The document discusses future trends in battery recycling, highlighting the U.S.'s reliance on imports for critical metals and the economic potential of recycling discarded batteries, particularly lead-acid and lithium-ion types. It emphasizes the complex processes and low profitability currently associated with recycling lithium-ion batteries, while introducing innovative technologies like aqua metals' aquarefining method that could improve efficiency and environmental impact. Overall, it warns that rising costs in battery materials could affect electric vehicle prices in the coming years.

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It should be clear from Future Trends – Recycling – Metals – Parts I, II, and III that the United
States has more problems than just being energy independent. An even bigger future problem for
the U.S. than oil and gas is the reliance on imports for critical to U.S. manufacturing metals and
compounds.
Recycling batteries is another business where valuable metals will be recycled and that will
become popular in the future. From batteryuniversity.com website, “BU-705a: Battery Recycling
as a Business”:
Batteries are expensive and have a relatively short life span. As discarded batteries grow by the
tonnage, entrepreneurs are enticed to start a business in recycling. With an annual world market
of $33 billion, lead acid is the most common battery in use. This is followed by Li-ion at $16.6
billion, NiMH at $2 billion and NiCd at $1 billion. All other chemistries only make up $1 billion.
Table (below) lists the material cost per ton to build these batteries.
Battery Chemistry Metal value (per
ton)
Recycling
Table 1: Metal value
per ton of battery.
Lead acid remains
the most suitable
battery to recycle;
70% of its weight
contains reusable
lead.
Lithium cobalt oxide
$25,000 Subsidy needed
Lithium iron
phosphate
$400 Subsidy needed
Lead acid $1,500 Profitable
Nickel
$10,000–
$17,000
Subsidy needed
Cadmium $2,200 Subsidy needed
Lithium-ion batteries are expensive to manufacture and this is in part due to the high material
cost and complex preparation processes. The most expensive metal of most Li-ion is cobalt, a
hard lustrous gray material that is also used to manufacture magnets and high-strength alloys.
As I pointed out in “Future Trends – Recycling – Metals – Part II”:
So Cobalt is a strategic metal and could become scarce very fast. That would be a problem for the
expansion of the electric automobile industry…

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From ecobalt.com:
The battery industry currently uses 42 percent of global cobalt production, a critical metal for
Lithium-ion cells. The remaining 58 percent is used in diverse industrial and military applications
(super alloys, catalysts, magnets, pigments…) that rely exclusively on the material…
New primary cobalt mines may come online should cobalt prices soar; however, exploration,
licensing and development take time and require billions of dollars of investments. In addition, 60
percent of the world’s cobalt reserves and resources originate in the DRC, which is riddled with
child labor and exploitation.
Cobalt supply is a problem for a major expansion of the electric automobile industry in the United
States. Continuing with the batteryunivesity.com article:
Knowing that billions of Li-ion batteries are discarded every year and given the high cost of
lithium cobalt oxide, salvaging precious metals should make economic sense and one wonders
why so few companies recycle these batteries.
The reason becomes clear when examining the complexity and low yield of recycling. The
retrieved raw material barely pays for labor, which includes collection, transport, sorting into
batteries chemistries, shredding, separation of metallic and non-metallic materials, neutralizing
hazardous substances, smelting, and purification of the recovered metals.
Recycling programs for lead acid are believed to have started soon after Cadillac introduced the
cranking motor in 1912 as a for-profit business rather than protecting the environment…
The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) has imposed strict guidelines in recycling of lead
acid batteries in the USA. The recycling plants must be sealed and the smokestacks fitted with
scrubbers. To check for possible escape of lead particles, the plant perimeter must be
surrounded with lead-monitoring devices. Rules are bound to be broken and batteries soon end
up in Mexico and other developing countries with relaxed regulations. China, a leader in lead
acid battery production, also took action to protect the environment by introducing strict
guidelines that only reputable companies can meet.
Nickel-based batteries can also be recycled and the retrieved materials are iron and nickel, which
are used in stainless steel production. Nickel-metal-hydride (NiMH) yields the highest return in
nickel, and with ample supply recycling is said to make money. Low demand for cadmium has
reduced the profitability from recycling NiCd batteries. The growth in batteries is with Li-ion but
valuable materials are difficult to retrieve. This makes Li-ion less attractive for recycling and a
financial breakeven may not be possible without subsidies.
The true cost to manufacture Li-ion is not so much in the raw materials, as is the case with lead
acid and NiMH, but in lengthy processing and purification processes of the raw materials to reach
battery grade. If the purity of lithium is below 99.5 percent, then it is not suitable as raw material
for batteries. Recycling brings the metal to ground zero, from which costly preparations begin

