As a company, we are interested in innovations within the battery industry. Battery recycling is one of the most important technological developments needed to combat unethical mining practices and reduce dependence on politically unstable partners. To get a feel for what is happening in the world of battery recycling, we visited the Battery Recycling Expo in Frankfurt am Main.
The ideal situation for battery recycling is simple: people all over Europe could easily return their waste batteries. These batteries would then be dismantled into their raw materials, which would then be used to produce new batteries. This closed loop system could continue indefinitely, with minimal waste and loss of raw materials. Unfortunately, we do not live in an ideal world.
The recycling process
STOKKERMILL RECYCLING MACHINERY develops recycling machines for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), among others. We asked about the correct methods for recycling batteries. For NMC and NCA batteries, they use a two-phase process to separate the materials.
The battery cells are first safely ground and sorted. This yields a lot of packaging material, such as plastics, steel casings, and metal foils (copper, aluminium). In addition, black mass is produced , a mixture of the remaining battery materials.
The black mass subsequently undergoes a hydrometallurgical process to extract valuable materials. In this process, the material is dissolved in a suitable liquid—often acids, bases, or other chemicals. The solution is then concentrated and purified to remove impurities. Afterward, the desired metals are recovered. Examples include: cathode materials (nickel, cobalt, or manganese), lithium solutions, and carbon.
Challenges and prospects for the future
Current recycling processes still lag far behind the ideal scenario described earlier. The biggest challenge is achieving sufficient purity – both in the black mass and in the recovered materials. The separation processes (phases 1 and 2) currently do not yield battery-grade materials suitable for making new NMC or NCA cells.
A 2023 study published by the Royal Society of Chemistry described several potential solutions. Many companies now claim to sell machines capable of producing battery-grade materials. However, none of these solutions has proven commercially viable to date. This was confirmed both in the study and at the Battery Recycling Expo 2024. Experts from Duesenfeld , Green Li-ion , and Elemental Battery Metals agreed: not a single company has yet achieved closed-loop battery recycling with battery-grade output.
A possible exception is Fortum Recycling & Waste , a Finnish company that claims to have a solution. They state that they have developed a closed loop for battery recycling. Currently, they can produce technical-grade materials , and their goal is to achieve battery-grade quality by 2027. They intend to recycle discarded NMC and NCA cells into new battery materials in their own factory. For the time being, however, they are still encountering chemical challenges that must be resolved first.
