ElectricMotorcycleForum.com
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: DonTom on February 06, 2021, 11:54:24 AM
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Recycling Lithium batteries isn't as easy as lead-acid.
See here. (https://www.wired.com/story/the-race-to-crack-battery-recycling-before-its-too-late/)
-Don- Auburn, CA
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Thanks Don. That was a very interesting and informative article. :)
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Good article, tho needed another editorial pass. Hmm.
-Crissa
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I found a little quote.
"“Designing for recycling is a very important area, but you can’t sacrifice performance at all, or nobody’s going to want to do it,” says Gaines. "
Thel first part seems ok the second 2/3 is questionable.
Fran
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I found a little quote.
"“Designing for recycling is a very important area, but you can’t sacrifice performance at all, or nobody’s going to want to do it,” says Gaines. "
Thel first part seems ok the second 2/3 is questionable.
Fran
I don't know about that. Nearly EVERY advertisement I read for an electric motorcycle seems to stress horsepower, torque and acceleration times. Several sentences later in the ad copy you'll see some mention of battery capacity and recharge time. To me, that sure seems like the marketing department knows their target market...
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I think the only way for batteries to be more recyclable by design is for solutions to be mandated.
Otherwise yeah, if making your battery less easy to recycle gives you better performance or even just cheaper manufacturing costs, those are the EV's that are going to sell while those prioritizing recyclability will go out of business.
We've had this discussion recently about Zero potting their pouch cells, which makes the packs difficult to service or disassemble and presumably also difficult to recycle. But any solution that replaced the potting would likely decrease capacity, cooling performance, and water-resistance.
We're still at the point where the first question about any EV is what is what's the range, recharge time, and price. Any decision that doesn't directly impact those three factors in a positive way is not going to be the manufacturers priority.
I've said it before but at this point battery recycling and pack replacements are the biggest issue facing long term EV adoption. If after ten years our vehicles are full of 60kwh of hazardous waste we don't have the capacity or economics to recycle, our attempts to go green are not nearly as effective as we want them to be.
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Recycling Lithium batteries isn't as easy as lead-acid.
See here. (https://www.wired.com/story/the-race-to-crack-battery-recycling-before-its-too-late/)
-Don- Auburn, CA
Déjà vu all over again .....
https://www.electricmotorcycleforum.com/boards/index.php?topic=10713.0
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VW seems to have a strategy for reclaiming the core materials from packs:
https://youtu.be/Qi8Y2lF7Luw (https://youtu.be/Qi8Y2lF7Luw)
The above process mirrors how Pb batteries are recycled, they are crushed and separated into base ingredients: plastic, sulfuric acid & lead.
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Reuse of lithium is another story, it's a developing industry that has a lot of potential.
The DIY hobby of salvaging, testing and repurposing cells for personal energy storage is growing too. The market for low voltage DC inverters and other power management products is booming.
Best part, this ties into the renewable energy space as people work to build solar and wind systems to harvest and store power.
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Is there any way the Zero packs can be recycled once they are done for?
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Is there any way the Zero packs can be recycled once they are done for?
If they can, Zero is keeping quiet about it. ::)
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Is there any way the Zero packs can be recycled once they are done for?
Nearly everything can be recycled. How much are you willing to spend on the recycling? The real question is under what circumstances does recycling (or repurposing) become more expensive and/or less environmentally friendly than creating new from scratch?
In my city the only thing that makes money for the recycling company is aluminum. Paper, cardboard, plastic and glass are all money losers now that the Chinese are pretty much refusing to accept our "recycling" debris. (After all, we sure don't want it around here. ::) ) So our garbage disposal rates help to subsidize the company's recycling program. If it doesn't make money recycling is not going to be appreciated commercially in California unless it is government or publicly subsidized. I am not sure what is happening with paper and plastic waste, but I have heard for years that glass just gets dumped into landfill because it costs too much to recycle it into useful products. As always, in the U.S. it is all about money. ;)
Hardly a day goes by when I don't hear about their latest EV plans and new and improved EV technology from the major automobile manufacturers but I sure don't hear much regarding their plans to recycle the hundreds of millions of lithium batteries that will be the result of all of those potential EV vehicle sales. ???
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Hardly a day goes by when I don't hear about their latest EV plans and new and improved EV technology from the major automobile manufacturers but I sure don't hear much regarding their plans to recycle the hundreds of millions of lithium batteries that will be the result of all of those potential EV vehicle sales. ???
Reminds me of this song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izQB2-Kmiic), especially the words "He's taken everything this old Earth can give. And he ain't put back nothing." -Nothing but a lot of lithium battery waste!
-Don- Auburn, CA
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How many lithium packs are "done"? A pack in just about any condition will sell and there's plenty of buyers wanting a used one. There's not much demand for lithium pack recycling right now. Maybe in a decade or two when packs aren't salvageable? Who wants a 30 year old, used, 60kWh pack that needs half its cells replaced?
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How many lithium packs are "done"? A pack in just about any condition will sell and there's plenty of buyers wanting a used one. There's not much demand for lithium pack recycling right now. Maybe in a decade or two when packs aren't salvageable? Who wants a 30 year old, used, 60kWh pack that needs half its cells replaced?
Yeah, I figure they will not all age and crap out at once. Especially with early failures as in my Zero DS that crapped out in two years. I assume most of those cells are still good.
BTW, do you think whomever does the batteries for Zero reuses those cells in new Zero batteries?
-Don- Auburn, CA
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Nah, I imagine when a Zero is wrecked, it gets turned into a cyberquad, like Rich did. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ERp_gy4L48
Or, the pack gets pulled and put into a sailboat.
If not wrecked, yeah, there's companies and hobbyists that replace the bad cells in a "Dead" pack and the pack is 99% as good as new. I just don't see many scenarios where a pack is tossed in the landfill, too valuable.
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Yeah, stripped and put into stationary power packs for solar installs, cabins.
-Crissa