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anew. It is often cheaper to mine raw material than to retrieve it from recycling. Lithium from
recycled batteries is commonly used for non-battery applications, such as lubricating greases
that are found in WD-40 and other products, rather than batteries.
Although alkaline and zinc-carbon account for over 90 percent of batteries consumed in the
United States, they contain few precious metals and the toxicity is low. Organizations are seeking
ways to recycle these batteries as well for the basic metal content and with high volume such a
venture should become viable.
At this time, recycling metals from batteries other than lead acid batteries is unprofitable. That
means the cost of lithium-ion batteries has to increase to make recycling lithium and cobalt
profitable. What do you think that will do to the cost of these electric automobiles in the future? If
you think the price is high now, imagine what the price will be in another ten years.
Nevertheless, some ambitious entrepreneurs are pursuing recycling metals from batteries with the
lowest cost technology available. From Waste 360 website, “Could a New Battery Technology
Push Smelting Out?”, Arlene Karidis, July 27, 2016:
Technology company Aqua Metals launched a lead-acid battery recycling plant in McCarran, Nev.
today that the Alameda, Calif.-based company says will revolutionize how lead from batteries is
processed. The company says its proprietary technology, AquaRefining, is a cheaper, cleaner
alternative to its long-standing forerunner, smelting. It will be available to recyclers as well as
battery manufacturers who will have two options: purchasing the commodity, or buying into the
technology to launch their own plants…
This new recovery method has been shown to generate less air emissions than smelting, which
produces greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. Smelting emits sulfur dioxide,
which causes acid rain. And it churns out toxins like arsenic, lead, mercury and carbon dioxide,
which are emitted into the air and leach into soil and water…
Unlike with smelting, which requires high temperatures (1,650 degrees centigrade), the new
technology processes lead at room temperature. Lead components are dissolved in a liquid
electrolyte material. And the reborn commodity is then electrolyzed…
At an average cost of $2,000 per ton the past couple of years, lead has not been affordable to
many who would otherwise buy the commodity. And recycling their own lead has been an option
only for “the big guys,” according to Steve Cotton, Aqua Metals’ chief commercial officer. He
believes AquaRefining will lessen the economic hurdle—cutting costs in areas from processing to
transportation—while making battery recycling sustainable…
This new recovery method has been shown to generate less air emissions than smelting, which
produces greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. Smelting emits sulfur dioxide,
which causes acid rain. And it churns out toxins like arsenic, lead, mercury and carbon dioxide,
which are emitted into the air and leach into soil and water.

