[ot] lithium phone batteries

[Fred]

Hi,

I hope this is not too OT but I have been having a spring clean and found some old mobile phone batteries. Is there anywhere that recycles lithium batteries? Our council tip does not and it seems a waste to landfill/burn them. I have found some web sites that recycle phones but not their batteries.

TIA

[Andrew Gabriel]

We've had battery recycling bins at work for a couple of years. AFAIK, they take everything, and often have large laptop batteries in them. You could ask around friends to see if any have similar schemes - I've seen them in many different company's officies.

The other thing you could do is hold on to them. Demand for Lithium is likely to outstrip supply and force up prices in years to come, and you might even be able to sell them in the future. Some people think that lithium batteries will become unaffordable, and have to switch to a leasing scheme where you return them when they're dead, to be remanufactured. Depends on finding more viable lithium sources, or lithium batteries being rendered obsolete by some better technology being discovered.

[The Natural Philosopher]

in electrochemical batteries, there is no better technology than lithium. Its not TECHNOLOGY is CHEMISTRY that matters. Lithium sits at the optimal place in the periodic table. For batteries of light weight. Just as gallium silicon selenium et al sit in the right place for semiconductors, and carbon for organic chemistry.

There is almost a couple of cents worth of lithium in each one.

[newshound]

I'm not convinced that this is other than an urban myth / daily mail story. OK, so all lithium currently comes from Bolivia, or wherever. But it is a pretty abundant element, and there's not that much lithium in a lithium battery.

[Gareth]

a bit more than an urban myth, though it probably depends if hybrid/electric vehicles take off, see:

OK, so all lithium currently comes from Bolivia, or wherever. But

It is abundant, according to this there is 0.18mg/Litre of sea water:

most of the deposits that are currently easy to get at are in Bolivia, of course if the price rockets it will become economically viable to extract it from other sources.

I agree there isn't much lithium in a phone battery, probably about ~300mg

[Gareth]

Maybe you could try offering them on ebay or freecycle? Someone may be able to use them.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Actually its not that abundant, and in viable concentrations, its pretty scarce.

I think the biggest deposits are in china, although the richest are S America as you say.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Bit more than that. The lithium energy density suggests that at least

15% in a typical battery is lithium ions of one sort or another. On caseless packs that we use in model aircraft, it looks like 30% or more of the total mass has to be lithium, with aluminium electrodes being the major component after that, and general other chemistry in the electrolyte. Which is bad news, as it means there isn't any order of ten improvement in energy density to be had,irrespective of technology.

So you wont be flying an electric plane across the atlantic anytime soon, although light aircraft have flown around for an hour or two powered by lithium batteries.

I suspect that synthetic kerosene at extremely high prices will be the only viable way to use electricity to power long haul aircraft in the future. Hydrogen is lighter, to be sure, but its dangerous and very BULKY and wouldn't physically fit inside an airliner..or a car, for that matter.

[geoff]

In message , Andrew Gabriel writes

Is it all getting used up in Drivel's medication, then ?

[Graham.]

Battery recycling bins are a potential (pun intended) fire hazard IMHO