If you look around you, there’s a good chance you’re near a device with a battery.
Smartphones, tablets, laptops and more.
And with automakers looking to move from gasoline-powered cars to all-electric vehicles, we’re going to need a lot more of them.
But getting the materials we need for those batteries can be problematic.
There are environmental and human rights concerns in some cobalt-mining countries, for example.
A startup called Nth cycle may have a partial solution: a more effective way to recycle materials from the batteries we’ve already made and used.
The typical recycling process means using acid to dissolve a battery and then using chemical solvents to harvest specific metals.
That can be a long process.
The company’s method uses an electrified filter to reclaim cobalt and other key metals for batteries, like nickel and manganese.
They say this could cut the need for mining by 10 percent up front, and as we produce more and more high-tech batteries, we can recycle more and more of them too.
News about recycling batteries always gives me a charge.
We produce five episodes a week, and you can catch up on all of them in just a quarter of an hour, though I advise against trying to listen to all of the episodes at the same time.
Unless, maybe, you’re Kiara Kaur.
The Indian-American living in Abu Dhabi just set a record for reading 36 books at the same time for close to two hours.
Oh, and by the way, she’s five.
This new tech mines old batteries to find critical ingredients for electric vehicles (Fast Company)
5-Year-Old Indian-American Sets World Record for Reading 36 Books in under Two Hours (News18)