As the popularity of electric vehicles starts to grow explosively, so
does the pile of spent lithium-ion batteries that once powered those
cars. Industry analysts predict that by 2020, China alone will generate
some 500,000 metric tons of used Li-ion batteries and that by 2030, the
worldwide number will hit 2 million metric tons per year.cheap Lithium battery pack
If current trends for handling these spent batteries hold, most of those
batteries may end up in landfills even though Li-ion batteries can be
recycled. These popular power packs contain valuable metals and other
materials that can be recovered, processed, and reused. But very little
recycling goes on today. In Australia, for example, only 2–3% of Li-ion
batteries are collected and sent offshore for recycling, according to
Naomi J. Boxall, an environmental scientist at Australia’s Commonwealth
Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). The recycling
rates in the European Union and the US—less than 5%—aren’t much higher.
“There are many reasons why Li-ion battery recycling is not yet a
universally well-established practice,” says Linda L. Gaines of Argonne
National Laboratory. A specialist in materials and life-cycle analysis,
Gaines says the reasons include technical constraints, economic
barriers, logistic issues, and regulatory gaps.
All those issues feed into a classic chicken-and-egg problem. Because
the Li-ion battery industry lacks a clear path to large-scale economical
recycling, battery researchers and manufacturers have traditionally not
focused on improving recyclability. Instead, they have worked to lower
costs and increase battery longevity and charge capacity. And because
researchers have made only modest progress improving recyclability,
relatively few Li-ion batteries end up being recycled.
Most of the batteries that do get recycled undergo a high-temperature
melting-and-extraction, or smelting, process similar to ones used in the
mining industry. Those operations, which are carried out in large
commercial facilities—for example, in Asia, Europe, and Canada—are
energy intensive. The plants are also costly to build and operate and
require sophisticated equipment to treat harmful emissions generated by
the smelting process. And despite the high costs, these plants don’t
recover all valuable battery materials.
Until now, most of the effort to improve Li-ion battery recycling has
been concentrated in a relatively small number of academic research
groups, generally working independently. But things are starting to
change. Driven by the enormous quantity of spent Li-ion batteries
expected soon from aging electric vehicles and ubiquitous portable
electronics, start-up companies are commercializing new
battery-recycling technology. And more scientists have started to study
the problem, expanding the pool of graduate students and postdocs newly
trained in battery recycling. In addition, some battery, manufacturing,
and recycling experts have begun forming large, multifaceted
collaborations to tackle the impending problem.