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.

Market trend, regulations, key players, and technological development surrounding LIB recycling vary greatly from region to region. Based on the future outlook of 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.

This presentation will cover the growth of the battery recycling market and the development of new technologies. Companies across the battery value chain show increasing investment in battery recycling largely driven by the need to secure feedstock for battery production, intensified by the volatility of critical material pricing, as well as emerging battery recycling legislation. Considering the relative infancy of the battery recycling industry, we will discuss how it might catch up and maintain pace with the electrification markets, especially as battery formats and chemistries evolve.

This presentation shows the technology and market outlook for lithium-ion battery recycling in North America and Europe. Highlights include costs breakdown per black mass production and refining technology, volumes expected for metals used in cathode active materials, regulation outlook for North America and Europe, and geographical distribution of players in North America and Europe.

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.

To ensure safety during the recycling process lithium-ion batteries should be discharged. Discharging can be done to different levels like over-discharge and over-discharging into reversal. During over-discharging, different effects can occur; e.g., formation of copper dendrites or coating of the separator with active material. To examine how over-discharging influences recycling, different battery types with different chemistries (NMC, NCA, LFP) were investigated.

OnTo will share strategies to improve safety and reduce cost with service on-site and critical material pretreatment.  These include cathode-healing, direct recycling applications to sustainable lithium-ion materials, and deactivation/rendering safe end-of-life batteries. Cathode-healing is an innovative approach to recycling materials independent of battery chemistry. Battery deactivation renders batteries inert to improve cost and safety of transportation and storage. Dr. Sloop will update the progress with deactivation and cathode-healing of lithium-ion batteries including cathode-healing of lithium iron phosphate, innovation to recycle manufacturing scrap, d esign for recycling on the material and cell level and application scenarios for battery deactivation.

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, and competitive landscape in Europe. We present research on most efficient setup and resulting business model that combines collection, upcycling, recycling, and refining scrap and batteries as a service for battery and car manufacturers.

With the recent flurry of policy around battery material strategy and increasing battery recycling infrastructure, this talk will discuss what that means for deglobalizing battery manufacturing. It will discuss implications of cell chemistries, battery recycling technology, and expected volumes for battery recycling in the future.

The EU plans to increase the recycling rates by 2025 and 2030. To recover more valuable materials the mechanical recycling route will become more important and the cell format and chemistry will have an influence on the mechanical recycling. Therefore, the mechanical processing of different cell formats (prismatic, cylindrical, pouch) and chemistries (NMC, NCA, LFP) was investigated and the impact on the energy consumption, material recovery rate, and product quality was compared.

This presentation will give an overview of the lithium battery market and its recycling market especially in China, our research on battery recycling and regeneration technologies for both LFP and ternary lithium battery, and introduce a self-developed ultra-short separation system via a hydro-metallurgical process for high nickel EV battery, a direct recycling method for various spent electrodes, carbon assessment system for battery whole life, etc.

The urgent phase-out of fossil fuel will inevitably lead to increasing demand for batteries for stationary energy storage and the fast-growing electric mobility sector. More than 1.200 GWh of annual production capacity is announced for battery gigafactories only in Europe. This rapidly growing demand raises questions about resource availability and the circularity of the battery sector. Na-ion batteries could help to alleviate the resource problem. CATL announced the production of a Na-based battery system by 2023. To increase the understanding of environmental implications of Na-ion battery technology, a prospective LCA is conducted ‘from cradle to grave.’

As early as 2027 each industrial, LMT and electric vehicle battery registered in the EU will need an electronic record or “battery passport” providing proof of sustainability information, recycling efficiencies, compliance on responsible sourcing, and sustainable government procurement, amongst other data.