What to do with all those spent lithium ion batteries …. Recycle of course !

Lithium to lithium, manganese to manganese

In the future, Volkswagen say they will offer e-mobility for all – and will assume overall responsibility: from the concepts for the vehicles, through production, sales and operations on to recycling. ...so far so good.

The vehicle battery consists of a large number of battery cells. They fill almost the entire vehicle floor area between the axles.

Volkswagen hopes they’ve got the answer with a pilot recycling project that they will launch at a factory in Salzgitter, Germany, about 30 miles from its global headquarters in Wolfsburg.

Starting in 2020, the plant will be able to take about 1,200 tons of lithium ion battery packs a year, about the volume of batteries used in 3000 EVs today. The mission is to recycle the raw materials back into the manufacturing chain and so reduce the hazardous waste in the marketplace.

The factory will accept about 1,200 tons of used automotive lithium ion battery packs a year — the equivalent of what's in about 3,000 EVs today. Until recently, batteries were regarded as hazardous waste but actually they can serve as valuable sources of raw materials. That’s why the engineers of the component department are working on a recycling concept for batteries. The aim: to return raw materials to the manufacturing process chain.

The battery packs will be analysed before being sorted and then depending on their level of usefulness will either go to be used in mobile vehicle charging stations or for totally spent batteries they will be shredded and ground to a fine powder before their raw materials             ( lithium,nickel, manganese and cobalt ) are extracted and sorted to be used again in new battery packs…. very clever !

The VW boffins aim is that within 10 years they will recycle up to 97% of all the raw materials in battery packs for their new cars.