Sustainable Electronics
and is a high-energy process that produces a mixed metal alloy, as well as a slag stream typically containing lithium, manganese, and aluminium. These intermediaries would require further hydrometallurgical processing if all valuable metals were to be recovered. IDTechEx predicts that hydrometallurgy will be the key technology adopted by most recyclers globally, primarily due to its higher efficiency and lower energy requirements compared to pyrometallurgy (see figure on the right). However, hydrometallurgical recycling requires pack disassembly and mechanical pre-treatment, so recyclers looking to scale their recycling capacities for a full Li-ion recycling process would need to scale both mechanical and hydrometallurgical capacities. As seen in IDTechEx’s ‘Li-ion Battery Recycling Market 2023–2043’ report, some players have chosen to adopt ‘Spoke and Hub’ models, where spokes are facilities purely focused on disassembly and mechanical processing, and where hubs take the black mass produced at spoke facilities and use this to produce battery grade salts.
Regulations will also start to drive Li-ion battery recycling in key regions such as the EU, India, and China. The EU Battery regulation includes targets for light means of transport (LMT) and portable battery collection rates, as well as specific material recovery efficiency targets for all Li-ion batteries, and minimum recycled contents targets in new EV and industrial batteries. India introduced its ‘Battery Waste Management Rules 2022’, covering EV, portable and industrial batteries with similar targets. The EU Battery Regulation targets are summarized in the table at the bottom of this page.
Second-life batteries
There may be instances when a battery has reached the end of its first life and is no longer able to meet the demands of an EV. EOL is typically defined as the point where a battery falls below a certain failure threshold. The consensus in the industry, especially for EV batteries, is that this is when the maximum battery capacity falls to 70-80 per cent of its rated value. However, such a battery could still be used in a less demanding stationary energy storage application, and at a lower cost than a new Li-ion stationary storage system. Critically, however, this involves testing the retired battery to ensure it is still fit for reuse, and also deciding whether cell-level disassembly is worthwhile. Key tests for assessing the suitability of batteries for second-life applications include State- of-Health and internal impedance tests. Generally, those batteries with a 70-80 per cent State-of-Health will still be suitable for second-life applications.
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Recycling techniques employed globally. Source: IDTechEx
Battery pack designs differ between original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and automating such a process is difficult. Therefore, manual labour is needed to disassemble EV battery packs, and this workforce will need to be reasonably skilled to disassemble packs of different designs safely. Moreover, disassembling to cell-level takes longer and therefore increases manual labour costs. These reasons therefore see the majority of second-life battery startups, scattered across Europe and North America, currently integrating EV batteries at pack-level for second-life applications. Multiple packs can be strung in parallel to create a kWh-MWh- sized stationary storage system. As suggested by research in IDTechEx’s report ‘Second- life Electric Vehicle Batteries 2023–2033’, currently, a large portion of second-life
batteries likely reside in China, where they are used for providing backup energy for telecom (4G, 5G) towers.
While repurposing at pack-level reduces costs, the performance of the pack will be limited by the weakest-performing cell. These repurposers will, therefore, be leaning more- so on battery analytics tools and software to closely monitor the performance of these batteries and may have conditions in place with customers that promise faulty battery replacement. As no modifications will be made to the cell arrangement, repurposers would have to ensure that procured batteries are provided to them by an automotive OEM at certain performance specifications. This could be at minimum State-of-Health (SOH) or internal impedance. This relies on partnerships between both automotive OEMs
and repurposers to manage this supply of high-quality batteries while still dealing with batteries that do not meet these minimum specifications.
To recycle or repurpose batteries for second-life applications? Repurposing EV batteries for second-life applications is arguably a more technically demanding operation that relies more on manual labour and with less predictable economics. While pack-level integration reduces remanufacturing costs, it relies more on repurposers using the best- performing batteries they are supplied with and monitoring the performance of these batteries closely over their second life. Crucially, repurposing does not
Article continued on page 46
EU battery regulation targets. Source: IDTechEx Components in Electronics December/January 2024 45
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