As a company we are interested in innovations within the battery industry. Battery recycling is one of the key technological developments needed to combat unethical mining practices and reduce dependency on politically unstable partners. To get a feel for what is happening in the world of battery recycling, we visited the Battery Recycling Expo in Frankfurt am Main.
The ideal situation for battery recycling is simple: people all over Europe could easily return their waste batteries. These batteries would then be dismantled into their raw materials, which would then be used to produce new batteries. This closed loop system could continue indefinitely, with minimal waste and loss of raw materials. Unfortunately, we do not live in an ideal world.
The recycling process
STOKKERMILL RECYCLING MACHINERY develops recycling machines for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) among other things. We asked about the right methods to recycle batteries. For NMC- and NCA-batteries use a two-stage process to separate the materials.
The battery cells are first safely ground and sorted. This produces a lot of packaging material, such as plastics, steel casings and metal foils (copper, aluminium). In addition, it also creates black mass, a mixture of the remaining battery materials.
The black mass then undergoes a hydrometallurgical process to extract valuable materials. The material is dissolved in a suitable liquid – often acids, bases or other chemicals. The solution is then concentrated and purified to remove impurities. The desired metals are then recovered. These include: cathode materials (nickel, cobalt or manganese), lithium solutions and carbon.
Challenges and prospects for the future
The current recycling processes still fall far short of the ideal scenario described earlier. The biggest challenge is to achieve sufficient purity – both in the black mass and in the recovered materials. The separation processes (phase 1 and 2) do not yet provide battery grade materials that are suitable for making new NMC or NCA cells.
A 2023 study published by the Royal Society of Chemistry, described several possible solutions. Many companies now claim to sell machines that can produce battery-grade materials. However, none of these solutions have yet proven commercially viable. This was confirmed both in the study and on the Battery Recycling Expo 2024. Experts from Duesenfeld, Green Li-ion en Elemental Battery Metals agreed: no company has yet achieved closed-loop battery recycling with battery-grade output.
A possible exception is Fortum Recycling & Waste, a Finnish company that claims to have a solution. They say they have developed a closed loop for battery recycling. Right now they can recycle materials from technical quality produce and their goal is to counter 2027 battery-grade quality. They want to recycle discarded NMC and NCA cells into new battery materials in their own factory. For now, however, they are still facing chemical challenges that need to be solved first.
