What *Really* happens to used Electric Car Batteries? - (you might be surprised)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ส.ค. 2023
- How are Lithium Batteries Recycled? Today we find out. Whether its Electric Car batteries, cell phone batteries, or tool batteries the process is all the same. HUGE thanks to Li-Cycle for giving us a tour: www.li-cycle.com/ if you're looking to recycle your old cell phone or battery, you can find a drop off location here: www.call2recycle.org/locator/ and Call2Recycle will handle the rest. Lets get those old electronics and batteries turned into NEW technology!
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1:48 That Nokia battery is gonna jam that machine.
Ah, the Nokia jokes never gets old 😂
Jam?? It gonna destroy that machine....
@@shawnh4528 Yeah and those jokes last forever.
This was awesome, props for answering so many of the questions surrounding this in a facility that’s actually doing it!
It was way cool seeing it happen in real life!
It also looks like they also have the answer to making batteries inert to handle :)
Hello Jerry@@JerryRigEverything I shared your video on LinkedIn. Do you have a commercial account there?
This is pretty awesome, but is it economically feasible?
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I'd love to see a comparison in costs between the recycled metals and the freshly mined ones. I'd also like to see how the black mass is being processed. Generally, separating metals like this requires a lot of energy or additional chemicals.
I wonder why that processing facility is in NY rather than AZ, think about the potential for solar.
@@khuo0219we are sacrificing farm land in AZ to build solar farms. While AZ gets lots of sun, the output from solar panels drops with increasing temperatures, generally cutting off at 122*F. Dark colored materials are too hot to touch for much of the AZ summer, for most people that is 126-132*F. Note that's above the practical limit got photovoltaic panels.
But how much work and energy goes into getting gas from the ground into our gas tanks ?
@@AlbertLebel I simply requested additional information. The fact you're leading the conversation into the defense of EVs, which is marginally related to the original topic, shows insecurity about it, doesn't it? I don't exactly know how much work and energy is required to pump gas from the ground, but it's significantly less anyways, because petrol extraction is largely automated (it requires only maintenance personnel) and although it uses energy to boil down the ingredients, all ingredients are used and some of them, like asphalt, don't have a replacement yet. Therefore, we would have to continue extracting fuel even if we fully transitioned to electric cars anyway. The inefficiencies of gas cars and the environmental damage occur at the stage of burning the fossil fuels, not at the stage of extraction.
Damn, say all that again but 3 times really fast. 🙄
This process is interesting, but I'd really be interested in seeing what chemical separation processes they use to clean up and recycle the black mass, including effluent treatment and POG scrubbing tech, as well as the handling of waste such as filter cakes an the like. That's where the real magic happens.
its leaching or smelting
Yep. It's pretty misleading to call the process in this video recycling. This is just the dismantling process.
Very neat! More of these please.
ev propaganda
No comments? Let me fix this
@@Fexiven 🤘
Yes please, more!
Agreed 👍
Nice to see the batteries are not wasted! I was hoping to see an explosion when they ground the car battery! I assume there is still a ton of energy left in there. What stops it from blowing up? The proprietary liquid is doing magic?!
From what I understood the sheer volume of liquid acts as a big heat sync. Absorbing all the thermals from getting ground up. Plus - I don't think it's ever shorting accross the full 400v? Each cell is probably just shorting with itself for a very short amount of time. From the battery dropping in and getting completely shredded is like 90 seconds.
Electrobooom
there is no such thing as an electroboom from batteries@@andrive
@@JerryRigEverythingthat would make sense
I would assume the liquid nitrogen is stopping those electrons from doing their thing (extreme cold limiting the migrating of the electrons) … there is not a chance for the electrons to transfer before it’s all ground down to a homogeneous mix. Sort of like your car battery on a cold day but cold enough to turn your Tesla battery to the shocking power of a couple AA’s lol
This is very informative.
I'm glad to see that so much of a battery can be recycled.
Nothing was recycled in this video. Only thing this video showed was mechanical separation and not even separation down to individual elements. Where is the recycled pigs of raw elemental components?
Yes, please. I want to see the rest of this process, into turning the black mass into batteries. I'm here from your short video, and you answered my question there. They dont discharge them first. They just spread them underwater, and that solves the high voltage, and disassembly time & danger issues. I love this, and this company.
I just did a research essay last year on EV batteries, and Li-Cycle was a big company that came up. Awesome to see this video of their Arizona facility!
Very nice, must've been an interesting topic to research!
And they started right here in Canada. We've been recycling batteries for over 30 years, but this process was by far a huge step in sustainability.
A really excellent subject to research is the amount of electricity that is now being used to keep at this supposedly sustainable tech running.
Highly recommend looking into it as your generation need to know what's a head of you!!
@@warrensteel9954sounds like you are an employee. My son is an accountant at Li-cycle TO.
Nothing was recycled in this video!!! Mechanical separation based on simple density of materials (gold panning effect) but no pigs were smelted of any basic element let alone whether they could be reused. Dig deeper if you truly are doing research into this before you praise them.
