and beneficiation of metals such as nickel. 30 Lithium ion batteries are classified as a Class 9 Dangerous Good for transport where Class 9 denotes miscellaneous dangerous substances and articles. 31 If not properly managed, Class 9 goods pose a health, safety, fire and explosion risk to resource recovery and landfill infrastructure. 32 There have been a number of reports of lithium ion battery fires during waste handling, 33 and in the event of a fire or exposure to moisture, toxic fluorine gases are released. 34 The safe disposal of lithium ion batteries in a sustainable and environmentally suitable way will become increasingly important as the adoption of electric vehicles and stationary energy storage rises. 35 Currently the Australian recycling rate of batteries, including lithium ion batteries, remains around 3%. 36 This represents an untapped source of raw battery metals. However, the high reactivity of lithium requires specialised processes to ensure safe handling. Established industrial processes to recycle lithium ion batteries exist in the EU, Japan and North America. The main industrial techniques to extract battery minerals are mechanical, hydrometallurgical and pyrometallurgical. 37 The mechanical process includes crushing
and shredding the battery before sorting and separating the battery metals. Due to the high reactivity of the lithium compounds (that can produce hydrogen and toxic fluoride gases), mechanical processes require additional precautions to handle larger battery volumes, such as inert gases or cryogenic cooling. The hydrometallurgical process uses mechanical pre-treatment before utilising acids or bases to leech the battery metals into a solution that is then concentrated, precipitated and recovered. The process allows the recovery of the majority of battery metals including lithium at high purities. The pyrometallurgical process smelts the batteries (without pre-treatment) to produce a metal alloy and molten slag. Leeching is applied to the metal alloy to recover cobalt, nickel, copper and iron. The remaining minerals in the slag, namely lithium, aluminium and manganese, are currently not cost effective to recover. 38 The hydrometallurgical process offers the highest recovery efficiency, while the pyrometallurgical process does not require mechanical pre-treatment and has the additional benefit of being able to process Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) batteries. The economic value from each of the battery
30 Opray, M (2017), “Nickel mining: the hidden environmental cost of electric cars”, 24 August 2017, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/aug/24/nickel-mining-hidden-environmental-cost-electric- cars-batteries . (Accessed: 01 May 2018) 31 United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (2016), European Agreement Concerning the International Carriage of Dangerous Goods by Road Volume 1, ECE/TRANS/257 (Vol.I), https://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/trans/ danger/publi/adr/adr2017/ADR2017e_web.pdf . (Accessed: 01 May 2018) 32 Randell, P (2016), Waste lithium-ion battery projections, Prepared for the Department of the Environment by Randell Environmental Consulting, http://www.environment.gov.au/protection/publications/waste-lithium-ion-battery- projections . (Accessed: 01 May 2018) 33 Fattal, A, Kelly, A, Liu, A and Giurco, D (2016), Waste Fires in Australia: Cause for Concern?, Prepared for the Department of Environment by University of Technology Sydney Institute for Sustainable Futures, http://www.environment.gov.au/protection/publications/waste-fires-australia . (Accessed: 01 May 2018) 34 Larsson, F, Andersson, P, Blomqvist, P and Mellander, BE (2017). “Toxic fluoride gas emissions from lithium-ion battery fires”, Scientific Reports, Vol. 7, Article No. 10018, http://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-09784-z.pdf . (Accessed: 01 May 2018) 35 Randell, P (2016), Waste lithium-ion battery projections, Prepared for the Department of the Environment by Randell Environmental Consulting, http://www.environment.gov.au/protection/publications/waste-lithium-ion-battery- projections . (Accessed: 01 May 2018) 36 Clean Up Australia (2017), Battery Recycling Fact Sheet, November 2017, http://www.cleanup.org.au/PDF/au/ clean_up_australia_battery_recycling_factsheet-2017.pdf . (Accessed: 01 May 2018) 37 Boyden, A, Soo, VK and Doolan, M, (2016), “The Environmental Impacts of Recycling Portable Lithium-Ion Batteries”, Procedia: Social and Behavioural Sciences, Volume 48, pp. 188–193, Presented at the 23rd CIRP Conference on Life Cycle Engineering, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procir.2016.03.100. (Accessed: 01 May 2018) 38 Lebedeva, N, Di Persio, F and Brett, L, (2016), “Lithium ion battery value chain and related opportunities for Europe”, Publications Office of the European Union, https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/publication/eur-scientific-and-technical- research-reports/lithium-ion-battery-value-chain-and-related-opportunities-europe . (Accessed: 01 May 2018)
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