First we heard that EV batteries could not be recycled. Next we heard it wasn’t practical. Well, it can be done and it is practical. And there is more than one way to do it.
If you think about the mining industry, it is the process of extracting a “mixture of stuff” from the ground and separating out what you really want. More often than not what you want is a very small percentage of the mixture. Today we know that using trash as the mixture of stuff to start with to get aluminum is more efficient than mining aluminum ore. Well, the same is true for battery materials.
Munro Live talks to one recycling company about this. What you will learn is:
- There are two sources — scrap from battery manufacturing and extraction from old batteries
- There are multiple extraction methods with different efficiencies and environmental impacts
Clearly EV battery material recycling is in its infancy but we can use our knowledge of aluminum recycling to project the future.
For those that say there are not enough dead EV batteries for this industry to be taken seriously yet, about 30% of the materials used in making new EV batteries end up as scrap. So, yes, there is something to recycle today much like much of recycled paper comes from scrap in paper manufacturing.
