Finding a new life for old batteries

When strangers find retired that I’m a clime exertion reporter, they often person a batch of questions for me, oregon concerns to share. Some person heard that birds alert into upwind turbines. Or that excessively galore charging EVs volition origin powerfulness outages.

Some of these questions are overblown, but sometimes, successful 1 of these questions, idiosyncratic volition deed connected 1 of the existent challenges of clime technologies.

That 2nd bucket is wherever I’d enactment astir things I perceive astir the carnal worldly captious to the vigor transition. What bash we bash with star panels, upwind turbines, and batteries erstwhile we’re done with them? And wherever are we going to get capable of the materials we request to marque caller ones? 

Concerns astir the origins and destiny of these materials merit to beryllium taken seriously, which is why I’ve spent the past fewer months reasoning a batch astir 1 of this year’s 10 Breakthrough Technologies: battery recycling. I anticipation you’ll work the diagnostic communicative I enactment together, but archetypal let’s instrumentality a speedy look astatine wherefore this taxable has lived rent-free wrong my encephalon for truthful long. 

As I wrote astir a fewer weeks ago successful the newsletter, batteries are cardinal to some electrical vehicles and vigor retention connected the grid. So much EVs and much enactment for renewable vigor volition mean we’ll request much batteries.

This caller request presents 2 related problems. First, we request to find capable metals to marque each those batteries—and mining tin beryllium destructive for radical and the environment, arsenic good arsenic downright expensive. Second, since batteries volition past a finite magnitude of time, they’ll yet go trash that we’ll request to woody with. 

You spot wherever I’m going with this … artillery recycling could beryllium the portion that closes the loop. If we tin crook aged batteries into caller ones, we lick some the materials proviso occupation and the trash problem. 

It’s conscionable a question of really pulling it off.

The bully quality is that batteries are, astatine slightest successful theory, bully candidates for recycling: the metals wrong them are invaluable and don’t truly degrade overmuch implicit time, truthful they tin beryllium reused implicit and implicit again. Today, the lead-acid batteries successful gas-powered cars are among the astir highly recycled products successful the world. (Other household batteries tin beryllium recycled too, truthful bash check earlier tossing them out.)

Lithium-ion batteries, which are utilized successful EVs, are a much caller invention; they came into the representation successful the 1990s successful tiny physics devices earlier uncovering a marketplace successful electrical vehicles. As their usage has grown, truthful excessively person efforts to recycle them. 

Recycling companies’ processes each look astir the aforesaid to an extracurricular observer. Batteries are disassembled and crushed up, and the resulting pulverization is dissolved earlier being subjected to assorted chemic techniques. But the details volition beryllium a cardinal deciding origin successful however overmuch of the invaluable materials recyclers tin recover, and truthful however overmuch wealth they tin make. 

Thanks to advances successful these processes, the prospects for gathering a concern astir artillery recycling person improved. The aforesaid dynamic is going connected successful solar sheet recycling, wherever companies are moving to retrieve metallic and different costly materials from the devices. 

On a idiosyncratic level, I deliberation uncovering ways to recycle and repurpose materials successful bid to chopped down connected discarded and destructive mining is simply a worthwhile extremity successful itself. But profitability is simply a surefire mode to marque artillery recycling much apt to happen. 

We’re inactive successful the aboriginal days of artillery recycling. China has funded and encouraged a monolithic industry, and present Europe and North America are catching up, with companies raising  hundreds of millions of dollars successful investments and gathering multibillion-dollar facilities.

For my heavy dive into artillery recycling, I took a look astatine 1 of these companies, Redwood Materials. If you privation to larn much astir what Redwood is trying to do, oregon the challenges the institution is facing, check retired my diagnostic story that came retired yesterday. I besides got to talk with JB Straubel, laminitis of Redwood Materials and erstwhile main exertion serviceman astatine Tesla, astir wherever helium thinks the manufacture is headed. You tin find an edited mentation of our speech here. 

Keeping up with Climate

Climeworks announced that it’s begun removing c dioxide from the atmosphere astatine its Orca works successful Iceland. (Wall Street Journal)

→ The works whitethorn not beryllium big, but this is simply a large measurement for c removal, which was 1 of our breakthrough technologies successful 2022. (MIT Technology Review)

The occidental US is seeing grounds snowfall. Don’t expect it to marque a dent successful the drought, though. (Grid News)

Sublime Systems raised $40 cardinal to assistance make its low-carbon cement technology. (Bloomberg)

→ Using energy for dense manufacture could assistance trim clime impacts from “hard-to-solve” sectors. (MIT Technology Review)

The cooking lipid utilized for your gallic fries contiguous could powerfulness your formation tomorrow. Ride on with collectors that gather grease for usage successful caller aviation fuels. (Canary Media)

→ New fuels volition beryllium cardinal successful cutting emissions from aerial travel. (MIT Technology Review)

The Hummer EV, weighing successful astatine astir 9,000 pounds, is fueling backlash against electrical trucks and SUVs. Critics accidental monolithic vehicles, electrical oregon not, are unsafe and wasteful. (E&E News)

A caller task that volition pump aerial heavy underground could assistance store renewable vigor connected the grid. (LA Times)

It was expected to beryllium the UK’s Tesla. But without capable backing oregon customers, Britishvolt went bankrupt. (Wired)