing of new batterty cell materials like anodes and cathodes is quite challanging with recycled stocks and many (pyro or hydro) recyclers have big ammounts of black mass and other recycled materials just sitting in big waste facilities waiting for a buyer. You know how Britney had this Lithium problem, do you think it could have been from recycled batteries?

[@dellmerlin6328]

Rosie, your speech is perfect.

[@xelaxander]

We also need to better reuse old EV batteries. An EV HVS might sustain physical degradation through abuse, and some electrical degradation leading to reduced charge and discharge rates and lower capacity. But for low performance but price sensitive applications like stationary storage it may be just fine. Setting up an efficient system for identifying type and magnitude of degradation and appropriate processing could really help with waste management.

[@stalwart56k]

It's definitively an option for energy professionals. I've advised DIY solar enthusiasts that they are liable to burn their house down and die in their sleep if they use a used EV battery to power their home at night.

[@chlistens7742]

I believe we should focus on recycling or at least segregating batteries. While recycling all types may not be profitable at the moment, it's crucial to separate them by type and keep them out of landfills. Currently, it seems we have more recycling capacity than material to process, so it's essential to recycle as much as possible. According to the economy of scale, if recycling plants aren't operating at full capacity, they become significantly less cost-efficient. With so many different battery types being developed, segregating them is becoming even more important. Some types of batteries will be more suited to hydrometallurgical recycling methods, while others might be better for pyrometallurgical processes. Cutting up and sorting batteries appropriately makes a lot of sense. Another issue is that many batteries are discarded while they still have usable capacity. For example, vape batteries are often recharged fewer than 100 times before they’re considered "end of life." Personally, I’ve repurposed batteries from devices like these. While they may not perform as well as purpose-built ones, they still work as backup power for me when my primary battery is charging. When they finally become less efficient, I can still recycle them. Our society has become very "disposable," but many items, like batteries and electronics, can have a longer life through third-party use before heading to recycling. Cell phones, for instance, often have plenty of functionality left even after they’re replaced, and once they're no longer useful, they can still be recycled. As for the costs of reusing and repurposing older components, I use a 15-year-old solar panel that now produces about 50% of its original output to charge my older devices. While I wouldn't install such a panel in a new system, it works well on its own. When it eventually wears out, I can replace it with another salvaged panel, which is much cheaper than buying a new one.

[@t1n4444]

Yes, but, where's the efficiency? Hanging onto something on the grounds you can still get an output is one thing but is it really economically sound reasoning? Might be better to ditch the old panels and replace with brand new higher (but granted not by much) efficiency units and keep for another fifteen years. That way you don't have to put up with lower output from old duff panels and avoid the fag of replacing the panels with marginally higher output units more often. And of course you become a "consumer" of brand new kit and help with the economy ... Rather too much made of recycling stuff to "work" which should be recycled into basic components for reuse in other products. Mind you if you have data which proves reusing panels is economically worthwhile then happy to debate.

[@gregorymalchuk272]

Energy has to be cheap for recycling to happen. So whatever future we have has to be one of energy abundance.

[@wjhann4836]

A small part but to be mentioned: In Germany there are some research about car batteries and a second live for them in grid batteries. But - this will also delay them to a recycling.

[@dmcarstensen]

I think all batteries should be covered under Extended Producer Responsibility programs to create easy and legally required battery recycling. The quantity of fires that lithium batteries cause right now in the municipal solid waste stream is incredible.

[@bbasmdc]

This was a very informative video, thank you. One thing you can start with is the problem of perfectly good batteries in today’s EV being written off by pressure from insurance companies. It goes like this. An EV has an accident and there is some visible damage to the battery unit(s). The manufacturer defines the battery as “no serviceable parts” - claiming that it costs more to diagnose the problem than just swapping for new. So, at the moment, there are fire-resistant warehouses around the UK that are used to store EV batteries that may have one or two damaged cells (out of several hundreds in the unit) - or perhaps just damage to the physical unit or electronics. And this practice can lead to the entire car being written off by the insurance company because the cost of the new battery alone exceeds the value of the repaired vehicle. However…there are third party battery recovery companies who would be able to repair the damaged units at a much lower cost - if only they had access to the proprietary firmware and software used in the EV battery. This is only available for some manufacturers today - such as the Nissan Leaf battery software, which recently went open source. EV manufacturers should be required to open up that software so that third parties could recover batteries with minor damage. The cells in those batteries are usually standard and could be reused - in home solar installations, for example. And insurance companies should be penalised if they write off entire vehicles that could otherwise be cost-effectively repaired. There’s a lot that could be done to reduce the amount of EV battery waste without any changes in recycling technology.

