Re:Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries?
by ajross on Friday July 27, 2018 @02:01PM
(#17627815)
> Not using current technology. You can't recycle lithium (for example) using smelting. It's also not very profitable.
Lithium is not a limiting resource for battery production, it's actually fairly common in the earth's crust. The limit is cobalt[1].
Extracting cobalt from a junked battery is orders of magnitude cheaper than mining and smelting it from the (very diffuse) ores that are available.
[1] Also, per the article, nickel, which surprises me so much that I suspect it's wrong. Per wikipedia nickel reserves are 30x yearly production, and of course new exploration and extraction techniques are always pushing the reserve number up.
Lithium is not a limiting resource for battery production, it's actually fairly common in the earth's crust. The limit is cobalt[1].
Extracting cobalt from a junked battery is orders of magnitude cheaper than mining and smelting it from the (very diffuse) ores that are available.
[1] Also, per the article, nickel, which surprises me so much that I suspect it's wrong. Per wikipedia nickel reserves are 30x yearly production, and of course new exploration and extraction techniques are always pushing the reserve number up.