Researchers at the Technische Universität Braunschweig and colleagues have developed a solvent-based direct recycling route for anode and cathode coating materials that allows direct reuse of the recovered coating materials.

A high yield of recovery is achieved by mechanical stress in a suitable solvent (96 % for anodes, 85 % for cathodes). An open-access paper on their work is published in the Journal of Power Sources.

Solvent-based direct recycling process chain. Ahuis et al.

As production capacity for LIB technology increases, it is expected that a high amount of production scrap will be generated, containing valuable materials such cobalt, nickel, manganese, copper, graphite and lithium. Assuming a battery production of 2 TWh a⁻¹ in Europe and a scrap rate of 15% at least in the next years … a power density of 250 Wh kg⁻¹ and a mass fraction of electrodes of 50% within the cell, a scrap mass of 600.000 t a⁻¹ results alone for Europe.

This is due to the longer return time of LIBs (lifetime + collection time) as well as the high scrap rates, especially during technology and factory ramp-up. In this context, the development of effective direct recycling methods for LIB electrode scrap is of paramount importance to minimize environmental impact and reduce material costs. Another benefit of recycling is the reduction of material requirements and supply chain dependency.

Most LIB recycling processes are designed for end-of-life LIBs and are not yet specialized for electrode scrap. … In order to bridge the gap between efficient direct recycling of active materials and their impact on electrode and cell production, this study presents a solvent-based recycling process chain that separates the active material coating (anode and cathode) in a suitable solvent and returns the achieved suspension (solvent and coating material) directly to electrode manufacturing.

—Ahuis et al.

Resources

• Marco Ahuis, Anas Aluzoun, Miriam Keppeler, Sebastian Melzig, Arno Kwade (2024) “Direct recycling of lithium-ion battery production scrap – Solvent-based recovery and reuse of anode and cathode coating materials,” Journal of Power Sources, Volume 593, 233995 doi: 10.1016/j.jpowsour.2023.233995