[@aussietaipan8700]

Tesla car batteries are being more integrated with the car's chassis with the use of glue surrounding and inside the battery. To recycle these, the glue has to be broken down to access the battery cells then further work to remove the glue from the battery cell area. This makes recycling unaffordable. My older model S, the battery can be easily removed and the cells are easily accessed. It can also be easily repaired without the need to dump a whole EV battery.

[@jimurrata6785]

How many years/miles do you have on your Tesla? Even when degraded below 80% the battery would make a very nice powerwall in a residential setting or part of a grid storage system. Yes, definitely with newer proposed manufacturing processes where the battery is more integral to the 'skateboard' perhaps some cropping of the chassis would be needed, but this is achievable with waterjet. Upcycling is almost always a more viable option than recycling unless badly damaged in an accident.

[@davidbrayshaw3529]

The "modern" integral battery platforms are an environmental disgrace. My understanding is that it isn't only Tesla that are guilty of this, but their inclusion in the club is certainly notable given the "mission statement" (Tesla con).

[@gregorymalchuk272]

​@@jimurrata6785Euro 7 emissions regulations would make it impossible to register an electric vehicle once the battery drops below a certain capacity.

[@jimurrata6785]

@@gregorymalchuk272 I'm suggesting that a vehicle battery that has reached its limit is better repurposed as fixed storage than shredded for it's materials. Not sure what that has to do with registering a vehicle in Europe... 🤷‍♂️

[@roberthayward9299]

As a person with some background in chemistry, I always find the word "cathode" problematic when presenters use it when discussing rechargeable batteries. I have a similar issue with "anode". The problem centres on the ways the chemistry changes during charge and discharge. When charging, the cathode will be the positive side because the external circuit will be sucking electrons out. During discharge the battery will be supplying electrons from the negative side. If you want to more precisely describe the chemicals on each side of the battery, perhaps you might want to use the words "positive " and "negative". Thanks for your work Dr Rosie, and the native Aussie English speaker in me doesn't think you talk too fast.

[@jeffreyfwagner]

Is there any thought given to the mechanical design of the battery to make recycling more effective?

[@markiliff]

Spoken at listening speed - thank you ✓✓

[@karlInSanDiego]

Great video, Rosie. Appreciate the admission that hydrometallurgy has some real environmental issues, as none of the EV or battery recycling cheerleaders ever discuss that. Chemical processors in the country often look to offshore because our domestic regulations make it difficult for this very dirty, wasteful industry to even operate, much less profitably. Who cleans the cleaners is sort of the paradox.

[@JimJim-bt5ht]

speech is good to a bit fast. Keep up the amazing work. No need to charge

[@ablacknambercat]

And I listen at 1.5 speed, so one mans too fast is too slow for another.

[@tarstarkusz]

1:25 Even though copper is highly recycled, I take that 1/6th with a HUGE grain of salt. The problem is that they are likely not including all the energy used to get the used copper to the smelter. The amount of energy to get the material to the smelter is extremely high. It is usually recycled in low amounts. Someone gathers maybe 20 pounds of copper and drives it to a recycling center. It then has to be trucked, albeit in much larger quantities to a larger recycle and then finally to a smelter. It is likely (though I don't know) also melted once into usable shapes and weights the smelter needs.

[@EarthCreature.]

The answer is St Georges Eco Mining (99% recycling of over 15+ battery compositions). They're even capturing green hydrogen from the off gassing.

[@anguscampbell1533]

The interesting part in the video is when Rosie mentioned MNC batteries were replaced with LFP batteries. This did reduce costs and made batteries more energy dense. The next step may well be replacing the Lithium in rechargeable batteries with Aluminium since Aluminium batteries are more energy dense and with Aluminium being more plentiful and available. In other words it would require less battery capacity using Aluminium than Lithium for the same energy capacity which in turn would require less recycling on a per unit basis.

[@anguscampbell1533]

@@денисбаженов-щ1б LFP were developed because of costs. The Lithium, Iron and Phosphorous are much cheaper than the Nickel, and Cobalt in NMC batteries.

