Yeah it takes insane amounts of electricity. There’s an aluminium smelter in NZ with an entire hydroelectric power plant dedicated to it. 13% of the total electricity supply of NZ dedicated to just one smelter.
I believe 10% of a lithium battery is lithium. I mean, it’s impressive and I love a closed loop for the life of any component, but this doesn’t really solve our need for more lithium. Reduce it yes, but not end the requirement for more extraction
The whole reason why lithium is such a good material for cathodes in car batteries is because of its very low mass per cation. So for a Lithium Iron Phosphate battery, the the cathode material is LiFePO4, where the Lithium itself is only 4.4% of the overall mass of the cathode.
So it’s important to remember that although the lithium constitutes a small amount of the total mass of a battery, that swings both ways so that not much is actually needed to build the next battery out of recycled materials.
You would not believe how inefficient mining is for platinum and rhodium in ICE catalytic convertors. The oil and gas industry has really drilled into the heads of people that lithium is evil.
You know what the richest ore for finding metals for new batteries is? Old batteries. Same applies to solar panels. This is great to see.
Also for aluminum it’s cheaper to recycle aluminum than to produce it from raw ore.
Yeah it takes insane amounts of electricity. There’s an aluminium smelter in NZ with an entire hydroelectric power plant dedicated to it. 13% of the total electricity supply of NZ dedicated to just one smelter.
holy crap that’s immense; how do you power concrete production?
Yeah ive played rimworld too.
I believe 10% of a lithium battery is lithium. I mean, it’s impressive and I love a closed loop for the life of any component, but this doesn’t really solve our need for more lithium. Reduce it yes, but not end the requirement for more extraction
But I presume a new battery also only need 10% lithium?
Right, I don’t understand their point. Recycling 90% of a battery is still 90% of a new battery.
It also assumes that we’d still using the same amount of lithium when we get to a point that it’s not so cheap they put it in disposable cigarettes.
Exactly.
The whole reason why lithium is such a good material for cathodes in car batteries is because of its very low mass per cation. So for a Lithium Iron Phosphate battery, the the cathode material is LiFePO4, where the Lithium itself is only 4.4% of the overall mass of the cathode.
So it’s important to remember that although the lithium constitutes a small amount of the total mass of a battery, that swings both ways so that not much is actually needed to build the next battery out of recycled materials.
Any metal in a car needs mining and extraction.
You would not believe how inefficient mining is for platinum and rhodium in ICE catalytic convertors. The oil and gas industry has really drilled into the heads of people that lithium is evil.