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Can Flow Batteries Finally Beat Lithium?
(spectrum.ieee.org)
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this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2023
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What makes a lithium iron phosphate battery an ecological nightmare?
Cobalt: https://earth.org/cobalt-mining/
This is irrelevant. First, there are chemistries not using cobalt, as explained already. Second, elemental cobalt is infinitely recyclable as all elemental metals, thus we don't need to mine that much more, just like we don't mine as much iron ore as we did centuries ago (relative to overall consumption). Yes, we still mine a lot of iron ore, but we recycle a lot as well.
This cobalt must be mined first to be recycled later, and being infinity recyclable doesn't mean it will be, for example if it's cheaper to mine new cobalt instead of recycling.
It was already mined, it only needs to be recycled if we continue using old battery chemistries. Which is unlikely.