The Universitat de València, GDV Mobility and Recuintec participate in this research project, which is financed by IVACE+i and the ERDF Programme and also includes strategies for reconditioning and reusing batteries prior to recycling.

Today, the most common fate of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), which are used in electronic devices such as mobile phones and computers, and electric mobility (scooters, bicycles, motorbikes, and vehicles), is landfill, which involves major safety and environmental risks. Due to their composition, discarded batteries can catch fire and explode, which is a clear risk for waste treatment plants and during transport. In terms of environmental impact, LIBs have chemical components that can be released into the environment as they degrade.

However, lithium is one of the European Union’s critical raw materials due to its strategic and economic importance. It is also subject to supply risks as a result of high demand because it is considered essential for electric mobility and the transition to a low-carbon economy.

Aimplas is tackling these two challenges through the METALLON Project with the participation of the Environmental Engineering Research Group (GI2AM) at the Universitat de València, the electric vehicle mobility company GDV Mobility and the IT and technological waste management company Recuintec. The aim is to improve the process of reusing and recycling complex waste such as LIBs in order to recondition them and give them a second life and, if they must be disposed of, to optimize recycling and recovery processes to extract and recover the lithium and other high-value metals and minerals they contain. This project is financed by the Valencian Institute for Competitiveness and Innovation (IVACE+i) with the support of European ERDF Programme.

According to Santiago Llopis, a Chemical Recycling researcher at Aimplas, “Current processes for recycling lithium-ion batteries, such as pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy, have certain limitations, including the impossibility of recovering lithium using standard pyrometallurgical methods, high energy costs, the intensive use of inorganic acids and the generation of highly polluting waste (gases and water). In the METALLON Project, we are investigating LIB metal recovery techniques that do not have a negative environmental impact. We’ll replace inorganic acids with less hostile agents, such as green solvents, and study biohydrometallurgical processes as an innovative, cleaner and cheaper alternative requiring minimal energy consumption and the use of biological reagents”.

The research project also includes pre-recycling strategies to try to reduce generation of this waste in the first place. Methods will therefore be established to identify the status of LIBs at the end of their life cycle and procedures will be implemented to determine if they can be reconditioned and reused in different sectors such as mobility and the electrical and electronics industry.

The METALLON Project is funded by the Valencian Institute for Competitiveness and Innovation (IVACE+i) through the call for Strategic Projects in Cooperation 2023 of the Valencian Agency for Innovation in conjunction with the ERDF Programme.

Fires caused by the batteries we throw away are causing a major crisis for the waste and resource management sector, taxpayers and the communities in which they occur.

In 2023, there were more than 1,200 fires caused, or suspected to be caused, by batteries at UK waste and recycling facilities or in collection vehicles (Material Focus, 2024), an increase of 71% from 2022. The cost of damage and lost time from these fires is estimated to be in the region of £158 million (Eunomia, 2021). The vast majority of these fires, however, were avoidable and resulted from batteries, in particular high-powered, rechargeable batteries that should not have been placed in a bin but taken to a collection point.

The CIWM white paper, based upon an extensive research programme report commissioned by CIWM and carried out by env23 Ltd, identified the lack of clear and impactful consumer information; the dramatic increase of batteries in everyday items; and the failure of producer responsibility rules to keep pace with the changing chemistry and pervasiveness of battery technology as the three main reasons for their incorrect disposal.

Consumer research undertaken for the report supported these findings, with 40% of those surveyed choosing the ‘wrong’ option when asked how to dispose of an electric toothbrush. Where batteries can be removed, however, they are much more likely to be taken back to a retailer or collection point, with almost 70% of people saying they would do so.

The report found a strong level of public support for the use of deposits for items such as batteries, with 51% saying they would use the scheme on ‘all or most occasions’ and a further 32% saying they would use it on ‘some’ occasions. Implantation of the scheme would also be eased by the fact that the deposit value would only need to be modest, as most ‘wrong waste-wrong place’ items such as toothbrushes and vapes are relatively low-value items.

CIWM has also called on battery manufacturers and retailers to act immediately and work with the institution in promoting safer, simpler and more effective recycling. It also highlights the need for chemistry-specific recycling targets to be introduced as part of the process of updating existing producer responsibility legislation for batteries.

An EPR of Everything, Starting with Batteries sets out recommendations to governments and legislators on how to address the widespread environmental, commercial and social issues associated with ‘hard to recycle’ products and materials, such as batteries, for the betterment and protection of society in general and workers in the resource and waste management industry in particular. The end-of-life impact of products and materials can no longer be a carefree and unconscious process by those carefully and consciously exploiting raw materials. To support a circular economy, the narrative must be changed, with an emphasis away from ‘costs’ towards ‘value’.

