BEST publisher Vic Giles reports from the International Congress for Battery Recycling (ICBR), held in Basel, Switzerland, in September. Participants heard about industry challenges and how progress in improving battery collection rates is slowing.

As the EU Battery Regulation mandates the level of recycled product in the manufacture of new batteries, analysts say investment is crucial to maintain the projected course of converting the vehicle fleet from ICE to EV in the next decade or so.

Battery collection and recycling efficiency

The end of life for EV batteries, with degradation rates lower than forecast, is being extended by years – according to research from Geotab. However, collection will result in large volumes of material when they are recycled. Portable batteries present a more complex collection scenario, according to Claude Chanson, general manager of rechargeable battery association Recharge.

He said the collection rate in 2012 was 35% and 47% in 2020. Based on the EU Commission’s evaluation of the battery (2018), progress in meeting that collection target is about 2% per year, and slowing.

A report by consulting company Perchards in 2022 stated that no country is consistently reaching the 65% collection target. Based on 2% progress per year from 2020, the rates in 2027 can be expected at 61% – below the targets of 63% by end-2027 and 73% by end-2030. This includes Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland, which have a strong history of battery collection.

Recycling efficiency (RE) is affected by the inclusion or exclusion of elements such as oxygen and carbon – because of their use in the recycling process. In the existing ‘negative list method’ (NLM), chemistries with less critical material content are penalised.

Chanson proposed a ‘positive list method’ to identify the list of materials that should always be recycled, contrary to the NLM proposing to list the excluded substances.

He said that, based on the existing collection organisations and historical progressions, the collection targets may be out of reach in some EU member states. Based on industrial recycling processes, the RE and material recovery targets may be difficult for some lithium technologies such as LFP.

Beatrice Browning from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence said things in the UK are a little different, with recycling initiatives led by research funding through the three Faraday Battery Challenge institutions. Legislation is found in the UK’s Waste Batteries and Accumulators Regulations 2009, which takes into consideration producer responsibility: portable producers must fund collection and recycling of batteries – collection and take-back schemes, landfill disposal bans and registration and labelling of products.

She went on to say the uneven global scrap distribution is due to the clear Chinese dominance because of the gigafactory industry. This will start to shift after 2040, she said, when end-of-life scrap is expected to skyrocket after the mid-2030s. However, with battery lifetimes extending, this date may shift. Processing infrastructure is unevenly distributed, and funding is required to ensure capacity is online when needed, whether through the IRA in the US or regulation in the EU.

Browning agreed with Chanson that business as usual is not acceptable and the UK needs to accelerate the industry and introduce consumer incentives for the collection and recycling of batteries.

Sorting apples from pears

Neil Harrington of Linev Systems talked about the X-ray sorting of batteries from AAAA to 2170 sizes, particularly those with no labels or markings to help identify them and those incorrectly labelled.

The key point about using X-rays is to get an image that AI algorithms can use to compare with a lookup table to sort the batteries, he said. Linev has developed a battery sorting solution that can take large feedstocks of material, arrange them on a conveyor, and pass them through an X-ray solution that takes an image of each individual cell. It then uses an AI-driven algorithm to compare those images to a library. This allows the sorting of those batteries into bins according to chemistry.

The image library started with about 500,000 images – just for the standard domestic cylindrical cells. However, including new cell constructions, the library has grown to some 1.5 million images.

The system can recognise up to 12 cells per second with a sort-purity above 99%. A battery will not be classified and ejected to a bin unless the machine is confident what it is. If there is uncertainty, it will be returned for fresh analysis.

It is not just images. When you pass the X-ray beam through a cell, you get the atomic number and this can be used to identify the various types of NMC, he said. The cost of a six-channel sorting machine is in the low €300,000s.

Urban mining

Charles Stuyck of Umicore identified key challenges for European recyclers. A battery is a small chemical factory, and its recycling includes dealing with sodium sulphate, lithium emission norms, PFAS emission norms, the formation of hydrofluoric acid, volatile organics and fine particulate matter, which is often carcinogenic. That is because of the nickel and cobalt contained, he said. So that is quite a challenge for any recycler in Europe, he added.

