Triple Dilemma of Battery Reality

There are three forces facing our battery industry that are holding back progress. We’ll come to explaining what these are in a moment, but the bottom line is they are out of sync. When we move forward with one aspect of the triple dilemma of battery reality, the other two may block progress.

Key Factors in the Triple Battery Dilemma

Qi Zhang writing in MDPI drew our attention to the scale of this internal conflict. He dramatically describes the eleven million tons of spent lithium-ion batteries awaiting recycling, held back by a fragmented circular economy.

Every time someone comes up with technical advancements in material separation, the triple dilemma of battery reality intervenes. The other two factors that come into play are economic volatility, and regulatory fragmentation.

Zhang moves on from discussing chemistry, business models, and government policies in isolated silos. He argues for a different reality where we analyze the friction points between these three forces:

Materials issues such as binder removal and impurity sensitivity.
Economic realities including costs and profitability.
Variances between US, EU, and China regulations.

Zhang’s paper, which we link to below, proposes a model for ‘true circularity’. This seeks to integrate ‘design-for-recycling, market stabilization, and harmonized digital product passports’.

Findings Ways Through the Triple Reality

Zhang applies his mind to solving the mounting pile of lithium-ion batteries awaiting recycling. There, an urgent economic and environmental imperative to do something, is often held back by the triple dilemma of battery reality:

Lithium-ion batteries play a critical role in decarbonising our atmosphere.
However, their make-use-discard life cycle is depleting scarce resources.
Continuing to extract these materials has major environmental implications.

Zhang completes his review by suggesting a model for an integrated, circular recycling system, which we paste in below. Do you think the battery world will wake up and listen, or is Zhang just another prophet in the global wilderness?