The manufacture of lithium batteries is an industrial activity of high environmental contamination, it consumes a huge amount of potable water in their production, an increasingly rare resource.
Not easy get minerals to make these battery, as well as being rare, they are located in conflict regions such as Congo-Africa. Another problem is related to the water consumption of these lithium batteries, which are the most popular. The production of one ton of lithium to make batteries consumes such a large amount of water that it is drying up several aquifers in the mining regions in this case in Chile and creating a very serious problem.
In the case of lithium it takes 100kg of the raw Lithium mineral to produce 1.6 kg of usable Lithium. The Lithium recycling process is capable of recovering only 7kg of lithium oxide from every 100 kg of battery.
The extraction has a high environmental impact due the intensive use of water, also the refining is expensive or electro-intensive, with rock materials heated to temperatures above 1,000ºC which consumes a lot of energy.
