By James Morton Turner, an environmental studies professor at Wellesley College and author of the forthcoming book “Charged: A History of Batteries and Lessons for a Clean Energy Future.” He published the lead op-ed in the journal Science’s special climate change issue last month .The lithium-ion batteries in today’s electric vehicles outperform older lead-acid batteries by almost every measure, except one. Lead-acid batteries are still the single-most recycled product in the world.
What is interesting is that none of this is actually new. Lead-acid batteries have been recycled since the 1920s. As early as 1930, the industry described lead for batteries as a “loan” rather than a form of “consumption.” Prior to the 1960s, hundreds of small-scale lead recycling operations operated in and around U.S. cities, making this an early form of urban mining.
With global production of lithium-ion batteries now overtaking lead-acid batteries, it is worth asking why lead-acid batteries have been recycled for so long and so efficiently, and what lessons that offers for closing the loop on the lithium-ion batteries. Consider these three points: In comparison, lithium-ion batteries are far more materially complex. That requires tailoring lithium-ion recycling processes to recover a range of cathode materials , anode materials , and conductors . These complexities pose significant challenges for efficiently recovering materials and processing them for re-use cost-effectively.
Because Lithium batteries are a hot mess of separators, and lead acid are as simple as it gets — lead plates and sulphuric acid.
It’s like your not even paying attention- Redwood Materials?