Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[enaef]

Some Swiss Zero-Dealers claim the following: "Zero Motorcycles uses a lithium-ion battery for the drive technology, which contains no heavy metals and is completely recyclable."

The original in german: "Zero Motorcycles setzt bei der Antriebstechnik auf einen Lithium-Ionen-Akku, der keine Schwermetalle enthält und komplett recyclebar ist."

I wasn't able to find another source which confirms that. However, I did no exhaustive research.

Anybody with any information about that? I'm really interested, if there is really no cobalt in the battery. I already have been asked about that and will be asked again, I'm sure.


If I search for 'cobalt' in this forum, there are several threads popping up which point in another direction than 'free of heavy metals' ...

[BrianTRice@gmail.com]

It sounds like the dealer is speaking out of turn, if I understand right...

Farasis Energy's pouch cells for the last several years have been described as Lithium NMC, or Nickel Manganese Cobalt.

Their recent deal with Daimler, however, does indicate some recycling affordance of some kind that Daimler wants to improve:
- https://insideevs.com/news/371405/daimler-farasis-energy-battery-supplier/
- https://www.greencarcongress.com/2019/09/20190912-farasis.html

I would generally bet on only the manufacturer (Zero) being able to process spent batteries at all, and probably not at a profit. Zero assembles the batteries by packing the cells in an epoxy resin and then encasing it in an armored box.

Farasis' website is down, but here's the unofficial manual entry for them:
https://zeromanual.com/wiki/Farasis
https://zeromanual.com/wiki/Battery/Cells

[Crissa]

Does the motor contain heavy metals?  Is there a proportion that's considered significant?

There's cobalt in ev batteries, but the amount is very small.  Tesla uses ~3% while VW uses 12% cobalt in a cell.  But the cell is a small part of the overall battery, and doesn't count the resin and case, either.

-Crissa

[Fran K]

What is a heavy metal?  Cobalt atomic number 27 atomic weight 59.

Is it rare earth metal that post 1 means to ask?

Carisa,  Take a battery for a Makita 18 volt tool.  It is basically some cylindrical cells and a circuit board. Of course a housing as well.  There are you tube videos taking the genuine ones and the aftermarket ones apart. 

That video is pretty tame compared to the mercury mining pictures I remember in a magazine when I was  young.

[Doug S]

"Heavy" metals aren't necessarily heavy, and "rare earth" metals aren't necessarily rare. It's just the family they're in.

Elements are all "natural", and they're necessary to some degree in everything that's fabricated. Sometimes there are safer or more ecological alternatives, sometimes there aren't, or sometimes the performance sacrifice is too great.

To me, the important thing is that lithium is highly recyclable. I'm pretty sure most if not all metals are pretty easily retrieved, refined and recycled. But the next questions are, is it economical to do so, and is there industry infrastructure set up to do it? Sadly, I don't think there are a lot of places set up yet to recycle lithium or the other elements commonly used in lithium batteries. Hopefully I'm wrong about that, or it'll change as people see the opportunity to make money doing it.

[SebfromBE]

Some naming conventions:
Co, Ni, Mn, Cu, etc... are usually called 'transition metal'
Heavy metal family is more toward Ta, W, Pt, Pd, etc...

 No doubts a lot of confusion and misquote will happen during translation from engineering terms to marketing and servicing terms... So unless they specify the elements they are talking about, I would not speculate too much :-)

Aside from that, the heavy metals (such as Pt, Pd) are definitely nice to try to recycle, since worldwide productions yearly is counted in tens of ton... Co and other transition metals are produced in much greater quantity (although not necessarily cleanly or fairly, but that is something else)

[NoMoreIdeas]

I did some reading up on recyclability of lithium batteries about a week ago. In short, they are not profitable to recycle without government subsidies. There actually isn't a ton of lithium in the batteries, most of it is copper with other small amounts of materials like magnesium, graphite and Cobalt. It's difficult to obtain since lithium is very reactive with oxygen, among how to separate these materials chemically in a pure enough state to re-use. There is currently no known method to reclaim lithium from batteries in a purity required for new battery. This really worries me as the boom of emerging EVs will be needing to replace their batteries here soon. Also there's a growing concern of throwing away / recycling lithium batteries as they are causing fires when crushed.

Ironically lead acid batteries are the best for the environment to recycle, as they are nearly 100% recycled and the process is easy. Batteries are thrown in a shredder, the acid is collected, the solid parts go into a bath of water that neutralizes any residual acid, the plastic floats and is collected, since its a thermoplastic, it is re-injected into a new battery case. The lead sinks and is collected and smelted into new lead plates.

