AquaMetals CEO Steve Cotton projects how rapidly the lithium battery recycling industry will mirror the maturity of lead-acid battery recycling.
Opinion
Cotton: Traditional battery smelters are dangerous, unsafe hellscapes
“You know, having the desire to understand, well, what happens to these batteries, I went to smelters, and they're a hellscape. It's very dangerous. You've got lead dust all over the floor. You've got a bunch of people wearing hot suits literally chucking batte…”
Insight
Cotton: Processes generating more waste than recovered material aren't true recycling
“When you produce many multiples more waste and pollution than the valuable materials that are recovered, is it really even recycling is the way we look at it.”
Prediction Open · timeframe Dec 2030
Cotton: Global Battery Recycling Market Will Reach $25 Billion by 2030
“And if you look at the global lithium battery recycling market, it's already today roughly a five billion dollar industry, And we expect it to grow by about five-fold just in the coming few years to the end of the decade to nearly twenty-five billion dollars.”
Assertion Contradicted
Cotton: Under 1% of materials in new lithium batteries are recycled
“And if you contrast that today to a new lithium battery that you get regardless of the application, whether it's an EV or a piece of consumer electronics, et cetera that has under one percent of the recycled lithium, nickel, or cobalt in that new battery. It a…”
Assertion Partly supported
Cotton: Pyrometallurgy burns or loses lithium into unrecoverable slag
“That really is high temperature, fossil fuels based and it doesn't recover all the materials. For example, in lithium recycling you burn the lithium or you lose what lithium you don't burn into what's called slag, which is a solid waste stream that you can't r…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cotton: Hydrometallurgy requires massive chemical inputs and costly waste management
“And it's not really great when it comes to the environment or worker safety. You've got train loads of chemicals coming in. So the economics of, ah, managing that, storing those in massive tank farms, and then spending tens of millions of dollars to run a tras…”