Automotive Engineering - May 2024 - 22

BATTERIES & RECYCLING:
THE NEXT
FRONTIER
There will be no lack of used
EV batteries soon. There's no
lack of companies working on
how to recycle them today.
by Sebastian Blanco
A spent pouch cell can be
shredded to yield several
products. The black mass
powder contains anode
carbon and the valuable
cathode material.
R
ecycling electric vehicle (EV) batteries has been a goal of
the auto industry for many years, but the infrastructure to
make that a widespread reality is still in the early stages.
As the amount of used lithium-ion batteries and cells coming
from EVs increases, the industry is getting ready to turn them
into fresh packs.
In the U.S., the federal government's push to recycle more Li-ion
batteries isn't just to reduce environmental impact. Salvaged materials
can be used in new batteries, and recycling can help get the
overall production cost of EV batteries under the national goal of
$60/kWh.
In February 2019, the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Vehicle
Technologies Office (VTO) launched the ReCell Center, bringing together
industry, academia and national laboratories to develop battery
recycling technologies for current and future battery chemistries.
ReCell is a collaboration of four national laboratories - Argonne, the
National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL), Oak Ridge and Idaho
National Laboratory - and four partner universities.
Jeff Spangenberger, ReCell's materials recycling group leader in
the Applied Materials Division, told SAE Media that ReCell focuses
not just on the science of recycling batteries, but also on the people
working on this technology.
" Battery recycling is a great way to reduce the material costs, "
Spangenberger said. " It's a lot easier to recover the materials from
22 May 2024
recycled materials or from the feedstock of batteries
than from the ground. To do that, we like to connect
people. No one person is going to solve this, and so
we try and connect the dots. "
ReCell hosts industry collaboration meetings for
those dots, with the next event happening in mid-May.
Direct recycling at ReCell
ReCell's research is focused on direct recycling.
Unlike existing hydro- or pyro-metallurgical recycling
methods that use chemicals or heat to break down a
battery into feedstock compounds like metal sulfates,
direct recycling recovers or reuses components in the
battery without breaking down the chemical structure.
ReCell's website says it developed an analysis
model called EverBatt to " compare impacts of virgin
batteries to those with recycled content, to compare
processes, and to identify sensitivities to various parameters, "
and found that direct recycling promises
to use less energy and is more sustainable than
hydro- or pyro-recycling.
" [Direct recycling is] not really researched, it's not
commercial, " Spangenberger said. " But the analysis
AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING
RECELL
Automotive Engineering - May 2024

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