Power play: US wants to recycle lithium batteries
chicago — The US government will lead an ambitious effort to develop technologies to recycle lithium-ion batteries from electric vehicles, cellphones and other sources to ensure a reliable and affordable supply of metals crucial to battery production in anticipation of soaring global demand and potential shortages, Department of Energy officials said.
Calling the effort a national security issue, the agency announced a $15 billion, three-year research and development project housed at the Argonne National Laboratory outside of Chicago.
The collaboration between Argonne, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and several universities also is an attempt to catch up with China and other countries that manufacture and recycle the vast majority of lithium-ion batteries, including those shipped back from the US, officials said. US dependence on other countries for metals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel and graphite, as well as finished batteries, “undermines our national security” because the source countries are not always close allies, said Daniel R. Simmons, assistant secretary of the Energy Department’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
The US has a strained trading relationship with China, which produces a large share of the batteries and has been aggressively recycling them to recover metals it otherwise would have to import.
But the demand for lithium-ion batteries also is driving the effort. With US automakers set to expand production of electric vehicles over the next 10 years, and batteries from existing electric vehicles nearing the end of their useful lives, it’s time to figure out how to recycle them in the US, said Jeff Spangenberger, director of the new recycling centre, called the ReCell Center. —