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Old electric cars are a raw material of the future

economist.com

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Re: Old electric cars are a raw material of the future

#31

Post by svth »

amelius wrote: post #9
kragen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually your sandwich is made from poop. The poop fertilized plants, the plants were harvested, some of them were turned into bread, others fed a pig, and that's what you're eating. Some of the poop decayed and was released as gases into the air, which were then recaptured by the plants, by bacteria in the roots of soybeans, and by Haber-Bosch factories (confusingly also called plants) which made synthetic fertilize…

This is the same as the endless recycling of water.

HAMLET Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots: your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table: that's the end.

KING CLAUDIUS Alas, alas!

HAMLET A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.

KING CLAUDIUS What dost you mean by this?

HAMLET Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.

Re: Old electric cars are a raw material of the future

#32

Post by reader_mode »

agumonkey wrote: post #20
WJW wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recycling of old cars is already pretty well developed. You drain the old fluids and strip any parts with secondary market value, then compact the whole thing and tip it whole into a steel melting furnace. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQHKUpwMboY

yes but the rate of recycling may explode due to EVs (potentially)

That makes no sense - even the best case scenarios for EVs will take a decade to get to a significant % of market share - batteries and charging infrastructure isn't there to explode anything, AFAIK all EVs have waiting lists.

Re: Old electric cars are a raw material of the future

#33

Post by crazygringo »

kragen wrote: post #3

18 days ago, I posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26952544 , "This battery waste problem has an epistemological status similar to that of dowsing and witchcraft." This article seems to vindicate the viewpoint I expressed in the comments there: electric vehicle waste can only pose a significant pollution problem if capitalism is somehow prevented from profiting from it. (There are problems that capitalism mak…

> only pose a significant pollution problem if capitalism is somehow prevented from profiting from it.

This is fundamentally false.

The entire issue of environmental pollution exists because, or when, reuse isn't profitable.

If new raw materials are cheaper than reusing, then capitalism will absolutely result in dumping old materials and increasing pollution.

Why would you think otherwise?

Re: Old electric cars are a raw material of the future

#34

Post by jillesvangurp »

Lithium is a valuable resource. EV batteries have lots of it. Therefore EV batteries are valuable even after they stop working.

Lithium is valuable because extracting it from naturally occurring salt deposits is a lot of work. These salt deposits are mostly not Lithium. We are talking trace amounts here. To extract it, you have to process vast amounts of brine. Boil of the water, separate it from other materials, etc. That's a lot of work and energy. Recycling a battery with high concentrations of Lithium is probably a lot less work. For that reason, lithium is a lot more expensive than other materials.

Melting old ice cars to recover the steel is already a thing. The steel has a value. All you need to do is melt it and reuse it. So, we already have existing practices for recycling old vehicles and companies specializing in that. The only thing that changes is that those companies will be dealing with very valuable batteries as well. Lithium is of course quite a bit more lucrative than steel. If it works for steel, it's going to work a lot better for lithium. Because it has a lot more value.

Re: Old electric cars are a raw material of the future

#35

Post by GordonS »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #34

Lithium is a valuable resource. EV batteries have lots of it. Therefore EV batteries are valuable even after they stop working. Lithium is valuable because extracting it from naturally occurring salt deposits is a lot of work. These salt deposits are mostly not Lithium. We are talking trace amounts here. To extract it, you have to process vast amounts of brine. Boil of the water, separate it from other materials, etc…

I had always assumed that when a lithium battery didn't work any more, the lithium was somehow "depleted", or had been charged chemically somehow?

