Publication date: 28th August 2024
The global policy push towards Net Zero and the decarbonisation of the energy and transport sectors will lead to a surge in lithium-ion battery (LIB) demand for grid storage applications and electric vehicles. Naturally, this in turn will result in growing amounts of LIB waste in the coming decades raising concerns about appropriate waste treatment solutions. Disposing of LIBs in landfills can lead to environmental and safety risks, where toxic chemicals could leach into the environment or landfill fires can be caused by defect battery cells. Moreover, valuable critical materials such as lithium and cobalt, which suffer from growing supply chain risks, would be simply thrown away. Responsible end-of-life LIB waste management is therefore increasingly becoming the focus of the academic community and policy makers alike. Here, the ideal scenario would be a circular battery economy, where LIB waste is being recycled and the recovered materials are fed back into the battery manufacturing process. This could further alleviate supply chain pressures and counter-balance negative environmental impacts incurred from mining activities, which will need to significantly expand in the future to match the increasing battery materials demand.
Whilst the importance of battery recycling cannot be negated, the recycling industry is still facing significant challenges such as complicated battery disassembly procedures and the establishment of efficient recycling processes. These obstacles are often associated with financial burdens and risks slowing down the growth of the recycling industry.
In this talk, I will provide an overview of the techno-economics of LIB recycling from disassembly to materials recovery and will highlight some of the main challenges we need to solve to establish a truly sustainable and financially viable circular economy for LIBs.
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