Anyone driving electric? Fine, but what do we do with the battery mountain? † Car

It takes a damn long time for them to come. Much longer than initially thought. But the first stream of discarded electric cars will inevitably arrive at some point. The question is whether we can recycle all of them properly. “There is still a lot to be done. At the moment there is insufficient capacity to recycle everything that is driving around in Europe.”

That’s what Janet Kes of Auto Recycling Nederland (ARN) says. This organization has been taking care of all end-of-life cars in our country for years. So also those with a battery. ARN sees a huge task ahead of it. The electric car is rapidly gaining popularity. Not surprising when you consider that from 2035, manufacturers in Europe will no longer be allowed to sell new petrol and diesel cars. If it is up to the Netherlands, that will even be 2030. From 2050, the combustion engine will in any case be banned throughout Europe.

Everything and everyone is switching to electricity. And of course that doesn’t just apply to cars. There is a good chance that much, if not all, freight transport will become electric. Some of the shipping too. And think of construction: tools, excavators, shovels, cranes. Large companies such as zinc manufacturer Nyrstar from Budel are going to use batteries to store energy.

Don’t forget about regional transport with electric buses, for example from the Brabant companies VDL and Ebusco. It is therefore by no means an exaggeration to say that a huge mountain of batteries is coming towards us. An advantage for ARN: they still have some respite. Electric cars last a long time. Much longer than previously thought. “The first really large generation of battery-powered hybrid cars came on the market around 2013,” says Kes. “We don’t see those batteries coming back at the moment.”

If this does happen, producers and importers are responsible for collection and processing. In the Netherlands, three quarters of all importers of electric vehicles have placed this responsibility with ARN, a foundation that was set up in 1995 by the RAI association, among others. Importers pay a recycling fee to ARN for this, as is customary for, for example, white goods and solar panels.

Although the big mountain of batteries is still to come, ARN is already processing quite a few old batteries. For example, from cars that are broken or batteries with a production error. “Last year we collected 117,000 kilos of batteries, which were all drive batteries,” says Kes. “That is only a fraction of what we expect in the future. There are currently about 300,000 electric vehicles in the Netherlands.”

An old battery can go two ways via ARN: option one is a second life for the battery, for example as a buffer for excess energy. Option two is recycling. Kes: “A recycling company discharges the battery and removes the wiring and casing.” Reusable metals such as iron, copper and aluminum are immediately recovered.

What’s left goes through a shredder. “Ultimately, you’re left with a kind of black mass,” says Kes. “It contains important metals such as cobalt, nickel and lithium. You can recover that with complicated metallurgical processes.” That black mass is therefore the proverbial gold. It contains the special metals that are needed for batteries. Metals that are sometimes scarce and sometimes are mined in Africa under dubious conditions.

At least that’s what Gerard Koning, green mobility manager at the RAI and one of the initiators of the Battery Competence Center in Helmond says. That is a network organization for Dutch battery technology. Many of those African raw materials go to Asia, especially China. “That country has invested enormously in mining in Africa,” says Koning. “China does not interfere with the conditions under which these raw materials are extracted. This is one of the reasons why we need to become self-sufficient in Europe.”

But we’re not there yet. The most important raw materials now go from Africa to Asia. “They make battery cells out of it. They go by boat to Europe”, says Koning. “In Europe they are processed in battery packs and disappear in cars, trucks and bicycles.”

Once those devices have been phased out, they are partly processed in Europe. For example, under the supervision of ARN, which contracted a number of European recycling companies for this. Much of the black matter that eventually arises is not there yet because major recycling has yet to begin. But the black mass that is there usually does not stay here. According to Koning, this will go to Asia together with a lot of other metal scrap. “The metals are recovered there.”

The black gold disappears via the port of Rotterdam towards Asia. “If we cannot keep those metals on board, we will eventually have to buy them expensively from outside,” says Piet-Jan Vet of the Battery Competence Center. “We need to keep as much metal as possible in Europe and not let it go to Asia.” Moreover, shipping black matter and scrap metal to the other side of the world is not particularly sustainable. The shorter the distances, the better. “Recycling batteries is still expensive at the moment,” says Vet. “Shipping to Asia is cheaper at the moment.”

Nevertheless, there are initiatives to start recycling in Europe. Multinational TES, for example, wants to recycle lithium batteries in Rotterdam. The factory should be operational by the end of this year. According to Kes, there are also initiatives in Germany and Scandinavia for the recycling of black matter. “The expectation is that we will be able to recycle black matter on a large scale in Europe within the next few years.”

Regional recycling is therefore important. This way you keep scarce materials on board. The European Union is also aware of this, it seems. The European Battery Handling Directive is currently under review and is expected to come into effect sometime next year. This regulation will introduce battery rules that apply throughout Europe. One of the rules: materials in new batteries must increasingly consist of recycled material.

For metals, this starts modestly: from 2030, for example, 4 percent of the nickel must be recycled, 4 percent of the lithium and 12 percent of the cobalt. From 2035, the percentages will increase to 12 percent nickel, 10 percent lithium and 20 percent cobalt. Koning: ,,From 2050, 40 percent must consist of recycled material. From 2070 that will be 55 percent, according to a pre-announcement from the EU.

The rules for used batteries are also becoming stricter. By 2025, 65 percent of used lithium batteries must be recycled. That percentage will rise to 70 percent by 2030. A percentage that ARN is already achieving, according to Kes. However, she finds the new rules ambitious. “I think the ambitions in the regulation are quite high. A lot still needs to be done,” she says. “We can barely get by with the recycling capacity that is now available in Europe. The industry needs to prepare for what’s to come.”

Europe also wants a registration system for batteries. A kind of battery passport. Kes: ,,This way, batteries can be tracked better.” Batteries probably pass from hand to hand a lot over the years. From producer, to car manufacturer, to importer, to customer and then a few more second-hand rounds. From one side of Europe to the other. A process of years. “Someone has to keep track of where batteries come from,” says Koning. “Every party involved should do that.”

Such a passport is important for recycling, explains Vet. “All car factories have specific batteries. You can’t just throw them together. You have to collect and recycle them by type. Otherwise you lose all kinds of materials.” Throw the wrong metals together and you get an alloy. Vet: “Then you can’t do anything with it anymore.” When modern solid state batteries are produced on a large scale in the future, there will be even more variety.

According to Koning, such a battery passport also offers the possibility of setting up a battery warranty. “If you have some sort of performance report for batteries, you can also attach a warranty for the second-hand market to it,” he says. “You can replace a starter battery relatively cheaply, but a new battery for an electric car costs thousands of euros.”

The only question is who will produce such a performance report. At least not car manufacturers, thinks Koning. “An electric car is a platform with four tires, a steering wheel and smart software. If you want to assess the battery, you need data from that software. But that is competitively sensitive information. No producer is going to reveal that.”

You have to be able to distil the performance directly from a battery, Koning suggests. “Then it doesn’t matter whether the battery is still in a vehicle or whether it serves as storage. But there is no such thing yet.” King estimates that at least 100 million euros is needed for a Dutch registration system. The entire infrastructure for this still needs to be set up. Huge storage capacity is required. Such a system would store information from small watch batteries to batteries in large city buses.

“Don’t be alarmed by those 100 million. I’m only talking about the administrative part then,” says Koning. For example, the government has already earmarked half a billion for the greening of the construction sector. “If we want to arrange this properly in the Netherlands, really big money has to be spent.”

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