Volts: The state of the lithium-ion battery recycling market
Podcast: Volts
Episode: The state of the lithium-ion battery recycling market
Length: 54 mins
Produced By: Volts
Date: Dec 10, 2022
Overview
Yayoi Sekine, head of energy storage at Bloomberg NEF, discusses the EV battery recycling market.
She provides a useful overview of EV battery recycling, the current battery recycling market in the U.S. and the companies involved.
Check out our EV Battery Recycling Newsfeed to keep up to date with developments in the U.S. battery recycling industry.
Battery Recycling 101
- 10-12 years for EV applications
- 15-20 years for Grid storage applications
What does it mean to recycle a battery?
- The Copper and Aluminum coils are the easiest to recycle
- Black Mass – high value minerals and metals, need to get processed further
- These will ideally be reused in battery supply chain
- Looking for Nickel and Cobalt, Lithium (for batteries that contain Nickel and Cobalt)
- Two ways to extract value:
- Hydro-metallurgic process – using chemicals to extract what is most valuable
- Pyro-metallurgic – involves using high temperatures to extract metals (done before hydro process to make that second process more efficient)
How much gets recycled from original material content?
- Nickel + Cobalt have high recovery rates – as high as 95%
- More mature processes, they are more valuable so high incentive to recycle
- Lithium – The interest in extracting lithium and in increasing recovery rates is new
- Recovery rates range from 60%-90%
Is it worth recycling a LFP battery?
- Depends on cost of the recycling process (equipment, chemicals, energy cost)
- Cost of recycling LFP is lower too (vs. those with Cobalt)
- More attractive today since Lithium prices are up
- Bottom line – you get less out of a LFP battery, but you are also paying less since the process is cheaper
- Interest in US and Europe for recycling in the interest of being more sustainable, depending less on China
- It’s not 100% driven by economics of recycling
Second Life – When battery is not good enough to be used in a car, but still has capacity
- LFP more appropriate for second life application
- Still gets recycled after second life usage
- Applications: backup batteries for telecoms (China), EV charging
Solid state batteries – definitely recyclable, lithium content is higher
US Market & Battery Recycling Companies
Current State of the Market:
- Batteries are being recycled now
- Scale depends on where you are – most recycling capacity (~80%) in China
- U.S. now:
- Redwood Materials, Li-Cycle and Ascend Elements are all directly involved with automakers or battery manufacturers
- Small volumes, have pilot facilities and are starting to scale up
- China has better infrastructure around collection, transportation, recycling
What’s Needed:
- Economies of scale in recycling facilities
- Economies of scale in number of recyclable batteries
Differentiation among recyclers
- End product
- Old practice – produce recycled sulfates, sell that to a cathode producer (for example)
- Redwood and Li-Cycle are trying to produce cathode materials for end-use as well
- More complex but more valuable end material
- Complex because each automaker or battery maker has different specifications
US Industry
- Sizeable scale-up happening now
- Ascend Elements – $50m investment in facility from SK
- Li-Cycle – Rochester hub commissioned + ramping up capacity
- Redwood Materials – scaling up facility in Nevada
- Larger scale operations around 2024-2025
- No broad regulation yet in US for what happens to end of life EV batteries
- How to collect them, process them, recycle them
- Inflation Reduction Act
- EV credits require materials and product to be produced in US
- Recycled materials are included in the critical materials requirement
- To qualify need 50% of minerals from US or FTA countries – includes recycled materials
- Recycling will play an important role in meeting these requirements
- See: Redwood Materials & Panasonic agreement
