As the global clean energy transition continues to accelerate, demand for critical minerals is heating up around the world. While the government tracks 50 of these materials that are essential to economic and national security goals, there is one clear frontrunner in the demand curve arms race: lithium. The “white gold” will see the fastest growth rate of any critical mineral, primarily driven by battery production for electric vehicles and energy storage.
In 2022, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) estimated that lithium demand for battery-making alone would skyrocket tenfold between 2020 and 2030. What is more, a 2023 report from Popular Mechanics calculated that “an electrified economy in 2030 will likely need anywhere from 250,000 to 450,000 tonnes of lithium” – a truly mind-blowing sum. For reference, “In 2021, the world produced only 105—not 105,000—tonnes.”
But at the same time that global lithium demand is going gangbusters, we’re throwing millions of tons of lithium into landfills each and every year. In fact, it’s estimated that only 5 percent of lithium ion batteries are recycled. Closing this loop could be instrumental to reducing the environmental footprint of lithium ion batteries. A Stanford University study published in January of this year shows that on an industrial scale, battery recycling is at minimum 58 percent less environmentally destructive than mining new lithium. Findings showed that the recycling process for lithium-ion batteries emits less than half the greenhouse gases of conventional mining and refinement processes, and consumes just a quarter of the water and energy.
Critically, increased recycling rates could also go a long way toward helping to “relieve the long-term supply insecurity—physically and geopolitically—of critical battery minerals,” as reported by Tech Xplore. Today, just one country dominates a huge array of critical minerals markets, including lithium – China. China alone accounts for 60 percent of EV-battery-grade lithium. And, as a result, a whopping 75 percent of all EV batteries are made in China. Increasing recycling rates in other countries could help diversify these supply chains and create a more competitive – and thereby more resilient – global market.
And a new startup out of Hong Kong is now employing artificial intelligence to make lithium battery recycling more efficient, effective, and accessible than ever before. A five-year old startup called Achelous Pure Metals has developed a portable recycling system equipped to process old lithium-ion batteries. The technology can be deployed in urban centers, making it an ideal solution for an increasingly urbanized world. The company has developed a robot-assisted pilot line capable of sorting, shredding, and filtering desirable materials from batteries – though, notably, not electric vehicle batteries.
“Our goal is to tackle the growing problem of discarded lithium-ion batteries by bringing scalable, movable, eco-friendly recycling to urban centres starting in Hong Kong, with plans to expand to [Southeast] Asia,” Alan Wong Yuk-chun, co-founder and technical director of the Achelous Pure Metals, told the South China Morning Post.
While this could be a critical step forward in diversifying lithium sources, China has also massively ramped up its own battery recycling capacities, to the extent that competition over recyclables – specifically, a battery waste byproduct known as black mass – has become somewhat fierce. “Our client’s factory has to compete for black mass at higher and higher prices, while the prices of end-products like lithium carbonate keep falling amid oversupply,” Shawn Cheng, the start-up’s co-founder and research and development director, told the Post.
But Achelous Pure Metals has a competitive edge, driven by the portable nature of its technology. According to a report from Interesting Engineering, the company is pivoting by “building out its Hong Kong operation and helping companies across Southeast Asia establish ‘micro-factories’ that can turn discarded batteries into black mass for export to China.” In the end, it would seem that all roads lead to Beijing.
By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com