Battery recycling is progressing rapidly to further reduce the ecological footprint of electric vehicles

Credit: Freepik

Today we are going to take stock of Li-ion battery recycling. This is a very important aspect to reduce the ecological footprint of electric vehicles (EVs) as much as possible.

To begin with, the lifespan of an EV is around 12 years on average. It can be more or less, depending on their use. We will look at the anticipated recycling capacity in 2025 and 2030, for light vehicles, in order to establish ideas. The number of battery packs to be recycled for these years will be approximately the number of EVs sold 12 years earlier, in 2013 and 2018. This information is given to us by EV-Volumes on a global scale. According to this site, worldwide sales were

 2013 worldwide = 206,000 EVs

 2018 worldwide = 2,082,000 EVs

Still according to EV-Volumes, sales of light EVs in China were 1,161,000 units in 2018. This is more than half of global sales. Therefore, the combined recycling capacities of Europe and North America are expected to be a first approximation of 100,000 EVs in 2025 and 1,000,000 EVs in 2030.

We are aware that this article is quite long and more of a dossier. So, for those who don't want all the details, I advise you to read the last two sections, "Are recycling capacities sufficient by 2030?" and “The very beneficial impacts of recycling on the environment”, in addition to the conclusion. For the body of the text which provides an update on the multiple battery recycling projects and the stakeholders, you can consult it if necessary, as it contains a wealth of relevant information.

CATL, the largest battery recycler in the world

In the June 29 article by Scooter Doll on the electrek blog , we learned that the Chinese company CATL, the largest manufacturer of Li-ion batteries in the world, had already invested more than $10 billion in recycling plants. batteries in China and Indonesia and that it also planned to set up Li-ion battery recycling plants in Europe soon, and then in the United States.

Northvolt is fully involved in battery recycling in Europe

Northvolt is Europe's largest producer of Li-ion batteries, with a gigafactory in operation in Sweden since 2022 and another in Germany expected to start in 2026, each capable of producing 60 GWh of batteries annually, enough for 1 million of electric cars each factory, eventually. Their corporate mission is to " build the greenest battery, with a minimal carbon footprint and the highest ambitions for recycling", as can be read on their website.

Concerning recycling, Northvolt began by establishing a partnership with the Norwegian company Hydro, one of the largest aluminum manufacturers in the world, to found the Hydrovolt company which opened the doors of the largest Li-ion battery recycling plant in the world. Europe in 2022.

This factory established in the town of Fredrikstad in Norway can recycle 12,000 tonnes of battery packs annually, corresponding to 40,000 electric cars (EVs) with a battery with an average capacity of 60 kWh (400 km of autonomy), with a energy density of battery packs of 200 Wh/kg. The factory is powered by 100% renewable energy, like Northvolt's battery factory in Sweden. We will separate the materials into aluminum, copper, plastic and a concentrate of critical minerals (a black powder made up of nickel, manganese, cobalt, lithium and graphite) which we call “black mass” in English literature. Hydrovolt will transport this concentrate to Northvolt's Revolt recycling unit in Sweden.

Revolt has developed a recycling process that makes it possible to produce quality battery materials by reducing greenhouse gases (GHG) by almost 80% compared to mining production, and also significantly reducing product consumption chemicals. A larger recycling plant, Revolt Ett, is under construction in Sweden to recycle, in 2030, 125,000 tonnes of batteries , representing more than 400,000 EVs with an average battery capacity of 60 kWh (400 km range) and an energy density of 200 Wh/kg. Eventually, Northvolt will build other battery recycling plants as needed, associated with its future battery gigafactories.

Redwood Materials to open giga- battery recycling plant in the United States

J.-B. Straubel, co-founder and former Chief Technology Officer of Tesla, left the company in 2019 to focus full-time on his new battery recycling company Redwood Materials , independent of Tesla. He and his team began by building a pilot plant in northern Nevada and carried out an electric vehicle Li-ion battery recycling project there . The collection of the batteries took place in California, with the help of state authorities, automobile manufacturers and dismantlers of end-of-life vehicles.

