I have heard that the pouch cell will be easier to recycle than a Tesla cylindrical cell. The full life of a Li battery includes the recycling and reuse of the chemicals. Has Tesla figured out how to recycle their batteries? Since they are all glued together and very hard to disassemble will these billions of batteries be trashed? Has anyone seen a pouch cell being recycled?
I suspect that recycling of EV batteries will be more complicated than solving the problem of whether or not the cells are glued together. There has to be both physical and chemical processes to retrieve the materials of value. These will be quite complex sequential processes that have not yet been brought to the scale required to recycle EV batteries in 10 years from now.
They are working on it. https://www.tvo.org/article/can-ontario-boost-ev-battery-recycling-before-its-too-late https://www.azocleantech.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=1314
All great article and the research will hopefully be the answers to our future recycling of batteries. Liked this Batteries might one day be designed to be recycled, Yu says. “We always design batteries thinking of performance, about the energy density, resolving range anxiety — but we never thought about, how could we design a battery with recycling in mind so that it makes it easier and more efficient? I think that's really the next thing to do.”