[@rob098890]

Thank you for the interesting and well researched video. Answered a lot of my questions about the issue much appreciated

[@ericplace367]

Very clear, very helpful. Thanks

[@SolAce-nw2hf]

LFP batteries should last a lot longer than NMC batteries and don't require mining of Cobalt or Nickel to begin with. In my opinion we should only use NMC for small electronics like watches, phones and laptops.

[@jimurrata6785]

LFP doesn't fare well in sub-zero temperatures. While this isn't a real problem for Australia, Africa, most of India and central America it definitely is in much of Europe, Canada and the USA.

[@SolAce-nw2hf]

@@jimurrata6785 NMC is not great either at sub zero temperatures. For these conditions we have thermal management. Any good system will have a heating system, preferably a heat pump to get the batteries to their ideal temperature.

[@jimurrata6785]

@@SolAce-nw2hf I'm not saying they are, but at least the solvent based electrolyte isn't as likely to freeze and destroy it. Thermal management and charge conditioning is certainly an important part of any BMS. While almost any chemical reaction rate is dependant on temperature, if it's _really_ cold you're using a disproportionate amount of energy to get/keep the battery itself optimal. It will be interesting to see what comes of solid state batteries that shouldn't have problems with liquid electrolytes or dendrite formation.

[@gerhardwesp3995]

The equivalent of battery recycling for oil&gas is capture and storage of the emitted CO2 and CH4. Governments should make *that* a requirement to create a level playing field.

[@troelsgudiksen9900]

According DOE report on recycling - mining in old batteries will max keep a 65% retainment on Pyrometalugic process and cost 10X the CO2 compared with building batteries from newly mined material. 1-2% is recycled today because it is a crazy cost to go through. Also this is why when you read Volvo report on SUV cars ICE (XC40) and a similar BEV SUV - they do not count in the battery recycling energy usage - like most other BEV reports. The Volvo needs to be driven 118.000km for a CO2 break even in Denmark and Volvo estimates the BEV SUV life to be 130.000km average. Hydrometalugic separation is so toxic and many people that has been experimenting has become serious injured from it.

[@stalwart56k]

Great video Rosie! Even in the USA scrap metal recycling has an element of criminality. Omnisource, my local recycler, takes one's driver's license and car plate number, and cuts a check as opposed to hard currency for copper recycling in order to have a paper trail. Stealing copper for the scrap value has around probably since copper recycling has existed. Regarding black market battery recycling in China, the USA's work place safety regulations in a variety of industries are often an after thought for low bid businesses until someone dies or a building catches fire. A lot of our OSHA rules are just guidelines, and require civil litigation after harm has happened to have any kind of teeth. The USA is not without room for improvement when it comes to work place and environmental safety for workers and for the general public. We also need more regulation and government subsidies to prohibit and prevent consumer electronics from being thrown out, as well as solar panels. It cost me $0.30 a pound to recycle broken solar panels on my home, and I was the first member to the general public to show up at the nearest solar panel recycler in my area. Most people throw solar panels in the dump and don't think about the heavy metals in solar panels leaching into their town's watershed.

[@franciscoshi1968]

EV batteries are hot property. EV batteries are very valuable for energy storage. Another benefit of EV batteries is that there is a large volume of recyclable material for the amount of effort because EV batteries are large and have significantly more metal in the casing than consumer goods batteries. Just the process of removing and discharging a consumer battery costs more than the materials recovered. An EV battery on the other hand has enough energy left in it that discharging is also profitable and it requires less effort to discharge.

[@Broken_robot1986]

Thank you so much for this video. Something i wanted to know more about for so long, but to lazy to find out myself!!!

[@rmar127]

Hi Rosie, another great video. Im curious why you didn’t include repurposing of old batteries in the video though. Once a battery is degraded to a point where it is no longer viable in an electric vehicle, it could still be put to at least a decade of use as a stationary battery. People all over the world are doing this with things like the first gen Nissan leaf, Chevy volt etc. there are even a number of companies that are taking apart the battery packs in older EV’s removing any cells that are heavily degraded and then repackaging the remaining cells into shelf ready stationary storage. I’d love to see a video exploring this as an emerging industry.

