2022年10月13日

在一項獨立的測試中，由重複使用的金屬製成的紅木材料的陰極組件的性能與由原始金屬製成的相同。要重新閱讀這篇文章，請訪問我的個人資料，然後查看保存的故事。陰極是分子編排的奇跡。電池的電量和續航時間取決於它的金屬原子晶格，也就是它捕獲和釋放鋰離子的能力。幾十年來，工程師們一直在擺弄幫助這種運動的設計。如果今天的電動汽車和手機是晴雨表的話，它們已經變得相當好了。但正極也是電池內部發生問題的地方。這個完美的結構，如此巧妙的安排，開始失去它的完整性。離子會鬆散或堵塞。就這樣，你的電池壽命就會耗盡。 But even as the structure fails, the atoms inside of the cathode haven’t changed. This is why, in theory, it should be possible to reuse them. “A metal atom is a metal atom,” says Alan Nelson, senior vice president for battery materials at Redwood Materials, a company that specializes in recycling. “That element doesn’t know if it was previously in a battery or if it was in a mine.” This is potentially a good thing, because many of those atoms, including metals like cobalt and nickel, are in short supply and only found in major volumes in places where mining them entails major ecological and human costs. Today, Nelson’s company released the results of tests at Argonne National Lab comparing recycled materials to virgin ones. These suggest it’s true that an atom is an atom; the performance of the two materials was almost exactly the same. Redwood is one of a number of companies trying to turn a supply of old batteries into materials for new ones . That’s low-hanging fruit, in the sense that it involves using up waste and could ease some of the pressure on new mines. But last year, the company, which originally sold its recycled raw materials to other suppliers, took the unusual step of announcing plans to produce its own cathode materials, and later selected a site outside of Reno, Nevada, where it would spend $3.5 billion over 10 years on a new plant. The company says it plans to produce enough cathode material (as well as copper anode foil ) for 100 GWh worth of battery cells by 2025—roughly equivalent to what CATL, the dominant battery maker in China, produced last year. That’s something of a departure for the US battery industry. Despite a flurry of manufacturing announcements, bolstered in part by infrastructure spending and the climate provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act , most have been focused on the steps closest to automakers and consumers, like assembling battery cells and packs. The US has meanwhile struggled to build up industries that lie deeper in the supply chain—from the mining that digs up key minerals such as lithium and cobalt to the extensive processing that turns them into components like the cathode. Most of that is done elsewhere. According to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a group that studies the battery supply chain, China currently makes 78 percent of the world’s cathode materials , and that share is poised to grow to 90 percent by 2030, despite efforts in the US to invest in domestic battery supply chains. One reason Chinese firms remain so dominant is that they have a closed loop of battery production, says Hans Eric Melin, founder of Circular Energy Storage, a consultancy that tracks battery recycling. Having battery cell production at home means it’s possible to break down scrap materials and quickly put the valuable metals back into production. The complex supply chain that refines the raw metals into that perfect crystalline cathode structure is also localized, centralizing expertise and reducing transportation costs. Redwood is among the companies trying to pull the US manufacturing loop a little tighter. The tests, which were performed by independent researchers at Argonne National Lab, are an early step in a qualification process to reassure battery makers of the quality of these hand-me-down materials. The process begins by taking the battery apart and breaking its components down with heat and acids into metal sulfate compounds, composed of elements like cobalt, manganese, and nickel. Most Popular