Started my career in an imaging consumables recycling plant. The ink and toner cartridges from spent printers and copiers get ground up in a very similar process to separate the plastics and metal types. Dropping off the spent cartridges at Staples and other similar storefronts was their method to acquire material as well and they called it a 'take-back program.' They also use a filter press to remove the toner powder from the water, but they called the resulting black bricks filter cakes instead of black mass. These are difficult processes and require a ton of R&D and trial and error to get right. Huge props to the people that worked hard to make this facility happen.
What do they do with the filter cakes after?
@@boy638 In order to do this kind of business you have to be R2 certified, which puts a lot of limitations on what they are allowed to do with the material. There is also commitments to customers (in this case companies like Xerox, Ricoh, Canon, Sharp, etc.) to not send any recovered material to a landfill. It was a pioneering industry while I was there, so a lot of the solutions for toner cake were innovative and some plain failures. Two notable experiments we did with toner cake:
1) create a wood alternative by injection molding the material into board shapes. This worked to an extent. I actually used some of the boards to build raised garden beds in my back yard. The issue was that the sun destroyed them. Non-virgin resins and the sun typically don't mix well for long.
2) add toner cake to the substrate used to asphalt roads. This has huge promise in hotter climates where the roads don't get cold enough for the material to become brittle. Roadways are the most recycled material on Earth by percentage, and the toner actually improved longevity but only in hot climates.
Most often, however, there was not a viable way to get rid of the cakes. It is hard to sell garbage. This resulted in a lot of the cakes being consolidated into gaylords and send to W2E (waste to energy) facilities to be burned as fuel to create electricity.
@@boy638bake for 30 minutes at 360°, add frosting, enjoy
@@boy638 what do you think? its a cake.. they eat it... duuuh
@@Kevin-rf9sx Why didn't I think of that
Awesome education! I always wondered where all the batteries i drop off at Lowes went👍
Thanks for letting us know about the local battery drop off locations. I have been holding onto batteries that I don't want to put into the regular garbage or recycling.
I reckon a follow up to show where the materials go and what they're used for. How they get further processed is going to be the game changer here.
I second this. All the materials they got out of batteries in the video need further processing.
That’s what I wanna see, my guess is they chemically break down the lithium, cobalt, and nickel. Then separate them individually thru some sort of filtering process or a reverse chemical induction process. Kinda like watching those guys liquify gold off circuit boards to a pure liquid state and then re-constitute them to a hard metal state.
Nerd stuff all the way around that I wanna know about and pester my wife with lol!
@@thatguythatdoesstuff5899why don’t you do the video? Every material requires processing.
@@unxusr Zack is more suited for making that video. It'd be nice if he had a full series on battery recycling showing the full process from old battery to new battery. This video shows just the first stage.
@@thatguythatdoesstuff5899
This video shows just the first stage IF the battery is recycled...because most of the times batteries are being used in EV conversions and home power walls for offgrid energy independence by people wit solar arrays.
This process will be of use in like 10-20 years from now when batteries from early tesla may be sent to this process, after many of the EV conversions themselves will see an end of life.
This honestly makes me feel better about our recycling process. Props to everyone that made this happen.
Ok, but for new batteries, the enviromental and social impact of lithium extraction stills being huge
It is worth talking about cobalt mining as well. Congo
This is just a fraction of the batteries we produce. Its not enough.
Like our normal recycling, it's not enough and they monopolised it.
@@djdusted6485Pretty sure the main problem is most people just throw these into common trash and that is not recycled or sorted, so people need to be given an incentive to put these in the correct place, and maybe even sort and recycle common trash
@therealpeter2267 a lot of recycling that has been put in the correct boxes and taken away by the correct truck will not get recycled. They ship it to a different country where it goes in to landfill.
There is many documentaries about it.
Amazing machines. Good work.
That’s a really cool way of showing how this material gets recycled and reused again especially when it’s being done in my home state and town I’ve lived in
Nothing was recycled. It was mechanically separated into conglomerates of elements with a promise of recycling in facilities that have not even been built. Watch it again and show me the smelted pigs of reusable materials. Smoke and mirrors.
It has to be a long way from the black mass to whatever goes into a battery. It would be more interesting to see the chemistry and mechanical processes required to accomplish that task.
Next week on, utv
Exactly. This program failed to provide any details except for crush it up,separate and shove it in a bag.
This is where they keep the secret of vast amounts of sulfuric acid needed to separate the metals from the “black mass” material.
Currently, sulfur is harvested cheaply as a byproduct of the crude oil refining process. But as oil production is set to decrease in the future, the availability of sulfur declines sharply, sending the costs of batteries skyrocketing.
@himdabo oil production will never go away. Slightly decrease, probably. Remember all those plastics we use and not to mention gas/diesel vehicles are still the go to for mining thoes precious metals the batteries needs. You can't recycle 100% of a battery.
