[HN Gopher] Efficient recovery and recycling of cobalt from spen...
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Efficient recovery and recycling of cobalt from spent lithium-ion
batteries
Author : Jimmc414
Score : 125 points
Date : 2024-02-25 16:33 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pubs.acs.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (pubs.acs.org)
| gardenfelder wrote:
| Clickbait? The link does not take us to a document of that title;
| the term "urine" is nowhere to be found there.
| Jimmc414 wrote:
| This article illustrates where the term "urine" came from, but
| to avoid the appearance of clickbait I removed the word from
| the title.
|
| https://www.thecooldown.com/green-tech/ev-battery-recycling-...
|
| It would have been more accurate to say "using ingredients
| commonly found in urine", but that is more words that can be
| used in an HN title even though that is the entire point of the
| post.
| tgtweak wrote:
| I don't really get the impression that current recycling
| techniques are lacking... typically the battery packs are
| immersion-shred and separated into the metal, plastic and the
| cathode "paste" which is a mix of lithium, mangagnese, nickel and
| cobalt. The recovery from there is pretty high - up to 95%.
|
| The percentage of cobalt in modern lithium ion batteries (ie:
| tesla/panasonic's nmc-811 cells) is only 8% of the battery
| material. It's almost entirely Nickel now (72%) with traces of
| manganese (8%) and cobalt (9%). Even the lithium percentage is
| down to ~11%.
|
| I was under the impression that the biggest issue right now was
| scaling up recycling facilities and recycling pathways back to
| those facilities so that they can handle the huge influx of
| batteries anticipated in the next 3-4 years. I don't think
| recovering 97% vs 95% of 8% of the material is going to change
| the economics of battery recyling.
|
| The more interesting breakthroughs seem to be low-temperature,
| safe-chemical extraction. Let's not forget the advancements in
| cell composition that will lead to longer lifespans (2-3x higher
| cycle counts) - which not only reduces the waste from battery
| packs but also that from devices that use them.
| vinni2 wrote:
| > I don't think recovering 97% vs 95% of 8% of the material is
| going to change the economics of battery recyling.
|
| Not yet but as more and more EVs reach end of life and these
| rare earth metals become rarer then it starts make a
| difference.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Neither nickel nor cobalt are rare earth metals. They may be
| somewhat rare, and they come from the earth, but that's not
| what "rare earth" means.
| tgtweak wrote:
| at $28,000/MT it's rare enough to worry about - for context
| it looks like a model 3 has about 4.5KG of cobalt in it's
| entire pack, or around ~$130 at current spot rate.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Totally irrelevant to the point I was making.
| ajross wrote:
| This is like arguing with an astronomer about what a
| "metal" is. The colloquial definition of "rare earth
| element" when talking about industry and not chemistry
| generally means anything you mine that isn't an already-
| concentrated ore.
| malfist wrote:
| What do you mean? Any element heavier than hydrogen is a
| metal, everyone knows this.
| whycome wrote:
| Sometimes hydrogen might be a metal....
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallic_hydrogen
| pfdietz wrote:
| Q: How many legs does a dog have, if we call a tail a
| leg?
|
| A: Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one.
|
| One sometimes sees the nonsense you are describing there
| in attempts to smear PV as dirty because it "uses rare
| earth elements", with a pointer toward dirty REE
| processing in China. PV does not use the actual REEs;
| this smear exploits the terminological slovenliness being
| engaged in here.
|
| I don't believe any honest person in industry would use
| "rare earth element" to refer to nickel or cobalt.
| ajross wrote:
| > I don't believe any honest person in industry
|
| The question should be whether you were genuinely
| confused about what the upthread commenter meant by using
| "these rare earth metals" to refer to battery reactants.
| You were not. You were just being a pedant. Now you're
| heaping onto the mistake by (1) calling the upthread
| comment "nonsense", (2) calling me "dishonest", (3)
| calling the discussion a "smear", and "slovenly".
|
| Good grief. Can you really just not? There are ways to
| have this discussion without flinging poo...
| pfdietz wrote:
| I'm being pedantic because the confusion has been
| exploited by bad actors in the way I described. Now, I
| correct it, to prevent the exploit.
|
| "Slovenly" is a precise description of the problem here,
| up to and including the moral component of that word.
| "Smear" is also accurate in what I was referring to
| there: these were clear bad faith attempts to disseminate
| a falsehood about PV. Your own use was not called a
| smear, you may just be the kind of useful fool the smear
| depended on.
| justinclift wrote:
| As additional info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare-
| earth_element#Minerals
| keenmaster wrote:
| Don't underestimate the elasticity of supply.
