[cyphar]

It really should not be surprising that we can get very high recovery percentages from batteries -- we do not mine elemental lithium, so the processes we use for extraction are already designed to extract lithium from fairly low-purity sources. In contrast, lithium batteries are an incredibly high-purity source of lithium. The main question is when it will become cost-effective to create recycling pipelines.

Lead acid batteries had a similar trajectory and modern lead acid batteries are effectively 100% recycled.

[legitster]

This is probably somewhat true, but also I suspect there might be an order of magnitude difference from extracting trace lithium from inert rock vs collecting it as a salt from amongst a medley of very refined metals.

Case in point - lead acid batteries are not a fair comparison. A lead acid battery is so robust you can separate the cathodes and anodes with your (gloved) hands. Getting the elements out of a lead battery is like picking pieces of pepperoni off of a pizza. Whereas taking lithium out of a lithium cell is like pulling only a certain protein out of a roll of bologna. And the protein catches fire in contact with air.

[Alpha3031]

> And the protein catches fire in contact with air.

FWIW neither lithium metal nor most Li-ion electrode chemistries autoignite in air at STP. The fire hazard is primarily due to heating up to the ignition temperature through short circuits though there are also exothermic reactions with e.g. water that can heat things up sufficiently.

Being the eager electron donor it is, once it is on fire it is very hard to put out, of course.

[ErroneousBosh]

As late as the early 80s and probably later there was a guy in the city I live near that had a battery recycling company where they did just that - melted the pitch to extract the cells from the battery "bucket", cut the old cells off and melted them down, cast new grids and put new lead oxide in, and sealed it all up again.

My dad bought a recycled lorry battery off them in the late 70s, and I remember going to the place to pick it up. I can't imagine it was a very safe place to work, and I expect that was pretty much a maximum lifetime exposure to lead in one hit ;-)

[lostlogin]

There are a fair few risks. Electrical and chemical burns, electrocution, fire, the weights involved, poisoning, heavy metals. It’s hard to think of a risk category that doesn’t apply.

[ErroneousBosh]

It's not radioactive, so it's got that going for it, which is nice.

[gosub100]

There are people doing it today, in the US.

https://youtube.com/@batteryguyz7203

[jandrewrogers]

Under normal conditions lithium metal doesn't spontaneously ignite. It is the least spicy of the Group 1 metals (ignoring the special case of hydrogen).

[lstodd]

What is more fun is that it reacts with water (and all air has some moisture) which then leaves hydrogen to catch fire and explode.

One can replace air with pure nitrogen for example, but that complicates things.

[leonidasrup]

U.S. lead acid baterries recycling has been outsourced.

" As the United States tightened regulations on lead processing to protect Americans over the past three decades, finding domestic lead became a challenge. So the auto industry looked overseas to supplement its supply. In doing so, car and battery manufacturers pushed the health consequences of lead recycling onto countries where enforcement is lax, testing is rare and workers are desperate for jobs. "

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/20/world/americas/car-batter...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/11/18/world/africa/...

[qsera]

>countries where enforcement is lax

As an Indian this is exactly one of the reasons why I am afraid of EV boom. All of that bad stuff, which we are mostly unfamiliar with (in terms of how to handle it properly, because battery tech is always changing) is going to dumped in places like India. And would silently sustain the bad effects for many decades or even more, until it (the bad stuff) somehow reaches some developed country (probably never).

[cogman10]

Well let me ease some of your fears.

Lithium batteries are less toxic than most other battery chemistries (including lead acid batteries). The major toxic portion of lithium batteries comes in the form of production, but not the actual materials involved in the battery.

The battery tech also isn't changing as much as you might think. Don't get me wrong, it is getting better, but a lot of that isn't really by changing the underlying formula for the batteries, but rather tweaking the processes for creating the structure of the battery.

That's not to say that you want to inhale the smoke of a burning lithium battery. But these batteries don't have any heavy metals in them. The materials they do have tend to already be in abundance in the environment. A major part of the reason for that is these batteries do need to be cheap. Heavy metals drive up the price.

[qsera]

You paint a happy path. But the devil is in the details that often come to light only much later.

Sure, we could end up with a tech that have really no pollution potential. But there is much higher chance that we would end-up with something bad, that would go into production with a promise of "proper handling and re-cycling", but would never end up getting done...

[cogman10]

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that there was no pollution potential or problems.

My point was primarily that the chemicals within the lithium ion batteries are themselves pretty common on the surface and not forever poisons like lead.

My other point was that the major issue around these was primarily the chemicals used to purify and refine. Those can be nasty especially if not treated well.