[@davestagner]

In the long run, we will recycle virtually all metals, for two reasons. First, there’s an “enough” for metals. As population levels off and starts to decline, the per-capita metals already mined and available to recycle will rise. Second, widespread cheap solar power will make clean energy readily available for such processes. A lot of these problems can be solved simply by throwing energy at the problem.

[@carlbennett2417]

Fantastic content, thanks Rosie.

[@ricshumack9134]

No need to recycle turbine blades, a lot of them ends up in the food chain. See the Scottish study from 2019. Microplastics annually shed per turbine on average total 62Kg per annum - "Leading Edge Erosion and Pollution from Wind Turbine Blades"

[@John_Ridley]

I think a whole lot of EV batteries that are EOL are not being recycled but reused. A 70 KWh EV battery that's at 60% of its original capacity is still an outstanding house battery where the peak draw is far less and even 30 KWh is a lot for a house. There are several companies in the US that take used batteries, disassemble into cells, characterize the cells and reassemble into packs of matched cells and sell them into the solar/home power industry.

[@karlInSanDiego]

EV battery recycling is a great argument against market captitalism. Instead of watching critical minerals swing all over the place boom and crash which also threatens mining and refinement industries, our governments should step in and create a price guarantee and a commodity market reserve. This would stabilize prices, enabling mining, refining, battery manufacturing, vehicle manufacturing, and recycling to all understand future prices and plan their businesses around them. It also acts as insurance in a short term recession or other demand slumps that stall forward progress of attaining/retaining these critical minerals. Unfortunately, time and the gross bloat of EV cars/SUVs/pickups mean we won't have the time or emissions allowance required to actually pull off a one to one transition from ICE to EV with whatever vehicle the market demands using whatever efficiency lazy engineers and even more lazy consumers agree to buy. The fact is, we're already decades over budget in emissions, so the pipe dream of perpetual car manufacturing in a circular economy is false hope. We'll need to temper our reliance on mined minerals, using them much more efficiently in micromobility. An e-bike uses 1/400th the battery size of an Chevy EV Silverado. Of course they don't do the same work, but that's beside the point. We'll need to seriously rethink how we do everything under the severe austerity that zero emissions means. Electric rail in the form of pantograph trams, light rail, metros, heavy regional rail, and high speed rail must not rely on battery tech, but simple realtime electrical flow through overhead wires. Save the hard-to-mine-and-make-perpetually-batteries for the places where they can do the most good e-bikes, e-trikes, e-scooters, maybe microcars for certain situations. Understanding that micromobility and shared public transit are the necessary end of the transition for transportation, we should not be investing heavily in a single generation or two of a tech which we can reasonably predict has no chance of surviving the extreme demands of a zero carbon world. Severe change is coming and EVs are like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, but with much wasted political capitol. We'll all soon be liars when we have to explain that we crunched the number and full sized EVs are nowhere near sustainable. We should have told everyone so, but we didn't think you'd buy into public transit.

[@absolute___zero]

About recycling economics, I would say that recycling business is not a good business. Why not? Well a product can be decomposed in 2 parts: 1) raw matter which the product is composed of (that would be all the atoms) 2) The process to transform the matter into final product which the customer will pay for. Obviously , the more processing you put into your product (assuming the product is very demanded) the more pricey it gets. This means that the customer doesn't pay for the raw mater, raw matter is cheap, but the customer pays for the process. Why does a car cost more than a loaf of bread? Well, because the process of making a car is more complex. Now, if we get back to recycling business idea, what is your product here? Haha, it is raw matter!! Do you see the problem? You want to sell the customer a product which production consists of 0 processing steps. How many processing steps does a car have (including all the processes of of car parts that aren't made by the car manufacturer because it outsources it , but the providers of a car manufacturer will charge for the cost of these processing steps). I would speculate that a car would require millions of processing steps to convert raw mater into final car, and that is why it is orders of magnitude more expensive than a loaf of bread. TLDR: recycling business is a very complex task while it produces a product of very low value. This means that recycling business can be only run temporarily in times of great economic growth to profit on rising commodity prices. Now, another story is that there is a huge economic crisis coming which will certainly make prices of raw materials much much cheaper than they are today.

[@vdivanov]

This is quite interesting! Wonder about the "reduce" aspect in addition to reuse and recycle. Yes, we need to electrify transport and adopt renewables for power generation, but can we effectively reduce the reliance on batteries for grid storage?

