Battery Recycling?
Discussion
Whenever I let people know that I am quite keen on the whole EV thing, despite not having the desire to buy one as yet, they start rattling on about how bad they are for the environment.
These new environmentalist have been strangely silent regarding oils spills, explosions, environmental damage from oil extraction and the wars its caused, never mind the current ropey air in town and city centres, however we will ignore that.
But, they are going on about the impending battery mountains from defunct EV's piling up and leeching all manner of nasties, because they cant be reused, cant be recycled and we will be surrounded by dead EVs and their batteries pretty soon.
Is there already a problem ? my thinking is most EVs are fairly new and are on their original batteries, there will be crashed ones and the odd worn out pack but it will be a few hundred, maybe a couple of thousand thus far nationally ?
Will it be a massive problem, whats being done if anything ?
These new environmentalist have been strangely silent regarding oils spills, explosions, environmental damage from oil extraction and the wars its caused, never mind the current ropey air in town and city centres, however we will ignore that.
But, they are going on about the impending battery mountains from defunct EV's piling up and leeching all manner of nasties, because they cant be reused, cant be recycled and we will be surrounded by dead EVs and their batteries pretty soon.
Is there already a problem ? my thinking is most EVs are fairly new and are on their original batteries, there will be crashed ones and the odd worn out pack but it will be a few hundred, maybe a couple of thousand thus far nationally ?
Will it be a massive problem, whats being done if anything ?
I've been thinking this for a while and I think it is a valid point. I looked at Nissan Leaf's the other day (not that I would buy one in a millions years, was for a thread on here) and saw a good few marching towards 100k miles.
If I am rightly informed, a mere <5% of batteries are recycled. So to me, it sounds like an issue that will only become worse as everyone makes the move to EV.
If I am rightly informed, a mere <5% of batteries are recycled. So to me, it sounds like an issue that will only become worse as everyone makes the move to EV.
There is a big market for using old EV batteries as home storage where the 80% capacity doesn't really matter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqlOlqK_ot8
There are also recycling plants that dismantle the batteries to create new ones. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bpe8HalVXFU
It's actually illegal to dump batteries in land fill. So in short, the stories are b0llocks.
Also consider that...
Oil - Extracted, refined, distributed, used once.
Batteries - Extracted, refined, distributed, used 10,000 times.
There are also recycling plants that dismantle the batteries to create new ones. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bpe8HalVXFU
It's actually illegal to dump batteries in land fill. So in short, the stories are b0llocks.
Also consider that...
Oil - Extracted, refined, distributed, used once.
Batteries - Extracted, refined, distributed, used 10,000 times.
Who told you they can't be re-used or recycled?
They can and are being be re-used (more efficient than recycling) for grid storage as the battery tech becomes obsolete for road use. Batteries in old EVs aren't so much wearing out, just as battery tech moves on no one will be willing to drive a first gen EV that can only do 60-70 miles. Renault, Toyota and others are planning to remove batteries from unwanted older EVs and put them to other uses. At the end of that second life they will then be recycled.
They can and are being be re-used (more efficient than recycling) for grid storage as the battery tech becomes obsolete for road use. Batteries in old EVs aren't so much wearing out, just as battery tech moves on no one will be willing to drive a first gen EV that can only do 60-70 miles. Renault, Toyota and others are planning to remove batteries from unwanted older EVs and put them to other uses. At the end of that second life they will then be recycled.
Depends on the definition of “re-cycled”.
The current approach of shredding things followed by chemical extraction is fabulously expensive and produces a product that cannot commercially compete with digging holes in the ground. So yes it is possible - but it is not economically viable at the moment. You could make it economically viable by taxing the hell out of lithium mining, but we’re trying to make the batteries cheaper.
Sticking half dead car cells in a house? Right, who is going to write the 10 year warranty on a half dead pack? And who will buy it if there is no warranty?
The current approach of shredding things followed by chemical extraction is fabulously expensive and produces a product that cannot commercially compete with digging holes in the ground. So yes it is possible - but it is not economically viable at the moment. You could make it economically viable by taxing the hell out of lithium mining, but we’re trying to make the batteries cheaper.