@@stevenhawker4984 that facility is currently under construction. Until then it's just sold to battery manufacturers.
Love it! I repair laptops for a big company and we send out a LOT of batteries to be recycled. Interesting to see the process. I shared it with my office.
Send the old PCBs as well!!
@@rogerstarkey5390 yeah we have an electronics recycler we work with too!
Brilliant and so good to see, thanks !
Great informative video. Very clean facility!
I loved how at 2:25 Zack said: "It's getting kinda loud but you can see them f̵l̵o̶w̸i̵n̶g̵ ̷t̶h̶r̷o̸u̷g̸h̶ ḧ̵̢e̶͔̒r̴̪̈́e̵̡͂, d̶̳͑o̶͍̔w̶̺͗ń̷̝ t̵̫̉̽ǒ̷̝̎ ̴̢͇̈͆ä̵͜ ̶̓͜͜s̶͔̖͘t̷̮̝̿̆r̶̗̀e̵̳̞̎a̷̝̹̾͝m̷͚̄, w̷̧̮̣̘̙̍̃̽̈́̔̈̅̄ͅh̵̜͐̓̐̓͌e̶̲̻͊͛̋r̶̲̘̪̬͂e̸̪̓̓̽͊̏̇̒͑ ̴̘̈t̷̨̩̳͍̯̙͊̈͆͝h̸̪̚̚e̸̥̹͚̋̓̐̏̄̚̚͜͠ ̶̳͍̭͍͎̪̋̅́͒p̷̢̙̳̠̈́͜l̷̡̲̭̒̆̾̂̈́ḁ̸͈̬̋́̈́s̴̜̱͔͉̣͇͍̯̐̒̀́͘͝ẗ̴̢̤͎̬̣̯̲́̿͒̿̆̀̒ͅį̵͙͖̈́͆̾̆̀c̶̡̠̝̯̅̓̑́̈́ș̶̰̓̀̒͂͠ ĝ̸̹̭̀̂̄̈̑̂̏͗̅́̃̄̈́ȅ̵̯̪̜̮̤̣̪͍͊́̑͛̿̓̈̌͘͝t̸͇́͑͐̀͐̓̆̅̎̑̓̄̕͝ ̷̩̻̬̠̦͓̫̃̓̉͑̐̏͌̓͒̌͆̍͐̈́̀͛̚ͅv̵̛͍̭̤͙̳̎́͊͘͝í̴̢̠̗̜̟̹͇̰͉͙̬͙̇̈́͗̓̋͊̽́̄́̏̏̓̏̃̆b̷̡̨̺̹̬̀̾̀̒̕͠r̵̖̤̜͍̩̠̘̣̅̑̀͛͐̾̈́̔̔͘ą̶̨̟̩͇̰̲̙̗̪̩̖̜̞͂t̴͇̥͚̩̱̱͔̠̗̱̼̜͗́̑̍̆̈́͒͗̍͋͐̇̇̀͜͝ẽ̴̡̧̨̞͍̜͕̱̰͎̞̬̝̱̐̔d̸̢̦̻̦̱̥̞̘͕͔̳͋͒͗̉̀͂̏̋̒͌̍̚͝͠ ̷̧̡͈̭̠̣̐͝ů̶̡̡̞̙̭̮̟͇̭̖̙͙̩̗͙̖̰͠ṕ̶̫̹͈̹͚̗͙̯̥͖͉̂̎̌̎̾̅̈́̑̒̒͒́͜ͅͅ"
Awesome video! I’ve been to the current Rochester facility (not the one under construction) and was blown away. Really awesome stuff.
Hey Undecided MF
Great to see more people like yourself Matt dispelling the FUD around lithium batteries.
How does someone tour one of these facilities? Do you just call up "Hey, I'd like to tour and record your facility"? Does the facility reach out to you for publicity? Do they have regular tours that anyone can pay for?
@@jeremyfk The FUD master matt farrel or whatever himself. The guy with no real knowledge of batteries, only psudo science. take everything with grains of salt
I had no idea they were in Rochester... looks like they're using some of the old Kodak Park buildings.
My local Lowe's used to have a recycle bins for rechargeable batteries but it's been gone for a long time now. I do take them to a county recycle center now.
You answered so many of my questions, thanks!
We need more of these plants. Great video. I don't want these to end up in landfill
Obviously can't argue, but what % of batteries make it there?
@@DJ-lq9gpin that case its to the individual people to take responsibility, the infrastructure is there, its up to you and me to make sure that the batteries make it there. (Which is not difficult…)
@@lawngnome777 based on your profile pic: do you know how bad burning russian tanks and ammo is for the environment??? I'll bet that's worse than this plant not running on green energy.
