Fortune Minerals : COBALT NEWS

Wired.co.uk - November 16, 2020

The electric car market has a crucial flaw: tonnes of unsustainable, explosive batteries. The solution is being built in the Nordics

materials from the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is where the large majority of cobalt - a major component in electric car batteries -

By 2025, it's predicted that electric and hybrid cars will account for 90 per cent of the lithium-ion battery market. That's a lot of batteries that will, one day, need disposing of…Right now, the recycling of electric car batteries is a complex and technical undertaking. Even before the recycling of the battery itself, Northvolt has to find a safe way to get the battery pack, with all its toxic, flammable chemicals, back to the facility. It's a process that involves jumping through a number of safety and regulatory hoops. 'Whenever a battery pack is being dismantled from the car, it needs to be safely handled,' says Emma Nehrenheim, Northvolt's chief environmental officer. 'It's very expensive to do this in a safe way, and it is very time demanding.'…Once a battery has been safely delivered to Northvolt's recycling centre, the process of dismantling and discharging takes place. The problem is that batteries have a tendency to go boom if disassembled incorrectly…A full battery discharge will remove any stored energy and prevent any unwanted thermal runaway events, which could cause the battery to catch fire or explode…After the battery has been safely dismantled and the cells and modules retrieved, Northvolt begins to crush those cells in an air-tight vacuum, ensuring that there are no reactive gases like carbon dioxide and oxygen around to contaminate the materials in the cells…As soon as all the crushed material has been sorted and separated based on density, magneticity and size, all that remains is a pile of black powder, something that Nehrenheim calls 'black mass'. The powder is made up of nickel, manganese, cobalt, lithium hydroxide and graphite - some of the most crucial components in a lithium-ion battery. This powder undergoes something called a hydrometallurgical process, where the black powder is effectively dumped into an acid bath. All those raw materials will be separated from the black powder, leaving behind all the ingredients needed to make a new electric car battery… there are three dominant methods to the recycling of battery cells. Hydrometallurgical is one of them. The other two are pyrometallurgical and direct recycling…The company will also be sourcing the raw materials needed to produce the batteries directly from the mines, and producing the cathode itself. The refinement will also take place close to the mine. This, Northvolt hopes, will create a shorter and more sustainable supply chain that's easier to trace and monitor…For now, Northvolt isn't sourcing raw materials from the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is where the large majority of cobalt - a major component in electric car batteries - is mined…While Northvolt says that it hopes to eventually mine cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo, it says it won't until it can do so in a sustainable and ethical way…Come 2030, Northvolt hopes that 50 per cent of the raw materials that it uses to make its batteries will come from recycled material...