Antinuclear

Lithium Australia – company seeks to recycle rare earths

Car industry revolution fuels Western Australia’s lithium boom, ABC News, By Kathryn Diss, 29 July 17

“……..’We can’t afford to keep throwing these things away’

Demand is also growing for other specialty minerals which go into building a battery, including graphite, cobalt, vanadium and nickel.

While the focus for most miners has been getting their lithium to market as quickly as possible, other players like Lithium Australia is targeting lower grade lithium and recycling of old batteries.

“Our focus has been developing processing technology to a large extent focusing on the materials people don’t want to process at the moment,” Lithium Australia managing director Adrian Griffin said.

“If you look at the industry, there’s more lithium that gets discharged to waste around the world than ever gets into the process supply chain.

“One of the things Australia really needs to look at is the recycling of waste battery materials.

“We can’t afford to keep throwing these things away: At the moment there’s about 8,000 tonnes a year of battery materials going to landfill and there’s only about 800 tonnes recycled.” http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-29/car-industy-lithium-revolution-driving-next-mining-boom-in-wa/8748322

July 31, 2017 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, rare earths