Sticking half dead car cells in a house? Right, who is going to write the 10 year warranty on a half dead pack? And who will buy it if there is no warranty?
There is an absolutely massive problem with battery recycling
And that is the fact that so far, there simply aren't enough batteries available to recycle!!
Today, with limited sales volumes and a unsated demand for second life use, a used EV battery is worth a fortune. An old leaf for example, that (pre pandemic) cost £4k as a working car, has a battery in it that is worth at least £3k!
If you crash your EV, you can basically sell your battery and powertrain for roughly what your car is worth when working :-)
And because manufacturers were so conservative with battery ageing, few batteries get replaced mid-life, and EVs being broadly simple things mechanically can have a long life, both factors meaning second hand EV batteries are scarce and valuable.
Now this situtation will eventually change, as EV production ramps up and more and more batteries are available second hand. But there is a big difference with a battery and say a second hand engine that you might see at a scrap yard today. A second hand engine is broadly, mostly worthless, because it only has a single, very specific use. A 2010 tdi engine from a ford focus for example is of no use to anyone other than someone wanting an engine for their 2010 tdi focus. This is why you can buy that engine for around £200 only. A second hand battery is a very different propersition indeed. A leaf battery pack can of course be used in another leaf, but it can also be used for a home battery, for a grid or industrial backup load leveller, or be used in a completely diferent car that has been converted to EV.
So whilst new battery cell cosats tumble below the $100 per kWh mark, we won't see second hand cells being worthless at anypoint, because they are simply too usefull for too many other industries.
However, the major OE's have looked at, and have understood what it will take to implement large scale recovery of the base elements in a EV battery. Today, at a realistic cost, around 95% of a battery is fairly easily recyclable and pliot plants have proven that. Because these pilots are small scale (handing tens of batteries a week, not thousands) they are actually less efficient and more explensive than a full scale plant, and currently require a fairly significant labour overhead, (because the cost of full automation is not feasible at small scale).
But fundamentally, and this is the important point, there is absolutely nothing preventing the wide scale recycling of the vast majority of materials in a EV battery, and the technology and process to do this has been demonstated already.
And that is the fact that so far, there simply aren't enough batteries available to recycle!!
Today, with limited sales volumes and a unsated demand for second life use, a used EV battery is worth a fortune. An old leaf for example, that (pre pandemic) cost £4k as a working car, has a battery in it that is worth at least £3k!
If you crash your EV, you can basically sell your battery and powertrain for roughly what your car is worth when working :-)
And because manufacturers were so conservative with battery ageing, few batteries get replaced mid-life, and EVs being broadly simple things mechanically can have a long life, both factors meaning second hand EV batteries are scarce and valuable.
Now this situtation will eventually change, as EV production ramps up and more and more batteries are available second hand. But there is a big difference with a battery and say a second hand engine that you might see at a scrap yard today. A second hand engine is broadly, mostly worthless, because it only has a single, very specific use. A 2010 tdi engine from a ford focus for example is of no use to anyone other than someone wanting an engine for their 2010 tdi focus. This is why you can buy that engine for around £200 only. A second hand battery is a very different propersition indeed. A leaf battery pack can of course be used in another leaf, but it can also be used for a home battery, for a grid or industrial backup load leveller, or be used in a completely diferent car that has been converted to EV.
So whilst new battery cell cosats tumble below the $100 per kWh mark, we won't see second hand cells being worthless at anypoint, because they are simply too usefull for too many other industries.
However, the major OE's have looked at, and have understood what it will take to implement large scale recovery of the base elements in a EV battery. Today, at a realistic cost, around 95% of a battery is fairly easily recyclable and pliot plants have proven that. Because these pilots are small scale (handing tens of batteries a week, not thousands) they are actually less efficient and more explensive than a full scale plant, and currently require a fairly significant labour overhead, (because the cost of full automation is not feasible at small scale).
