It is clear, at this point, that the future will be sustainably electrically powered. With governments planning to decarbonise transportation and an ever-increasing demand for electronics and smart technology, the major debate in toll processing is whether there is enough for the precious metals used in high-yield rechargeable batteries to power this new world.
The International Energy Agency went as far as to describe this change as a shift from high demand for fuel to high demand for materials.
To that end, there are three main paths to helping to produce enough lithium and other metals to keep the world moving.
The first is to reduce the need for rare metals, as mining them in increasingly large quantities has a considerable environmental cost that undermines the sustainability of the end product.
This path splits in two, as it involves more economical use of the lithium resources we have, as well as using alternatives to cobalt and nickel. This also involves intensifying research into more abundant alternatives such as sodium-ion.
As well as this, the other path is to make battery recycling easier, better and more affordable than mining the raw metals required.
This involves creating processes that can recover the metals in a battery more effectively than either pyrometallurgy (smelting the metals into a liquid) or hydrometallurgy (dissolving them in acid to separate them).
One technique that is being researched separates the different materials using ultrasound, which spares more of the complex components of a battery and can make recycled metals a lot cheaper than using current methods.
Finally, at least in the short term, there is improving the sustainability of mining itself, both through increasing the useful yield in different brines and mines, and using geothermal energy to power the processes rather than relying on fossil fuels.