Battery Recycling

In 2025, the global recycling market underwent a major regulatory shift as Europe and India made efforts to restrict the export of black mass, whilst China legalised black mass’ importation. Not only did this influence prices and trade flows, it has also altered the types of commercial arrangements and technologies being developed regionally. This presentation will put forward Benchmark’s perspective on the current global recycling market as well as how we expect it to evolve in 2026 and beyond.

This presentation will cover scrap-battery forecast, black mass pricing, and shredding vs. refining capacities.

This presentation will discuss a three-dimensional approach for battery-materials reclamation: deactivation, direct recycling, and design. The service of lithium-ion batteries and recycling of their materials is at the forefront of the reestablishment of the global supply chain of critical-materials refining and manufacturing. The industrialisation of this requires innovative processes and design to realise cost and safety demands in the next generation of lithium-ion manufacturing.

This session provides the latest updates on EU rules shaping EV battery recycling. Key topics include delegated acts on recycling efficiency and material recovery (including end-of-waste and export conditions), recycled content calculation, and carbon footprint reporting. We’ll examine how these evolving requirements impact compliance and the business case for recycling, offering insights into obligations and opportunities within the EU’s circular economy framework.

SAE International has created a standard for a battery traceability record to harmonise US and EU requirements for incentives and regulations. This standard has laid out an information collection framework, accompanied by a guide to supply-chain mapping and material calculations, and verification options. This presentation will address the items covered in the standard as well as the feedback that was received from the pilot program on the standard.

Recycling of batteries under the EU Battery Directive is essential to recover valuable materials and reduce environmental harm. By closing material loops, battery recycling plays a key role in advancing a circular economy and ensuring sustainable use of critical and non-critical resources. Central attention is given to the recycling challenges of low-value anode and cathode addressing economic challenges, technological hurdles, and pathways to improve material recovery, reduce waste, and advance circular approaches across present and future battery technologies.

• NMC, LFP, Sodium battery
• Recycling (Hydro / direct recycling)
• Low value Black Mass

• Quality and quality fluctuations in recycling products?

This presentation explores precycling—the safe dismantling and preparation of large end-of-life batteries for reuse or recycling. It highlights key processes, safety considerations, and market drivers shaping battery after-life strategies, and discusses how effective precycling supports circular value chains and sustainable-material recovery in a growing global battery ecosystem.

The EU Battery Regulation sets mandatory recycled content levels for EV batteries, requiring by 2031 at least 16% Co, 6% Li and 6% Ni in active materials from recycled sources, increasing by 2036 to 26% Co, 12% Li and 15% Ni. Recycled feedstocks contain impurities originating from battery components at pack, module, and cell levels. During active material regeneration, certain impurities can alter nucleation pathways, microstructure evolution, and structural organization, with clear implications for meeting battery grade requirements. Through thermodynamic modelling and multi-scale characterizations, this work identifies impurity specific signatures and the concentration ranges where performance relevant properties begin to deviate. This comprehensive understanding establishes a clearer view of impurity impacts prior to reintegration of recycled materials into the battery value chain.

This presentation provides post-treatment recycling market insights, examining how post-treatment refining improves supply-chain security while navigating regulatory challenges. It reviews recycling routes for PCAM, MHP, lithium, and graphite, highlighting technical hurdles and quality gaps. Pyrometallurgical, hydrometallurgical, and non-solvent aqueous methods are compared to assess efficiency and sustainability. Finally, it outlines opportunities for next-generation recycling to meet regional minimum recycled-content requirements across evolving global battery supply chains and markets.

Water-using recycling processes—such as wet crushing and electrohydraulic fragmentation—generate large amounts of contaminated process water, resulting in increased costs for the disposal of hazardous waste and safety guidelines. To improve wastewater management, safety, and sustainability of water-assisted recycling processes, comprehensive knowledge of the battery components in the water are required. Analytical techniques can play an important role during these processes, including wet shredding processes, wastewater management, and analytical techniques.

Dr. Bittner will give an introduction into CellCircle’s innovative direct recycling and its benefits for a sustainable battery value chain in Europe. His presentation includes the concept for recovering ready-to-use active materials from end-of-life batteries and production waste, innovative recycling technologies as well as respective lifecycle assessment. Findings from the Horizon Europe project ReUse will show the potential of this next-generation process for economic and ecological LFP battery recycling.

This presentation will discuss a three-dimensional approach for battery materials reclamation: Deactivation, Direct Recycling, and Design. The service of lithium-ion batteries and recycling of their materials is at the forefront of the reestablishment of the global supply chain of critical materials refining and manufacturing. The industrialization of this requires innovative processes and design to realize cost and safety demands in the next generation of lithium-ion manufacturing.

Metal ions in high concentration are toxic to living things. Microorganisms mitigate this toxicity by exporting metal ions from the cell and precipitating the ions as metal nanoparticles or minerals, preventing reentry and reducing metal-ion availability. We are harnessing this capability to recover metals from lithium-ion battery leachates, using engineering biology to optimise processes and improve scale up. The recovered materials have been well-characterised and show potential for reuse.

Integrating electrochemical strategies into hydrometallurgical processing offers a promising pathway to secure the lithium material base required for tomorrow’s energy and mobility solutions. This work presents innovative electrochemical approaches that enhance lithium recovery efficiency, reduce reagent consumption, and minimise environmental impact. By coupling selective electro-extraction with sustainable process optimisation, we demonstrate how electrochemical methods can strengthen lithium supply-chain resilience and support the transition toward a circular, low-carbon battery materials economy.

The CLIMA process is Accurec’s innovative solution for lithium recovery from end-of-life batteries, combining patented thermal treatment with advanced hydrometallurgical technology. This zero-waste process enables efficient recycling of diverse battery chemistries without mandatory discharging, achieving high-purity lithium carbonate at a fraction of the energy and CO₂ footprint compared to conventional methods. In this presentation, the CLIMA process will be evaluated within the context of Europe’s dynamic market, competitive recycling approaches, and evolving legislative framework.