But fundamentally, and this is the important point, there is absolutely nothing preventing the wide scale recycling of the vast majority of materials in a EV battery, and the technology and process to do this has been demonstated already.
rxe said:
Sticking half dead car cells in a house? Right, who is going to write the 10 year warranty on a half dead pack? And who will buy it if there is no warranty?
who? people who will make a massive amount of money as a result.Lets consider a gen 1 renualt zoe, just about the smallest, slowest BEV you can buy. That car has a 66kw motor and a 22kWh battery. Both pathetic in terms of BEVs, but even that weedy BEV still is incredibly powerful and energy dense when you look at domestic useage. A kettle is 3kW, a power shower perhaps 7kW, so that tiny zoe battery could run around 20 kettles or 10 power showers AT ONCE without exceeding it's very conservative ratings. And of course, you don't take 10 power showers at once. Limited to a much more realistic 20kW, that battery will have a huge lifetime, in fact, cell studies show that for less peaky loads, a second life battery could have an effectively unlimited life because it stops degrading and can actually be healed if managed properly.
And because modern battery packs have modern Battery Management systems, any one using those batteries can monitor exactly how they are ageing, and pre-emptive replacement can be done, and of course swapping a module or cell is really easy to do because a battery is a mechanically simple device. (A cell replacement in a gen 1 leaf can be completed in around 45min, it's not like changing a complex and highly interconnected engine or gearbox)
Anyone who suggests that second batteries are not a valuble commodity is i'm afraid to say either ignorant, too stupid to understand, or so biased and bigotted to have blinded themselves to the facts......
Well the BBC and a professor would appear to disagree on the ease of recycling
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220105-lithiu...
TL:DR - current shredding approaches are economically unviable, and they’ve found some cool ideas that they hope to demonstrate in the future.
As for home use … well this is where it gets a bit interesting. Take a 10 grand Tesla power wall. It would appear that the cell cost of the batteries is about $1600. So the idea is that we take a car power pack, work out which cells are really dead, disassemble the packs, repackage the cells into something that can hang on a kitchen well for something materially less than $1600, and be willing to write a 10 year warranty on a bunch of cells that we don’t really know the history of. I suspect that will be challenging.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220105-lithiu...
TL:DR - current shredding approaches are economically unviable, and they’ve found some cool ideas that they hope to demonstrate in the future.
As for home use … well this is where it gets a bit interesting. Take a 10 grand Tesla power wall. It would appear that the cell cost of the batteries is about $1600. So the idea is that we take a car power pack, work out which cells are really dead, disassemble the packs, repackage the cells into something that can hang on a kitchen well for something materially less than $1600, and be willing to write a 10 year warranty on a bunch of cells that we don’t really know the history of. I suspect that will be challenging.
rxe said:
Well the BBC and a professor would appear to disagree on the ease of recycling
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220105-lithiu...
TL:DR - current shredding approaches are economically unviable, and they’ve found some cool ideas that they hope to demonstrate in the future.
As for home use … well this is where it gets a bit interesting. Take a 10 grand Tesla power wall. It would appear that the cell cost of the batteries is about $1600. So the idea is that we take a car power pack, work out which cells are really dead, disassemble the packs, repackage the cells into something that can hang on a kitchen well for something materially less than $1600, and be willing to write a 10 year warranty on a bunch of cells that we don’t really know the history of. I suspect that will be challenging.
Sorry, but it seems you have no idea about which you are talking!https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220105-lithiu...
TL:DR - current shredding approaches are economically unviable, and they’ve found some cool ideas that they hope to demonstrate in the future.
As for home use … well this is where it gets a bit interesting. Take a 10 grand Tesla power wall. It would appear that the cell cost of the batteries is about $1600. So the idea is that we take a car power pack, work out which cells are really dead, disassemble the packs, repackage the cells into something that can hang on a kitchen well for something materially less than $1600, and be willing to write a 10 year warranty on a bunch of cells that we don’t really know the history of. I suspect that will be challenging.
I've worked with, specified, designed, tested, validated and defined passenger car and high performance EV's and DC power systems for the best part of 20 years now.
Take your single point "work out which cells are really dead". Do you know how this is done? do you know how long it takes? do you know the accuracy and robustness of the results? I'm going to guess the answer to all those questions is "no"..... Well, i do, in fact, right now i'm designing a high performance battery management system for a client so i can tell you all the answers and more off the top of my head.
