A team of researchers from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore is partnering with several companies to develop a revolutionary process that harnesses microbes to recycle spent lithium-ion batteries, The Straits Times reports.
The project has already shown incredible promise, with recovery rates for valuable metals like lithium, manganese, nickel, cobalt, iron, and graphite ranging from 85% to 92% in just six hours.
Recycling Lithium-ion Batteries with Bioleaching
According to the Chemical Abstract Service, only 5% of lithium-ion batteries are being recycled on a global scale. This means that the 8 million tons of waste could have big environmental and financial effects.
The gravity of this situation is exacerbated by the fact that these batteries are inherently toxic to the environment, making this statistic deeply concerning.
This calls for more ways to process and recycle old batteries.
The innovative process at the heart of the project is called black mass bioleaching, which involves combining powdered feedstock with a liquid microbial culture to produce metabolites that extract valuable materials.
While bioleaching is a process that has been around for a while, it has struggled to gain traction in the industry because of the difficulty in scaling it up. The black mass is toxic to the microbes, and previous attempts to add more of it resulted in the microbes dying off.
However, the project team has discovered that the key to successful bioleaching lies in feeding the microbes the right combination of inorganic and organic substances before adding the black mass for material recovery.
Dr. Joseph Jegan, a senior researcher at the Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N), discovered that training the microbes with the correct ratio of nutrients could produce metabolites and survive for a long time even in unfavorable conditions like high acidity and concentrations of heavy metals.
An Efficient Way to Recycle Batteries
Using microbes to recycle lithium-ion batteries has the potential to reduce the number of resources needed for traditional mining methods significantly.
For instance, Straits Times tells us that producing one tonne of lithium using traditional mining requires 250 tonnes of lithium ore and 750 tonnes of brine. On the other hand, creating the same amount of lithium through the bioleaching process would require only 28 tonnes of spent lithium-ion batteries.
Furthermore, the process is energy-efficient, with the microbes requiring only 40°C for recycling. In contrast, the pyrometallurgical method used in traditional battery recycling heats up spent batteries to over 1,000°C, producing hazardous gases and greenhouse gases.
Securing Cleaner Energy Resources
Professor Madhavi Srinivasan, the head of the study, emphasized that resource recovery from recycling lithium-ion batteries can help secure cleaner energy sources and transportation from electric vehicles.
Raw materials such as lithium, manganese, cobalt, and nickel may not be widely available globally. Recovering these elements through recycling creates a new market and paradigm for the circular economy concept.
The use of microbes for recycling spent lithium-ion batteries presents a promising solution for a cleaner, more sustainable future.
The innovative bioleaching process developed by the NTU researchers has the potential to revolutionize the way we approach battery recycling, reduce the strain on resources, and minimize the environmental impact of battery production.
According to Statista, the global demand for lithium-ion batteries is anticipated to increase by an astonishing eleven between 2020 and 2030, culminating in a staggering two terawatt-hours by the end of the decade.
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