| piyh wrote:
| We've been trying to figure out cobalt supply for a long time
| and the DRC is still 70% of the worlds supply
|
| https://www.cobaltinstitute.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/06/P...
| praseodym wrote:
| The price for cobalt is currently around 30 USD/kg but has been
| as high as 90 USD/kg:
| http://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalpricecharts.php?c=co&u=k...
|
| I'm not very familiar with the ellconomics of recycling, but I
| doubt that this process to recover an additional 2% will be
| cost effective.
| tgtweak wrote:
| I guess if you're a massive recycling facility and working on
| 30,000+MT of raw batteries as input, the 2% extra could
| equate to a fair amount, certainly when the spot price is
| $28,000/MT.
|
| Considering spot prices for cobalt are dropping quickly and
| are now back to pre-2019 levels... not sure it makes sense to
| invest heavily in this.
| fbdab103 wrote:
| What happens with the slag from these operations? I assume
| it is easy enough to separate out the metals from plastics,
| all of the metal is still potentially available for
| reprocessing.
|
| Do they keep a huge deposit of these tailings hoping for it
| to be profitable some day?
| parineum wrote:
| > I don't think recovering 97% vs 95% of 8% of the material is
| going to change the economics of battery recyling.
|
| I think you're focusing on the wrong part of the headline.
|
| > ... with common chemicals.
|
| Seems much more important to the economics than, as you said,
| the slight uptick in recovery.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| All of this progress is also good information to counter the
| endless claims that electric vehicles are destroying the
| world. There is an impact from all mining exercises and there
| are terrible conditions in some cobalt mines. Tesla
| apparently buys from only certified cobalt suppliers, for
| example. But every article that talks about improvements in
| efficiency in recycling and the continuing improvements help
| to set the record straight.
|
| We could reach almost steady state of battery materials
| eventually with more and better battery recycling. I wonder
| when that might be expected? 30 years for EVs to go through
| the car fleet and replace all other cars, then most battery
| materials can come from recycling? However there will likely
| be different minerals in new battery tech over time, will
| solid state batteries be as recyclable?
| pompino wrote:
| Improving public transportation is a far superior solution
| than forcing people to buy EV cars by outlawing gas
| engines. For the median income in the US, or person working
| minimum wage - all of this is pie-in-the-sky elite talk.
| EVs are essentially for rick folks to feel better about
| themselves.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| Class warfare aside, public transport will transition to
| EVs as well and there is a lot of promise in self driving
| vehicles smaller than a bus making public transport
| cheaper, more flexible, and more attractive.
|
| In the end people will buy EVs because they are cheaper
| and better. Governments are just trying to set goals and
| promote action against climate change.
| pompino wrote:
| There is no benefit to public transport when EV companies
| gets our tax money to build their charger network, or
| offering thousands of dollars of tax credit to rich folks
| to buy EVs.
|
| >In the end people will buy EVs because they are cheaper
| and better.
|
| I'm hoping people switch from EVs to public transit.
| Personally, I'm more interested in how the government can
| expand public transit in general so that the need for EV
| cars is eliminated or substantially reduced in the first
| place.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| The easiest way to get people to switch to public
| transport is to make it suck less. Short of forcing
| people to use it that's kind of the only way. It also
| contributes to CO2 emissions so it has to go electric and
| improvements in EVs also helps there.
|
| I can see your preference for public transport, but it's
| already heavily subsidised and only used by a minority of
| people in most places. Subsidies for EVs, which aim to
| reduce emissions from cars, which are extremely popular,
| seems quite equitable.
|
| I don't think further subsidy of public transport is
| going to materially increase its use, it has to improve
| beyond incremental availability. As I said automated
| vehicles are a much more promising avenue for drastically
| increasing public transport use.
| cyberax wrote:
| Public transit is NEVER a good solution. It's at most a
| miserable workaround for inability to use personal cars.
| Animats wrote:
| The really important point: "Furthermore, the ni-DESs are
| highly soluble in water and can be recovered and recycled."
|
| Most leaching processes produce toxic waste, often very large
| quantities of toxic waste. It's usually soluble in water, so
| plants have big leachate ponds, where the water evaporates,
| leaving behind some kind of sludge. The question here is, can
| this new leachate really be recycled effectively, or is there
| a sludge-disposal problem?
|
| This is probably a solveable problem, because recycling
| batteries starts with a very rich resource. It's processes
| which extract from low-grade ores that yield giant dumps of
| leftover crud. Gold and rare earth extraction are notorious
| for this.
| lazide wrote:
| The original mining process almost certainly involved some
| kind of leachate processing process too. And it's pretty
| unlikely to be worse doing it on battery components where
| all the original components were highly refined.