But all things considered, the risks and potential damage from mishandling the recycling and production of LiPos is a lot lower than the risks that surround things like recycling lead acid batteries.

[qsera]

But scale matters too. I wouldn't be too worried if we are not going to eventually replace all fossil fuels with batteries.

That is a lot of batteries..

[pacija]

As a Serb, I currently live in a dictatorship actively supported by everyone involved in EV boom. Those who want to profit from mining lithium in Serbia have determined my country should be a mining colony, and they do everything in their power, including financing corrupt murderous regime protested by hundreds of thoudands of Serbs for years, in order to poison our rivers and aral land and extract lithium.

https://friendsoftheearth.eu/news/lithium-in-serbia-people-p...

So far we have been able to pause it, but evil never sleeps. Hopefully we overthrow traitors on next election. Won't be easy as all media turned into propaganda brainwashing machine, protesters are being run over by cars driven by pro-government thugs who are being pardoned by president, and instead of being jailed for attempted murder they get promoted, are being given high political functions, and celebrated as defenders of the nation.

Polluted cities getting cleaner for some. Clean rivers and beautiful forests getting poisounous ore pits for others.

[qsera]

>Polluted cities getting cleaner for some. Clean rivers and beautiful forests getting poisounous ore pits for others.

Yes, that is how it goes.

Right now all the "intellectuals" and "thought leaders" are in EV apologetic mode. This is a window of opportunity for the corporate to maximize bad stuff to maximize profits selling EV.

[lostlogin]

A depressing thread.

We replace the evil of oil with the same behaviour but in new places.

I wonder how long it takes for a country to recover from its oil industry?

[worldsayshi]

> places like India

I had the impression that India is quickly turning rich enough to say no to things like this.

[anal_reactor]

Never underestimate the poverty of India. India is huge and while in some places there are bubbles of wealth, it's still a third-world country.

[orwin]

India is a lot like Russia in that its people and standards of living are very different from place to place. China, despite a larger size and similar population is more culturally uniform than India, especially once you go in more remote areas.

(this is not a diss on India, i think that make the country much more interesting)

[lostlogin]

> China, despite a larger size and similar population is more culturally uniform than India

If rumour is to be believed, this isn’t a coincidence and had been done by the regime.

[willy_k]

Yes but this sentiment has held true since before the CCP.

[iberator]

who cares? India is very dirty even without any kind of manufacturing - awful mentality of just throwing trash and shit around.

[hgoel]

That attitude is exactly how to prevent things from ever getting better.

[dv_dt]

Don't get on such a high horse about US regulatory effectiveness.

This is recently (2010) in California even: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exide_lead_contamination

Still, the overall benefit might be seen as positive for lithium from shifting widespread air pollution from combustion engines to more localized pollution. Though obviously the world needs to work on better processes for the local pollutants.

[dtech]

The "advantage" is that in contrast to heavy metals like lead lithium is a lot less toxic as far as we know. Not 0, but not in the same league.

[Danox]

Anything that you can dig/pump out of the ground is toxic, particularly to water resources, and if you don’t recognize upfront that, be it the military, companies or government, you have to be prepared to clean up your mess, in short, factor in cleanup and the cost of using rare earths or any other item you can dig up on land or pump from the sea or land, but worldwide, mankind is still not quite there in terms of recognizing all of the ramifications up front, short-term thinking is the curse of mankind.

One example I can give of that is the fact that Alaska is home for the largest salmon fishery in the world, a fishery that is more valuable as a food resource than any gold you can extract from the headwaters of Lake Iliamna.

[cogman10]

> Anything that you can dig/pump out of the ground is toxic, particularly to water resources

Not really true. There are plenty of non-toxic elements in the ground.

The actual issue with mining is that the elements we are after are often surrounded by the likes of arsenic. Gold is a great example of this as veins of it are often right along and in arsenic.

That said, I do agree about being conscious of what sort of undesirables get leached out from the stuff we pull from the ground. For example, I recently learned that the reason we have to be worried about mercury in ocean fish is because mercury is a major part of the pollutants spewed from coal plants.

[iso1631]

> Anything that you can dig/pump out of the ground is toxic

Carrots?

[lostlogin]

Everything has a fatal dose. But I’m not sure the LF50 for carrots has been established yes.

[ufocia]

Poison hemlock is a carrot. Socrates and I would consider it toxic.

[dv_dt]

but here again, shifting from fossil fuels usage lifecycle - which is literally extract to refine and burn is a much more polluting lifecycle than a 20 year extract, use, recycle lifecycle for lithium or solar or any renewable approach. And its an improvement in both intensity and sheer tonnage of material extracted.

