Eli5: How is Lithium from batteries recycled? Bonus points for an explanation of what happens to lithium if/when it can no longer be recycled.
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It’s actually not as simple as it sounds. Lithium ion batteries are very hard to recycle for many reasons including the almost impossible to put out lithium ion battery fires and multiple different chemistries found in different batteries. It’s an extremely labor intensive process unlike recycling a regular lead acid car battery where you can just shred it; shredding a lithium ion battery is almost an instant way to start a battery fire. Lithium ion cells must be stripped from their plastic packaging or however the car manufacturer decided to put the cells together. The cells are burned then the remnants are collected and the metals are extracted from the ash. Cobalt and nickel are usually the only metals recovered in most recyclers as it is normally simply cheaper to mine virgin material.
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