[Richard230]

I did some reading up on recyclability of lithium batteries about a week ago. In short, they are not profitable to recycle without government subsidies. There actually isn't a ton of lithium in the batteries, most of it is copper with other small amounts of materials like magnesium, graphite and Cobalt. It's difficult to obtain since lithium is very reactive with oxygen, among how to separate these materials chemically in a pure enough state to re-use. There is currently no known method to reclaim lithium from batteries in a purity required for new battery. This really worries me as the boom of emerging EVs will be needing to replace their batteries here soon. Also there's a growing concern of throwing away / recycling lithium batteries as they are causing fires when crushed.

Ironically lead acid batteries are the best for the environment to recycle, as they are nearly 100% recycled and the process is easy. Batteries are thrown in a shredder, the acid is collected, the solid parts go into a bath of water that neutralizes any residual acid, the plastic floats and is collected, since its a thermoplastic, it is re-injected into a new battery case. The lead sinks and is collected and smelted into new lead plates.

That appears to be the case. My local recycling yard will not touch lithium batteries, especially since a recycling facility in a neighboring city caught on fire about a year ago and burnt to the ground.  The fire was blamed on lithium batteries being disposed of by electronic device consumers.  However, they have no objection to accepting lead-acid batteries.  Interestingly, they will take car tires for a fee (I think it is $15), but will not accept motorcycle tires, likely because the tire recycling company that picks up their used tires is unable to fit them into their plant or storage system.   

There was a news report today that said that a local study discovered that most recycling facilities in the SF Bay Area just dump the plastic recycling stuff into their garbage waste and bury it in a landfill. They do this because it costs more to recycle plastics than it costs to dump them into landfill.  It is all about the money, of course.

I agree with you that I have no idea how EV lithium (and 12V lithium vehicle batteries, for that matter) are going to be able to be disposed of when the time comes to replace them.  Maybe Tesla will figure out what to do, as they would seem to have the greatest potential for disposal issues?

[Richard230]

Speaking of recycling lithium batteries, I just remembered that Zero's first batteries that were used in their 2008-2009 models were said to be "salt-based"  and were fully recyclable.  I wondered about that statement, but I can't recall anyone discussing their battery design. In any case, whatever they used for a battery in the very early years, by 2012 it was lithium all the way.

Since Zero recalled (and I assume destroyed) the entire 2012 model year S and DS production, they must have figured out a way to dispose of the lithium EIG batteries that powered those bikes.

[ESokoloff]

.................

I agree with you that I have no idea how EV lithium (and 12V lithium vehicle batteries, for that matter) are going to be able to be disposed of when the time comes to replace them.  Maybe Tesla will figure out what to do, as they would seem to have the greatest potential for disposal issues?

Maybe not Tesla directly but rather an offshoot. 

[Richard230]

That was an interesting blog regarding Redwood Materials, although a $2 million investment to get the project started doesn't seem like enough. But I assume that once the company comes up with a business plan and some ideas how recycling lithium batteries can be accomplished economically, then investor (or Tesla) money will start rolling in.

I would certainly like to learn how recycling lithium batteries can be accomplished. Would they just throw spent batteries into a hopper, grind them up, and then separate the materials out via some method?    Or would it be more complicated than that? All I can say is good luck to Redwood Materials. I hope they can find a way to make recycling work to the point where it is more economical to recycle than to dump old batteries into landfill.  As I always say, it is all about the money. 

[Curt]

There's lots of detailed information about recycling all types of batteries on this page:
https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/recycling_batteries

Unfortunately, government subsidies are needed because recycling Li batteries takes 6-10x as much energy as mining. That really surprises me.

[Richard230]

There's lots of detailed information about recycling all types of batteries on this page:
https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/recycling_batteries

Unfortunately, government subsidies are needed because recycling Li batteries takes 6-10x as much energy as mining. That really surprises me.

Me too.   

[Crissa]

Make aure that the references are talking about recycling lithium pouches from cars, and not confusing it with lithium buttons.

Right now the money is in remanufacturing (refurbish) bulk units:  Finding the individual cells that aren't working and sorting them by degradation then making new power units from the cells.

That's very much a different proposition than breaking down the cells themselves.  And the new larger cells are easier to extract than the older button and cylinder cells; while the cylinder cells are easier to remanufacture than the pouches.

-Crissa

[Curt]

Right now the money is in remanufacturing (refurbish) bulk units:  Finding the individual cells that aren't working and sorting them by degradation then making new power units from the cells.

Refurbishing is certainly important to reducing the amount of recycling. The battery in my Chevy Bolt had to be replaced at 2 months old! The whole thing was replaced because the dealer doesn't have the capability to disassemble it and fix specific problems (in this case, a coolant leak). I'm sure the battery got factory refurbed and installed in a different car for another warranty job. But there must be an age limit to refurbishing. Having a mix of old and new cells is almost as bad a problem as having all old cells.

At some point, all spent cells need to get completely recycled. The surprising part is they apparently can't just throw them in a big smelter and separate out the metals in bulk. Basically make a big slug rich in all the needed materials and then "mine" it. Shouldn't that be easier than digging up rocks?