From February 2022 to February 2023, they collected 1,268 battery packs representing approximately 500,000 pounds (227 metric tons). They demonstrated that their recycling processes allowed them to recover more than 95% of the minerals (lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, copper and others), with which they manufactured battery-grade materials, which can be used directly by manufacturers of batteries.

In fact, Redwood Materials collaborated with the Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) to verify the performance of the battery materials they manufactured, using recycled batteries. The results of tests carried out by ANL, released in fall 2022, demonstrate that the performance of batteries manufactured with recycled materials from Redwood Materials or with native materials (mining followed by refining) is identical. Their processes having been validated, Redwood Materials is now moving towards commercial recycling of Li-ion batteries.

The company announced in December 2022 that they would begin construction in 2023 of a Campus near Charleston, South Carolina , where they will combine the recycling, refining and remanufacturing of battery materials. The first phase of the factories is expected to be operational by the end of 2024 . The campus will be 600 acres (2.4 km2 ) , with ample room for future expansion. Initial investments represent US$3.5 billion and 1,500 permanent jobs, with production capacity of cathode and anode materials sufficient for 100 GWh of Li-ion batteries per year, ultimately capable of equipping 1 million EVs with an average capacity battery of 100 kWh or 1.66 million with an average battery of 60 kWh . At 200 Wh/kg for the battery pack, this corresponds to approximately 500,000 tonnes of battery packs over time that the factory would need to recycle. This is a very big project!

The press release specifies that they will not use any fossil fuels in the Campus factories and only renewable energy. They estimated they could reduce greenhouse gases (GHG) by 80% compared to the Asian supply chain currently used for battery materials.

Redwood Materials' partners include Toyota, Ford, Volkswagen, Panasonic, Volvo and Proterra, but not Tesla. As we will see below, Tesla is developing its own recycling units for their batteries, at or near their existing factories.

Tesla will recycle the batteries of its vehicles

Pages 162 and 163 of Tesla's “Impact Report 2022” describe what the company did in 2022 and what they plan to do in the coming years in relation to the recycling of its vehicle batteries and waste. or residue from cells manufactured in its factories. Here is what we can read there.

“ In 2022, Tesla made significant progress in recycling:

– None of our batteries (manufacturing scrap or fleet returns) are sent to landfill.

– Deployment of equipment to recover 100% of manufacturing waste generated on-site in manufacturing plants.

– Safe storage, for future processing, of all generated materials that cannot be processed immediately (allowing optimization of material flows, equipment parameters and validation of new market technologies for recover metals from batteries at scale).

– Significant resources have been devoted to developing scalable battery recycling technology for both nickel-based and iron-based cathodes, including lithium recovery and reuse.

– Increase from year to year in the absolute volume of materials available for recovery

– Development of a reverse logistics system to recover batteries from products sold.

Tesla's recycling program aims to be the gold standard as we optimize the safest and most efficient methods to recover materials. This will directly reduce mining demand in the long term.” Translation using DeepL , slightly corrected by the author.

And in the box, to highlight it, the fact that the Tesla team working on recycling has demonstrated the capacity to recycle 100 metric tons per week of used batteries and manufacturing rejects. This is a possibility of 5,000 tonnes per year , or approximately 16,600 EVs with a battery with an average capacity of 60 kWh, counting 200 Wh/kg for their energy density. Tesla will have to pick up the pace in the coming years.

The report goes on to say that in 2023 and 2024 they will work on the mechanical deconstruction of the battery packs and heat treatment, to be able to recycle the battery packs in 2024. We conclude that to date they have recycled cells rejected in tests carried out just after their manufacture and cell manufacturing rejects. They safely stored the battery packs until they were ready to safely recycle them in 2024.

Credit : Freepik / Tesla car

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Two new Canadian companies are seriously entering the battery recycling arena

The Ontario company Li-Cycle , founded in 2016, and the Quebec company Lithion Technologies , founded in 2018, are entering the major leagues in Li-ion battery recycling. The two companies use hydrometallurgy to separate and purify Li-ion battery materials at the end of their useful life and recover up to 95% of the minerals (aluminum, copper, nickel, manganese, cobalt, iron, lithium and graphite). For now).

