Battery Recycling Is Here - But Where Are The Batteries? - Ep165: Hans Eric Melin

As everyone knows, battery prices are plummeting and manufacturing volumes are soaring, whether for EVs or for grid-connected storage. And everyone knows there's a problem: only 5% of lithium-ion batteries are recycled. The rest go to landfill, right? Wrong. This week's guest on Cleaning Up is the world's preeminent expert on battery recycling. Hans Eric Melin is the Founder and Managing Director of Circular Energy Storage.
Circular Energy Storage is a London-based data collection and analytics consultancy focused on the lithium-ion battery end-of-life market. They help companies and organisations in the entire battery value chain to take better decisions in everything that relates to reuse and recycling of lithium-ion batteries. They do this by continuously collecting, analysing and publishing data from all parts of the value chain worldwide and by working actively with customers in their strategy and business development.
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Links and more:
Circular Energy Storage: circularenergystorage.com/about
Hans' LinkedIn post on the false narratives around lithium-ion battery recycling rates: / 5-rate-other-untruths-...
Hans' more extensive research report explaining the real rates: www.energimyndigheten.se/glob...
The 2023 Battery Materials Review Yearbook, featuring a chapter authored by Hans: www.batterymaterialsreview.co...
The 2016 paper Hans mentioned, featuring the 95% landfill rate: link.springer.com/article/10....
00:00 - Introduction
01:37 - Battery Recycling Mythbusting
10:27 - Where did 5% come from?
17:36 - What is the collection rate?
24:10 - EV battery collection
27:36 - Recovery rates
33:22 - Circularity
39:33 - EV second life
47:09 - Alternative uses
52:31 - Reusing cells
56:13 - How much is a battery worth?
01:04:10 - Overcapacity
01:11:58 - Outro

[@mikemellor759]

Really interesting content. I really value your contribution in summarising the information provided by your guests. Thank you. 👏👏

[@davejohnson2134]

Amazing content. You should have 100K subscribers.

[@MLiebreich]

I agree! Please help spread the word!

[@Mankster23]

​@@MLiebreichYou are an inspiration! Do you ever do personal interviews or appearances on other podcasts?

[@user-no7vk3lt3o]

The battery of my 8.3 year old AUDI A3 etron died 3 months after the end of the warranty... AUDI refused to replace it, but wanted to charge 12000 EUR for a 8.8kwh battery. Luckily my car importer was partly paying for the replacement. For your next podcast it would be great to cover how much such a battery actually costs from a material perspective? What happens to all the Teslas that are only getting 8-9 years old now? What happens to a secondary car market when the battery warranty is the new key purchase metric?

[@rtfazeberdee3519]

Great amount of useful info, thanks