battery detection blog

The Strategic Outlook for Lithium Ion Batteries

Shipments of Consumer Electronics with Li-Ion Batteries is Increasing 10%/year

Despite significant focus on public service announcements urging consumers not to place lithium-ion batteries in recycling bins, battery fires in recycling facilities remain a big headache. Recycling operators may be asking the question of whether there is any new battery technology on the horizon that may pose less of a fire risk?

The short answer is no - at least for a while.

Currently there is significant research and development into alternate battery chemistries for automobiles with significant focus on solid state battery technology, Lithium-sulfur batteries, NanoBolt lithium tungsten batteries, Graphene batteries, and Organosilicon electrolyte batteries. These batteries will offer higher energy density without the fire risk of current generation batteries. Such advanced batteries will almost certainly find there way into consumer goods - the same kind of goods that people are putting in their recycling bins today.

The challenge for the recycling industry is the huge base of battery devices already in households. In 2022, an estimated $4.9 billion of lithium ion batteries were sold in North America for consumer goods. That number will grow to an estimated $18.8. billion by 2032 - which is a quadrupling of the number of batteries in ten years! That growth is being driven not just by organic growth in the market but by regulatory changes such as California's ban on outdoor ICE powered lawn equipment (see: https://clca.org/faq-ban-gas-powered-small-off-road-engines/). Thus, every year millions more devices are added to the install base that eventually wear out or are discarded for some reason. In short, it could take decades for these devices to be replaced with a newer battery technology.

Therefore it's important that the recycling industry develop a long term strategic plan to manage lithium-ion batteries. Public service announcements to urge consumers to properly dispose of the batteries are helpful but they can't offer recycling operators the protection of solutions that can detect and remove these batteries.

For more information on the growth of the lithium ion battery market for consumer goods, please refer to:

https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/lithium-ion-battery-for-consumer-electronics-market-A53542#:~:text=Lithium%2Dion%20Battery%20For%20Consumer%20Electronics%20Market%20Research%2C%202032,14.5%25%20from%202023%20to%202032.

Is the US Unique In Terms of Lithium-Ion Batteries?

Problems with Lithium Ion Battery Fires Are a World-Wide Problem

In the United States may draw the conclusion that our "throw away" society may be most prone to allowing lithium-ion batteries to get into recycling - where they can cause fires both in the trucks that transport recyclables and the MRFs that process recyclables. However, the issue of battery fires in recycling is rampant world wide. Stay tuned for more information on this topic!

Understanding the Tools Available For Li-Ion Battery Detection

Several Tools Exist to Reliably Remove Batteries and More Are On The Way!

Today there seems to be no shortage of new stories capturing recycling fires caused by lithium-ion batteries. From collection trucks to MRFs, the entire recycling processing chain seems to be exposed to risk of battery fires. Thus many in the industry are asking what tools exist to find and remove batteries before they can cause problems. This article provides reviews what technologies are available for this task and how they can be deployed.

One of the challenges with detecting lithium-ion batteries is that they are typically hidden - whether in a device that they power or they can be concealed by recycling materials on a conveyor belt, etc. This context eliminates vision technology as a means of detection as camera-based technology can only detect objects that are plainly visible. X-Ray based detection is perfectly suited for battery detection. Additionally, recycling applications are very similar to several food inspection applications, where the technology is well proven. The capability of x-ray inspection is enhanced with state of the art AI image processing, which facilities extremely accurate detection of batteries as well as the classification of batteries by construction type (ie differentiating between standard alkaline batteries and lithium-ion ones).

An analysis of the typical recycling operations chain, there are 4 potential inspection locations:

Loading of recycling bins into trucks
Unloading recycling materials from a truck at a processing plant
Conveying material into a recycling facility
Pre-bailing of highly flammable materials such as cardboard

Inspection "Curbside" Before Loading Bin on Trucks

Developing an inspection solution for pickup recycling bins is extremely attractive in the sense that bins with batteries could be left curbside for consumers to fix. This inspection point would also prevent batteries from ever entering the recycling process - thereby protecting trucks and all other downstream recycling steps. The challenge with inspection at this point are the large number of truck types that a solution would need to accommodate (i.e. all of the variants of side and backloading trucks) as well as designing an imaging system robust enough to handle all of the road shocks trucks regularly encounter. While such a solution is not impossible to build, it is the most difficult application of the 4 discussed here.

Inspection at Truck Unloading at MRFs

The contents of trucks can be immediately inspected upon unloading ensuring that no lithium-ion batteries enter the recycling facility. The challenge inspecting at truck unloading is mainly one of logistics. Operators need to have sufficient space to "quarantine" freshly unloaded material before it can inspected and added to the contents of the main tipping floor. The inspection process for an entire truckload of material is just a few minutes - meaning low overhead to operations. Long term, post truck unloading makes the most sense because batteries can be seamlessly removed before they can cause fire damage.

Inspection at Point of Conveyance Into MRF

Perhaps the easiest place to install an inspection system is at the main infeed conveyor to the recycling plant. Such locations rarely require any special plant modifications as the BDS solution is specially designed to fit over an existing conveyor - and BDS has produced a set of modular connectors that minimize custom installation modifications. Furthermore, inspection solutions that are initially deployed on infeed conveyors can be converted over to truck unloading applications when appropriate.

Pre-Bailing of Cardboard

BDS has also developed an inspection solution to ensure that extra flammable materials, such as cardboard, are battery-free prior to bailing. Like the infeed conveyor solution, these systems offer a modular design and are easy to install on top of existing conveyor systems.

The Extinguisher Blog: Learning About Battery Fire Prevention