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Joined: 02-08-2007
Posts: 44,221
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BuckyB93 wrote:Looks like the Westboro facility is near the technology park where I worked when I first moved out here.
Without knowing anything of their process or looking into it, they probably take in old batteries and shred them up or get in shredded battery scrap from another player. Then, my guess is, they do a series of separation steps like mechanically sifting the scrap through a series of screens to get out the out the "fluff" (any plastics and paper and such - throw that $hit away). Collect larger shreddings like foils that didn't shred well and siphon that stuff off for further processing/recycling. Maybe some magnets to pull out iron (magnetic) compounds - recycle that on site or send it out to a third party.
The fluff and other shreddings they are not interested in are probably put in a scrap barrel or made into a bale and a third party buys it off of them.
The leftover stuff is is what they really want: lithium, cobalt, manganese, nickel. These are primary elements needed for lithium batteries which are all tied up together in a few compounds of the the battery anodes and cathodes. These compounds tend to be rather brittle so probably can be pulverized into "sand" or "dust" during the shredding process. Then either dissolve this stuff in solution and selectively try to precipitate it out as a salt, oxide, or carbonate or maybe sludge. Another way would be to try to pull it out of solution via a electro-chemical method (electroplate it out of solution).
This is the reclaim process where, unless you are an idiot, you get higher purity of the stuff you want from the junk you put into it. With that said, you still have waste that you'll need to dispose of - the crap that you don't want or need.
I didn't do much work with Li other then when we were using it as an alloy addition with silver help increase the mechanical properties of the silver we were using. Problem, for our product, was Li really likes oxygen... like REALLY LIKES oxygen... it would "getter" oxygen and starve the main reaction of oxygen that we need in other parts of the wire composite. It ended up as a no go for our situation but we did land a handful of SBIRs to work on it. Used Lithium, Aluminum, and Mercury as alloy additions but none of them panned out too well.
My favorite was Gallium. I loved working with that $hit. Researched a ton of old write ups and patents. Spend many days in the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) library (Whoopie as they call it here... it's Central MA version of MIT). Found some tech articles and patents dated back to the 40's on using Gallium to heal cracks on the Aluminum skins of WWII planes when they returned from combat. We were able to take that knowledge and adapt it to our niche need for a project we were working on.
I'm all for recycling, repurposing, composting and all that stuff. If one can make a profitable business doing so, then go for it. though not a deep dive into the process, the article does cover their process better than the couple of quotes I pulled from it. Not sure how to find it to post but it was from The Globe. Would mean more to you than to me, probably.
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