So, listen, it's fine to be sceptical, it's fine to keep an open mind, it's fine to question, but please do try to listen when people explain the answers to you, especially when those people are actually experts in the field as it were :-)
Maybe working out which cells are really dead is easy. But taking stuff apart and reassembling it on an industrial scale is quite hard, and doing it reliably is very hard. If you do the maths on a 10 grand power wall - even if your reassembled packs were free, would people buy the pack that was $1600 off in exchange for less warranty? Would the margins of the business writing the warranty cope with a few service visits to replace dead cells in a warranted pack over 10 years?
Or maybe you’re telling us that the batteries used in cars don’t ever fail, and that we are worrying about nothing. This would be new news, perhaps you should correct the professor in the BBC article, as he may be barking up the wrong tree.
Or maybe you’re telling us that the batteries used in cars don’t ever fail, and that we are worrying about nothing. This would be new news, perhaps you should correct the professor in the BBC article, as he may be barking up the wrong tree.
rxe said:
Maybe working out which cells are really dead is easy. But taking stuff apart and reassembling it on an industrial scale is quite hard, and doing it reliably is very hard. If you do the maths on a 10 grand power wall - even if your reassembled packs were free, would people buy the pack that was $1600 off in exchange for less warranty? Would the margins of the business writing the warranty cope with a few service visits to replace dead cells in a warranted pack over 10 years?
Or maybe you’re telling us that the batteries used in cars don’t ever fail, and that we are worrying about nothing. This would be new news, perhaps you should correct the professor in the BBC article, as he may be barking up the wrong tree.
ok i'll try one last time.Or maybe you’re telling us that the batteries used in cars don’t ever fail, and that we are worrying about nothing. This would be new news, perhaps you should correct the professor in the BBC article, as he may be barking up the wrong tree.
What is a "warranty" ? It's an insurance package for an individual You can get a warranty on an old ICE that is totally f**ked and has been to the moon and back, simply because on average, the policy guarantor makes more than they lose. A battery is actually an incredibly low risk to warrant, because the battery management system tells you EXACTLY the history and life of the cells. Compare that to say an engine, where any number of very expensive complex mechanical parts can suddenly fail, and fail with little of no warning and certainly no nice electronic diagnosis that tells you in black and white well before the failure exactly which cell is worn, and WHY it is worn as well!
You can today, already buy a BEV battery waranty, just like you can for your dishwasher, your ICE car, your phone or any other expensive device.
You seem to think that using a second hand BEV battery pack in a domestic powerwall type arrangement would require a lot of replacement and maintainance, which tells me you know nothing about batteries, battery chemisty, battery management, FMEA's and probabilistic modelling for end of life analysis.
You also state "taking stuff apart and reassembling it on an industrial scale is quite hard, and doing it reliably is very hard" which is ignoring the very fact that the battery pack in a mass produced passenger car is engineered to be specifically assembled on an industrial scale because the OE's need to make millions of the things in the first place!
But hey, it's your ignorance that makes you think it's "impossible" so, sorry, I and many engineers like me are just going to go right ahead and do it anyway :-)
Edited by anonymous-user on Monday 17th January 14:30
One of the co-founders and CTO for Tesla, JB Straubel now is part of Redwood Materials to deal with reuse/repurpose and recycle of lithium packs. Vision is a circular supply chain for EVs.
Probably says enough about it’s credibility. I mean why use high density materials in a box when you can mine for fractions of fresh material….
Probably says enough about it’s credibility. I mean why use high density materials in a box when you can mine for fractions of fresh material….
And I’ll try one last time.
I could buy a Powerwall (or similar) and have it installed. For £10K (+ installation) Tesla will warrant 80% of capacity in 10 years. If in 9 years time it drops below 80%, then presumably they will fix it. This will undoubtedly be expensive for them. This is with shiny new cells.
