Electric car revolution to change metal recycling – Report
Reuters reported that recycling companies are honing processes to extract metals from old batteries more cheaply and efficiently so they can capitalize on an expected shortfall in materials such as cobalt and lithium when sales of electric cars take off. The main obstacle recyclers face now is a shortage of spent batteries to recycle to make their technology cost-effective, but those at the forefront of the industry are confident the supply, and profits, will come.
Albrecht Melber, co-managing director of German recycling firm Accurec, said “The value of lithium carbonate and natural or synthetic graphite has doubled or tripled in the last three or four years, becoming the most valuable materials besides cobalt in the automotive battery. There are big values that can be recycled in the future.”
Electric vehicle sales are expected to pass 14 million a year by 2025 from less than a million now, fuelling a surge in the consumption of battery materials. Data specialist Benchmark Mineral Intelligence predicts the industry will need an extra 30,000 tonnes of cobalt and 81,000 tonnes of lithium a year to meet demand by 2021. Commodity research group CRU expects 11,600 tonnes of cobalt to come from recycling in 2021, up from 7,110 a year now, and 24,900 tonnes by 2026, accounting for 9.7 percent and 17.9 percent of the total market supply respectively.
Source : Reuters