@@DJ-lq9gp if you take lead-acid batteries as an example, near to 100%
@@DJ-lq9gp - With EV batteries there's little doubt they'll be recycled especially now that auto salvage yards make money selling them to specialist firms that dismantle the packs and break them down into their different materials: wires, circuitry, plastics, and the metals including lithium, cobalt and nickel. John Voelcker's article in the June issue Car & Driver had one of the more comprehensive answers, Google: "Everything You Need to Know about EV Battery Disposal" - Car&Driver 6/10/2023
Even car dealers are now sending EV battery packs to recyclers. They're simply too valuable to throw away.
But your correct, there's the feckless human element that needs to be considered. Hard to resist throwing smaller battery packs in the trash can. Similar issues with motor oil. What percentage of toxic used crankcase oil makes it to recyclers? We hear that its better than 95% but that means a lot of it still gets dumped. According to the EPA website over 200,000 million gallons of used motor oil still gets dumped every year, into streams, rivers, backyard pits, storm drains and landfills. Considering just how toxic used crankcase oil is and how readily even small amounts can contaminate huge amounts of ground water, how come we don't see the outpouring of concern or public outrage? Perspective is important.
With batteries that are made up of a large number of cells, it is also possible to refurbish many heavily degraded batteries into a smaller number of less degraded battery cells by using the least degraded cells from multiple used batteries, allowing the still useful battery components to be used longer before being completely being turned back into raw materials. Nissan has plants that do this to get replacement batteries for existing Leafs.
Yes it is, though it isn't widespread and not cost-effective for small consumer electronics packs. Most companies focus on prematurely recycling batteries well before they reach true end of life. Most EV packs, for example, are at about 80% state of health when they're removed from the car. Renewing them saves a significant amount of energy and carbon emissions vs. prematurely recycling. There are a dedicated few of us trying to address that inefficiency!
Yeah, I wish someone was disassembling and sorting out good cells from those EV packs. Even if they end up all bad, separating them from the tray and recycling it separately would save a ton of energy versus grinding up and separating the steel, aluminum and copper.
@@wesley00042 except for the intensive labor costs.
There is a company in NC that does just this.
RV and Yaght owners are their biggest customers.
Relacing house lead acid batteries with rebuilt EV batteries.
It requires a lot of dangerous manual labor. Should be banned.
I saw the name on the building you toured. I thought it was a bicycle business. Now I know what it is. They are only 5 miles from my house. Thanks for the info.
Thank you nice to see how it all get recycled and add more resurance of sustainability of ev technology
So cool to see how it actually works!! Would love to see more content like this 🙌
Having lived in Rochester for five years, it's exciting to see that such a facility is being built there. Back in the day when businesses like Kodak and Xerox were booming, Rochester would have been hugely successful. Nowadays it's a shell of its former self, which is quite depressing. If it were to become a leader in lithium recovery, that could potentially bring some life back to the city!
Unions, Democrats, and the drumbeat of technology emptied your city. With all the regulations and taxes, I can’t understand why any new business- especially one that involves the EPA would invest there. Those tax incentive commercials NY state used to run always struck me as unusual- so you’re saying that you understand companies can’t be competitive with the laws you have???
I have no idea what sort of effect it may have, but it seems like a good thing.
I also lived there for 7 years and felt the same. Proud of my second city home leading the charge!
@@ncrawford1488 Rochester used to be a leader in technology. In fact that's why RIT is there, which is also why I spent five years there. I wouldn't blame technology for its downfall, but rather failure to keep up with it. While I personally despise both the left and the right, I currently actually live in Austin, which is very left leaning and technology driven and absolutely thriving. My best guess for what may make Rochester so appealing would be the availability of an eager workforce. Many people haven't actually left the city, but are struggling. Give them a solid opportunity and they'll take it. Otherwise, I'm not actually sure why Rochester. But I'm happy to see it happen.
@ncrawford1488 Kodak went under for passing on digital photography and xerox is a shadow of its former self because well, when was the last time you used a copy machine? It is still a fortune 500 company though.
Reflect on your argument and come back when you can make something better than political nonsense.
I'd like to see some number on the actual prices of batteries that come form this process. I'd also like to see the performance of these products, compared to traditional manufacturing process.
They are returned to their original elements. There is no change in ability to hold a charge.
You can't buy a new replacement battery anyway, the best you can do is get a refurb made from cobbling together two already Failed packs.
@@robertkubrick3738 yes you can. Do some research please
I have a small business of fixing up broken power tool batteries. I recycle the left over cell and related products. My question is this How could I get ahold of some of those power tool battery packs?
Nice video. I’d be curious to see how Lithium Carbonate, Nickel Sulfate and cobalt sulfate are refined into usable materials for new batteries.
2:32 further processing = straight to the landfill
My biggest concern with what's shown is the lack of actual reuse of the material. Sure, the process to grind and loosely separate the materials is very cool, but that's a lot of those shipping bags in the background. Reminds me of the Australian REDCycle recycling scandal where they collected all the stuff to recycle and just warehoused it instead.
If you can get an invite to show us them processing that material that would be fantastic.
YES! And, what grade battery can be made from the recycled batteries? How many times can it be recycled, i.e., a recycled battery back to the Arizona plant, again and again?