You’re saying that you can take a dead battery pack from a car, remove the really dead cells, and assemble what remains into a new pack that you will then have to warrant for the customer. Are you saying that a surviving 10 year old cell in a car pack is in fact as good as new, and you would happily underwrite its use for another 10 years? If you are, great. That’s new news. It would surprise me if this was the case, because if it was, why is Tesla only offering 10 year warranties?
If you aren’t, then what’s the difference to the customer? If you said “here’s a Powerwall for 8K, but it’s only warranted for 5 years”, I would probably take the 10K option. Now that assumes the customer is getting your recycled batteries “for free”, They won’t be, I know you don’t believe me, but taking stuff apart at an industrial scale is difficult and costs money.
I could buy a Powerwall (or similar) and have it installed. For £10K (+ installation) Tesla will warrant 80% of capacity in 10 years. If in 9 years time it drops below 80%, then presumably they will fix it. This will undoubtedly be expensive for them. This is with shiny new cells.
You’re saying that you can take a dead battery pack from a car, remove the really dead cells, and assemble what remains into a new pack that you will then have to warrant for the customer. Are you saying that a surviving 10 year old cell in a car pack is in fact as good as new, and you would happily underwrite its use for another 10 years? If you are, great. That’s new news. It would surprise me if this was the case, because if it was, why is Tesla only offering 10 year warranties?
If you aren’t, then what’s the difference to the customer? If you said “here’s a Powerwall for 8K, but it’s only warranted for 5 years”, I would probably take the 10K option. Now that assumes the customer is getting your recycled batteries “for free”, They won’t be, I know you don’t believe me, but taking stuff apart at an industrial scale is difficult and costs money.
rxe said:
And I’ll try one last time.
I could buy a Powerwall (or similar) and have it installed. For £10K (+ installation) Tesla will warrant 80% of capacity in 10 years. If in 9 years time it drops below 80%, then presumably they will fix it. This will undoubtedly be expensive for them. This is with shiny new cells.
You’re saying that you can take a dead battery pack from a car, remove the really dead cells, and assemble what remains into a new pack that you will then have to warrant for the customer. Are you saying that a surviving 10 year old cell in a car pack is in fact as good as new, and you would happily underwrite its use for another 10 years? If you are, great. That’s new news. It would surprise me if this was the case, because if it was, why is Tesla only offering 10 year warranties?
If you aren’t, then what’s the difference to the customer? If you said “here’s a Powerwall for 8K, but it’s only warranted for 5 years”, I would probably take the 10K option. Now that assumes the customer is getting your recycled batteries “for free”, They won’t be, I know you don’t believe me, but taking stuff apart at an industrial scale is difficult and costs money.
Recycling in the sense of re-smelted to material parts, ie can be down to the raw component form, not simple repurpose /reconditioning of the pack.I could buy a Powerwall (or similar) and have it installed. For £10K (+ installation) Tesla will warrant 80% of capacity in 10 years. If in 9 years time it drops below 80%, then presumably they will fix it. This will undoubtedly be expensive for them. This is with shiny new cells.
You’re saying that you can take a dead battery pack from a car, remove the really dead cells, and assemble what remains into a new pack that you will then have to warrant for the customer. Are you saying that a surviving 10 year old cell in a car pack is in fact as good as new, and you would happily underwrite its use for another 10 years? If you are, great. That’s new news. It would surprise me if this was the case, because if it was, why is Tesla only offering 10 year warranties?
If you aren’t, then what’s the difference to the customer? If you said “here’s a Powerwall for 8K, but it’s only warranted for 5 years”, I would probably take the 10K option. Now that assumes the customer is getting your recycled batteries “for free”, They won’t be, I know you don’t believe me, but taking stuff apart at an industrial scale is difficult and costs money.
rxe said:
And I’ll try one last time.
I could buy a Powerwall (or similar) and have it installed. For £10K (+ installation) Tesla will warrant 80% of capacity in 10 years. If in 9 years time it drops below 80%, then presumably they will fix it. This will undoubtedly be expensive for them. This is with shiny new cells.
You’re saying that you can take a dead battery pack from a car, remove the really dead cells, and assemble what remains into a new pack that you will then have to warrant for the customer. Are you saying that a surviving 10 year old cell in a car pack is in fact as good as new, and you would happily underwrite its use for another 10 years? If you are, great. That’s new news. It would surprise me if this was the case, because if it was, why is Tesla only offering 10 year warranties?