[ufocia]

There are other toxic substance like phosphorus in "lithium" batteries. Some "lithium" battery chemistries, though reportedly not LFP, contain cobalt, a very toxic heavy metal. Besides, there isn't a clear definition of what is a heavy metal. Even iron and copper, used in LFP, are considered heavy metals by some.

BTW, lithium itself is highly toxic too.

[cogman10]

> cobalt, a very toxic heavy metal

Cobalt is neither particularly toxic nor a heavy metal. In fact, it's a part of vitamin B12. You might be thinking of Cadmium, which is indeed a very toxic and nasty metal.

In LiPos the heaviest metals are Iron and Nickel. That's by design. Heavier metals tend to be more expensive to procure.

In trace amounts, by both weight and volume lithium batteries are mostly nickel and/or iron.

> There are other toxic substance like phosphorus in "lithium" batteries. Some "lithium" battery chemistries

...

> BTW, lithium itself is highly toxic too.

Both phosphorous and lithium are fertilizers. Yes, taking in a very large dose of both is poisonous, but the same is true of salt.

[themaninthedark]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt Toxicity The LD50 value for soluble cobalt salts has been estimated to be between 150 and 500 mg/kg. Thus, for a 100 kg person the LD50 would be about 20 grams.[209] Cobaltism (cobalt poisoning) is rare but has resulted from the fabrication of tungsten carbide.[210] Another source is from wear and tear of certain metal-on-metal hip prostheses.[211]

Chronic cobalt ingestion has caused serious health problems at doses far less than the lethal dose. In 1966, the addition of cobalt compounds to stabilize beer foam in Canada led to a peculiar form of toxin-induced cardiomyopathy, which came to be known as beer drinker's cardiomyopathy.[212][213]

Cobalt metal is suspected of causing cancer (i.e., possibly carcinogenic, IARC Group 2B) as per the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) Monographs.[214]

It causes respiratory problems when inhaled.[215] It also causes skin problems when touched; after nickel and chromium, cobalt is a major cause of contact dermatitis.[216]

[t_mahmood]

Yeah, too many lead batteries here, and there are a lot of battery recycle factories. It's been a health and environment concern for a while. And these batteries allowed to put motors on rickshaw, we call them "Tesla", And they are also another hazard, and menace for the price of faster transportation.

[JumpCrisscross]

> It really should not be surprising that we can get very high recovery percentages from batteries -- we do not mine elemental lithium

Plenty of substances we don't mine elementally are not worth recycling. The main advantage with lithium is it tends to go into large volumes of standardised chemistries.

[tpm]

I think the issues with recycling lithium from electrolyte containing lithium hexafluorophosphate in solvents is more the hexafluorophosphate part; it's highly reactive, hygroscopic and releases (toxic, corrosive) hydrogen fluoride upon contact with water. So purely from economic perspective it's possibly not worth it unless we are very lithium-constrained. Of course it should be done anyway as there will be a lot of used batteries in near future.

The article doesn't really give us the details which is a pity.

[ufocia]

> Of course it should be done anyway as there will be a lot of used batteries in near future.

The necessity for recycling those batteries, without more, does not logically follow from their relative abundance in view of the purely economic perspective you posit. Why not just bury them?

It may be the scarcity of lithium that may drive us to take otherwise expensive steps to recycle such batteries.

The conclusory "of course" sets the argument up for a failure from the outset. Though it is not the only flaw.

[tpm]

here in densely populated parts of the world we don't prefer burying toxic waste close to our homes.

[Danox]

Since Japan is an island country and they have relatively limited lithium rare earth resources, probably, it makes sense for them to look into recycling, and the same would apply to many other countries that don’t have a huge landmass like Canada, United States, China, Australia, and Russia.

It makes sense to try an recycle rare earths or many other types of metals that you may be short of, and I would say for a country like Japan, Holland, Switzerland, Germany, it would make sense to make the effort.

I would think price would be no object if you want to maintain some independence, it’s probably why Switzerland and Denmark are teaming up on Thorium research currently.

[vasco]

If you've ever seen a video of Nigerians "recycling" lead batteries you'd be hard pressed to call it that. Katana in one hand, bucket on the floor, no shoes, let's go.

[JuniperMesos]

I confess I am not sure what role the katana plays in Nigerian lead battery recycling.

[vasco]

Take battery box, hack it with katana, stuff from inside goes into bucket (and some splashes on you), repeat. Look up videos there's plenty.

[protocolture]

>Lead acid batteries had a similar trajectory and modern lead acid batteries are effectively 100% recycled.

Getting rid of all that waste material from Galena was maybe a different incentive structure but yeah.