As the global clean energy transition continues to accelerate, demand for critical minerals is heating up around the world. While the government tracks 50 of these materials that are essential to economic and national security goals, there is one clear frontrunner in the demand curve arms race: lithium. The \u201cwhite gold\u201d will see the fastest growth rate of any critical mineral, primarily driven by battery production for electric vehicles and energy storage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In 2022, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) estimated<\/a> that lithium demand for battery-making alone would skyrocket tenfold between 2020 and 2030. What is more, a 2023 report<\/a> from Popular Mechanics calculated that \u201can electrified economy in 2030 will likely need anywhere from 250,000 to 450,000 tonnes of lithium\u201d \u2013 a truly mind-blowing sum. For reference, \u201cIn 2021, the world produced only 105\u2014not 105,000\u2014tonnes.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n But at the same time that global lithium demand is going gangbusters, we\u2019re throwing millions of tons of lithium into landfills<\/a> each and every year. In fact, it\u2019s estimated that only 5 percent of lithium ion batteries are recycled. Closing this loop could be instrumental to reducing the environmental footprint of lithium ion batteries. A Stanford University study<\/a> published in January of this year shows that on an industrial scale, battery recycling is at minimum 58 percent less environmentally destructive than mining new lithium. Findings showed that the recycling process for lithium-ion batteries emits less than half the greenhouse gases of conventional mining and refinement processes, and consumes just a quarter of the water and energy.<\/p>\n Critically, increased recycling rates could also go a long way toward helping to \u201crelieve the long-term supply insecurity\u2014physically and geopolitically\u2014of critical battery minerals,\u201d as reported<\/a> by Tech Xplore. Today, just one country<\/a> dominates a huge array of critical minerals markets, including lithium \u2013 China. China alone accounts for 60 percent of EV-battery-grade lithium. And, as a result, a whopping 75 percent of all EV batteries are made in China. Increasing recycling rates in other countries could help diversify<\/a> these supply chains and create a more competitive \u2013 and thereby more resilient \u2013 global market.<\/p>\n And a new startup out of Hong Kong is now employing artificial intelligence to make lithium battery recycling more efficient, effective, and accessible than ever before. A five-year old startup called Achelous Pure Metals has developed a portable recycling system equipped to process old lithium-ion batteries. The technology can be deployed in urban centers, making it an ideal solution for an increasingly urbanized world. The company has developed a robot-assisted pilot line capable of sorting, shredding, and filtering desirable materials from batteries \u2013 though, notably, not electric vehicle batteries.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOur goal is to tackle the growing problem of discarded lithium-ion batteries by bringing scalable, movable, eco-friendly recycling to urban centres starting in Hong Kong, with plans to expand to [Southeast] Asia,\u201d Alan Wong Yuk-chun, co-founder and technical director of the Achelous Pure Metals, told<\/a> the South China Morning Post.<\/p>\n While this could be a critical step forward in diversifying lithium sources, China has also massively ramped up its own battery recycling capacities, to the extent that competition over recyclables \u2013 specifically, a battery waste byproduct known as black mass \u2013 has become somewhat fierce. \u201cOur client\u2019s factory has to compete for black mass at higher and higher prices, while the prices of end-products like lithium carbonate keep falling amid oversupply,\u201d Shawn Cheng, the start-up\u2019s co-founder and research and development director, told the Post.<\/p>\n