| tonetegeatinst wrote:
| This is what my understanding of EV battery recycling is at. It
| all gets shredded and then the separate the enclosure from the
| actual battery.
|
| Then they get a mixture of the annode and cathode + any
| electrolyte solution.
|
| My understanding is that the anode and cathode are separated
| into separate containers....and who knows what the electrolyte
| solution is doing....its probably stuck in both piles or burnt
| off
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| > The percentage of cobalt in modern lithium ion batteries (ie:
| tesla/panasonic's nmc-811 cells) is only 8% of the battery
| material
|
| Worth pointing out that with LFP batteries, it's actually zero
| percent. There are a few more cobalt free battery chemistries.
| But this is so far the most popular one with a rapidly growing
| market share that is closing in on 40% of the market. Lots of
| Teslas and other vehicles use them. There are a few more cobalt
| free battery chemistries of course. Sodium ion is getting some
| usage in China lately and does not involve cobalt, for example.
| And some of the solid state batteries don't use it either.
|
| Cobalt isn't actually controversial because it's rare but
| because the way some of it is mined in Congo (i.e. with
| children). Most of it is actually fine and mined in a more
| humane way. Using children is not a hard requirement. And as
| the article points out recycling it is pretty doable too. And
| it's not all that rare either. It's by no means a rare earth.
|
| And never mind about the other things children mine. Like
| copper, coal, diamonds, gold, etc. Or the fact that a lot of
| cobalt is also used in other industries. Like the oil refining
| industry, for example. Cobalt is somehow only controversial in
| the context of batteries. Any other form of cobalt usage is
| apparently not worth reporting on, scrutinizing, etc.
|
| A lot of crocodile tears get shed over the poor children in the
| Congo. But only when it concerns batteries for EVs. I wonder
| why that is (rhetorical question with some obvious answers, I
| know) and whether those people actually really care. Because
| they sure are being awfully selective with their outrage.
| thebruce87m wrote:
| The people who care about cobalt being used for EVs don't
| seem to mind when you point out it's also used to refine
| petroleum. It was never about the cobalt.
| rbut wrote:
| It would have been nice to provide a source to back up this
| argument. So I looked it up.
|
| 4% of global cobalt use is used by refineries. 62% of
| global cobalt use is for EVs, and growing.
|
| [1] https://www.perplexity.ai/search/How-much-
| cobalt-5scBTFEHRym...
|
| [2] https://www.perplexity.ai/search/How-much-
| cobalt-5scBTFEHRym...
| Jimmc414 wrote:
| >A lot of crocodile tears get shed over the poor children in
| the Congo. But only when it concerns batteries for EVs. I
| wonder why that is (rhetorical question with some obvious
| answers, I know) and whether those people actually really
| care. Because they sure are being awfully selective with
| their outrage.
|
| Seems a bit complex for an issue as simple as you can extract
| cobalt from spent batteries literally with human pee and
| white vinegar as a solvent.
| Turskarama wrote:
| The point being made is that talking about the use of
| cobalt in batteries is actually beside the point. Unless we
| do something about child labor _in general_ then reducing
| cobalt use will just see those children being exploited in
| some other way. The focus on child labor for mining cobalt
| is 100% just an attack on BEVs, it was never about the
| children who were just being used in yet another way to
| achieve someone elses ends.
| grecy wrote:
| > _I don 't really get the impression that current recycling
| techniques are lacking_
|
| Big money is trying as hard as possible to convince people not
| to buy EVs, and "The batteries are not recyclable" is just
| another wonky arrow in their bent quiver of fear, uncertainty
| and doubt.
|
| In fact, there are huge EV battery recycling plants in the US,
| operating right now:
|
| https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/recycling-renewables/th...
| superkuh wrote:
| Here's the article mirror for anyone like me getting blocked by
| cloudflare no matter what buttons pressed or captchas solved:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240223190753/https://pubs.acs....
|
| BTW, the N-methylurea used in this is extremely mutagenic in
| humans.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Are you confusing that with N-nitroso-N-methylurea?
| overstay8930 wrote:
| There's no breakthrough until a business plan exists to resell
| for a profit, otherwise it's as recyclable as plastic.
| sojournerc wrote:
| You don't think there is a market for recovered cobalt? I see
| your point regarding recyling, but plastic just isn't as
| valuable as cobalt, given the relative difficulty of
| extraction.
| overstay8930 wrote:
| Of course there's a market for it, but if you can't sell it
| for a profit then it doesn't matter how much of a
| breakthrough your recycling project is.
|
| Plastic is trivial to recycle but it's cheaper to buy new
| plastic than to buy recycled plastic.
| StarterPro wrote:
| If only we could find a child-slavery free way to extract and
| process the cobalt.
