SCIENTISTS MAKE BREAKTHROUGH DISCOVERY WHILE EXPERIMENTING WITH URINE: UÑ CAN REUSE A VERY SIGNIFICANT PORTION OF THE COBALT’

[Ubiquitous]

Scientists have experimented with many types of materials in hopes of making
EV batteries, their storage, and their recycling more efficient. One of the
latest breakthroughs, developed by a team from Linnaeus University in Sweden
and the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in India, is derived from
perhaps the most unexpected substance yet: urine.

The new method, which the scientists described in a study published in the
scientific journal ACS Omega, summarized by Anthropocene, can be used during
the battery recycling process to extract valuable metals used in lithium-ion
batteries. It uses a liquid solvent derived from urine and acetic acid, the
main ingredient in vinegar.

The scientists say that it is able to recover a whopping 97% of cobalt from a
battery, all while relying on harmless chemicals and much less energy than
current processes.

“The combination of readily available and relatively harmless substances and
high energy efficacy gives our method potential to work for large-scale
extraction,” said Ian Nicholls, a professor at Linnaeus University, in a
press release. “With more efficient and environmentally friendly methods, we
can reuse a very significant portion of the cobalt that is already in use,
instead of mining.”

The scientists did not say where they sourced the urine used for the
experiment.

As electric vehicles climb in popularity, the batteries that they run on have
become something of a hot-button issue. While EVs cause much less pollution
than their traditional gas-powered counterparts, their batteries do come with
a host of downsides — lithium-ion batteries, the industry standard, rely on
the mining of materials like lithium, cobalt, and copper, which causes
immense environmental degradation.

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For that reason, it is crucial for the EV industry and for our planet that
efficient processes for recycling these batteries are developed. The EV
battery recycling industry is still in the early stages, but it is advancing
quickly — and more scientific breakthroughs like this one that streamlines
the process bode well for its future.

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