What Raw Minerals Are Used To Make a Battery?

To build a battery you have four basic overarching battery components including the casing, chemistry, electrolyte, and the internal specialized hardware. At the core of these four basic overarching battery components are the foundation blocks; the raw materials necessary for the construction of a battery. Minerals and materials used in the construction of batteries are numerous but the core mineral required to have a battery is the batteries chemical which can either be : cadmium, cobalt, lead, lithium, and nickel (along with other rare earth elements).  Why is the chemical one of the most important element in a battery: because a battery at its most basic element is a system that converts and stores electrochemical energy for the purpose of providing portable power to a device. Without the chemistry changing chemical energy into electrical energy is impossible. So needless to say the availability of minerals used in batteries are highly important!

What's Inside A Battery?

A typical battery needs 3 parts to create electricity:

• Anode - negative side of the battery
• Cathode - positive side of the battery
• Electrolyte - a chemical paste that separates the anode and cathode and transforms chemical energy into electrical energy

There are recoverable resources inside of each battery regardless of its type

Take a single-use alkaline battery for instance. These are the non-rechargeable type batteries that come in AAA, AA, C, D, 9 volt and various button cell sizes.

On average, 25% of the battery is made up of steel (casing). Did you know that steel can be recycled indefinitely for reuse?

60% of the battery is made up of a combination of materials like zinc (anode), manganese (cathode) and potassium. These materials are all earth elements. This combination of material is 100% recovered and reused as a micro-nutrient in the production of fertilizer to grow corn.

The remaining 15% by weight is made up of paper and plastic (label and protective cover). These materials are sent to an energy from waste facility to create electricity.

Nickel, Cobalt, and Lithium as battery raw materials

Nickel, cobalt and lithium are key metals used in today's active cathode materials and the chemistries deployed in high performance batteries. Highest demand growth is seen in the batteries used for portable devices, energy storage and especially in electric mobility, typically basing on NCM and NCA Lithium-ion chemistries.

Nickel and cobalt can be found from different type of ore bodies with most typical being lateritic and sulfidic ores. Quite often these mineralogies hold both nickel and cobalt, but cobalt is often also found together with copper. Both metals can also be found from several refined raw materials, like nickel matte or sulfide, from which the battery raw material refining can start.

The two main raw material sources of lithium are the brines from salars and the rock-forming lithium minerals, typically spodumene.

Nickel and Cobalt processing

The processing configuration of nickel and cobalt is defined by the raw materials from which the refining starts as well as what type of end-products are targeted. After needed minerals processing and pyrometallurgical refining steps, the hydrometallurgical processing typically consists of material handling, leaching, solution purification and battery metal or battery chemical production. The amount of impurities and other valuable metals in the starting material dictate the number of steps needed downstream from leaching to meet the purity requirements of the products used in the preparation of active cathode materials. High purity requirements are typical for these metals when produced for battery manufacturing purposes.

Lithium processing

Lithium is a highly reactive alkali metal that offers excellent heat and electrical conductivity. Lithium extraction is a set of chemical processes where lithium is isolated from a sample and converted to a saleable form of lithium, generally a stable yet readily convertible compound such as lithium carbonate.

lithium arises from two major sources: underground brine deposits and mineral ore deposits. The methods of lithium extraction and processing vary depending upon the source material, and include the following:

Conventional lithium brine extraction

• Pretreatment. This step usually employs filtration and/or ion exchange (IX) purification to remove any contaminants or unwanted constituents from the brine.
• Chemical treatment. Next, a series of chemical solvents and reagents may be applied to isolate desirable products and byproducts through precipitation.
• Filtration.The brine is then filtered to separate out precipitated solids.
• Saleable lithium production. The brine is finally treated with a reagent, such as sodium carbonate to form lithium carbonate, and the product is then filtered and dried for sale. Depending upon the desired product, different reagents may be applied to produce other commonly sold forms of lithium, such as lithium hydroxide, lithium chloride, lithium bromide, and butyl lithium.

Once the lithium extraction process is complete, the remaining brine solution is returned to the underground reservoir.

Hard rock / spodumene lithium extraction

While accounting for a relatively small share of the world's lithium production, mineral ore deposits yield nearly 20 tons of lithium annually. Well over 100 different minerals contain some amount of lithium, however, only five are actively mined for lithium production. These include spodumene, which is the most common by far, as well as lepidolite, petalite, amblygonite, and eucryptite.

Mineral ore deposits are often richer in lithium content than are salar brines, however, they are costly to access since they must be mined from hard rock formations. Due to the added energy consumption, chemicals, and materials involved in extracting lithium from mineral ore, the process can run twice the cost of brine recovery, a factor that has contributed to its smaller market share.

The process for recovering lithium from ore can vary based on the specific mineral deposit in question. In general, the process entails removing the mineral material from the earth then heating and pulverizing it. The crushed mineral powder is combined with chemical reactants, such as sulfuric acid, then the slurry is heated, filtered, and concentrated through an evaporation process to form saleable lithium carbonate, while the resulting wastewater is treated for reuse or disposal.

Other lithium extraction processes

Beyond salar brine and mineral ore, lithium can be produced from a few other sources, though such production is not widespread at this time. These other lithium sources include:

• Hectorite clay. Extensive research and development has been invested into developing effective clay processing techniques, including acid, alkaline, chloride and sulfate leaching, as well as water disaggregation and hydrothermal treatment. To date, none of these technologies has proven economically viable for extracting lithium from clay.
• Seawater. Hundreds of billions of tons of lithium is estimated to exist in our oceans, making them an attractive source for meeting future lithium demand. While existing processes—including a co-precipitation extraction process and a hybrid IX-sorption process—have succeeded in extracting lithium from seawater, newer membrane technologies are showing greater promise for bringing the costs of seawater extraction down.
• Recycled brines from energy plants. Efforts to retrieve lithium from geothermal brines are gaining popularity as worldwide demand for lithium increases and as new technologies emerge. The processes used follow conventional brine extraction, though they might be adapted based on the content of the brine stream.
• Recovered oil field brine. Retrieval of lithium from oil field brines is technically just another form of conventional brine extraction, with the difference being the source of the brine.
• Recycled electronics. Lithium battery recycling doesn't truly meet the definition of extraction, however, as demand grows, lithium ion battery recycling will become an increasingly valuable source of the metal.

While each of these poses a potentially valuable source of lithium, the technologies to extract brine from them are not yet developed enough to make them cost-effective or viable alternatives to salar brine mining or mineral ore mining.

Other metals needed in battery manufacturing

Along the critical metals Nickel, Cobalt and Lithium, also many other metals play an important role in the battery manufacturing chain, either in the battery chemistry or in other components like current distributors or permanent magnets. Most typical metals are aluminum, manganese, copper, magnesium and iron. Also new chemistries for different type of batteries evolve fastly and provide up-potential for metals like vanadium.