| thebruce87m wrote:
| There are LFP batteries that don't use cobalt if you want to
| use less of it. It's used for refining crude oil so you can't
| get away from it completely.
| krmblg wrote:
| Disclaimer: didn't read the paper and only have a very basic
| understanding of chemistry (and sorry for simplifying a complex
| topic), but started wondering whether we should be able to
| discover useful reactions via pure calculation by now (ignoring
| quantum effects)?
|
| Despite being a specific domain, wouldn't reasoning about
| reactions (and their efficiency in an industrial, large-scale
| setting) be something that "models" should be able to do quite
| "easily" (given the fact that bonding forces, energy requirements
| and catalytic effects are sort of well-known, i.e. just some more
| dimensions to deal with)?
| spenczar5 wrote:
| Yes, but its not easy. The devil is in the details.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_chemistry
| philipkglass wrote:
| The only kind of bonds we can model reasonably well while
| ignoring quantum effects are hydrogen bonds. Hydrogen bonds can
| be modeled as parameterized effects in Newtonian mechanics, and
| molecular dynamics simulations using Newtonian mechanics can
| reproduce some interesting properties of molecules in solution.
|
| The vast majority of chemical reactions involve changes in
| electronic configuration that are only described by quantum
| mechanics. The most accurate algorithmic approximations of
| electron quantum mechanics have terrible scaling properties -
| O(N^7) or worse. Due to that terrible scaling, the largest
| high-accuracy calculations that are tractable now are not
| _that_ much larger than those that could be completed in the
| 1990s, despite much greater processing power.
|
| There are other ways of approximating quantum effects in
| chemistry that scale better, but they all have tradeoffs and
| weaknesses of their own. They can used in limited domains or
| used to guide experimental design, but they're not accurate
| enough to discover useful reactions via pure calculation. They
| need to work in tandem with experimental validation and it
| requires domain experts in both the experimental and
| theoretical work. The methods are not simple enough for a bench
| chemist to use them as a black box for reaction discovery.
| krmblg wrote:
| Thanks for the reply, really didn't know such a vast amount
| of chemical reactions and outcomes was grounded in QM.
| mkesper wrote:
| Probably because our school atom model is too simple.
| https://www.quantamagazine.org/inside-the-proton-the-most-
| co...
| jabl wrote:
| Broadly speaking, "computational materials science" has been a
| thing for quite a while, and has been responsible for the
| majority of academic supercomputer time allocations for
| decades.
| barbarr wrote:
| Yes, there are many research groups working on this at the
| moment. We can (roughly) screen through chemical reactions
| performed in vaccuum. Even this is difficult since you either
| need to simulate atoms bouncing around until you observe a
| reaction (extremely slow to perform) [0], or you need to
| numerically search for a viable reaction pathway (still quite
| slow to perform) [1]. The main problem is that the best methods
| scale badly with the number of atoms you're simulating, so you
| need to trade off accuracy for speed by using less-accurate
| methods.
|
| Screening through reactions in the real world is particularly
| hard, since you not only need to worry about the inaccuracy of
| your simulation method, but you also need to take
| solvent/environment effects into account. You need to trade off
| even more accuracy for speed if you want to do so. As computing
| power advances, there will be less pressure to make these
| tradeoffs, but a lot of work in comp chem at the moment is
| focused on either exploring or expanding the speed-accuracy
| frontier.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_path_sampling
|
| [1]
| https://people.chem.ucsb.edu/kahn/kalju/chem126/public/qm_ts...
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ab_initio_quantum_chemistry_me...
| krmblg wrote:
| Thanks for the reply and the links. Really have to read up a
| little.
| lumb63 wrote:
| Not a chemist, but I think trying to do chemistry without
| modeling quantum effects is like trying to do physics without
| math. The latter is necessary to express the former.
| krmblg wrote:
| Yeah, reading the sibling comments made me aware that my
| mental model when it comes to chemistry (and the role QM
| plays even in "simple" scenarios) needs an update.
|
| Thanks for the angle!
| doctorhandshake wrote:
| As is often the case, there's a good Volts about the economics
| (and chemistry / physics) of battery recycling:
|
| https://www.volts.wtf/p/electrifying-battery-recycling
| falserum wrote:
| > it effectively replaces fire and chemicals with clean, cheap
| renewable electricity
|
| Does it mean it can work on intermittent electricity? (Cheapest
| renewable is intermittent)
| baseline-shift wrote:
| The energy use is the issue because fossil fuels supply the heat
| for the thermochemistry (like with most industrial processes).
| But direct solar heat could be used instead - this heat is
| supplied by concentrated solar thermal in a novel process
|
| https://www.solarpaces.org/solar-pyrolysis-to-recycle-lithiu...
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