[@w0ttheh3ll]

Much of the cost of making Li-Ion batteries is in making the active materials (including the carbon-based anode!), so direct recycling seems very promising. However, there is a huge problem/risk: If batteries last 15 years and are then recycled, most of those active materials will be way outdated. Apart from LFP (in its infancy back then) and LCO (LiCoO2, used in phone batteries), none of the cathode materials from 10 years ago are still in common use.

[@brettyallop6018]

Great video Rosie!

[@JSM-bb80u]

Sodium ion batteries would be easier to recycle it seems. They use materials like sodium carbon nitrogen iron and aluminum. None of which are critical minerals. So we can be able to use pyrometallurgy process for recycling them.

[@S0me0ne_S0meWhere_SaysHi]

I'm sorry but there is no excuse! All items need to be recyclable whatever we develop. To that end all items that are developed MUST consider their end of life reuse or safe biodegradability. WE MUST MOVE AWAY FROM AN UNSAFE DISPOSABLE SOCIETY! If it's not economic to safely biodegradable or recycle then that material must not be used in any design!

[@samuelprice538]

Taking on sponsorship from companies like this diminish your brand.

[@latsword3513]

Are you signed up to her Patroen?

[@ahosie]

Meanie

[@latsword3513]

@@ahosie yeah it's harsh, but you know it's fair. The creators out so much effort, time and money into their work that we should be more considerate in our feedback. The channel "Just Have A Think" operates with no ads or sponsorship based on sustained Patreon support. I won't pretend that I'm signed up but then again I won't take pot shots at creators who aim to educate, tackle misinformation and entertain. I think his criticism is valid but give creators another option or lead with kindness when commenting

[@mikeklein4949]

Thank you for this perspetive that is critical to rational thought about our essential energy transition story. The moe facts we have as evidence, the more likely we are to succeed with life saving measures.

[@kevfquinn]

There was much talk about "second life" for EV batteries a few years ago (home batteries, perhaps grid storage); nothing much seems to have come of it. Typically re-use is more cost-effective than recycling as it requires very little processing. I suspect it may well simply be that there's insufficient supply of end-of-EV-life batteries to make a market. Beyond the earliest EVs, we're now seeing EV traction batteries lasting easily through the life of the vehicle itself which in turn delays the point at which significant amounts of end-of-EV-life batteries will appear in the market.

[@brankojedi]

Hello Rosie, thank you for yet another great video. I am, as always, at the loss of the current system of market economics that we live in. We are forced to look into "economics" of battery recycling, when there is absolutely no doubt that we do need to do it. Do they stop recycling the air on the Space Station because it is too expensive? Our planet is just a huge spaceship, and if we don't start acting accordingly, our life-support systems will fail completely.

[@kevinc404]

I appreciate your research but battery metals and battery recycling has evolved and current generation batfery recycling is done with cryogenic nitrogen shredding of batteries and separation for reuse into batteries again. Ive traded metals for 20 years. Battery metals use specific battery grade metal hydroxides directly from ores and will not be refined into slabs of metal like aluminum and copper. Building the recycling plant next to factories to battery plants allows efficient recyling of battery waste and immediate reuse into new batteries. This ix 80% more efficient than refining waste into a cobalt slab or lithium metal which few industries actually use. See Redwood Materials which is thr current largest battery recycler and their links to some Stanford papers on the topic.

[@AdityaMehendale]

In the "slag" components 5:32 - the metals (lithium, alu, manganese) won't just vanish, right? The lithium is still there, awaiting retrieval. What, exactly, makes this difficult?

[@SwissPGO]

This immediately triggered the question: can windturbine blades use aluminium?

[@Suburp212]

Include cost of recycling in product prices.

[@yodaiam1000]

What is the carbon footprint of manufacturing a BEV with recycled battery material versus virgin material? How does the manufacturing carbon footprint of a BEV with recycled battery material compare to the manufacturing of an ICE car?

[@jakegomez-fort3810]

Lol I listened at 2x speed (Fellow Australian lol)

[@peterhguk]

I listened at 0.75 speed. Little bit laboured, spent some time waiting for a punchline 😂

[@sean2074]

Me too!

[@nigels.6051]

It’s the accent that some people have problems with, the way Rosie joins the words together. People just need to get used to it! The number of different accents for English is one of the best things about it.