Li-Cycle

Li-cycle divided the work into two types of factories: peripheral (spoke) factories and central (hub) factories. The more numerous peripheral factories dismantle the battery packs, shred them and carry out an initial separation of the materials, the aluminum, iron and plastic of the block structures, and a concentrate of critical minerals. The aluminum, iron and plastic are sent to local conventional recyclers and the critical mineral concentrate goes to a central Li-cycle plant to be broken down into its constituents which are also purified. Watch the YouTube video “ Li-Cycle Spoke & Hub Technologies ”. This logistics structure of the different factories makes it possible to reduce the transport costs of the battery packs.

Li-Cycle's central pilot plant and peripheral pilot plant were installed in Kingston, Ontario in 2018 to validate and refine the processes. Currently, four commercial peripheral plants are located in North America: one in Ontario, one in New York State, another in Arizona and a fourth in Alabama. These peripheral plants will supply the central commercial plant, under construction in the city of Rochester, which is expected to begin operations at the end of 2023. This “central complex” will consist of 14 buildings on a site of 65 acres (26 hectares) and is planned to process 35,000 tonnes of critical mineral concentrate corresponding to approximately 90,000 tonnes of batteries annually . Watch the “ Li Cycle Rochester Hub Update ” YouTube video . Taking 200 Wh/kg for the energy density of battery packs and 60 kWh for the average battery pack capacity of an EV, the 90,000 tonnes corresponds to approximately 300,000 EVs .

Li-Cycle also plans to establish itself in Europe. The company already has a peripheral plant in Germany and plans to open a second in Norway in 2024. In addition, Li-Cycle and Glencore have announced plans to set up a central plant in Italy , the capacity of which would recycle between 50 000 tonnes and 70,000 tonnes of critical mineral concentrate per year. Glencore is a major producer, recycler and seller of nickel and cobalt. The tonnages of critical mineral concentrates correspond to 125,000 to 180,000 tonnes of batteries, based on the proportion given in the previous paragraph. If we count an average battery of 60 kWh per EV and an energy density of 200 Wh/kg for battery packs, these tonnages come from approximately 415,000 to 600,000 EVs .

Lithion Technologies

As we can read on the Lithion Technologies website , the Seneca Expert Consulting firm is the force behind the development of Lithion technologies. Seneca has significant know-how in the development of industrial transformation processes, thanks to their demonstrated experience in the metallurgy and chemical sectors including critical materials, for more than 25 years. After its founding in 2018, the next important milestone was the commissioning of a pilot plant in Montreal in 2020. There they validated and perfected their patented processes, based on the use of mechanical forces and hydrometallurgy. Currently, a commercial extraction plant is under construction on the south shore of Montreal (St-Bruno-de-Montarville) and should be operational in the fall of 2023 . Watch the YouTube video “ The first commercial Lithion factory under construction!” ". It will be able to process 15,000 tonnes of batteries per year. Taking the same standard that we have used throughout this article (battery with average capacity of 60 kWh, with a density of 200 Wh/kg), this tonnage would correspond to 50,000 EVs . At this extraction plant, the batteries will be dismantled and shredded to achieve coarse separation of aluminum, plastic and critical mineral concentrate materials.

This latter concentrate will be sent to another factory, Lithion Hydromet, specialized in their treatment by hydrometallurgy, to produce strategic battery quality materials for battery manufacturers . The planned processing capacity of this future plant will be 30,000 tonnes/year of critical mineral concentrates, which is similar to the Li-Cycle plant in Rochester (35,000 tonnes) which, as we have seen, will recycle 90,000 tonnes of batteries per year. With a simple rule of 3 we deduce that the 30,000 tonnes of Lithion critical mineral concentrate corresponds to 77,000 tonnes of recycled batteries, which would come from approximately 255,000 EVs, taking into account an average capacity of 60 kWh and a density of average energy of 200 Wh/kg. The commissioning of the Lithion Hydromet plant is planned for 2026, on a site which remains to be determined. Note that this plant must be supplied with concentrate of critical minerals by 5 “extraction plants” like the one that Lithion is currently building in St-Bruno and which will be able to carry out initial treatment of batteries at the end of their life of 50,000 EVs.

