{"id":200956,"date":"2024-12-07T10:07:52","date_gmt":"2024-12-07T16:07:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/a-greener-cleaner-way-to-extract-cobalt-from-junk-materials"},"modified":"2024-12-07T10:07:52","modified_gmt":"2024-12-07T16:07:52","slug":"a-greener-cleaner-way-to-extract-cobalt-from-junk-materials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/a-greener-cleaner-way-to-extract-cobalt-from-junk-materials","title":{"rendered":"A greener, cleaner way to extract cobalt from \u2018junk\u2019 materials"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-greener-cleaner-way-to-extract-cobalt-from-junk-materials2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Siddarth Kara\u2019s bestseller, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2023\/01\/23\/books\/review\/cobalt-red-siddharth-kara.html\" target=\"_blank\">Cobalt Red: How the Blood of Congo Powers Our Lives<\/a>,\u201d focuses on problems surrounding the sourcing of cobalt, a critical component of lithium-ion batteries that power many technologies central to modern life, from mobile phones and pacemakers to electric vehicles.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPerhaps many of us have read how <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/lithium-ion+batteries\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">lithium-ion batteries<\/a> are vital for energy storage technologies,\u201d says Eric Schelter, the Hirschmann-Makineni Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. \u201cBut how materials that make up such batteries are sourced can be concerning and problematic, both ethically and environmentally.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Schelter says that <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/cobalt\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">cobalt<\/a> mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which supplies about 70% of the world\u2019s cobalt, raises concerns due to environmental degradation and unsafe working conditions, and that large-scale mining disrupts ecosystems and can contaminate <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/water+supplies\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">water supplies<\/a>, leaving lasting environmental damage. In addition, he notes that a looming cobalt shortage threatens to strain <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/global+supply+chains\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">global supply chains<\/a> as demand for battery technologies continues to grow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Siddarth Kara\u2019s bestseller, \u201cCobalt Red: How the Blood of Congo Powers Our Lives,\u201d focuses on problems surrounding the sourcing of cobalt, a critical component of lithium-ion batteries that power many technologies central to modern life, from mobile phones and pacemakers to electric vehicles. \u201cPerhaps many of us have read how lithium-ion batteries are vital for [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":367,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1512],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-mobile-phones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/367"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200956\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}