this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2026
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Japan finds a way to recover 90% of lithium from old EV batteries (www.techspot.com)
submitted 5 days ago by Argyle13@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] tgf@lemmy.world 221 points 5 days ago (3 children)

"The process starts with old batteries being separated and burned to strip away non-metal components. What's left gets crushed into something called black mass. This is essentially a powder packed with recoverable metals. From there, a water-based chemical treatment called hydrometallurgy pulls the lithium out. One clever distinction in this new process is that the recovered lithium hydroxide actually replaces a chemical traditionally used during refining. This cuts the carbon footprint by about 40% compared to older methods."

Article also said that previous methods got about 45% of the lithium from recycling.

[–] renzhexiangjiao@piefed.blahaj.zone 78 points 5 days ago (2 children)

seems like a significant breakthrough

[–] winkerjadams@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago

Now we just need to stop big oil propaganda and lobbying from shitting all over EV sales

[–] timestatic@feddit.org 1 points 3 days ago

Nowhere near the advertised 90% in the title tho

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 55 points 5 days ago (4 children)

black mass

Pretty metal

[–] TerdFerguson@lemmy.world 10 points 4 days ago (1 children)

HAIL SATAN

[–] kamen@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago

WORSHIP DOOM

[–] Crozekiel@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 days ago

Lithium can be a pretty metal, but I'm not sure it looks its best in this state.

[–] null@lemmy.org 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Brutal

[–] anomnom@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 days ago

But still lithe.

[–] ericatty 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Dumb question... how are they burning them? I thought controlling lithium battery fires was difficult?

[–] brygphilomena@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 points 4 days ago (1 children)

They are hard to put out, but if you want them to burn all you really need is a safe place to do it. So in a big crucible with some type of fume extraction so they aren't crazy polluting the air. As long as the heat has somewhere safe to go and there isn't anything else to catch on fire, burning things is easy.

[–] FundMECFS@piefed.zip 1 points 3 days ago

Yeah the air pollution is what I’d be most worried about if this becomes scalable.