Re: Old electric cars are a raw material of the future

#36

Post by gilbetron »

crazygringo wrote: post #33
kragen wrote: post #3

18 days ago, I posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26952544 , "This battery waste problem has an epistemological status similar to that of dowsing and witchcraft." This article seems to vindicate the viewpoint I expressed in the comments there: electric vehicle waste can only pose a significant pollution problem if capitalism is somehow prevented from profiting from it. (There are problems that capitalism mak…

> only pose a significant pollution problem if capitalism is somehow prevented from profiting from it. This is fundamentally false. The entire issue of environmental pollution exists because , or when, reuse isn't profitable. If new raw materials are cheaper than reusing, then capitalism will absolutely result in dumping old materials and increasing pollution. Why would you think otherwise?

You are agreeing with the OP, you know. "somehow prevented" = we put dumb regulations in the way or the entire process of lithium extraction can't be made profitable.

Re: Old electric cars are a raw material of the future

#37

Post by gilbetron »

WJW wrote: post #5

Pretty much everything is a raw material of the future. Even household waste has much higher concentrations of metals than most ore deposits.

As with most places, our municipal recycling system just throws away most of what it receives (but that looks like it is changing soon-ish, maybe). My wife really virtue signals by wanting to recycle everything, and gets annoyed if I throw something that is "recyclable". I just tell her that recycling deprive the future waste miners of their livelihood :)

I joke, but I do believe there will be "waste miners" at some point in the future.

Re: Old electric cars are a raw material of the future

#38

Post by yomly »

GordonS wrote: post #35
jillesvangurp wrote: post #34

Lithium is a valuable resource. EV batteries have lots of it. Therefore EV batteries are valuable even after they stop working. Lithium is valuable because extracting it from naturally occurring salt deposits is a lot of work. These salt deposits are mostly not Lithium. We are talking trace amounts here. To extract it, you have to process vast amounts of brine. Boil of the water, separate it from other materials, etc…

I had always assumed that when a lithium battery didn't work any more, the lithium was somehow "depleted", or had been charged chemically somehow?

Matter cannot be created nor destroyed. And elemental conversion is a big deal - usually involving nuclear fission or fusion.

Batteries do become depleted but the lithium never disappears, I guess simply put a reverse potential is no longer able to reverse the battery equation back to the energy storing state. Presumably because there is some third reservoir state that a potential cannot reverse (without delving into the chemistry).

Don't be mistaken into thinking that because a charger cannot reverse the battery reaction that the lithium itself is gone, or that there does not exist some completely unrelated process that can recover the lithium - separate from the immediate battery ecosystem

Re: Old electric cars are a raw material of the future

#39

Post by theelous3 »

GordonS wrote: post #35
jillesvangurp wrote: post #34

Lithium is a valuable resource. EV batteries have lots of it. Therefore EV batteries are valuable even after they stop working. Lithium is valuable because extracting it from naturally occurring salt deposits is a lot of work. These salt deposits are mostly not Lithium. We are talking trace amounts here. To extract it, you have to process vast amounts of brine. Boil of the water, separate it from other materials, etc…

I had always assumed that when a lithium battery didn't work any more, the lithium was somehow "depleted", or had been charged chemically somehow?

Lithium is lithium. Idk anything about lithium batteries, but presuming they use some kind if lithium salt compound or something, it's going to be a hell of a lot easier to re-saltify it or otherwise rebuild the useful compound, than it is to try and recreate big bang conditions to make more lithium.

Re: Old electric cars are a raw material of the future

#40

Post by ecpottinger »

GordonS wrote: post #35
jillesvangurp wrote: post #34

Lithium is a valuable resource. EV batteries have lots of it. Therefore EV batteries are valuable even after they stop working. Lithium is valuable because extracting it from naturally occurring salt deposits is a lot of work. These salt deposits are mostly not Lithium. We are talking trace amounts here. To extract it, you have to process vast amounts of brine. Boil of the water, separate it from other materials, etc…

I had always assumed that when a lithium battery didn't work any more, the lithium was somehow "depleted", or had been charged chemically somehow?

Lithium is an element how can it be deleted?

If Lithium is chemically changed what prevents it being chemically changed back?

Batteries are sealed, if material does not leave than all the components used to make it are still inside the battery.

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