This all looks very nice but I would feel more confident if there was some sort of peer reviewed data or equivalent that can verify these claims. I hope this process is as as clean as the video makes it seem 🤞
Agreed! I would like to see what can you make with those bags
@@e.j.schoute1987per the video, the water is in a closed loop system. It doesn't leave the the recycling plant. Now an accidental spill is a valid concern but that would be the same with any industry.
I still laugh that he says zero emissions, and I know that's not true. Emissions were a byproduct of making that facility, emissions are a byproduct of shipping these batteries to this place, and emissions are a byproduct of the generating stations powering these facilities.
Thanks for showing us this process, I'm so glad its an efficient process and would love to see Australia invest in this industry too so I can go work there lol
I live just west of Rochester, used to drive there every day, and had never heard of this company. Neat!
You never will hear of that company again since its about to go bankrupt and the Rochester plans have been cancelled.
Wow. This is the first real vehicle battery recycling I’ve seen. Wonder how much power it takes for the entire process. That black mud still needs to be processed further in a different facility.
Yes - wondering - what cost to do this. Where do they recycle the water / slurry.
Plus when they remake into next battery - what is needed....
How good are the elements.
Why did Musk not get this into his car build cycle.
They get made into more batteries
Yes. But what the degrade level.@@iancouper3644
It's a scam. Lithium is not recyclable
Not to mention the slave labor to mine the lithium… and all the fossil fuel required to make the batteries, ship the batteries, and truck the batteries.
Curious to know what the cost of those recycled materials are vs freshly mined equivalents
You will stay curious for a very long time...... If it was positive, it would have been the key feature.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez????
It is very expensive still compared to mined Lithium. They are focusing on Battery logistics cutting down on shipping costs but the core technology unfortunately won't get much more profitable. Especially with chemestries such as LFP where iron and phosphate are impossible to hit profitability on.
How much of this black mass actually ends up being used? Without this information this video is pointless. What percentage of the black mass is useless and where does it end up. Deliberately omitting this essential information is very suspicious.
So working in Environmental Regulation here. The main issue with these recycling centers is well, they are insanely toxic and a number operate illegally. If black mass gets into groundwater, its a disaster that costs millions to clean up.
To answer where black mass ends up if not reused, it goes (well is supposed to go) to a permitted hazardous waste landfill. Unfortunately, the illegal takers of batteries its anyones guess where they put them.
@@goldenhate6649
And there you have it folks..... If Goldenhate is as correct as he sounds, he just took a gigantic dump on this butterflies and unicorns video. Oooops. So sorry Goldenhate for using "he" when it could be "she/we/us/they/them/etc". But thanks for honesty. Food often tastes good going in, but not always. It ALWAYS smells bad coming out. Facts of life. It's a series of trade-offs that have risks, benefits and consequences. Everything.... personal health, economies, environments, relationships.... everything.
What is the "proprietary liquid" in the shredder? Mineral oil?
Also, this isn't fully recycled at that plant, this just makes the black mass that contains the various metals. How is it processed after that point?
Awesome!! The materials guys, chemists & physicists who figure all this out are amazing! I’m a EE, we do amazing things in electronic design, fab, test & prod. But it’s our material guys, who figure out all the chemistry & solid state physics at the molecular and atomic level, who REALLY amaze me!!!
Totally sharing this with my grandma. She thinks that it’s impossible to recover anything from these batteries, and no matter how hard I tried to explain that there are absolutely ways to recover and recycle the material, she instincts it’s not.
Same thing with my uncle!
Tell your grandma hi for me!
Same thing with my sister. Honestly this communication is a problem with otherwise progressive people just not accepting it.
@@zigadabooga
Maybe it's because we've been hearing that plastics recycling isn't really happening even though most of us do try to at least separate our trash and throw it in recycling bins.
I don't think we should succumb to doom and gloom, but there is a lot of improvement that needs to be made. Cynicism is not without justification.
@@AWildBard it shouldn't be surprising that complex oil products aren't really recycled. But a metal is a metal. If we can mine a metal, we can recycle it.
Hopefully it's not too late, and people accept EVs.
I was literally just talking to my friends about how we can’t recycle EV batteries making the “environmental impact” basically pointless. Now I’ve eaten my words and will share this video with her later today lol.
It’s a new process. I said the same thing
But I mean it’s great that you actually looked for it and learned it. You are willing to learn and even admit that you are wrong, a sign of great maturity
@@Lavafire1 heehee thank you :)
Good on you. Also, a lot of EV and power tool batteries also end up in reuse centers where companies sort through decent ones to be used by the DIY community. I've built a few small things with some Model 3 cells. Others have done ICE to EV conversions and home storage solutions with EV battery modules.
Being able to admit you're wrong in the face of new information is a good sign of intelligence and maturity
RIP. They just cancelled the Rochester location and are about to declare bankruptcy
Surprised that manual shaking is used to dislodge the black mass - or was that just a demo for the video? I 'had thought vibration could have been used.
