The view through the windshield is enough to make an unmistakable statement: the Electromobility is still in its infancy. Only rarely can you see an electric car next to it at the traffic lights. Not surprisingly, the Stromer share in Germany is less than half a percent. And even if 2020 actually, as once the Federal Government had fully predicted, one million electric cars should be on the road, the value would be at about two percent.
Who should worry about the later recycling of lithium-ion batteries with this small spread already today? After all, the automakers currently promise the customer that the battery of his electric car still delivers at least 80 percent of its original capacity (capacity), regardless of whether the cells were gently charged at home or by "pressure refueling" to Super Charger stations. If the value falls below said 80 percent, the battery in the vehicle is no longer operational and will be replaced.
But what happens to the old battery? "First, the battery should be kept alive as long as possible," says Melissa Bowler, Technical Project Manager, Stationary Storage at BMW. The Bavarian brand is one of the car companies with the greatest experience in electromobility. Since the end of 2013 the carbon racer i3 is on the market. About 50.000 are on the move worldwide. The Californian company Tesla can point to around 141.000 units. And more than four times the amount of BMW i has Nissan with the Leaf on the road.
The keyword is "Second Life". One of the first pilot projects is in Lünen in Westphalia, where Daimler, in cooperation with recycling specialists Remondis and Getec, and the Swiss company The Mobility House (TMH), operates 13 MWh storage from used Smart and Mercedes batteries. It is considered the largest 2nd-use battery storage in the world. Overall, 1.000 battery systems have been combined into one block. According to Mercedes, an economic operation in the inpatient area is still possible for at least ten years. Low capacity losses are irrelevant.
BMW cooperates with Bosch and Vattenfall. Old batteries from i3 and 1er ActiveE test vehicles are integrated into the power grid as energy storage in order to stabilize it. Renewable energy sources do not always supply electricity when needed. Caches are necessary. "They serve as buffers by absorbing the surplus electricity and feeding it back into the grid when needed," says Melissa Bowler. The car batteries are interconnected to large memories.
According to a new study by Bundesverband Erneuerbare Energien (BEE) and Deutscher Messe AG, old lithium-ion batteries in 2025 with 25 gigawatt hours (GWh) can provide about the same amount of electricity as half of all German pumped storage power plants. Prerequisite: The market for electromobility in Germany should gain momentum.
It is not always necessary to replace the entire battery in case of damage. A precursor to Second Life offers Mitsubishi. Here, individual battery modules can be replaced, at significantly lower costs. The manufacturer speaks of about 1.000 Euro plus two mechanic hours. Opel operates a "Battery Refurb Center" in Rüsselsheim, where defective Ampera batteries are repaired (refurbishment).
But despite all the "second-life" efforts, at some point the performance of the battery has dropped so low that only the recycling process comes into question. The focus here is primarily on the valuable raw materials cobalt and nickel, less attention is paid to lithium. The experts distinguish between two types of recycling, the pyro- and the hydrometallurgical route. In the latter, the battery is mechanically crushed and the metals are then dissolved out by means of chemicals. The pyrometallurgical process is a high-temperature combustion. Both require large amounts of energy and are comparatively inefficient. It would be ideal to separate the metals in the form of already synthetic compounds in order to reuse them 1: 1. This would lead to significant energy savings. An electrohydraulic separation process by the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research ISC in Hanau looks promising. Here, batteries are placed in a liquid in which an arc generates shock waves. "In this way, we can disassemble the batteries virtually without contact and very efficiently," says Andreas Bittner, Business Unit Manager Energy Materials at the Fraunhofer Institute.
The fact that recycling processes for lithium-ion batteries are not used on an industrial scale is due to the fact that the amount of battery scrap is still low. Langelheim-based Rockwood Lithium has built a hydrometallurgical pilot plant at LithoRec, where cobalt, lithium and nickel are recovered as solutions, ie as liquids, or as salts.
"According to 2020, when enough vehicle batteries have reached the end of their useful life, the entire value chain will be available on an industrial scale," promises Rockwood Lithium. (Michael Specht / SP-X)