[@andyjohnson3790]

Recycling is more than just value and energy savings. Mining is absolutely horrible for the environment and garbage dumps will leak overtime and be very costly to fix in the future. If your parents generation required resources and generated waste just as much as the current generation does than ruels, regulations, and public perception would be drastically different, and thats just one generation out of thousands of years of human alterations on the inly planet that humans can ever call home. Please learn how to Reduce, resuse, and then Recycle Everything PROPERLY that you can. ♻️✌️🌲🌎🌳🌎♻️✌️

[@gregorymalchuk272]

There are a lot of situations where recycling uses more energy than manufacturing from new materials.

[@MaxNippard]

Thanks

[@danwylie-sears1134]

You do talk fairly fast. Normally, I watch videos on 2x. I didn't turn the speed on this one up until you mentioned talking fast. Thank you for mentioning it: now I can listen at full speed.

[@jeffreyroberts4637]

I realise I am doing this the wrong way around, but here is more on the bates framework Businesses will have to start asking energy and water utilities, how much of the energy they are supplied with is renewable energy, and how much of the water they are supplied with comes from a replenishable source, but its biggest effect should be on recycled materials. One option worth considering could be, disassembly lines, while assembly lines may have gone abroad, there is no reason why end of life products could not be disassembled here. It should be mandated that most manufactured products should be disassembled at the end of their useful life. How will this B.A.T.E.S. mandate work in practice? for larger items like fridges, washing machines, and other household electronics, at the time of purchase an additional charge would be made for a bond, probably set at 10%of the purchase price, which would be stored electronically and would be redeemable by a recycling company, only when the item had passed down a (disassembly line) and been broken down to its most basic materials. For a larger item like a car, I would set the bond at £750 payable to the (D.V.L.A.) when a vehicle is first registered in the U.K. or similar authority in another country. The bond is then held until the vehicle has reached the end of its useful life, then the bond will be redeemable by a disassembly company, only when the vehicle has passed down a disassembly line and has been broken down to its most basic components and not just crushed, this means everything removed, doors, bonnet, boot and separated from their padding and electricals, seating, carpets, and roof lining, plastic dash-Panel, and wiring loom removed, even the engine/ gearbox and suspension system to be separated into their various metallic alloys, and even the generator and starter motor, in the future, this would include vehicle motive batteries and fuel cells, all to be disassembled. It would not matter Where in the world the car was made, once it is registered in the U.K. a bond must be bought, and all manufactures who wish to sell into the U.K. would have to supply the Disassembly companies with a protocol out lining the easiest methods of disassembly. Problems and benefits of the idea so far, even a cheap new car costs over £20,000 So how do we manage to disassemble for just £750? Well to start with you do not need a design team or an advertising budget, neither do you have the cost of manufacturing components from freshly bought new raw materials, and if you consider it takes between 20 and 40 hours depending on the efficiency of the plant for a shell to travel down an assembly line to become a completed vehicle, it should take about the same amount of time to disassemble, and £600 is about the wage for forty hours of a low to medium skilled worker. And it will be MANUAL labour that will be required, robots are perfect for assembling pristine new components, but after ten or fifteen years of corrosion disassembly might be beyond them; one option could be to repurpose old car production plants that are due to be decommissioned.

[@reeceagland1980]

Do you think we should demand that EV batteries are built in a way that reduces the cost and complexity of recycling?

[@t1n4444]

@@reeceagland1980 Demand? Demand from whom? You might be a wiser person if you got past batteries and research hydrogen as a fuel. You might be surprised to learn of the decline in battery EV sales to private buyers is now in decline in UK. The preference, for now, is for petrol and diesel vehicles, plus a slight leaning towards hybrids. The issues with BEVs are well known and you can Google if you don't know what they are. I would refer you to the manufacturers who are doing the R&D thing ref hydrogen as a fuel even as we type. Batteries no longer quite the thing they once were. It may be that batteries might be better suited to mass area storage for absorbing solar power and for supporting the National Grid as and when. This concept of storing power is by no means new and you might slide over to info on Dinorwic (inside Welsh mountain) for reference/context. Dinorwic is by no means unique either.

[@nigels.6051]

They need to be built so that a failure of a single cell can be quickly repaired, the full battery can be quickly extracted/replaced,and so that they can be easily plugged into static storage when nobody wants them for EVs because they have dropped to 90% capacity. We have standards for liquid fuel, we can have standards for batteries.

