EV battery recycling key to future lithium provides
by Andy Fell for UCD Information
Davis CA (SPX) Jun 02, 2025
Light-weight, highly effective lithium-ion batteries are essential for the transition to electrical automobiles, and world demand for lithium is ready to develop quickly over the subsequent 25 years. A brand new evaluation from the College of California, Davis, printed Could 29 in Nature Sustainability, appears at how new mining operations and battery recycling may meet that demand. Recycling may play an enormous function in easing provide constraints, the researchers discovered.
“Batteries are an unlimited new supply of demand for lithium,” stated Alissa Kendall, the Ray B. Krone endowed professor of Environmental Engineering at UC Davis and senior creator on the paper.
Lithium is a comparatively frequent mineral and as much as about 10 years in the past demand was comparatively small and regular, with a small variety of mines offering the world’s provide, Kendall stated. International demand for lithium has risen dramatically – by 30% between 2022 and 2023 alone – as adoption of electrical automobiles continues.
“Governments have to know the place lithium will come from and if we will run out,” she stated.
Earlier analysis has centered on forecasting cumulative demand over the subsequent 30 years in contrast to what’s recognized to be within the floor, stated graduate scholar Pablo Busch, first creator on the paper. However opening a brand new lithium mine is a doubtlessly billion-dollar funding that might take 10 to fifteen years to start manufacturing, he stated. New mining proposals may be delayed or cancelled by environmental rules and native opposition.
“It is not nearly having sufficient lithium, it is how briskly you possibly can extract it,” Busch stated. “Any provide disruption will decelerate electrical automobile adoption, decreasing mobility entry and increasing the operation of combustion engine automobiles and their related carbon emissions.”
There are three principal sources of usable lithium, so as of ease of extraction: briny water from deep underground; rocks; and sedimentary clays. Half the world’s lithium at present comes from Australia, the place it’s principally mined from rock. Elements of South America and the US have lithium-rich brine in geothermal areas and oilfields, and the US additionally has lithium-bearing clay.
A fourth supply of lithium is from recycling of previous batteries. That is nonetheless a comparatively costly course of in comparison with mining, Kendall stated.
Modeling provide and demand
Busch and Kendall modeled how the necessity to open new lithium mines would change over time below various demand situations. They forecast that below the high-demand state of affairs, as many as 85 new and extra lithium deposits would must be opened up by 2050. However this could possibly be dramatically lowered, to as few as 15 new mines, by insurance policies that push the market towards smaller batteries and intensive world recycling.
Battery recycling has an outsize impact in the marketplace, the researchers stated.
“Recycling is absolutely vital for geopolitical and environmental causes,” Kendall stated. “In case you can meet a small share of demand with recycling, it might probably have a big effect on the necessity for brand spanking new mines.”
Timing is every little thing. Some new mines have to open to create a circulation of lithium that may be recycled. Relying on the demand state of affairs, recycling would make the largest distinction round 2035.
Effectivity requirements for electrical vehicles and enhancements to the general public charging community to cut back “vary anxiousness” may additionally average lithium demand by encouraging smaller vehicles.
Extra authors are Yunzhu Chen and Prosper Ogbonna, each at UC Davis. The work was funded by grants from the Heising-Simons Basis and the ClimateWorks Basis.
Analysis Report:Effects of demand and recycling on the when and where of lithium extraction
Associated Hyperlinks
University of California – Davis
Powering The World in the 21st Century at Energy-Daily.com
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