Fascinating film that answers a load of questions.
I definitely have some questions about the "black mass" especially considering the lack of any real information on how it is processed. Seems like the greater vast majority of it's contents would be toxic waste.
What makes you say that? It’s just lithium, gallium, nickel & cobalt. It’s like high school chemistry to sort those out because they all have different weights, densities & properties.
@@thomasfx3190 There's a lot more material that goes into batteries, like plastics for example. Have fun trying to recycle all of that. The "black mass" is made up of waste byproduct that needs to be broken down to extract valuable material. There will be "toxic waste" as a result, material that cannot be reused or safely disposed of.
That process would be kept secret considering it is the money maker. I wouldn't be surprised if it got thrown away for fresh materials. Government substitutes is where the real money is but that is just from a skeptical mind lol
You obviously know a lot about chemistry so please explain how the process works.
They haven't actually done it yet if it were easy there would be other companies already doing it that said what they won't tell you is it will take some rather toxic chemicals and a lot of electricity to separate the different elements out its also a risky operation as Lithium in its pure metal form is highly pyrophoric on contact with air and if it comes into contact with water it reacts violently and produces explosive Hydrogen gas.
What's interesting is that going from the NMC or LCO or whatever cathode material is in the battery (Nickel Manganese Cobalt Oxide or Lithium Cobalt Oxide) is actually the bigger challenge here. That black mass unfortunately cannot just be put directly back into a battery and has to first be turned back into it's initial base metals before being manufactured into new material, which is actually quite a technical and chemical challenge with traditional hydro or pyrometallurgical techniques. One project I worked on as part of my graduate degree in metallurgy was studying the reaction of this material at high temperature using just hydrogen gas in order to reduce all these metals back from their oxide form into their base metals form. I believe there are now some companies trying this on a pilot scale using that technique.
Fascinating! I would have assumed it was refinable through traditional means (flesh eating acids and eldritch pressures and temperatures).
What about the water, how long is it used and what happens at the end of its life? Closed system but for how long?
Only some really small % of batterries are recycled.
Process is expensive and dangerous to environment.
This the sad truth.
@@podunkman2709 So’s mining. Mining is honestly probably worse too, cause it is usual open and outside, which makes controlling dust and waste water even harder. And fossil fuel extraction is *definitely* worse.
Exactly why Li-Cycle is building a central facility for the separating and purification of those materials (in Rochester)
More of this, please!!!
Recycle...Recycle...
Recycle...lovey info. 💯
You've always made great videos but this might be one of the best ones you've done in terms of importance. We've seen a lot of FUD spread over battery recycling or the lack of it. This video helps, a lot.
100%!! Was reading silly comments this morning that this video would refute.
While lithium is decently recyclable according to this video, and this facility is recycling batteries, it does not mean that all batteries (or even a good chunk) are recycled. This process is however very interesting. I wonder what the price of the finished product is, since the biggest reason for cooperations to _not_ recycle or _buy_ recycled materials is simply the cost.
Are they profitable though? Or litteraly being paid to do this by taxpayer?
Profits and scaling up aside, it still has to better than the burning of gasoline/oil based products. Especially as the technology to do this evolves over time. Along with better battery technology hopefully too.
@@caseyelliott8794 oh but the burning still happend. What's the percentage coal, and other fossile and polluting fuel represent in electricity's production?
Electric car being the future is a fallacy. Only public transportation and it's efficiency will lead to progress in that domain
What's the process to separate the metals (the mud)? Curious as to what type of waste comes from that.
They likely heat the black mass in a big pot and let the metals separate according to weight, heavier metals at the bottom and lighter metals at the top, then they just keep skimming off the top and depositing what they have skimmed into different containers as they go down and the metal changes.
Good to know. I work for a recycling place in CA and I Always wondered what happenes to the batteries. I'm curious why I didn't see any car batteries.
Thank yo man. Keep going!
Would be interesting to talk to what proportion of lithium waste is currently recycled, how that compares historically, and what projections are into the future. Also, is this method the only one used at an industrial scale or are there many options?
Yeah, the proportion is the important bit
Agreed! Curious
I cant say for certain but I would imagine almost all ev batteries are recycled because of the residual value they have.. once they get to the plant they are more than 97% recyclable
There are many companies trying to stand up recycling facilities using a myriad of recycling approaches. Li-cycle was an early entrant and well-funded but its technology is unimpressive.
@db7948 one would hope, however just because the ingredients are valuable doesn't mean there are sufficient companies with the technology to recycle them. Thus leaving a void to fill with such recycle companies.
This is super cool to see and learn about
Why hello there Dan!
Thanks. Great video. What is the proprietary liquid, and is it reused or recycled?
Great vid. Power used to recycle versus potential power output of recycled material - is there some sort of meaningful balance?.
The process looks very simple but I'm sure developing and perfecting this process required a ton of work. Great work! Would love to see more encouragement/incentives to recycle old batteries instead of mining new one.
