One of the long-standing problems of battery technology is what to do with the waste. Now a research team at the US Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory says why not mine the e-waste?
The PNNL research team used a simple mixed-salt water-based solution and their knowledge of metal properties to separate valuable minerals in continuously flowing reaction chambers, in a method similar to the way in which a prism splits light into its constituent colours.
Materials separation scientist Qingpu Wang presented their potential solution for selectively recovering manganese, magnesium, dysprosium, and neodymium - minerals critical to modern electronics – from spent batteries, at this year’s Spring Meeting of the Materials Research Society (MRS), in Seattle, USA.
Now that’s clever – and a potential solution to all these dead batteries going to landfill.
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