This Is What No One Tells You About Used Electric Car Batteries

Do all end-of-life electric vehicle batteries end up in landfills? Here's how used EV batteries are recycled in the U.S.

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A big cause of concern for EV users is: what happens to the battery pack of their vehicles at the end of its life? The majority of these owners pick an electric car instead of a gas-powered one because it is kinder to the environment in the long run.

But does the used battery of an EV end up in a landfill, creating more environmental pollution? In most cases, that's certainly not what's happening in the United States, where strong environmental safeguards are in place.

Dealerships and junkyards carefully collect these end-of-life battery packs and send them off to businesses specializing in battery recycling. These firms shred these used batteries into multiple materials, such as plastics, aluminum, lithium, and cobalt, used again to manufacture fresh packs for other use cases.

Related: The Cold Truth About Driving Electric Cars In Winter

Zack Nelson, aka Jerry Rig Everything's latest video, takes us into the heart of operations of one of North America's leading Li-Ion battery recycling plants run by Li-Cycle. This Arizona facility can process up to 18,000 tons of lithium-ion battery material in a year through a very ingenious and neat process.

The used electric car batteries are first fed into a huge funnel-shaped tower filled with Li-Cycle's proprietary liquid. An industrial-grade shredder is submerged at the bottom of this tower, which grounds up each battery module.

The liquid carrying the shredded battery pack first flows through a screen where all the plastic bits are vibrated out into a separate chute. Metals such as aluminum, cobalt, and steel turn into small metal flakes, which drop to the bottom of the tank and are conveyed out of the liquid.

Nelson mentions in the video that these flakes sometimes contain rare metals such as gold, platinum, and palladium from the circuit boards mounted on the electric vehicle's battery pack.

Extracting lithium, cobalt, and nickel from the Li-Cycle's proprietary liquid involves sending it through a filter press. As Nelson explains, the liquid from the shredder machine carrying all these rare earth metals is pushed into the press and passes through a series of filters.

It is then hydraulically pumped out, leaving each filter with the 'Black Mass.' This clay-like substance, rich in lithium, cobalt, and nickel, is then manually shaken loose from the filters and collected in separate bags for further processing.

This black mass is essential to the entire lithium-ion battery recycling process. It will play a significant role in manufacturing new batteries and hence is aptly called the 'new gold.'

The recycling process of used electric vehicle batteries requires further processing of this black mass to extract battery-grade materials, such as lithium carbonate, nickel sulfate, and cobalt sulfate.

Over in Canada, Vancouver-based RecycLiCo Battery Materials has come up with an ingenious method to process this black mass. Their system involves fewer stages and deletes the intermediate step of extracting the above-mentioned rare earth metals individually - as is currently being done in the majority of black mass processing techniques.

The substance is converted directly into a 'Cathode Precursor'(nickel sulfate, cobalt sulfate, manganese sulfate) and lithium carbonate. A recent video uploaded on the YouTube channel Munro Live explains the details of the firm's efficient process.

Related: How Solid State EV Batteries Compare To Lithium-Ion: Pros And Cons Analyzed

Extracting lithium, cobalt, and nickel by recycling used electric car batteries is a lot more efficient than mining the earth for these metals. As Nelson explains in his video, there is no end to the number of times you can recycle these metals, and the process has an efficiency rate of more than 90 percent.

Electric vehicle users do not need to worry about the battery packs of their cars ending up in a landfill and harming the environment. There is an excellent chance that such end-of-life modules will end up in these plants and be recycled into fresh batteries for new electric vehicles.

Source: Jerry Rig Everything / Munroe Live - YouTube / Li-Cycle / RecycLiCo Battery Materials

Ayush's love for all things automotive started with his grandfather's old Suzuki. This early initiation has transformed into a passion for cars that he now chooses to express through his words.