{"id":1738,"date":"2014-03-20T02:00:45","date_gmt":"2014-03-20T10:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/erlenmeyer\/?p=1738"},"modified":"2014-03-18T13:59:47","modified_gmt":"2014-03-18T21:59:47","slug":"recycling-battery-parts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/erlenmeyer\/2014\/03\/20\/recycling-battery-parts\/","title":{"rendered":"Recycling Battery Parts Makes for Greener Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guest Bloggers: Kim Thackray<\/a> & Mike Lerner<\/a><\/p>\n

Have you looked around and noticed that more and more items are powered by lithium ion batteries?\u00a0 All cell phones and laptops use lithium ion batteries, and automobiles and even ships are moving toward this technology.\u00a0 Advances in technology are making these batteries (and the products they power) smaller, lighter, and longer-lasting\u2014but what happens to the batteries once they have outlived their usefulness?<\/p>\n

\n \"Dr.<\/a>\n
Dr. Sloop enjoys football too.<\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n

The current technology for handling used batteries follows 2 tracks:\u00a0 batteries are either ground up in order to extract the expensive components (nickel, cobalt), or…they go to the landfill.\u00a0 Good earth stewardship demands a better, lower-energy alternative.\u00a0 Dr. Steve Sloop (OSU, 1996), founder of OnTo Technology<\/a>, is in the forefront of this field, helping to change the battery waste<\/i> flow into a battery resource<\/i> flow.<\/p>\n

Working closely with researchers and students at Willamette University and OSU, OnTo Technology is developing direct recycling processes that entail disassembling used batteries into their reusable components, ensuring component quality, and then introducing these components back into the battery manufacturing process.\u00a0 The associated recovery technologies, which must continually evolve as lithium-ion battery technology evolves, use much less energy and create much less waste than current recycling methods.\u00a0 Although their new procedures are somewhat more labor-intensive, Steve calculates they use 1\/62 as much energy (based on the Hess cycle calculation for smelting, boiling, and purifying the valuable components).\u00a0 If the energy used to originally extract these materials from the earth is included, the savings are even greater.<\/p>\n

OnTo Technology came into being as a company in 2004, starting with a loan from the Oregon Department of Energy<\/a>.\u00a0 This loan allowed Steve to hire a staff and to purchase equipment for pilot-plant scale research.\u00a0 A battery recall by Apple provided the raw materials required for initial testing.\u00a0 Interestingly, one of the first revenue streams for this fledgling company was reselling perfectly functional batteries (obtained in the recall but not on the recall list) on eBay.\u00a0 Since that time, OnTo Technology has largely moved away from the small consumer electronics batteries to work with automobile and ship batteries; a grant from the US Department of Energy, Vehicles Division supports this newer focus.<\/p>\n

When asked about the business model for his company, Steve explains that OnTo Technologies is not planning to become a battery manufacturer.\u00a0 Instead, their goal is to license battery recycling technology to a manufacturing partner; currently they are working with XALT<\/a>, a major US based manufacturer of large format batteries for cars and boats, and other manufacturers as well.\u00a0 The scientists at OnTo are working to keep up with rapidly evolving battery technologies, in order to keep their partners in the forefront.\u00a0 Their main product is knowledge and expertise in this exciting field.<\/p>\n

\n \"Mike<\/a>\n
OSU’s Mike Lerner<\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n

In addition, OnTo works with OSU Chemistry\u2019s Dr. Mike Lerner<\/a> and his group to characterize material structures and compositions at different points in the recycling process. This information helps guide OnTo\u2019s process development.\u00a0 Collaborating for several years now on battery chemistry, Dr. Lerner and Dr. Sloop met 20 years ago when Steve was a doctoral student working with Mike.<\/p>\n

Battery companies are not only interested in Steve\u2019s ideas in order to save money on minerals.\u00a0 There is momentum in local and state governments to require battery recycling, in order to reduce the toxic load in landfills; California already has such laws.\u00a0 In addition, the marketing value of being considered a \u201cgreen\u201d manufacturer cannot be overstated.\u00a0 Steve believes recycling is inevitable; he is leading the way in developing the best way to do it.<\/p>\n

Many challenges remain; some manufacturers still think it is crazy to consider processes that are so labor intensive when it is easier\/cheaper to grind and smelt, or discard, old batteries.\u00a0 In the future, an automated disassembly line may reduce the required labor.\u00a0 Right now, the scientists at OnTo Technologies continue to work on these challenges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest Bloggers: Kim Thackray & Mike Lerner Have you looked around and noticed that more and more items are powered by lithium ion batteries?\u00a0 All cell phones and laptops use lithium ion batteries, and automobiles and even ships are moving toward this technology.\u00a0 Advances in technology are making these batteries (and the products they power)… Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3656,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187099,101481],"tags":[199187,170172,199164,199160,199165,155,199161,199163,199166],"class_list":["post-1738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faculty-mentions","category-research-2","tag-battery","tag-kim-thackray","tag-mike-lerner","tag-onto-technology","tag-oregon-department-of-energy","tag-oregon-state-university","tag-steve-sloop","tag-willamette-university","tag-xalt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/erlenmeyer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/erlenmeyer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/erlenmeyer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/erlenmeyer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3656"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/erlenmeyer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1738"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/erlenmeyer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2027,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/erlenmeyer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1738\/revisions\/2027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/erlenmeyer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/erlenmeyer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/erlenmeyer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}