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“Aquarefining eliminates metals and dust and it reduces greenhouse gases and sulfur dioxide. For
every 30,000 tons of recycled lead, we will emit 0.07 tons of sulfur dioxide versus the average
smelter’s 97 tons,” says Cotton.
Unlike with smelting, which requires high temperatures (1,650 degrees centigrade), the new
technology processes lead at room temperature. Lead components are dissolved in a liquid
electrolyte material. And the reborn commodity is then electrolyzed.
Interstate Batteries President and CEO Scott Miller is optimistic that the company they have joined
forces with is on to something. “Lead is one of the most recycled materials because it can be truly
purified to its original form,” he says. “A lead battery is made from 95 percent recycled lead. That’s
pretty remarkable, and is part of why lead recycling is so important for our industry, other
industries and the public in general.”
Aqua Metals also says its process will cut transportation costs since operations can be co-located
with battery manufacturers and distributors whereas the alternative is shipping the wasted material
to smelters. The technology eliminates the need to run energy-guzzling glass furnaces.
Environmental permitting will be less involved and cheaper. And, says Cotton, you can scale down
manufacturing to meet demand as it is not done via batch processing.
The company’s goal is to see that within 10 years the new technology is the primary method for
recycling lead-acid batteries.
From technologyreview.com website, “Lithium Battery Recycling Gets a Boost”, Tyler Hamilton,
August 12, 2009:
The US Department of Energy has granted $9.5 million to a company in California that plans to
build America’s first recycling facility for lithium-ion vehicle batteries.
Anaheim-based Toxco says it will use the funds to expand an existing facility in Lancaster, OH,
that already recycles the lead-acid and nickel- metal hydride batteries used in today’s hybrid-
electric vehicles.
There is currently little economic need to recycle lithium-ion batteries. Most batteries contain
only small amounts of lithium carbonate as a percentage of weight and the material is relatively
inexpensive compared to most metals.
But experts say that having a recycling infrastructure in place will ease concerns that the
adoption of vehicles that use lithium-ion batteries could lead to a shortage of lithium carbonate
and a dependence on countries such as China, Russia, and Bolivia, which control the bulk of
global lithium reserves. “Right now it hardly pays to recycle lithium, but if demand increases and
there are large supplies of used material, the situation could change,” says Linda Gaines, a
researcher at the Argonne National Laboratory’s Transportation Technology R&D Center.
The Trail facility is also the only one in the world that can handle different sizes and chemistries
of lithium batteries. When old batteries arrive they go into a hammer mill and are shredded,

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allowing components made of aluminum, cooper, and steel to be separated easily. Larger
batteries that might still hold a charge are cryogenically frozen with liquid nitrogen before being
hammered and shredded; at -325 degrees Fahrenheit, the reactivity of the cells is reduced to
zero. Lithium is then extracted by flooding the battery chambers in a caustic bath that dissolves
lithium salts, which are filtered out and used to produce lithium carbonate. The remaining
sludge is processed to recover cobalt, which is used to make battery electrodes. About 95
percent of the process is completely automated.
The DOE grant will help Toxco transfer the Trail recycling process to its Ohio operations, laying
the foundation for an advanced lithium-battery recycling plant that can expand to accommodate
expected growth in the US electric- vehicle market. The electric-car maker Tesla Motors, like
most major automakers, already sends old or defective battery packs to Toxco’s Trail facility for
recycling. “It’s very important for us,” says Kurt Kelty, director of energy storage technologies at
Tesla. “The recycling issue is a key issue and we need to get it right.”
But Kelty says the economics of recycling depend largely on the chemistries of the lithium-ion
batteries being used. He adds that lithium is currently one of the leas valuable metals to retrieve.
For example, the lithium in a Tesla Roadser battery pack would represent roughly $140 of a
system with a replacement cost of $36,000. For most lithium-ion batteries, the lithium
represents less than 3 percent of production cost.
“The lithium part is a really negligible cost when you compare it to other metals; nickel, cobalt,
those are going to be the biggest drivers [of recycling],” says Kelty, adding that Tesla actually
makes money by recycling jus the non-lithium recycled components of its batteries. “So while
we’ve been reading plenty of articles about the industry running out of lithium, it’s totally missing
the mark. There’s plenty of lithium out there.”
Over the long term, some observers believe the mass introduction of plug-in hybrid and electric
vehicles, combined with the fact that much of the world’s lithium reserves lie in foreign and
potentially unfriendly countries, could lead to a large spike in the price of lithium carbonate. The
concern is that we could end up trading “peak oil” for “peak lithium.”
Battery recycling could become very popular once the electric car market starts rolling out more
and more models.