Jerry Rigs Everything Video about lithium recycling to black mass.
Recycled lithium uses 70% less energy than virgin freshly mined lithium, and lithium, like aluminum, in infinitely recyclable.
Assholes like Jeremy Clarkson don't get this.
this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2026
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Jeremy Clarkson rims goats. Fuckin tail-lifter.
What did I miss?
Nothing. Lemmy being edgy teens.
"The process starts with old batteries being separated and burned to strip away non-metal components. What's left gets crushed into something called black mass. This is essentially a powder packed with recoverable metals. From there, a water-based chemical treatment called hydrometallurgy pulls the lithium out. One clever distinction in this new process is that the recovered lithium hydroxide actually replaces a chemical traditionally used during refining. This cuts the carbon footprint by about 40% compared to older methods."
Article also said that previous methods got about 45% of the lithium from recycling.
black mass
Pretty metal
Generals gathered in their masses
Just like witches at black masses
Evil minds that plot destruction
Sorcerer of death's construction
seems like a significant breakthrough
Dumb question... how are they burning them? I thought controlling lithium battery fires was difficult?
They are hard to put out, but if you want them to burn all you really need is a safe place to do it. So in a big crucible with some type of fume extraction so they aren't crazy polluting the air. As long as the heat has somewhere safe to go and there isn't anything else to catch on fire, burning things is easy.
tl;dr:
Rub them on a big piece of carpet.
Ok it needs to be said. The smart play is to have governments to subsidize this process and build up the raw inventory for lithium. That way, ie (US) could have tons and tons of raw lithium without having to mine it.
We recover 99% of lead from car batteries. The same lead is used over and over.
Lead is much easier to purify than lithium.
Wouldn't it be smarter to use old EV batteries for grid storage?
Why not both? Downcycle the old EV batteries for grid storage, then when they reach the end of useful life, recycle them. We need to resurrect the first 2 R's (Reduce, Reuse) to be able to survive on this planet.
They are listed in order of importance.. reduce first, if you can't, then reuse. If you can't reuse, then recycle.
Problem is, we saw "recycle" and thougt "infinite resources" and ditched the other two.. turns out that most things cant really be recycled, so now it's just landfill all the way
I wish I could remember where I read it, but the focus on just Recycle was encouraged as the main narrative by corporations which didn't want to give up the myth of endless growth.
The batteries don't last forever, eventually, they need to be dealt with somehow.
Also grid storage doesn't have the sort of deep, rapid discharge/charge cycles that EVs go through. Once an EV battery is no good in the car, it still has about 80% of it's useable capacity left. Meaning, there will always be a need for "new" EV batteries, but grid storage would saturate and leave surplus batteries. Not to mention, as the grid storage batteries fall out of their useful life for that purpose, they can be recycled into new EV batteries and begin the cycle anew.
Not if they are not holding energy any more.
That's great and all, but not all batteries need lithium. When another battery technology gets mature enough to surpass lithium based batteries, then we'll still be stuck on old tech cause the government is subsiding it.
This also reduces the incentive for making more lithium efficient batteries.
Subsidies can help, but they need to be more generalized so they don't create issues moving past current tech. Heck, look at how much trouble we're having getting past oil, that's a perfect example.
Under modern physics, Lithium is pretty much the best possible chemical to build batteries out of. Anything else that might be better won't be a chemical battery, and it's not like there's any reason to suspect some new magic thing will be created like a pocket-size fusion reactor that will make chemical batteries totally obsolete any time soon. Decades more of lithium batteries being relevant are as close to guaranteed as can be.
Lithium is pretty much the best possible chemical to build batteries out of.
Depends on how you define "best". Likely the highest possible short-term energy density, yes, but that isn't the only thing we might want out of a battery. "Doesn't catch fire" is one of the areas where the highest-energy lithium battery chemistries are far from the best, for instance.
Lithium's energy density is largely the cause of its flammability - if you accept density and capacity comparable to another battery chemistry, you can get it down to a comparable fire risk, even if there's not much point bothering.
Lithium is pretty much the best possible chemical to build batteries out of.
Nickel iron batteries, while heavier and less energy dense have virtually infinite lifespan. As such it is a far better battery for home power walls than lithium.
Except nickel is fairly rare, driving up the costs. Sodium isn't
Sodium batteries? Of course it depends on their use a bit.
Those are not “better” batteries chemically or electrically. They are just cheaper and don’t use lithium which is considered a feature.
Sodium batteries are cheaper, safer, and last longer than lithium batteries. That's exactly what you want for grid-scale energy storage. So yes, sodium IS better than lithium for grid-scale energy storage
Cheaper is a kind of better.
Cheap, high longevity, high capacity. You can't have all three.
What's better depends on application. I don't want a cheap battery in my car if I only get 80 miles on a charge.
What's better depends on application
Go reread the thread. You're (hopefully unintentionally) arguing against using sodium batteries for grid storage because lithuim has more energy density.
Cost, high longevity, and heat tolerance are way more important for grid storage than energy density. Sodium batteries are perfect for that, and were poised to start being supplied for that application until the price of lithium tanked at the start of the year.
Also, the sodium batteries that are (and were) about to go to market have enough energy density that manufacturers were considering adding them to cars by mixing and matching sodium and lithium cells in varying ratios to match various use cases. The two chemistries aren't mutually exclusive in any field
That's great for grid storage. Maybe one day for even EV use, emphasis on maybe. But you'll never have a cell phone with a sodium battery
That day is already today. They need better density for digital devices, probably, but with all these advancements, who knows.
Kickstarting new infrastructure is one place government money tends to work well. You can always phase out the subsidies and there is an argument that battery tech benefited from a feedback loop (used in phones until infra and tech was cheap enough for cars+) and something needs to kickstart that for their recycling, government stepping in to start that loop isn't uncommon or as terrible as you seem to be making it out
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Lithium recycling has never been the problem. The problem is most EVs are new, and people aren't buying enough of them, so there isn't enough capacity of old batteries in the system yet for business to profit from building the plants to do the recycling. And now some stupid orange asshole has been sabotaging production, so we're not going to hit that tipping point for decades.
In the USA. Us Europeans are happily treading toward carbon neutrality, even more since the cheetos' fun war with Iran.
Can these not be used for grid storage?
Not forever
I remember reading another article that said that their incinerated sewage waste had more gold per ton than their highest yielding mines.
But aren't used batteries perfect for grid energy storage?
Not forever
Terrific. But, I suppose it won't happen at scale until it's cheaper than mining.
Because money is everything, and our environment is replaceable. /s
"But but but! What about landfills? What lame excuse will I make up now that my delusions about batteries filling up landfills has been exposed?" 😭 🫏
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