Read the white paper

The demand for electric vehicles which run on batteries is increasing worldwide. At the same time, resources of primary battery materials – i.e. those obtained from mining activities – are limited. Moreover, mining these resources is often damaging to the environment and involves precarious working conditions. As a result, recycling such materials to establish a circular economy is an important issue in politics, industry and academia – also against a background of becoming independent from imports of raw materials. A team with members from academia and from the automotive and battery industries, and headed by Prof. Stephan von Delft from the University of Münster, has now been looking into the question of what effects different strategies for achieving an efficient and sustainable circular economy with lithium, cobalt and nickel for electric vehicles will have on the demand for materials in Europe. They have determined the amounts of mining and recycling which will be necessary to enable a circular economy to be set up and maintained.

The researchers looked at the period 2035 to 2040 and demonstrated that through a combination of different strategies it would, in the best-case scenario, be possible to have a total of eleven mines and 57 recycling plants fewer – and these mines and plants themselves produce emissions. So this would correspond to savings totalling 35 billion dollars (32 billion euros) and – with regard to the metals lithium, cobalt and nickel – 32.5 million tonnes of CO₂-equivalents. As a comparison: around 3472 million tonnes of CO₂-equivalents were emitted in the EU in 2021. The package of measures required for this includes a faster electrification of the automobile market, smaller batteries, a selective second use of certain types of battery – for example, in stationary energy storage units – and an increased use of lithium-iron-phosphate batteries in electric vehicles.

“The results are important for European policy-making as they provide recommendations for action on how policies can support the transition, increase security of supplies for raw materials, and strengthen the EU’s strategic autonomy,” says Stephan von Delft.

The team of researchers proceeded from their previous work on battery recycling. As in their earlier study, the team used a so-called dynamic material flow analysis to calculate not only how much lithium, cobalt and nickel will be needed in future, but also how much recyclable raw material will then be available. The basis for the team’s work was data from current research work and market forecasts regarding developments in battery production and sales and the associated demand for raw materials.

BASF and WHW Recycling GmbH have entered an agreement on the processing of cathode and anode waste.

WHW Recycling, a joint venture between Walch Holding and Štefan Hanigovský, owner of the Slovakian waste management company Fecupral, is a specialist in the recycling of electrode foils. Through the processing of cathode and anode foil waste from battery cell production for electric vehicles, valuable raw materials can be recovered and fed into various value chains. With the separation of materials, WHW Recycling complements BASF’s processes of collecting production waste and feeding the recovered raw materials into various value chains for further processing.

From the end of the year, cathode and anode foil waste from battery cell production will be processed and separated into its components in WHW Recycling’s two new separation plants in Baudenbach, Germany. Most of the recyclable materials can be recovered up to a highly pure form due to an innovative process patented exclusively by WHW Recycling. Cathode foils consist of a thin aluminum foil coated with cathode active material. The aluminum material used in the cathode foils can be separated highly efficiently from the cathode active material in the cathode separation plant and reused as a metal fraction. After separation, BASF will refine the resulting impure cathode active material and the resulting battery grade minerals can be re-used as a raw materials for cathode active material production. Copper processed in the anode foil as a carrier material and graphite can be used as recovered raw materials after processing in the anode separation plant.

The Lion Vision system can analyse more than half a million images in a 24-hour window and detect more than 600 cylinder batteries per hour as the waste passes beneath it. Although the system currently focuses on detecting cylinder batteries, it can be programmed to detect more than 40 battery subtypes and other hazardous objects such as vapes.

Lion Vision’s detection system is in use at various sites across the UK, most notably at SWEEEP in Kent, where 100 tonnes of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is processed every day. Amongst this waste, the Lion Vision system is detecting approximately more than 4500-cylinder batteries every day.

Tozero’s hydrometallurgy process maximizes the recovery of valuable materials such as lithium and graphite. These materials are reintroduced into the supply chain, significantly reducing the need for new material extraction and processing. This reduces CO2 emissions by up to 70% compared to conventional lithium mining and processing techniques.

Launched in July 2023, the Munich pilot plant operations have culminated in the delivery of high-quality recycled lithium to European customers as of March 2024.

With commercial deliveries underway, Tozero anticipates producing hundreds of tonnes of recycled lithium by 2026.

Together, the companies will jointly own (50/50) and operate a newly constructed electric vehicle (EV) battery recycling facility in Zawiercie, Poland. The facility will disassemble, discharge and shred EV batteries to produce black mass, which can be used to make new engineered EV battery materials, including cathode active material (CAM) and cathode precursor (pCAM). The facility has the capacity to recycle up to 12,000 metric tons of batteries per year, or approximately 28,000 EV batteries annually.

Both JV partners agreed to jointly invest in large-scale lithium extraction from black mass. Lithium extraction capabilities producing up to 20 000 metric tons of black mass per year will begin construction in Fall 2024 to be operational in 2026.

Additionally, the companies plan to begin building a new, state-of-the-art EV battery recycling facility in central Germany. The AE Elemental facility in Germany will have the capacity to recycle up to 25,000 metric tons of batteries per year, or approximately 58,000 EVs annually.