Battery Recycling on "Boneyards"

I really only see battery recycling becoming a problem when we have millions of electric vehicles on the road and only a handful of recycling plants. At that point though, you would expect the business to be booming for those plants and they would likely have expanded.

 

Throwing away electric car batteries will become a problem when throwing away money becomes a problem....since it is the same thing. The Prius battery only fetches a measly $200 dollars from Toyota. Few would throw that away. It fetchs a lot more on e-bay and other sites. Even fewer would let that go out in the garbage.

 

With the price of these rare metals going up there is going to be a lot more battery recycling. At some point there will be bounties on all dead nicad, lion and nimh batteries. Sometimes capitalism works well for environmentalism.

 

Thieves are desperate for precious metals around here. Lately it's been reported around here that they're crawling under cars and cutting off catalytic converters to steal them for their scrap metal value. I'm glad it's a little more difficult for them to get to my Prius batteries.

 

Hi All,


I think this issue with battery recycling stems from the early days of hybrid and electric car investigations - ie the 1970's and early 80's. The comment was, that lead-acid batteries from cars are a real problem now, why should we make cars where 10 to 50 times more of these things would need to be take car of. Lead is so cheap, there is not a break-even situation in recovering it from batteries. These batteries are very heavy, and the cost to transport them is a large part of the money loss. Additionally, the powerful liquid acid in these batteries is difficult and dangerous to process. So, the thought was people would just dump them on the road-side when they were no longer any use.

These issues simply do not apply to NiMH batteries. Nickel is expensive, and makes the recycling, if not profitable, a minor penalty that can be included in the up-front cost of the car. The batteries are much lighter take less energy to transport for a given energy density. The NiMH batteries out-last lead-acid batteries by many years/charging cycles. So, at any given time there are fewer to recycle per capita usage. The electrolyte is a geltatinized caustic, which does not splash around like a liquid acid.

On PC here, I read that the Prius in using the NiMH battery and the smaller Lead AGM battery has half the lead in it than a standard car. So, from a battery enviormental point of view, the Prius is really twice as good. Because the main battery which lasts the lift of the car displaces 66 lbs of lead (1/2 of 3 standard replacement batteries over the life of the car).

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Section 31 @ Aug 17 2007, 10:35 AM) [snapback]497790[/snapback]</div>

I also watched it. Maybe I missed it, but I don't remember seeing any mention of recyling Lithium (from Lithium batteries).

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(geeky teacher @ Aug 18 2007, 06:26 AM) [snapback]498258[/snapback]</div>

It's also a little more difficult to just crawl under a Prius. But real easy to those monster trucks with the huge wheels and the jacked up cabs. Not feeling real vulnerable.

 

You would think too that the cat size would be in direct relation to cubic inches of the motor and it's rpm. Therefore the return on theft would be better with Navigator than a Prius.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Godiva @ Aug 18 2007, 03:41 PM) [snapback]498452[/snapback]</div>

they've probably taken it off as well for more "power"

 

It's just a ploy to turn away people from buying Hybrid cars.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(geeky teacher @ Aug 18 2007, 07:26 AM) [snapback]498258[/snapback]</div>

The cats are stolen for the rare metals inside the actual catalyst, such as palladium and silver. The 5 lbs of shell in the outside would only fetch about 50 cents, which is less than the risk and wasted sawzall blade are worth.

 

Lead acid battery recycling is big business here in Australia. 30 years ago you got $2.00 for a dead car battery at a service station but at a recyclers you got $3.00 or $4.00 depending on size.
The amount of platinum in a catalytic converter would barely be worth the cost of removing it. The core is a ceramic coated with the catylist.

I found this on Wikipedia
Due to the use of precious metals including platinum, which is worth up to $1,200 an ounce; palladium, which can fetch $320 an ounce; and rhodium, which can go for up to $6,000 an ounce on the market, catalytic converter theft is on the rise. (Note, however, that the loading of precious metals in a converter is low, and seldom over $50 per converter at 2007 spot prices). The problem is especially common among mid-90s to present Toyota sport-utility vehicles and trucks, due to their high ground clearance and bolt on catalytic converters, which are easy to remove. Welded-in converters are also at risk of theft from SUVs and trucks, for they can be removed within five minutes by means of a battery powered reciprocating saw.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(patsparks @ Aug 20 2007, 09:40 AM) [snapback]499080[/snapback]</div>

I read a few weeks back of a local car dealership here in Ohio had been vandalized where 10 or so vehicles on their lot had their catalytic converters stolen.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(patsparks @ Aug 20 2007, 09:40 AM) [snapback]499080[/snapback]</div>

So......crime pays......just not very much.