Although rechargeable batteries in smartphones, cars and tablets can be charged again and again, they don’t last forever. Old batteries often wind up in landfills or incinerators, potentially harming the environment. And valuable materials remain locked inside. Now, a team of researchers is turning to naturally occurring fungi to drive an environmentally friendly recycling process to extract cobalt and lithium from tons of waste batteries.
Because of the huge growth in smartphones and all the other products with rechargeable batteries, the demand for lithium is rising rapidly, and it is not sustainable to keep mining new lithium resources
Although a global problem, the U.S. leads the way as the largest generator of electronic waste. It is unclear how many electronic products are recycled. Most likely, many head to a landfill to slowly break down in the environment or go to an incinerator to be burned, generating potentially toxic air emissions.
While other methods exist to separate lithium, cobalt and other metals, they require high temperatures and harsh chemicals. The research team is developing an environmentally safe way to do this with organisms found in nature — fungi in this case — and putting them in an environment where they can do their work.
