Amid a demand for batteries, companies are scrambling for supplies of lithium | Hacker News Reader

Amid a demand for batteries, companies are scrambling for supplies of lithium

economist.com

79 pointsedward23 comments

I love this jewel -- "a Canadian firm, said it had signed a conditional agreement to supply Tesla with lithium hydroxide from a mine that it plans to develop in northern Mexico. Bacanora’s shares jumped on the news—though analysts noted that shipping fine white powder across the United States border would need careful handling."

Careful handling indeed. One interesting thing is that the clays that cover the Black Rock desert (the site of the Burning Man Festival) also contain lithium salts. So perhaps one year the theme could be "recharge your life" and every camp could evaporate off a bit of lithium chloride :-). Although its more likely that if demand gets great enough that companies will petition the BLM for mining rights.

BM will shift from meaning Burning Man to Battery Mine.

Split the difference and call it Battery Man or Burning Mine? Where the festival is also a forced labor camp?

We prefer the term "crowdsourced"

You're completely overlooking "bowel movement". BM is in use as a euphimistic contraction (no pun intended) for this.

I'm curious about whether LI batteries can be recycled. This paper: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214993714... appears to argue that it's technically possible but not really being done at the moment. Does anyone here work in this area? Is the paper cited correct?

I'm sure it can be done if the lithium doesn't evaporate, but the question is whether it's cost-effective, compared to just getting new lithium. It's not like there's just bars of the stuff to be found in old batteries, like with traditional lead batteries.

I wonder if more toxic chemicals are necessary to recycle or to initially refine it.

Energy used and emissions are more interesting than the process chemistry.

The paper linked above mentions that some sulfuric acid recovered from lead-acid batteries ends up as an input in soap making. Sulfuric acid surely passes the bar for being a toxic chemical, but it isn't a big deal if it isn't released in that form.

I wonder if there's a good strategy that lets you store the dead batteries long-term and wait for the price to get high enough, or recycling technology to bring that cost down enough that it's worthwhile.

Storing is is dangerous (search youtube for 'lithium fire'), and takes up space, but I'm sure there's a clever way around that.

The only potential for a real bust is if other, better forms of energy storage get invented before your garbage dump's profit margin becomes positive. Or if a new source of lithium is found (isn't it one of the most abundant elements in the universe?).

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/recycling_batteri... covers issues with the various battery types and reclamation.

Interesting but not detailed. It says:

Lithium-ion: Li-ion is reasonably harmless but spent packs should be disposed of properly. This is done less to retrieve valuable metals as with lead acid, but for environmental reasons, especially with the growing volume used in consumer products. Li-ion contains harmful elements that are at the toxicity level of electronic devices.

At what price does recovering LI make sense? Must recycling be done with lead acid? Are there other ways in the works? How much energy does recycling LI take, versus mining it?

I think the meaning of the reference to "Lead acid" is this:

This is done less to retrieve valuable metals (which is the reason for recycling lead acid batteries), but for environmental reasons…"

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/types_of_lithium_...

Most Li-ion batteries also contain Cobalt, which is a somewhat toxic heavy metal. Layers of solid cobalt oxide used in the batteries could dissolve and leach out into the soil and ground water if large amounts of Li-ion batteries are disposed of in landfills.

I do not have a source for this, but given the relative abundance of lithium and ease of purifying salt deposits, it will be a long time before recycling lithium from spent Li-ion batteries would be cost effective. Lead isn't rare at all, but large lead acid batteries are easy to recycle. The lead mostly stays on the battery plates and isn't mixed in with other metals. Besides, there are laws that make disposing of lead more expensive than recycling it.

> cobalt oxide used in the batteries could dissolve and leach out into the soil and ground water

... were it not for the fact that cobalt oxide is insoluble in water.

Musk on the gigafactory: "This is going to be a very green factory. There going to be a lot of solar power. It’s going to have essentially zero emissions and there are no toxic elements that are going to come out of this factory and we will build in recycling capability right into the factory"

http://insideevs.com/tesla-ceo-leaks-out-more-details-on-lit...

A while back there was a company called Toxco which I think got out of the business of lithium recycling. Look up the company Retriev Technologies. They recycle lithium batteries. It's absolutely recyclable.

It is technically possible, but expensive; SLA batteries are basically a giant brick of lead with sulfuric acid inside. This is easy to recycle just by chemical separation.

Li-Ion isn't so much a battery chemistry as a family of chemistries, and the lithium, while valuable, makes up a small fraction of the battery.

Something I really like about lithium is how recyclable it is. I read some time ago that lithium batteries do not "die" the same was as other batteries. The shortening of lifespan for these batteries is not about the lithium wearing out, but rather the oxidation of the leads and terminals inside the battery. Thus lithium can be recycled for a long, long time.

Any chem engineers out there able to confirm?

Does medical lithium end up in our water supplies, from people taking it as medication? Is it possible to extract it from that water?

It probably does, like a lot of widely used medication. But if it's not economical to extract lithium from batteries significantly made of it, it's certainly not economical to get it from waste water.

Fun fact: a big chunk of the lithium produced in the world is extracted from the Salar de Atacama: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salar_de_Atacama

The method is to concentrate the lithium (from <1% to 7%) via evaporation and then process this brine to produce lithium carbonate.

A vast trove of unused lithium can be obtained from Hillary Clinton's bathroom cabinet.

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