The cathode in a battery connects to the positive terminal and delivers the electricity we use. Then it temporarily becomes a receiver, and accepts fresh electricity when we recharge it. There is a new way of farming lithium-ion battery cathodes available, so we can re-use their materials cost-effectively.
Which Battery Cathode Materials Can We Farm?
A cathode’s dual role does not come easy, especially when you are working with chemistry like lithium-ion. And so we can expect smart chemicals in a battery cathode, and some of these are going to be expensive.
In the case of a lithium-ion battery cathode, these chemicals may include lithium-based oxides of iron phosphate, nickel manganese cobalt, nickel cobalt aluminum, and manganese. No wonder we need a way of farming used lithium-ion battery cathodes when their days are done!
How Sandia National Laboratories Farm Battery Cathodes
First and foremost, this is not a recipe for a home experiment. The Sandia researchers may have used microwave technology, but they did this in a special way. We don’t want you trying this in the kitchen, and getting into trouble with the Cook!.
Microwaves move molecules of atoms in materials. That, in plain terms, is how we cook food in our microwaves. We agitate their molecules to warm them up to cooking temperature.
Sandia National Laboratories are being a bit coy about how they go about recycling lithium-ion battery cathodes in microwaves. We understand perfectly. They need to make some money out of this to cover their costs,
What we do know though, is they don’t use a domestic microwave like we have in our kitchens. They use ‘high throughput microwave reactors’ to scale the job up, and process large quantities of old lithium-ion cathodes quickly.
More Information:
Central Role of Oxides in Batteries
Role of Oxides in Storage Batteries
