Stanford affiliate professor William Tarpeh and Ph.D. scholar Samantha Bunke working within the Tarpeh lab. Credit score: Invoice Rivard/Precourt Institute for Vitality, Stanford College
Recycling lithium-ion batteries to recuperate their crucial metals has considerably decrease environmental impacts than mining virgin metals, based on a brand new Stanford College lifecycle evaluation revealed in Nature Communications. On a big scale, recycling might additionally assist relieve the long-term provide insecurity—bodily and geopolitically—of crucial battery minerals.
Lithium-ion battery recyclers supply supplies from two foremost streams: faulty scrap materials from battery producers, and so-called “dead” batteries, principally collected from workplaces. The recycling course of extracts lithium, nickel, cobalt, copper, manganese, and aluminum from these sources.
The examine quantified the environmental footprint of this recycling course of, and located it emits lower than half the greenhouse gases (GHGs) of standard mining and refinement of those metals and makes use of about one-fourth of the water and power of mining new metals. The environmental advantages are even larger for the scrap stream, which comprised about 90% of the recycled provide studied, coming in at: 19% of the GHG emissions of mining and processing, 12% of the water use, and 11% of the power use. Whereas it was not particularly measured, diminished power use additionally correlates with much less air pollution like soot and sulfur.
“This study tells us that we can design the future of battery recycling to optimize the environmental benefits. We can write the script,” stated William Tarpeh (BS ’12), assistant professor of chemical engineering within the College of Engineering and the examine’s senior writer.
Location, location
Battery recycling’s environmental impacts rely closely on the processing facility’s location and electrical energy supply.
“A battery recycling plant in regions that rely heavily on electricity generated by burning coal would see a diminished climate advantage,” stated Samantha Bunke, a Ph.D. scholar at Stanford and one of many examine’s three lead investigators.
“On the other hand, fresh-water shortages in regions with cleaner electricity are a great concern,” added Bunke.
Many of the examine’s knowledge for battery recycling got here from Redwood Supplies in Nevada—North America’s largest industrial-scale lithium-ion battery recycling facility—which advantages from the western U.S.’s cleaner power combine, which incorporates hydropower, geothermal, and photo voltaic.
Transportation can also be an important issue. Within the mining and processing of cobalt, for instance, 80% of the worldwide provide is mined within the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Then, 75% of the cobalt provide for batteries travels by street, rail, and sea to China for refining. In the meantime, many of the international provide of lithium is mined in Australia and Chile. Most of that offer additionally makes its solution to China. The equal course of for battery recycling is accumulating used batteries and scrap, which should then be transported to the recycler.
“We determined that the total transport distance for conventional mining and refining of just the active metals in a battery averages about 35,000 miles (57,000 kilometers). That’s like going around the world one and a half times,” stated Michael Machala, Ph.D. ’17, additionally a lead writer of the examine.
“Our estimated total transport of used batteries from your cell phone or an EV to a hypothetical refinement facility in California was around 140 miles (225 kilometers),” added Machala, who was a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford’s Precourt Institute for Vitality on the time of analysis and is now a workers scientist for the Toyota Analysis Institute. This distance was primarily based on presumed optimum areas for future refining amenities amid ample U.S. recyclable batteries.
Patent benefit
Redwood’s environmental outcomes don’t symbolize the nascent battery recycling business’s general environmental efficiency for recycling used batteries. Typical pyrometallurgy, a key refining step, may be very power intensive, often requiring temperatures of greater than 2,550 levels Fahrenheit (1,400 levels Celsius).
Redwood, nevertheless, has patented a course of known as “reductive calcination,” which requires significantly decrease temperatures, doesn’t use fossil fuels, and yields extra lithium than standard strategies.
“Other pyrometallurgical processes similar to Redwood’s are emerging in labs that also operate at moderate temperatures and don’t burn fossil fuels,” stated the third lead writer, Xi Chen, a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford throughout the time of analysis and now an assistant professor at Metropolis College of Hong Kong.
“Every time we spoke about our research, companies would ask us questions and incorporate what we were finding into more efficient practices,” added Chen. “This study can inform the scale-up of battery recycling companies, like the importance of picking good locations for new facilities. California doesn’t have a monopoly on aging lithium-ion batteries from cell phones and EVs.”
Wanting forward
Industrial-scale battery recycling is rising, however not shortly sufficient, based on senior writer Tarpeh.
“We’re forecast to run out of new cobalt, nickel, and lithium in the next decade. We’ll probably just mine lower-grade minerals for a while, but 2050 and the goals we have for that year are not far away,” he stated.
Whereas the U.S. now recycles about 50% of accessible lithium-ion batteries, it has efficiently recycled 99% of lead acid batteries for many years. On condition that used lithium-ion batteries include supplies with as much as 10 occasions greater financial worth, the chance is important, Tarpeh stated.
“For a future with a greatly increased supply of used batteries, we need to design and prepare a recycling system today from collection to processing back into new batteries with minimal environmental impact,” he added. “Hopefully, battery manufacturers will consider recyclability more in their future designs, too.”
Extra data:
Michael L. Machala et al, Life cycle comparability of industrial-scale lithium-ion battery recycling and mining provide chains, Nature Communications (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-56063-x
Offered by
Stanford College
Quotation:
Recycling lithium-ion batteries slashes emissions, secures future mineral provide (2025, February 1)
retrieved 1 February 2025
from https://techxplore.com/information/2025-02-recycling-lithium-ion-batteries-slashes.html
This doc is topic to copyright. Other than any honest dealing for the aim of personal examine or analysis, no
half could also be reproduced with out the written permission. The content material is supplied for data functions solely.
Author : tech365
Publish date : 2025-02-01 11:38:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.