Lithion Technologies' goal is to deploy their technologies globally through strategic partnerships and licensing , targeting 25 factories by 2035. Their two commercial factories in Quebec will serve as training centers for partners.

Umicore, an already established Li-ion battery recycler, will increase its recycling volume

Umicore has been recycling batteries on an industrial scale for 15 years. In 2022, they launched a new business unit “Battery Recycling Solutions” to focus on the fast-growing Li-ion battery market. To this end they intend to set up a new factory capable of recycling 150,000 tonnes of batteries in Europe and which should open its doors in 2026 . This tonnage is equivalent to 500,000 EVs with an average battery of 60 kWh, counting an average energy density of 200 Wh/kg.

Their process combines pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy and, according to them, would be 20% to 30% less expensive while being able to recover more than 95% of the nickel, copper and cobalt and more than 70% of the lithium from a wide variety of batteries. Umicore maintains that greenhouse gas emissions from their recycling processes are no higher than processes using only hydrometallurgy and mechanical force.

Cirba Solutions (formerly Retriev), another experienced battery recycler expanding its capabilities

Retriev has a battery recycling plant in Trail, British Columbia, which has processed all kinds of batteries including Li-ion batteries. In an article from Foresight Canada we learn that the company has recycled more than 12,000 metric tons of batteries in 20 years (25 million pounds) at this plant. The parent company is in Ohio where Retriev has another recycling plant, in Lancaster, which it will expand mainly for Li-ion batteries, an investment of $200 million , creating 150 jobs and capable of powering 200,000 EVs per year. The new factory will open its doors in early 2025. Another factory is located in Brea, California.

In 2022, Retriev acquired two other companies, Battery Solutions and Heritage Battery Recycling and changed its name to Cirba Solutions , alluding to the CIRcular economy and Batteries. Cirba is therefore a major player in battery recycling in North America.

On March 22, Cirba Solutions announced that it would invest $1 billion over 5 years (2023 to 2028) in the establishment of a Li-ion battery recycling complex for electric vehicles, in South Carolina, on a land of 200 acres (0.8 km2 ) . Construction begins in 2023 and the first phase is expected to be operational in early 2025. This complex will employ 300 people and be able to supply battery-grade materials (from recycling) to battery manufacturers, enough for 500,000 EVs, in 2028.

By this date, Cirba Solutions estimates that it can supply battery materials for 1 million EVs, including all of their recycling plants . To do this, the company should, in principle, be able to recycle the batteries of around 1.1 million EVs.

BASF, a large German chemical producer, is joining the fray and plans to set up in Quebec

BASF announced in 2022 the construction of a battery recycling pilot plant , in Germany, in order to validate and perfect the hydrometallurgy technologies that they intend to implement in their future commercial factories. The pilot plant is scheduled to open in 2023. Based on the rate of deployment of other players' factories that we presented above, commercial BASF battery recycling plants should be in place by 2030.

Regarding North America, BASF plans to set up in Bécancour in Quebec to set up a future plant for the production of cathode materials for Li-ion batteries as well as a recycling plant for these batteries. They have already purchased land for this.

Will recycling capacities be sufficient by 2030?

In this article, the different companies that we have presented, which have or will build Li-ion battery recycling plants, mention how many tons of batteries their factories will recycle. To avoid this tonnage being transposed into a number of EVs that this represents using 56 different ways of calculating, we have established a standardized calculation procedure.