There comes a point where these companies can only do so much, and then it comes to the people that use these batteries to actually dispose of them properly, that means you and me.
@@ProXcaliber Absolutely, people need to be educated about limited resources and importance of recycling. Perhaps governments should step in to educated and encourage.
@@NanoMine I definitely agree that governments should be doing more to encourage recycling in general, not just for electronics and batteries. But the companies that we buy from can also do some encouraging themselves. Like, for example, a small kickback program for recycling the electronics or battery you are replacing or getting rid of.
@@ProXcaliber
Not just batteries.
Let's say you are disposing of an old TV, or printer, etc.
Pull the back off.
Remove the circuit boards.
Send them to these companies (same box as the batteries?)
Those boards have Gold, Silver, Lead. Copper, Aluminum, Antimony, Silicon, and other compounds which can be ground up and recovered.
Small amounts, but literally billions are discarded every year.
@@NanoMine Perhaps governments should step in and say, collect our lithium batteries. The recycling should not ALL fall on the consumer. That's more prone to error than a paid government service that makes it easy to drop off, or collect. Recycling centers do exist in San Diego California, but I would have to drive 45 minutes, or longer, to reach these facilities and then wait in line. That's too much effort, especially if I'm just dropping off a small drill battery or something.
One of the most informative videos we have ever done Jerry! Lets keep it up!
Great video Jerry!
You can tell people to recycle their batteries all you want. But it’s up to the companies and recycling systems to make them easier to dispose of (I.e. accepted at stores or in our recycle bins)
They should pay by the pound for turning in old Li-Ion batteries.
"No air pollution in the traditional sense." So there *IS* still air pollution, just not from burning things.
Showing people how separated waste (like batteries) are recycled will create more understanding and will result in more people bringing their batteries to a recycling point. So, share this video with everyone 🎉
can you show us what they do with the first generation old wind turbine blades after change?
Holy crap... I used to work right there at Kodak...... Nice to see the old place being put back to good use.
Oh, I actually visited the Kodak shop right across the hall from this place. Kodak was still making films...
Working in the recycling industry myself at the moment ... cool to see that there is progress in this field . Though ... this all depends where you life and how local authorities handle waste management . In many countries this is still not the case , but we slowly getting there . Let's see how it all turns out in the future ;-) same goes for solar panel and windturbine recycling .
As the value of recycling batteries increases we will likely see much more of this. Since with batteries the recycled material is essentially a better form of what is mined, it is better to source the recycled material vs mined and refined material, so it should hopefully sort itself out just from a financial standpoint for big companies
Something that becomes abundantly clear the older I get is that regulation/punishment for situations like this is almost never the answer. If you make it simple, quick, and easy to access, the majority of the population will take advantage of the solutions provided to them.
For instance, I've lived in a couple places where waste disposal is an extremely difficult task unless you are a commercial/industrial level company. Minimum fees up to 2,000 lbs, stuff like that. Compare that to some of the most backwoods, redneck states I've lived in with distributed satellite transfer stations free for anyone to use, and it is unreal how little trash you see on the side of the road. Batteries, oil, and bulk items are the big ones. If you think someone who replaced 2 toilets is going to pay $50 minimum at a landfill to get rid of them...... I've got bad news. Those used items are gonna wind up in a ditch somewhere on the side of the road in the middle of the night.
@@SyntheticSpy What the hell are you talking about? Recycled materials are almost always lower grade and cost more than new stuff.
THIS is the video we all did not realize we were hungry for. Seeing you pick up a handful of 'black gold' and squeeze it was deeply satisfying. Thank you 🙏
What is the 5% unrecycled and where does it end up? This video is interesting, but I would like to go into more detail, like cost, or hov the black mass is processed later, or where is the gold stuff you mentioned? It is like short trailer which left me hungry. :)
I am impressed and pleased with everything right up to the end where they turn my stuff into their fortune. It's like giving them money
My father in law is a scrap metal collector. I've lost count how many laptop battery packs he's gotten for me with working cells. I get floored how people don't look at the labels on batteries and notice how they indicate not to throw in the garbage.
I love this. Im glad i saw it too, because I went to a battery recycling place not too long ago and they told me that I would have to pay $60 to recycle some cell phone batteries. This really discourages people from recycling so knowing you can just find one of these boxes somewhere and you can just drop them off and go is nice.
It makes me really happy to see efficient recycling facilities. I hope the world realizes how important this is. Rubber, valuable minerals, plastic. We need to do so much more. But this is such a good start.
Great video on recycling Li ion batteries!
Always wondered how they separated it all safely, Great informative video. Thank you
It's nice to see recycling ramping up for these batteries!
I very much agree! (and nice pun, by the way)
How much does that black mass need to be processed to make it useful? How energy intensive is it? This part of the recycling process is closed loop but I wonder what kind of impact the purification process takes.