[@avid6186]

Something I haven't heard a out yet is transport costs. When you take a car to the scrap man he isn't the one who will recycle the battery. The recycling plant isn't necessarily even in the same country as the dead battery. Considering the way these batteries like to catch fire, how are they going to be safely shipped to the recycling plant? Who is going to pay that cost? If the recycling plant is struggling to make money that won't be keen on extra cost. The owner of the car is already smarting because he's been told it's not feasible to repair what looks like a perfectly good car due to ridiculous battery costs. Is the tax payer going to end up subsidizing at the end of life as well as the begining?

[@kaiserruhsam]

depending on climate change mitigation being profitable sounds like a great way for most of the world to not actually do anything about the problem.

[@matthewbaynham6286]

You think we will have to deal with recycling EV batteries in about 2030, well I disagree. The Nissan Leaf and Renault Zoe came out around 2010, the very first of the Nissan Leafs now need to have their batteries replaced, the Renault Zoe have thermal battery management systems so the batteries are in a better condition. However the batteries for the first Leaf's are on average at 85% of their compacity now. So they are being replaced. However just because you take the battery out of you 2010 Leaf doesn't mean it gets recycled now. Re-use is a far better option, and if you put your Nissan Leaf battery in stationary storage now at 85% capacity it'll have a couple decades of use and even when it has 50% capacity it's still good for stationary storage. The only EV batteries we need to recycle are ones from crashes or new batteries with manufacturing defects.

[@thewatersavior]

Aren't there oils and carbons recovered from pyrometallurgy that can be reused?

[@GimbloBlimfby]

Wouldn't the surplus renewable energy being dumped on the market at near zero prices tend to promote electrolysis based metal recovery?

[@markmuir7338]

I’ve seen plenty of abandoned cars in the wilderness… No EVs yet though 😅

[@ians3328]

Thanks so much for a great video again. What do you think about the UK spending £22 Billion on Carbon Capture ?

[@pebbleschan6085]

Hi Rosie, did you not need to study Chemistry at university? Thanks for the great videos.

[@dermotbalaam5358]

Never too fast, !

[@w0ttheh3ll]

10:18 battery mineral supply constraints is still a huge risk to the energy transition, even if less talked about.

[@JSM-bb80u]

I don't think it would be. First if all we have enough lithium for the transition. Second we have alternative technologies such as sodium ion batteries (which is much more suitable for grid storage). Sodium ion batteries are already commercially available. And there are potential battery technologies like Aluminum graphene ion battery which are a lot more suitable for vehicles. Even better than lithium.

[@w0ttheh3ll]

@@JSM-bb80u We have enough resources, but not enough mining and refining. Sodium Ion batteries will need at least 10 years to reach the same scale as Lithium Ion, probably longer. I'm not saying it's a problem long term. Long term you are completely right. But the next 10 years will be intersting.

[@JSM-bb80u]

@@w0ttheh3ll Agree with everything. But mineral bottle neck wouldn't be that much if an issue with growing technologies. Direct lithium extraction is becoming viable. It would lead to more environment friendly and quicker lithium extraction.

[@roidroid]

Lith-ion battery recycling is relatively rare. Because the batteries last so long, there are typically SO MANY secondary uses for the batteries AFTER taken from the car (eg: Stationary home-batteries), before they ever get close to recycling. You gotta remember, most ppl who are concerned about lith-ion battery recycling are probably coming into the topic from MISINFORMATION sources like BBC-TOPGEAR and other Tabloid rags, telling them that batteries will "only last a couple of years, oh no!". All of those ppl are quite misinformed. But with _that_ foresight - you can prepare for their very predictable questions!

[@pete_dl1585]

very interesting analysis. I do like the fern on your desk, do you mind telling me the name ? :)

[@0786RICARDO]

Everything is worth recycling. Specially expensive material

[@mikejfranklin7000]

Rosie, you speak about as fast as Matt Farrell. You should both consume less caffiene😉

[@roidroid]

14:27 Anyone who has ever bought any sortof lith-ion battery from China - via Ebay or Ali-express or whatevs - knows how LAUGHABLE this suggested *tracking platform* would be. They can't even ensure their exported batteries are the STATED CAPACITY, it's all exaggerated, they don't care or can't do anything about it. That entire online sales thing is ONE BIG BLACK-MARKET FLUSTER-CLUCK (they're almost all factory-seconds, smuggled out into the market). Now they think they can track every battery their country will make?! Ridiculous, start small first.

