Lithium-ion battery recycling is a big topic in energy right now. Recycling lithium itself, the element that makes these batteries what they are, has not garnered so much attention because of the tiny amounts that are used in each battery. Now, this may be about to change. Lithium is the component that makes batteries rechargeable, that makes them more energy dense than the alternatives, and, ultimately, the element that has made this technology dominant in consumer electronics and, more importantly, electric cars. It is also the one metal in batteries that does not get recycled because of how little of it there is in batteries. Yet as the number of EVs on the roads increase, we soon may have enough “black mass” to extract lithium at a profit. Black mass is a mixture of all the active materials in a battery. Until now, recycling plants extracted only metals such […]