This was followed by the red tape of logistics, where intra-EU mobility of scrap continues to be severely hampered. Material availability also fluctuates, partly due to the delayed realisation/ramp-up of EV gigafactories, he said.

The maturity of technologies is quite high in mechanical terms, but on the refinery side a lot of things are not ready to deploy at the scale of 100,000 tons. Getting lithium out of a compound of NMC is not trivial, he said.

Then there is the missing information on the history of a battery and its compounds. The dismantling manuals are not being shared, which hampers optimisation by recyclers, and the industry is waiting for battery passports to close that gap.

Finally, the investment climate is being hampered by the uncertainty of regulation for the market, he said. Recycled content is one of the objectives of the battery directive, but the exact calculation method is not yet defined.

He believes that the technology that Umicore has picked is uniquely positioned to cope with these uncertainties. He claimed that, when deployed at scale, it can compete with Asia and will be fully compliant with the directive. It is robust against evolving chemistry trends and adheres to the strictest environmental health and safety norms.

Umicore starts with any type of feed – cells, scrap or black mass – and it is fed to one smelter that melts everything at high temperature. In that molten bath, an alloy, slag and flue dust are separated. The lithium is pushed into the flue dust and refined in a hydro process.

The slag will be engineered to qualify for cement, aggregate or construction applications, he said. Most of the value will be collected in the alloy – a nickel, cobalt, copper compound – which can be then refined to battery grade.

The hydro process eliminates many traditional steps because many contaminants have already been removed and the yields are higher. He believes the system, readily scalable, can cope with all evolving battery trends over the next 20 years.

At high temperatures, typically above 1,000°C, you demineralise the PFAS to a non-hazardous state. The creation of toxic black mass is also avoided.

Biotechnology

A very different approach was proposed by Max Nagle of CellCycle. Biotechnology is the utilisation and manipulation of bacteria or microbes, and in this sector the treatment and extraction of critical minerals uses these bio-based processes. The processes have existed for more than 50 years and can recover many different minerals including lithium, nickel, manganese and cobalt, he said.

The company is also looking at recovering graphite, copper and aluminium. The use of bio-based processes means operating costs are very scalable and much lower than industry-standard processes, he said. Significantly less pollution is created in the production of the bacteria and it is carbon negative.

Using this process, the need for black mass with all its inherent risks, can be removed. The costs and the steps in the process can also be reduced.

The UK is a few years behind, but this innovation gives the UK a refining process viable for processing end-of-life batteries. The customer can say what they want, and the company will get the bacteria to create that material. The process speed is similar to pyro and hydro, but bacteria must be grown initially.

Also presenting a bio solution was Arnaud Riss, market manager for battery recycling at specialty fluids company Total Energies Fluids. This low carbon footprint process for lithium-ion battery recycling uses solvent extraction. Initially used for copper mining, it is now applied to battery recycling due to its high recovery rate, purity, and environmental friendliness.

The process involves extractants that have a strong and selective affinity to metals, binding metals in an organic phase, while leaving impurities in the aqueous phase. This can be later processed to recover solid metal by electro-wedding – and the extractant solution reused.

Total Energies Fluids’ objective is to transition 30% to bio-diluents by 2030 with a carbon footprint reduction of 1,800 tons of carbon dioxide per year compared to paraffin (kerosene).

Black mass variability

Lawrence Donnelly from inspection and consultancy company Alfred H Knight discussed the global variability of black mass across Europe, China, Australasia and the US, noting differences in particle size, composition and contaminants like plastics.

He highlighted the challenges in sourcing geological materials for battery minerals and the potential of black mass as a sustainable alternative.

He emphasised the importance of standardised sampling and analysis methods to ensure consistent results. Donnelly argued for the development of standard operating procedures and the need for a global strategy to standardise black mass sampling and analysis, which he said is crucial for commercial applications and the circular economy. He concluded that future battery minerals could come from both geological and recycled sources, requiring improved segregation and sorting at source.