Tech Briefs Magazine - March 2023 - BET-20

Battery Recycling
cobalt or nickel, such as Li-ion phosphate
(LiFePO4, or LFP), but lower energy
density remains a problem, he said.
Solid-state batteries, which can be made
without nickel and cobalt and do away
with liquid electrolyte, are another technology
in development.
Li-ion battery
recycling does have
some skeptics. Almonty's Black said that
some components, including printed circuit
boards, can't be recycled, and that
handling cobalt will be problematic for
the industry.
In late 2022, Redwood Materials and Audi initiated a recycling program for consumer
electronics. (Image: Redwood Materials)
it's used in an EV battery pack. " She said
recycled metals will make up 30 percent
of the materials in the company's cathodes
by 2025, and its cobalt will be 100
percent recycled.
Scrap from Tesla's Gigafactory will also
be an important feedstock, Georgeson
said. " Even if the plant is 95 percent efficient,
it will still produce a lot of scrap, "
she said.
Ascend Elements' recycling technology
was spun off as a business
from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in
2015, with the intent of creating new
cathode-active material from recycled
batteries. " The cathode is the single
most expensive component of the battery, "
said Roger Lin, VP for Marketing
and Government Relations at Ascend,
based in Westborough, MA. " And cathodes
are now being made only in Asia,
with little or no manufacturing capacity
in the U.S. "
Ascend says its " hydro-to-cathode " process
can recapture 98 percent of the
material in Li-ion batteries. The company
has pilot projects in Massachusetts and
Michigan, and is building a commercial-scale,
154,000-square-foot operation
near Atlanta to open in late 2022 that
will take in material from SK Battery
America's plant in Commerce, GA. Since
2021, Ascend has also had Honda as a
partner, with a deal to recycle materials
from Honda and Acura vehicles.
20
" There's a lot of activity in this space
now, " Lin said. " Automakers are realizing
that if they want to build EVs at volume
they have to think about the end of life. It's
why we're seeing all these partnerships. "
A key question is: If future EV batteries
contain far less cobalt, nickel, and other
metals than they do now, will recycling
still be economically viable? GM's Grewe
said that the batteries in Cadillac's new
Lyriq EV have 70 percent less cobalt than
those in the Chevrolet Bolt. Lin thinks recycling
will still be viable as the amount
of those metals decline, both because
recyclers will be working with older batteries
that still contain large amounts of
those metals, and because lithium - not
itself likely to disappear from batteries
anytime soon - has skyrocketed in price
and value. Sanderson agrees. " With lithium
at the prices we're seeing - it's up
400 percent in China this year - recycling
is still economically viable, " he said.
Georgeson at Redwood Materials explained
that because recycling is not the
company's primary business, reductions in
certain metals shouldn't be a big factor.
" Everything we recycle gives us a strategic
source of metals that makes cathode
and anode components, " she said.
It's likely that manufacturers will
be able to reduce, but not eliminate,
problematic elements from their batteries
in the short term, Lin said. Battery
chemistries exist
that don't use any
Reusing Old Batteries
Used EV battery packs don't have to
be reduced to their component metals;
they can also be reused. Two of the
more promising avenues are stationary
backup for intermittent renewable energy
generation, and as storage at EV
charging sites to offset utilities experiencing
peak demand.
Battery packs can be repurposed from
EVs that have been in accidents, or that
have reached the end of their useful
lives. The second-life battery supply
for stationary uses could be more than
200 gigawatt-hours by 2030, with the
market propelled by 30 to 70 percent
lower cost, said McKinsey and Co. Even
after they're no longer able to power
a car efficiently, they may still have 80
percent of their initial storage capacity,
the company's report said. The Union of
Concerned Scientists (UCS) estimates
that used EV batteries could continue
to be of service for five to eight years in
secondary applications.
California has 42 percent of the world's
EVs, according to the Orange County
Register, and a bill enacted in 2018 calls
for regulations to ensure that " as close
to 100 percent as possible of lithium-ion
batteries in the state are reused or recycled
at end-of-life. " But getting to that
admirable goal is a challenge.
Jigar Shah, Head of Energy Services at
Electrify America, the charging company
formed out of the Volkswagen diesel
settlement, said the company now has
150 " behind the meter " Li-ion battery
backup installations at its charging
sites in the U.S., primarily to offset utility
demand charges.
Unfortunately, Shah said recycled battery
packs " don't currently have the perBattery
& Electrification Technology, March 2023
Tech Briefs Magazine - March 2023

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