Asia cornered the lithium-ion battery recycling industry last year with an 87% market share, according to a report commissioned by The Swedish Energy Agency.
The State-of-the-art in Reuse and Recycling of Lithium-ion Batteries– A Research Review dispelled the industry myth that lithium-ion batteries were not being recycled— but it was sad reading for non-Asian firms.
Report author Hans Eric Melin (pictured), director at battery end-of-life consultants Circular Energy Storage, said “because the recycling rate of lithium-ion batteries is low in Europe it does not mean that the recycling rate is low globally”.
In total, 97,000 tonnes of lithium-ion waste batteries and production waste was recycled last year— 67,000 tonnes was completed in China and 18,000 tonnes in South Korea— by firms ranging from small laboratory plants to full-scale factories.
Asia’s domination of the market is in part because three-fifths of the world’s 50 lithium-ion battery recycling firms are based in China and a further 15 are in South Korea.
While the numbers are small compared to lead-acid (around 1.5 million tonnes of lead-acid batteries were collected in Europe, in 2017, according to Eurostat, a directorate-general of the European Commission) recycling capacity for lithium-ion is expanding.
For example, cobalt supplier Huayou Cobalt has the capacity to recycle 65,000 tonnes each year, although it only managed 10,000 tonnes in 2018.
Melin told BEST Battery Briefing the recycling numbers depended on how you count.
He said: “It depends on whether its production scrap from big manufacturers in China or material from smaller pre-treatment facilities in the form of black mass — a sludgy mixture of lithium, manganese and cobalt— where recyclers don’t know how many batteries are in that material.”
“It’s like the Wild West in terms of numbers, and which batteries go where. Very little in fact come from Europe, we estimate around 6,000 tonnes and North America around 2-3,000 tonnes.”
Melin said: “Companies tend to keep the numbers more closely guarded in Europe and North America than China. But a lot of that volume will go to China, with black mass going to the Philippines, South Korea and Indonesia.”
While Europe has about 10 companies that treat lithium-ion batteries in different ways, the report noted their recovery efficiency was not as good as in China and South Korea, which was mainly due to lower volumes making it unprofitable to extract all substances.
It is a similar story in the US, Canada and Japan where, despite being among the pioneers in recycling, the countries suffer from limited lithium-ion battery volumes as the vast majority were exported to South Korea, China and to some extent to Europe, the report said.
Firms use “almost exclusively” hydrometallurgical to collect cobalt sulfate, nickel sulfate or lithium carbonate, with all battery chemistries having varying worth depending on their cobalt and nickel content.
The report notes that many companies also harvest complete blends to produce, NCM or NCA cathodes, with more than one third of the companies associated with producers of cathode or anode materials.
Last year BBB reported how more than half of Europe’s used batteries “disappear” without proper treatment because of “outdated” recycling rules and inadequate targets for collecting lithium-ion batteries.