We assume that the average EV battery will be 60 kWh, which corresponds to a range of around 400 km for a car. Furthermore, according to our knowledge of the subject, it appears to us that the average energy density of battery packs is around 200 Wh/kg, which corresponds to 5 kg of batteries to store 1 kWh of electrical energy. Taking these criteria, here is how we transposed the tonnage of recycled batteries from a factory into the number of corresponding EVs. We transform the tonnage into the number of kilograms of recycled batteries and divide by 5 kg/kWh to obtain the number of kWh of batteries associated with this tonnage. Then, we divide by 60 kWh to establish the number of corresponding EVs. This procedure being defined, it is easy to find the number of EVs if we change the value of the average battery to say 90 kWh instead of 60 kWh, i.e. a battery 1.5 times larger. Simply divide the number of EVs found for 60 kWh by 1.5. If the battery was twice as large (120 kWh), we divide the number of 60 kWh EVs by 2.

The assessment of the recycling capacities anticipated in the various projects that we have described in this article is summarized in the two tables below that we produced ourselves.

Note that Cirba Solutions did not give the tonnages of recycled batteries for its factories but rather the number of EVs for which they will be able to supply the battery materials. We were therefore unable to apply our standardized calculation protocol discussed above.

We established at the beginning of this article that it would be necessary to be able to recycle approximately 100,000 EVs in 2025 for Europe and North America combined and that these EVs would be those produced approximately 12 years earlier, i.e. in 2013. Since the EV penetration is higher in Europe than in America, let's say Europe should recycle 60,000 EVs in 2025 and North America 40,000 . Furthermore, let's not forget that batteries from that time (2013) had a capacity between 30 kWh and 40 kWh for the most part, with ranges of 160 km to 180 km. So the numbers in the last column of both tables, for the number of EVs that factories can recycle, could be increased by 30% to 50% since we assumed 60 kWh batteries.

That being said, we see on both tables that there is no problem in recycling these quantities of EVs in 2025 , considering that factories like those of Umicore or Northvolt in Sweden will start as soon as possible and increase their recycling capacity over a few years.

By 2030, Europe and North America combined will need to recycle 1 million EVs, as we established at the start of this article. Taking the 60/40 proportion for 2030 as we did for 2025, that corresponds to 600,000 EVs for Europe and 400,000 EVs for North America. Our two tables show us that there will be no problem recycling this number of EVs , which will have been produced in 2018.

The very beneficial impacts of recycling for the environment.

From the outset, all companies mentioned battery material recovery rates of 95%. Furthermore, we must not forget that in 12 years, the average time between the production of a battery and its recycling, technologies evolve a lot and it takes fewer materials to produce each kWh of battery. All this to say that once the fleet of vehicles is electrified, it will no longer be necessary to extract minerals from mines for batteries, in around twenty years , assuming that the fleet stabilizes in number, or even decreases with robotaxis.

Consequently, the main gain brought by recycling in the long term is:

A 100% reduction in the drain on natural resources

In the event of a new technology (antigravity) the resources that have been monopolized still exist and can be used for something else

When it comes to greenhouse gases, several companies claim reductions of up to 75% by recycling compared to mining and mineral refining.

A very interesting and extensive article (24 pages) which makes a comparison between the environmental impacts of mining extraction vs recycling has been published as a “preprint” by nine researchers from Stanford University on the ResearchGate website. The title of the article is “ Life cycle comparison of industrial-scale lithium-ion battery recycling and mining supply chains ”. The recycling technology is that of Redwood Materials. Their results demonstrate:

a reduction in energy consumption of 77%,

a reduction in greenhouse gases of 55%,

a reduction in water consumption of 74%.

Conclusion

Well! As we have just seen, Li-ion battery recyclers are multiplying like rabbits and mega-recycling plants are mushrooming, with critical mineral recovery rates of 95% leveraging hydrometallurgy, and seamlessly recycle all EV batteries by 2030.

The enormous investments involved mean that we will not see EV batteries heading to landfills, as some alarmists like to decry. Rather, it is one of the finest examples of the circular economy that is being put in place. Laws are being prepared almost everywhere to force the recycling of batteries, another element that should not be neglected.

For the denigrators of EVs who often point the finger at the ecological footprint of batteries due to their manufacturing, it has just decreased enormously when we take into account recycling which is now becoming a reality, but not an abstract concept in the land of unicorns which would arrive in the week of 4 Thursdays. Tar sands oil or shale oil cannot be recycled and are very harmful to the environment and human health, as several studies have shown.