When looking at the cost of a battery system, either domestically or commercially or as an electric vehicle it is important to look at “total cost of ownership” of TCO.
This means not only considering the initial cost of the battery but;
the costs of all the components of a battery system that are needed for an installation including inverters, MPPT’s, communications etc.,
the length of time to install a complete system,
The running costs associated with the system, including maintenance,
The expected lifetime of the battery installation
End of life disposal costs.
Up until now, in Australia, end of life costs for batteries have not been considered. This is becoming increasingly problematic for lithium-ion batteries. Multiple lithium-ion chemistries need to have multiple processes for dismantling, recycling and recovery processing, meaning there is not a standard recycling process that can be put in place.
In fact, lithium phosphate batteries (LFP), which are a safer lithium-ion battery technology, due to it being less likely to catch fire, actually have less value when recycling, meaning LFP batteries have a higher upfront cost but will also have a higher recycling cost, although they are inherently safer than Li-NMC batteries.
When recycling lithium-ion manganese cobalt batteries (Li-NMC), generally there are 3 end products, shredded copper and aluminum which is commonly referred to as stock-feed, mixed plastics, and a black mass. This black mass contains the lithium, manganese and cobalt and is what is further processed for value return of the battery recycling. These Li-NMC batteries are cheaper to purchase upfront, potentially will have higher recycling value than LFP batteries but are less safe and a number of them have been known to catch fire and explode causing property damage and in some cases death. This has actually led to a number of recalls of these Li-NMC batteries.
In both LFP and Li-NMC if the black mass from the recycling doesn’t have enough value it is sent to landfill.
It has been estimated that this Li-ion battery recycling cost may be several hundred dollars per kWh of renewable energy storage batteries meaning the cost of disposing your energy storage battery may cost half as much again as the cost of the battery initially.
Unless this is addressed and the cost is included in the cost of the battery more and more lithium-ion batteries will be disposed of by being sent to tips or potentially by dumping them in the bush. This has already been known to cause fires in garbage tips and at least one recorded case of a bushfire being started.
The ACCC lithium-ion batteries and consumer product safety report states currently 3 lithium-ion battery fires are recorded per day due to incorrect disposal in Australia in general rubbish or recycling bins, fires in garbage trucks and at waste processing facilities and in landfill or garbage tips.
Although most of these fires come from small electronic equipment like phones, laptops and e-scooters when the fires come from renewable energy storage batteries (15 – 20%) the fires tend to be much larger and more likely to cause burns or more serious injuries to people as well as property.
In many European countries the cost of recycling batteries is now included in the purchase cost of the batteries and must be recorded as a separate line item on the purchase receipt.
This is now being discussed at a government level to be introduced in Australia.
This will increase the price of lithium-ion batteries but won’t change the price of sodium nickel chloride batteries as, like lead acid batteries, the recycling and recovery process is cost positive making it economically advantageous to recycle the SoNick batteries.
