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The lithium-ion batteries in right now’s electrical autos outperform older lead-acid batteries by nearly each measure, besides one. Lead-acid batteries are nonetheless the single-most recycled product on this planet.
Though lithium-ion batteries are set to energy a clean-energy transition, greater than 100 million lead-acid batteries are nonetheless bought every year in america, principally as starter batteries for automobiles, vans, and boats.
When these lead-acid batteries die, almost all of them get recycled. Actually, the lead-acid battery trade claims a home recycling charge of 99 %. In 2021, the U.S. produced almost a million metric tons of recycled lead. Virtually all of that recycled lead was used to fabricate new batteries.
What’s fascinating is that none of that is really new. Lead-acid batteries have been recycled for the reason that Twenties. As early as 1930, the trade described lead for batteries as a “mortgage” quite than a type of “consumption.” Previous to the Sixties, a whole bunch of small-scale lead recycling operations operated in and round U.S. cities, making this an early type of city mining.
These city lead recycling operations had been additionally a major supply of air pollution. One of many earliest epidemics of lead poisoning was tied to battery recycling operations in Baltimore, Maryland, within the Nineteen Thirties. In some locations, it’s nonetheless attainable to determine the websites of deserted lead-acid battery recycling operations primarily based on elevated ranges of heavy metals within the soil.
Within the Eighties, nonetheless, the trade went by means of a significant restructuring. New environmental legal guidelines pressured recyclers to improve air pollution controls. In response, many small recyclers closed. Those who remained consolidated operations into built-in battery recycling operations with improved air pollution controls. Right this moment, a dozen extremely regulated secondary lead smelters recycle the overwhelming majority of the U.S.’s spent lead-acid batteries.
With international manufacturing of lithium-ion batteries now overtaking lead-acid batteries, it’s value asking why lead-acid batteries have been recycled for thus lengthy and so effectively, and what classes that provides for closing the loop on the lithium-ion batteries. Take into account these three factors:
First, the chemistry and format of lead-acid batteries is extremely standardized, which simplifies recycling. In contrast to with lithium-ion batteries, which are available in a variety of chemistries and quite a lot of shapes (cylindrical, flat, pouch, and many others.), the relative uniformity of spent lead-acid batteries reduces the necessity for sorting spent lead-acid batteries by chemistry, form, or measurement. That facilitates bulk processing.
Second, the metals content material of lead-acid batteries is sort of completely metallic lead and lead oxide paste — each of that are normally recovered by means of pyrometallurgical recycling processes at greater than 2000 levels Fahrenheit. After processing, the recovered lead is each the useful equal of and cost-competitive with lead sourced from main ore.
As compared, lithium-ion batteries are much more materially complicated. That requires tailoring lithium-ion recycling processes to get better a variety of cathode supplies (lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, iron, and many others.), anode supplies (graphite), and conductors (aluminum and copper). These complexities pose vital challenges for effectively recovering supplies and processing them for re-use cost-effectively.
Third, beginning within the Eighties, the federal authorities and states prohibited the disposal of lead-acid batteries, as a result of lead’s excessive toxicity. Though some spent lead-acid batteries get shipped overseas for recycling, most are recycled domestically. (Issues have been raised about spent battery shipments to much less well-regulated services in Mexico.) That has meant recycling has performed an essential position in guaranteeing america has had an ample and dependable supply of home lead.
Wanting forward, the size of recycling of lithium-ion batteries is ready to increase quickly. Excessive volumes of spent large-format electrical automotive batteries promise to drive the economies of scale wanted to shut the loop on lithium-ion batteries. Studies point out that recycling has the potential to scale back the cumulative demand for lithium, cobalt, and nickel wanted to impress the transportation sector by as much as 30 % between 2020 and 2050.
Scaling up lithium-ion battery recycling will even create alternatives to enhance the sustainability of recycling operations. Current pyrometallurgical processes for lithium-ion batteries typically get better solely a fraction of the metals content material of spent batteries (normally pushed by the worth of cobalt). Direct recycling methods, corresponding to these being researched at Argonne Nationwide Laboratory’s ReCell Center, have the potential to considerably enhance supplies restoration and to scale back the power inputs and potential pollution from lithium-ion battery recycling.
Though there are rising private-sector and governmental initiatives to advertise recycling in america, the circulation of spent lithium-ion batteries, and the assets they comprise, might simply be diverted abroad. In the long run, a strong U.S. lithium-ion recycling trade can play an essential position in securing home sources of superior battery supplies. Though its significance is little appreciated, that’s simply the position the lead recycling trade has performed in supporting home manufacture of lead-acid batteries for the reason that mid-twentieth century.
This put up is customized from James Morton Turner’s forthcoming e-book, Charged: A Historical past of Batteries and Classes for a Clear Vitality Future (August 2022). You may be taught extra about Charged at http://charged-the-book.com. Turner tweets at @_jay_turner
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