[@jeffreyroberts4637]

Whether it is recycling batteries, Solar panel, cars or washing machines, the problem is not Technical, but financial, there are plenty of clever chemist and engineers who will develop The necessary systems to recycle almost anything, but if there is no demand for the recycled material, there is no point and no incentive to invest in such systems, to that end I suggest a framework of Biannually Adjusted Targets for Environmental Sustainability Ideally this would be set up as part of a global inter-governmental conference, like the COP conferences may be a (3R`S) conference, no, not the grammatically incorrect.(reading, writing, and arithmetic) but (renewable energy, recycled material, and replenishable water) Given the state of current diplomatic tension, it is unlikely a global consensus could be Agreed, so maybe we should encourage governments to set up their own variation, which might lead to protectionism, (in the name of sustainability of course.) Governments already have rules about what can be sold, like no lead in paint, and electrical Standards. So, is it such a big leap of imagination to have rules about sustainability? A (B.A.T.E.S.) framework should complex and, all-encompassing covering every category, and would require the definition of each product or service probably by sector, so we are able to balance what is desirable, against what is possible, it would set minimum standards for the quantities of recycled materials to be used in each product, plus the percentage of renewable energy to be used, together with amount of water capable being replenished that was involved in the production of any product or service. These targets would be adjusted every two years, (products or services) that did not meet the new targets after Two years would be Banned, these targets would be different for each product, newspapers And cardboard packaging could probably already be made from 100% recycled material, but it is not practical to recycle cotton from a shirt to make a new one, in that case we would concentrate on whether the water used to grow and process the cotton could be replenished.

[@Dutch-vj2eg]

Interesting but not very reassuring that recycling will be a viable business. It still looks questionable that all this battery stuff is actually a net benefit to the planet. Synthetic fuels are being looked down on because of low efficiency but if it avoids a bunch of toxic disposals from batteries then it might just be worth it.

[@MrCoophi]

I normally watch on double speed, so I don't think you talk too fast 😅

[@joehopfield]

Not discussing the externalities of mining version resources...

[@jeffreyroberts4637]

this is the final part on recycling and the bates framework , sorry back to front I know. In any case with a growing world population, it is time to re-think how we use Our planets resources, because the truth is, we are a very long way from being able to Mine asteroids, or at the bottom of the ocean, I am optimistic, and I do believe even with a Growing world population, it is possible for everyone to have all the goods and services they Need, we simply need to make better use of the resources we already have available, by Disassembling and recycling, and a globally mandated framework of regularly adjusted targets would be A good method of pushing the world towards long term sustainability. A global perspective. It is easy to assume this is just a problem, in the wasteful throw away culture of first world countries, but in first world countries they do have refuse collection, and some limited recycling, but in many third world countries, there little if any refuse collection let alone a recycling system, and waste is dumped wherever it is easiest to do so, and a lot of that ends up in water courses and finds its way to the sea. I therefore suggest that if third world countries who want financial help with global warming, they receive it on the condition that they set up and maintain an effective waste/refuse collection and recycling system. If a global consensus is not possible in the short term, governments should be pressured Into setting their own targets, of course this might lead to some countries setting standards That favour their own industries, and disadvantaging rivals, but I believe it would not be Long before companies struggling to meet different standards in different countries, would Start to pressure their own governments to agree a common global standard. How businesses responded to the sustainability challenge would be up to them, but a B.A.T.E.S framework would be a common path towards a sustainable future, and a future C.O.P. conference would be a good place to start preliminary discussions about such a system.

[@GroovyVideo2]

how about recycling car exhaust -

[@Luddite-vd2ts]

Hey Rosie! Keep taking the magic mushroom juice. It has slowed your delivery down, noticeably! That's very welcome imo. As an older person with hearing impairment, I found your previous combination of Australian accent and machine gun delivery a struggle to keep up with, understand and digest. A micro-pause between sentences, Dave Borlace-style, would allow my withered synapses to do a bit of absorption and digestion of the concept just discussed, but thank you SO much for the new more measured pace. Loving it ❤!