If you aren’t, then what’s the difference to the customer? If you said “here’s a Powerwall for 8K, but it’s only warranted for 5 years”, I would probably take the 10K option. Now that assumes the customer is getting your recycled batteries “for free”, They won’t be, I know you don’t believe me, but taking stuff apart at an industrial scale is difficult and costs money.
er, you know that people like Tesla employ a lot of very clever (and expensive) engineers like me who, you know, actually use science and physics to viably solve problems and allow them to sell products?I could buy a Powerwall (or similar) and have it installed. For £10K (+ installation) Tesla will warrant 80% of capacity in 10 years. If in 9 years time it drops below 80%, then presumably they will fix it. This will undoubtedly be expensive for them. This is with shiny new cells.
You’re saying that you can take a dead battery pack from a car, remove the really dead cells, and assemble what remains into a new pack that you will then have to warrant for the customer. Are you saying that a surviving 10 year old cell in a car pack is in fact as good as new, and you would happily underwrite its use for another 10 years? If you are, great. That’s new news. It would surprise me if this was the case, because if it was, why is Tesla only offering 10 year warranties?
If you aren’t, then what’s the difference to the customer? If you said “here’s a Powerwall for 8K, but it’s only warranted for 5 years”, I would probably take the 10K option. Now that assumes the customer is getting your recycled batteries “for free”, They won’t be, I know you don’t believe me, but taking stuff apart at an industrial scale is difficult and costs money.
If Tesla have set the waranty at 80% SoH then they have done a lot of work to ensure that is a value at which the not just the business case works, but the actual product has a very high overal probability of meeting. A battery for a domestic useage has a very easy time. A Tesla model 3 puts out up to 413 kW of power, your house almost certainly never exceeds 20 kW! if you knew anything about battery chemistry you would understand why this makes such an important difference when we are talking about cell SoH. This is the point, second life cells are not "good as new" but they are a very known quanity. In fact, in certain cases (such as ultra high performance FormulaE for example) we only use "second hand" cells, ie cells that have a traceable and known history, we actually "age" new cells before they get built into battery packs precisely to ensure they have both the highest possibel performance, but also the highest possible reliability. A new cell is an unknown cell, and that makes it actually significantly MORE risky in terms of SoH than a used cell! But oh look, you can get a warannty on a new battery pack, just as you can on a second hand one, because it the FAILURE PROBABILITY that matters only in this case.
Fact is, Tesla (and many others) are already using, selling, trading and sourcing second life cells for both domestic and industrial power back-up and load levelling type useage. You can shout all you like using your "made up facts" that it won't work, or nobody will do it, or you won't be able to get a warranty or some other distraction b*ll*cks, but look out the window man, because people are already doing it!
Honest answer - nobody knows. Second life use as mentioned in posts before me is an obvious way of delaying the inevitable recycling issues. For now, there arent enough battery packs to recycle commercially and nobody in the world is geared up to do it. There are grant-funded prototype schemes in operation but they consume vast amounts of energy and make pollution galore before pure metals etc. come out the other end.
EV makers have different ways of packaging cells, some of which are easier than other makes to strip for recycling.
EV makers have different ways of packaging cells, some of which are easier than other makes to strip for recycling.
rxe said:
Sticking half dead car cells in a house? Right, who is going to write the 10 year warranty on a half dead pack? And who will buy it if there is no warranty?
Powervault put 10 year warranty on a new pack and 3 year warranty on a Powervault Eco second-life battery.And that's based on a first gen Zoe battery.
https://www.powervault.co.uk/choose-your-powervaul...
delta0 said:
Tesla recycles their batteries. The value of lithium is going support recycling of the materials.
I could be wrong, but didnt I just read an article that the battery recycling process is a combination of Panasonic and Redwood - and they then supply the batteries for Tesla? I think they just started the closed loop process this year. Impressive stuff, but not Tesla from what I read.Gassing Station | EV and Alternative Fuels | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff