The ReCell Center, a U.S. Department of Energy-managed program led by Argonne National Laboratory, is working to develop and demonstrate battery recycling technologies that improve the economics of responsible end-of-life lithium-ion battery management. The center focuses on reducing processing costs, increasing product revenues, and overall, enabling lower cost of new batteries. This presentation provides a brief summary of ReCell’s work to create a profitable battery recycling system.

The global shift to electric vehicles (EVs) is essential when it comes to tackling climate change – and it’s equally important to remember that the lithium-ion batteries within EVs will need to be properly recycled at end-of-life. This presentation will discuss Li-Cycle’s recycling approach – a low-cost, safe, and environmentally friendly process – which recycles all types of Li-ion batteries, with an unparalleled recovery rate of up to 95% of all materials.

In this presentation, we will discuss a unique plasma process that successfully addresses all these critical elements, and in conjunction with our recycling partner, provides a complete solution for recycling and upcycling end-of-life battery materials. 6K’s new process enables the next-generation of materials in the energy, transportation, and industrial sectors by displacing costly and wasteful legacy manufacturing approaches with a lower-cost sustainable production platform.  providing a path to meeting the cost demands battery producers, recyclers and OEMs require.

Following the strong growth of e-mobility, significant volumes of EOL batteries are expected to flood the market from 2025, exceeding 670 kT by 2030 – a tremendous value pool that simultaneously provides chances for sustainability. Employing efficient hydrometallurgical recycling methods allows for eco-friendly recovery of materials with reduced CO2 footprint compared to conventional mining routes, especially for localized recycling setups omitting complex logistics. P3 will provide an overview of current Li-ion cell CO₂ footprint as well as potentials for a European cell recycling company.

With electric vehicle and stationary storage markets set to increase more than ten-fold by the end of the decade, and battery production ramping up worldwide, we forecast an increasing volume of battery scrap that will need to be managed in the relatively short term, and a growing volume of devices reaching end-of-life in the long term. Starting from Rho Motion market data, and considering the legislative framework, the presentation will discuss incumbent technologies, with a forecast towards future business cases for re-use and recycling.

The transition to a more sustainable world will place pressures on critical enabling materials. The need to electrify the road transport sector and store renewable energy will increase demand for Li-ion batteries by 450% by 2030. The resultant strain on traditional supply routes will ultimately lead to supply deficits for key battery raw materials. What role can the nascent recycling industry play in an era reliant on batteries?

Current Battery Design is made for assembly but extended sustainable battery requirements like battery directive and circular economy in combination with new applications in second life leading to changes in battery design. We are discussing recycling processes with the different potentials for cost and emission reduction. Based on this investigation IAV developed a closed loop-based battery concept – Eco-Design to reduce emissions by 20%.

A key factor to create a more sustainable battery supply chain is to implement recycling solutions as close as possible to battery manufacturing capacity and close to large EV estimated end-of-life locations. This reality demands flexibility from recyclers in order to propose solutions that will reflect the needs of tomorrow.

The recycling process of lithium batteries often includes a crushing stage, producing a battery's active material mixture (BAMM) called the “black-mass." The paper will analyze the legal statute of the BAMM and whether it can reach the “end of waste” statutes, according to the expected level of recycling quality and materials recovery. The conditions to fulfill for a BAMM in order to be legally treated as a recycled product will be described, including REACH and UN Transport of Dangerous Goods declarations.

The comminution of spent lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) produces a powder containing the active cell components, commonly referred to as “black mass.” Froth flotation has been proposed to treat the fine fraction of black mass as a method to separate anodic graphite particles from cathodic lithium metal oxides.

What are the challenges for battery and car manufacturers regarding compliant, cost- and CO₂-efficient collection, and recovery of valuable manufacturing scrap and batteries? We show available recycling technologies, recovery rates, capacities, market pricing, and competitive landscape in Europe. We present research on most efficient setup and the evolving business model that combines collection, upcycling, recycling, and refining scrap and batteries as a service for battery and car manufacturers.

Presentation is based on thorough analysis of upcoming European regulations, recycling processes, technology developments, and strategic actions of market players. It gives an outlook on the volume of the EV battery recycling, the technical developments in the recycling process, and how recycling players position themselves. It summarizes the major success factors from a societal, environmental, and corporate perspective and highlights that the emerging European EV battery industry needs to be circular to keep its promises.

Market trends, regulations, key players, and technological development surrounding LIB recycling vary greatly from region to region. Based on the future outlook of the EV market in each region we will introduce our hypothesis on the risks and business opportunities in LIB recycling, by considering multiple scenarios for the LIB recycling market.

OnTo has patented and demonstrated Cathode-Healing direct recycling, an innovative solution to improve the cost and sustainability of battery production. Cathode-healing provides a low-cost route to reuse materials in manufacturing in lieu of sending them to a costly recycler to recover critical elements (e.g., cobalt, nickel, and lithium).  The cathode-healing process separates cathode material from the electrode foil, restores its material condition, and returns the cathode material back to the slurry for reformulation and application back to the foil. This internal recycle maintains the cell manufacturer’s ownership of the cell material and reduces value loss.

This presentation will discuss different approaches to sustainably recover lead from used lead-acid batteries. Notably, hydrometallurgy is widely considered an attractive alternative to the industry’s pyrometallurgical standard. Solveteq develops novel solvent systems for cost-effective and environmentally-friendly battery recycling, and we will discuss our recent developments focused on scaling up to a closed-loop, continuous operations prototype, process costs at scale, and life-cycle analysis to benchmark with the incumbent technology.

To ensure high material recovery, the batteries should be able to be mechanically processes to aim for highly concentrated streams. This is possible if we can efficiently discharge the batteries prior recycling and electrochemical discharge has been proposed. Thus, we will present a method to measure battery voltage during the discharge in aqueous salt solutions and propose new media for efficient discharge.