Of EV factoring importance; The plant's external energy usage breakdown per ton of the 'usable' debris would have been an interesting tidbit.
2:38 - Further processing, meaning the landfill.
hope not, but you might be right
Such a good video mate. Please keep the recycling videos coming. I am learning a lot 👍🏼
Li-ion recycling is vital so it is encouraging to see that someone somewhere is doing it. But this video is only part of the story--what processing does the black matter need to extract the important bits out of it and what's the cost of that processing? Your next video, perhaps.
Very interesting! I do have a question. Why did they choose to build the battery plant all the way across the country from the recycling plant? Would it not have made more sense to have the two facilities closer to each other?
Transportation is trivially cheap while there are many considerations behind locating a recycling operation, including where the owner wants to live and work.
Both facilities are not owned by the same company.
It would be great to have a series of battery to battery recycling!
Insider, National Geographic, BBC, etc all need to employ this dude
that wold be worst for him
@@aneesh.augustinehe would probably start taking things apart
I agree, they would stretch it out to 3 1 hour episodes and dumb it right down.
Don't even get started on NG... more like NFG
Why recycling good thing and space cleanup should be easy with this helpful hint if put on a ship like the shuttle
Recycle locations like Home Depot and Lowes will also recycle those newer light bulbs to recycle the materials inside the bulbs.
Its amazing you make these videos for the general public. I would love to be in a job where I help people find information like this
It would be great to see a comparison between recycled content and how much overall cost and energy used to recycle all the material and recreate a battery vs straight from mine to product.
The video states 70% less cost and energy is require to harvest materials from the recycled stock vs. mining the materials from the Earth in the first place.
ie: only ~30% of the original cost and energy is required.
@@AerialWaviator Thanks! Wow nice!
It would be great to see a complete breakdown of the data used in the calculation, kinda like when you look at gov data. Lol.
@@AerialWaviator The video states 70% less energy is required to use this material VS new material pulled from the earth, however, cost is not included with the statistics in this video. Unfortunately, the physical cost to recycle materials is immensely expensive - its a huge issue that's been affecting the solar industry for years.
@@jamieclaudeo8107 the cost to recycle these things will go down over time, just like how the cost to recycle lead acid batteries went down.
@@AerialWaviator How simple to get such profit?!! If this is true, giant companies would switch to this cycle business🤔
Will you be doing a video going over the process of recycling the black mass once the plant is built?
That's great to know. Awesome company.
This is supercool, wish someone in the UK showed UK versions of these plants
So I googled the cons of li-ion battery recycling. The term PYROMETALLURGY comes up. I believe that's when they ship the black mud to another plant and extract and separate the goo from the gold😮 They won't be talking about that poisonous process. That would be the video to make. I'd bet the battery recovery plant sponsored this video 😂
I don't think so that the video is sponsored, I am a very old subscriber here, and I've seen Zack mentioning sponsor if it is.
Good work guys
Are there any risks of these car batteries catching fire especially the high-powered ones during this recycling process as are fully charged or partially charged when they go into the shredder and what happens to the power that’s in it how is it discharged
Awesome video! That is a super interesting process! I'm glad those batteries are getting recycled!
Here in Denmark, we have to travel quite a distance to dispose of our old batteries responsibly.
Which is weird, cause we already have trash separation like, organics, paper, metal, glass, plastic and everything else.
Strange we don't have one for batteries and lightbulbs for that matter.
Those are usually located outside super markets.
As I said in a separate comment, battery sellers (supermarkets and electronics shops etc) all have to collect batteries for recycling in the UK. It's definitely a law worth passing and they're probably getting paid for the scrap value.
Fire hazard.
@@georgehill3087 good point. Since the law was passed a decade or more ago, every single shop in the UK has burned down. Super dangerous.
@@jonevansauthor I was talking about end users throwing batteries into their own categorized recycle bin to be picked up. Recycling those at specific locations can be managed by the stores.
@@georgehill3087 that makes more sense. Yes, you do need users to take them somewhere central because they shouldn't hang around for six years until you have enough to make it worth picking up.
awesome video Jerry ,thanks
Excellent journalism
Great video, im happy to see processes like this getting developed. I know most countries still dont have facilities like this, but its great to see what the future may hold. Also many batteries have uses besides just being ground up and recycled. In many cases they can still be used on home solar systems, or the battery can be rebuilt, replacing the cells or modules that have gone bad.
The reuse of old EV batteries actually slowed down the development of recycling processes. All the batteries were getting bought up before the recyclers could get their hands on them.🤣
A dead battery has no use my friend.
I definitely want to see the next step in this process. But I would love to know why they are doing it so far away from the first step?
Two separate companies, the guy who is building the next factory probably didn't want to move to another state or give hundreds of jobs to a state that isn't his own.
We have two Rivians and an Ionic 5. This makes me feel better about the end of life of the batteries. I always heard they can’t be recycled. Great info.
Is there any kind of sludge from this process that has to be taken to a landfill? Is there any left over product that can't be re-used?