The development of battery dismantling and recycling technologies is essential to ensure the long-term sustainability of the battery economy. A new European battery regulation aims to ensure that batteries placed in the EU market are sustainable and safe throughout their entire life cycle. This calls for new, innovative and low-cost processes, new logistics and business incentives.
The technical approaches range from direct recovery of the active materials, (instead of multistep recovery processes) to new recycling concepts, such as reconditioning or reusing electrodes. Industrial participation will be brought on board early with a coupling to material suppliers, cell and battery manufacturers, and recyclers.
The discovery of new materials using BIG and MAP will integrate parameters such as recyclability, critical raw materials, and toxicity into the algorithms.