While lithium extraction technologies generally focus on ways to get the essential metal out of the ground, there’s another source to mine: existing batteries that no longer work. A new technique could now make that process economically viable.
illini pride:
Enter the new technique from scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. There, a team led by chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Xiao Su, has been spending time disassembling batteries and then submerging them in an organic solvent. This leads to a brine that contains lithium as well as other metals present in the batteries.
To harvest the lithium, the team developed a special electrode created from a copolymer consisting of molecules that attach to lithium and those that respond to an electrical current. When placed inside the brine and electrified, it sucked only lithium from the solution like a sponge, leaving other metals behind.
“A new technique could now make that process economically viable.”
That reminds me of that Tumblr post about Aperture Science celebrating pride month.
"Congratulations Earth, your survival just became Economically Viable™ "
Question is does that $12.70/kg figure include sourcing the spent batteries?
Great news, but would be curious to know if the figures are apples to apples, or if one of them excludes cost of the raw material.
If they’re hiding something and aren’t comparing apples to apples, it wouldn’t be a scientific comparison and they wouldn’t be scientists. Let us know what you find.
Note when the article made the comparison, it seemingly sourced the comparative figure independently, not the scientists. So the scientists may be in good faith describing ‘incremental cost to take presumed existing battery material and recover lithium from it’ and article trying it’s best but not thinking things through presents "number that would implicitly include processing, but also cost of acquiring the raw material as well’. So no one may be trying to ‘hide’ something, but still the comparison is somewhat flawed.
Just seeing how even if everything is being honestly presented, we may still be in a position where mined lithium is still cheaper than recycled even as all the figures suggest that shouldn’t be the case at face value.
As long as the cost is lower than mining it from the ground, I think other gaps can be overcome, especially where batteries already have their own logistic waste path. Though I guess it also depends on scale required to get that cost. If it’s something that can be set up at any waste facility, sourcing might be close to “free”, as in it might just require a redirection of what’s currently done. I don’t think it even needs to be cheaper than mined lithium, since there’s other costs associated with that, like environmental.
Right, a lot of questions that are frankly outside the scope of their specific work, since it depends on what the general ‘market’ is for used batteries today and if there’s any opportunity cost associated with the process (e.g. you can get the lithium, but you somehow make retrieving other materials tough.
But yeah, if the $13.17 figure is, say, $3.17 raw lithium and extraction and $10 of ‘processing’, then the cost of spent batteries would have to be less than $0.77/kg by lithium content to be break-even.
I’m hopeful that even nearly break even is enough to move the needle, but companies love taking advantage of cheaping out by inflicting externalized costs on the environment…
We can power the country on vape pen lithium.
I have a hard time believing it’s cheaper than from my local lithium guy.
I have a slight suspicion we’re not talking about the same lithium here
Stop it before you give some MAHA influencers the idea for a new “ditch your mood stabilizers, lick used batteries instead!” trend… 😵
Licking batteries has been proven to lighten your mood according to three major scientists with published papers in Nordic countries.
Used batteries just come with the extra benefit of being multi use, first in your regular electronics, and then in your synapses.
How else would you recharge after a long day?
Start with smaller batteries, take it slow, relax, use lube, you’ll get to D batteries in no time.
That’s the advantage of sourcing it locally, of course. I have a feeling these guys have gamified lithium collection through an app like uber or grubhub or airbnb, ultimately taking all the advantage we once had for simply being local…
Idk where they got the picture from but 4300mah in aa size would be insane. Thats like 2.5 times as much capacity as how much the best ones provide currently.
It’s probably an AI gen image.
Was gonna say maybe they’re 18650s but it Def says AA on them. I’m gonna go with it’s a made up / AI-generated image
They would have to be 21700 cells to hold 4.3AH. 18650 cells top out around 3.6AH. While it is possible to make higher capacity cells, there are some major downsides with doing so.
Yeah probably tho i kinda wish they existed lol
It’s just a stock photo used since at least 2017 that appears to have had the 4300mah text added on more recently.
Looks like AI to me. Also, those would most likely be NiMH batteries, which AFAIK don’t have any lithium.
The way its packaged with the indent at the top would make it a lithium cell but yeah its fake anyways
In case anyone’s curious: it is likely a cell wrapper misprint/typo.
4300mWh AA lithium ion cells are a standard extended-life chemistry. 2866 mAh is their actual rated capacity.
Maybe they’re just ultra fire batteries?
🩵
One time I went to a local shop with cheap electronics etc, and they sold…
UItraFirebatteries, with aniinstead of anl! Double fake 😄
There are plenty of cells that size over 3000mah.
The highest capacity one that is properly commercially available is the vapcell f15 which is known for quality control issues. Its advertised capacity is 1500mah but multiple sources measured it at an actual usable capacity of 1250-1350.
14500s are fairly uncommon… I assumed these were the much more common 18650.
If this truly works, that would be fantastic news, but getting clean lithium out of a used battery that has been degraded and the lithium has become contaminated sounds extremely complicated, so I’m still a bit skepical on the feasibility of it.
The process honestly sounds to me a little bit like decaffeination, which also feels like witchcraft to me. So it might work!
While most of science has thoroughly moved away from their mystic roots chemistry marches right back into alchemy.
Might have to start calling it the chemistry
That means battery prices will be coming down, right? Right?
You say that like they havent been? The price per kWh for lithium batteries has been consistently falling for over a decade. I see no reason to believe that this tech wouldn’t result in further price decreases if it could be built at scale.
Lithium batteries have dropped 90% in price in the last decade.
No. For a process to have an impact to the economy at large it must either be substantially cheaper or be given enough time.
Bullshit, just like we can replace fossil fuels by making algae biofuel (leaving out the part where there’s no possible way to scale that enough to do ANYTHING)
I’d love to be wrong tho
May well be bs but for different reasons.
Algae is an alternative fuel and has no link to fossil fuels. This takes an existing but expired fuel and extracts usable material, or so it says. In any case they aren’t comparable.
Comparable in that it’s presented as a solution to a problem when it’s really not a solution at all, I meant
Ah okay 👍
Not related directly to the article, which I found interesting, but I’d never heard of this website before and there seems to be many great articles on it! Another website to follow for me!
