Tesla Claims 92% Battery Cell Material Recovery In New Recycling Process - Electrek:
For years now, Tesla has been working with third-party recyclers to recover materials from their end-of-life battery packs.
But the automaker has also been working on its own “unique battery recycling system.“
Today, with the release of its 2020 Impact Report, Tesla released more details on its battery recycling effort.
Tesla confirmed that the first phase of its own battery cell recycling facility was deployed late last year:
“In the fourth quarter of 2020, Tesla successfully installed the first phase of our cell recycling facility at Gigafactory Nevada for in-house processing of both battery manufacturing scrap and end-of-life batteries. While Tesla has worked for years with third-party battery recyclers to ensure our batteries do not end up in a landfill, we understand the importance of also building recycling capacity in-house to supplement these relationships. Onsite recycling brings us one step closer to closing the loop on materials generation, allowing for raw material transfer straight to our nickel and cobalt suppliers. The facility unlocks the cycle of innovation for battery recycling at scale, allowing Tesla to rapidly improve current designs through operational learnings and to perform process testing of R&D products.”
The automaker shared a chart showing that it can recover over 92% of raw battery materials:
[...] The company says that it had 1,300 tons of nickel, 400 tons of copper, and 80 tons of cobalt recycled in 2020.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 10 2021, @12:02PM (11 children)
This is good news for the EV market. Battery disposal is one of the biggest problems it faces. That it also reduces raw material requirement helps a lot, too. If we are ever to achieve sustainability this is the kind of technology we are going to need.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by FatPhil on Tuesday August 10 2021, @12:09PM (9 children)
In other recycling news - I just found out all the medals at the olympics were made from metals extracted from waste electronics in Japan.
It's almost as if when we put our minds to it we can work towards a more sustainable economy.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 10 2021, @02:06PM (8 children)
I will not disagree with you here, but I don't think this is a good representative example to use. The cost of this recycled material would have been far down the priority list. The importance of using this material in making the medals was all about symbolism and making a statement, and even generating a sense of ownership in the games with the populace [dw.com]. But it doesn't mean it was economically viable.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday August 10 2021, @03:09PM (7 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday August 10 2021, @05:27PM (6 children)
You're making the, not completely unreasonable, assumption that we don't take up asteroid mining in the next century. If that becomes widespread then metal commodity prices could do literally anything. e.g. skyrocket by disproving hypothetical reserves or from demand for spacecraft or crash on a massive supply glut.
That will be interesting to live through.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday August 10 2021, @06:51PM (3 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday August 10 2021, @08:51PM (2 children)
I don't see it as an unreasonable proposition. Here's my thinking. For perspective, in my lifetime I've seen launch costs go from $85 per gram to $0.90 per gram* and some crazy fscker in Texas is trying to drop it another order of magnitude. It's not that far beyond our grasp today. Assume your flight hardware was completely free; That's a bullshit assumption, but indulge me. With gold at $55 per gram today and a free spacecraft today, your return mass fraction only has to be $0.90/$55 1.6% to pay for your launch cost. Do you honestly believe that, over the next 100 years, that number won't get small enough to make it possible?
* Inflation adjusted dollars 1981 shuttle cost to falcon heavy fully reusable.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday August 11 2021, @06:40AM
And no, I will not indulge you in using bullshit - how can you say "my argument's bollocks but I'll make it anyway" with a straight face? Has post-truth reached everywhere now?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 11 2021, @04:15PM
I'll do you one better. Assume that energy was completely free, and the machine was completely free. I could install a machine to process sea water and extract all the dissolved gold in it. It'd be a veritable Midas machine!
Yes, I believe that inflation-adjusted costs will go down over the next 100 years. No, I don't believe it will continue indefinitely (see: Moore's law, and the "The Tyranny of the Rocket Equation").
If you are saying that it could become profitable, I absolutely agree. I suspect I think the chances are lower than you think they are, but with things like the advent of fusion technology, it absolutely could.
On the other hand, if you are saying that it obviously will become profitable at some point, then I strongly disagree. (Anecdotally, look at how the "Sid Meyer Civilization" games keep changing... early ones had the player traveling to Alpha Centari to win, and more recent ones have a much smaller scope of establishing a colony on Mars. As time goes by, I think the optimism of the 1950s space age are slowly facing the realism of physics and engineering.)
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday August 10 2021, @08:41PM (1 child)
In the next century we might dig a little deeper than two miles into the earth's crust before asteroid mining ever becomes viable
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 11 2021, @01:17AM
There are eight mines in the world deeper than two miles, the deepest being 2.5 miles [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 10 2021, @06:08PM
and Tesla should make their cars "free battery for life!". make it easy to swap out and do it for free. then, those EVs start sounding much better.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 10 2021, @12:39PM
... comes from all of the burnt out Teslas when the autopilot fails...
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday August 10 2021, @01:44PM (2 children)
So which 8% is it that can't be recycled? What happens at/or is this "Black Mass Enrichment" (about 3%) and "Purification" (about 5%) processes?
(Score: 2) by agr on Tuesday August 10 2021, @02:13PM (1 child)
With a recycling facility at the plant, it will be easier to try modifications to the battery design and manufacturing process to reduce the waste fraction further.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 10 2021, @09:30PM
And if it impacts charge capacity verses weight, what's the customer gonna do? Write a letter? Tweet their woes?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday August 10 2021, @05:22PM (1 child)
The battery packs weigh between 1,000 pounds (model 3) and 1900 pounds (roadster).
I infer from this that they had ~3,000 packs to recycle to hit that number last year. If they included packs recycled because they fail QA that would drive the number lower.
Today's 1 month out future contract prices:
Cobalt $52,500/ton
Copper $8,686/ton
Nickel $18,596/ton
That's ~$30 million in materials recovered. I wonder what the PPE & process costs were.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 11 2021, @01:31PM
Is the Personal Protective Equipment something we really need to worry about at this level?
Unless it requires extreme measures to keep people safe, if should be easily worth it at $30M saved.