cle lithium-ion batteries. This has led and will continue to lead to large amounts of spent batteries ending their days in landfills. This is incredibly wasteful, as many of the main components, like lithium, could be recovered and reused. While recycling can be achieved, most of the current research has focused on improving durability, efficiency and reduced cost of production. Current practices involve simply smelting (high-temperature melting and extraction) of old batteries in a process fairly similar to the mining industry. This is a very energy-intensive process, compounding the hidden CO2 cost of EVs during their construction. Improving the methods of recycling these old batteries could be potentially very lucrative, however. It may also become ever more geostrategically essential as time goes by. Where does lithium come from? Lithium, one of the main components of lithium-ion batteries, comes from two major sources: brine and hard rock deposits. The former
is generally found in salt lakes and is extracted by evaporating off the water to leave lithium-concentrated salts. Brine evaporation is the simplest and most common form of lithium extraction, but tends to yield the lowest grade of the material. At present, more than half of the world’s lithium resources lie under the salt flats in the Andean regions of Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. Extraction is conducted by pumping huge amounts of brine groundwater from drilled wells to be left to evaporate in brine pools or ponds. Also called salterns, salt pans or salars, here the lithium-rich brine water is left to evaporate in the sun. Depending on the makeup of the groundwater, this tends to lead to a concentrated mixture of manganese, potassium, borax and lithium salts. This is then filtered, and placed in another evaporation pool until a commercially viable amount of lithium carbonate salt can be extracted. These pools or ponds can become havens for some types of wildlife, including algae and some
endangered birds. As a general rule of thumb, it takes about 2 million liters of water to produce a ton of lithium. Hard rock deposits, on the other hand, tend to produce the best yields of lithium. So, how is lithium mined? Hard lithium mining requires significantly higher investment costs as well as extensive geological mapping and exploration to find suitable deposits. Once found, drilling equipment is used to extract the lithium ore, which provides better quality lithium at the cost of increased monetary burden. There are various lithium ores including, but not limited to, petalite (LiAl(Si2O5)2, lepidolite K(Li,Al)3(Al,Si,Rb)4O10(F,OH)2, spodumene LiAl(SiO3)2. To date, the largest hard rock sources of lithium include Australia and Chile. Hard rock lithium extraction tends to require about three to four years of capital investment before becoming productive, and mines― depending on the ore reserves―tend to have an average productive life of about 16 years.
Brine evaporation extraction methods tend to require five or so years of investment prior to production but will tend to last much longer than hard rock mining, with average lifespans of about 30 years. According to some estimates, at the current rate of consumption and production, there is expected to be a shortfall in lithium by the mid2020s. Can lithium-ion batteries be recycled? As we have previously touched upon, lithium-ion batteries most certainly can be recycled. However, the current practices of Li-ion battery recycling, and projects currently in the works, are still very much in their infancy. For example, in Australia, only about 2% to 3% of spent batteries are currently collected and sent offshore for recycling. European and U.S. rates are not that much better, at around 5%, give or take. “There are many reasons why Li-ion battery recycling is not yet a universally well-established practice,” Linda L. Gaines, of Argonne National Laboratory, said in an in-
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