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Re:Gigafactories are recycling old EV batteries into new ones by leereeves on Sunday October 30, 2022 @07:34AM (#33393511)
> Sodium is a likely candidate, and it's as cheap and available as salt.

If you split salt into sodium and chlorine, and use the sodium for batteries, what do you do with the chlorine?

Re:Gigafactories are recycling old EV batteries into new ones by unionpivo on Sunday October 30, 2022 @07:41AM (#33393546)
Dump it into Californians tap water supply apparently :)

On serious note, Chlorine is widely use chemical, used in cleaning products, bleaching paper and cloth, pesticides , rubber, and some solvents.

Re:Gigafactories are recycling old EV batteries into new ones by eloff on Sunday October 30, 2022 @08:24AM (#33393828)
Chlorine has lots of industrial uses, so I imagine you sell it. If you produce enough as a by product the cost will go insanely low.

If you had to dump it, you'd probably react it with something cheap to make it inert. This would generate energy, it's akin to combustion with oxygen. You could use that energy to decrease the energy requirements of splitting the NaCl in the first step.

Re:Gigafactories are recycling old EV batteries into new ones by namibj on Sunday October 30, 2022 @10:44AM (#33394899)
For example, you could use it to turn calcium carbonate AKA limestone into calcium chloride, which is rather harmless. You would get carbon dioxide out of this.
Re:Gigafactories are recycling old EV batteries into new ones by leereeves on Sunday October 30, 2022 @11:25AM (#33395246)
That doesn't sound like a good idea, we already have too much CO2.

Something that might work on a small scale could become an ecological threat on the scale of a billion electric cars.

Re:Gigafactories are recycling old EV batteries into new ones by xhkkffbf on Sunday October 30, 2022 @11:46AM (#33395446)
Bleach. Clorox sells lots of it.
Re:Gigafactories are recycling old EV batteries into new ones by samatman on Sunday October 30, 2022 @12:06PM (#33395629)
Use carbonate, which doesn't have this problem.

This would be preferred anyway: HCl is nasty, and carbon dioxide is not.