A standard concern about EVs is the destiny of their battery packs as soon as their operational lives conclude. Whereas a landfill would be the first concept delivered to thoughts, a number of corporations are presently working to sort out the issue of EV and lithium-ion battery recycling. Some of the outstanding is a agency known as Li-Cycle, based in 2016.

Like all lithium-ion batteries, a battery in an early Nissan Leaf or an previous iPhone can be encroaching on the tip of its service life. Ultimately, the time will come when these batteries have degraded considerably or had a fault, requiring a alternative.

This raises a legitimate query: what occurs to the previous, partially (or fully) unusable batteries? With new recycling methods being applied, there at the moment are methods to salvage these batteries and even make the most of the parts in future battery functions.

Lithium, cobalt, copper, and nickel are contained contained in the batteries. As pure components, they can be recycled an infinite variety of occasions. Li-Cycle is an organization capitalizing on this chemistry.

This agency has an Arizona-based manufacturing facility that recycles all kinds of lithium-ion batteries. Whether or not it is a Tesla Mannequin S battery pack or a battery pack for an electrical leaf blower, Li-Cycle can recycle all of those due to a proprietary “water-based resolution.”

In different phrases, the corporate would not soften the batteries down; moderately, it makes use of the answer to separate all of the battery pack parts out into three containers. On the finish of the road, the three luggage comprise plastic scraps, aluminum and copper, and a bag of “black mass.”

The black mass bag comprises lithium, nickel, and cobalt. After the power collects the supplies, the black mass containers can be shipped to a unique location to be separated additional.

From there, producers can produce lithium-ion battery packs with these recycled components. Successfully, Li-Cycle’s work “closes the loop” with the life cycle of a lithium-ion battery.

Li-Cycle says that its Arizona facility can course of 18,000 tons of lithium-ion batteries yearly. Furthermore, the agency claims it could recycle as much as 95% of the batteries’ sources.