In order to fulfill the soaring demand, a new technique for recycling these batteries could be developed.
Nearly all electric cars, laptops, and smartphones use lithium-ion batteries, which are also crucial for storing renewable energy in the face of the climate emergency.
However, the present mining operations throughout the world are unable to produce enough lithium and other essential minerals to satisfy the rapidly increasing demand for these batteries.
It takes time and money to establish new mines.
Additionally, mining brings about a number of environmental issues that have sparked demonstrations against new mines, such as the depletion of regional water supplies and the pollution of the neighboring area by runoff debris.
All of this indicates that recycling old batteries is essential for changing the global energy grid in a sustainable way.
However, commercial use of lithium-ion battery recycling is still relatively new.
Battery producers have been hesitant due to worries that recycled goods would be of worse quality than those made from freshly mined materials, which might result in a battery's life being cut short or its internal components being harmed.
Serious consequences may result, especially in an application like an electric car.
The precisely made crystal that is the cathode—the most expensive part of the lithium-ion battery and essential to giving the right voltage—is refurbished in new study that was just published in the journal Joule, which experts characterize as a more elegant recycling approach.
The scientists discovered that the batteries they created using their novel cathode-recycling method work as well to those created using a cathode produced from scratch.
In actuality, batteries with recycled cathode charge more quickly and last longer.
According to Kang Xu, an electrochemist at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory who was not involved in the work, the team's methodology and successful demonstration are "quite unusual and extremely outstanding."
No Longer a Joke
The new study's co-author and Worcester Polytechnic Institute professor of materials science Yan Wang first began investigating battery recycling 11 years ago.
Some people joked with me at the time, "There aren't enough batteries for you to recycle," he recalls.
That joke is starting to become old.
The battery market might increase tenfold over the following ten years, according to the Department of Energy.
Dave Howell, head of the DOE's Vehicle Technologies Office, argues that recycling lithium-ion batteries—getting that material back into the supply chain—is essential to easing the market's rising difficulties.
As part of its extensive campaign to promote large-scale battery recycling technology in the United States, the DOE supported the
A cluster of lithium ions travels from one crystalline "cage" (the anode) to another while a lithium-ion battery is producing electricity (the cathode).
These batteries are now recycled most frequently by disassembling and shredding the entire battery, which is then either melted down or dissolved in acid.
The end product is a black mass that may be used to recover chemical components or basic chemicals. Its texture can range from powder to goo.
The same industrial production procedure used to produce cathodes from newly mined elements can subsequently be applied to those recovered products.
Wang and his coworkers employ a very similar procedure, however their method preserves part of the previous cathode's vital composition rather than fully dismantling the battery to its chemical components.
Following battery shredding, the less costly components (such as the electrical circuits and steel battery shell) are physically removed and recycled separately.
The majority of the cathode material is what is left after it has been dissolved in acid and purified.
Then, to ensure the ratio of materials is just perfect, they carefully add a trace amount of new elements that make up the cathode, such as nickel and cobalt—another departure from conventional recycling techniques. After a few more procedures, the cathode powder, which is made up of tiny crystalline particles, is effectively refreshed and ready to be adhered to a metal strip and inserted into a "new" battery.
Since a cathode must be manufactured from a specific mixture of precious minerals to achieve the battery's intended voltage, even little modifications to its shape or composition might have a severe influence on its performance.
In light of this, Emma Kendrick, a professor of energy materials at the University of Birmingham in England who was not involved in the present work, claims that a substantial chunk of the cathode powder's value rests "in how you've generated the particles [of powder] in the first place."
If the battery is immediately melted down or dissolved, as is the case with current recycling techniques, that value is lost.
Faster Charge with More Pores
The particles in Wang and his coworkers' recycled cathode powder were compared to those in cathode powder that was produced commercially (largely made from newly mined minerals).
They discovered that the recycled powder particles had more gaps throughout and were more porous overall.
Because of these features, the cathode crystal has some ability to expand slightly when lithium ions cram inside of it. This wiggle room prevents the crystal from breaking as quickly as cathodes made from scratch.
Such cracking is a significant factor in a battery's deterioration over time.
More pores also indicate more exposed surface area, which allows for the chemical processes required to charge the battery to occur. As a result, Wang's recycled batteries charge more quickly than those made in factories.
According to Wang, a goal for the future could be to create all cathodes with this improved structure rather than simply those manufactured from recycled materials.
According to Linda Gaines, a transportation analyst at Argonne National Laboratory and the head scientist at ReCell Center, a company that studies and promotes battery recycling, the most recent findings show that "the cathode they can make is as good as—or even better than—the commercial material that we've been importing."
(Gaines wasn't a part of the latest study.)
These imports are primarily made in China, which is the world leader in battery recycling. However, because of this circumstance, recyclable components must be transported across the world, which raises the carbon footprint of recovered batteries and reduces their appeal as a more sustainable option.
The method created by Wang's team eliminates a sizeable portion of the need for international commerce and transportation, potentially opening the door for other nations to support local battery recycling.
Ascend Elements, originally Battery Resourcers, a recycling business Wang co-founded, is presently scaling up the procedure.
