Why you may recycle a battery—and how you can do it

Lithium-ion batteries, that are utilized in EVs, are a newer invention; they got here into the image within the Nineteen Nineties in small digital units earlier than discovering a market in electrical automobiles. As their use has grown, so too have efforts to recycle them. 

Recycling corporations’ processes all look about the identical to an outdoor observer. Batteries are disassembled and crushed up, and the ensuing powder is dissolved earlier than being subjected to numerous chemical methods. But the small print shall be a key deciding consider how a lot of the precious supplies recyclers can recuperate, and subsequently how a lot cash they’ll make. 

Thanks to advances in these processes, the prospects for constructing a enterprise round battery recycling have improved. The identical dynamic is happening in solar panel recycling, the place corporations are working to recuperate silver and different costly supplies from the units. 

On a private stage, I feel discovering methods to recycle and repurpose supplies in an effort to lower down on waste and harmful mining is a worthwhile aim in itself. But profitability is a surefire approach to make battery recycling extra prone to occur. 

We’re nonetheless within the early days of battery recycling. China has funded and encouraged a massive industry, and now Europe and North America are catching up, with corporations elevating  tons of of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in investments and constructing multibillion-dollar services.

For my deep dive into battery recycling, I took a take a look at considered one of these corporations, Redwood Materials. If you need to be taught extra about what Redwood is making an attempt to do, or the challenges the corporate is going through, check out my feature story that got here out yesterday. I additionally acquired to talk with JB Straubel, founding father of Redwood Materials and former chief know-how officer at Tesla, about the place he thinks the business is headed. You can discover an edited version of our conversation here. 

Keeping up with Climate

Climeworks introduced that it’s begun eradicating carbon dioxide from the ambiance at its Orca plant in Iceland. (Wall Street Journal)

→ The plant is probably not massive, however it is a main step for carbon elimination, which was considered one of our breakthrough applied sciences in 2022. (MIT Technology Review)