Researchers from Cornell University in New York believe they have found a way to recover almost the full life of lithium-ion batteries by using an electrochemical solution to regenerate a battery’s electrodes.
The potentially game-chaging process could theoretically cut the cost of battery stewardship by 56 per cent compared to current recycling methods and would also be more environmentally friendly, reducing harmful air pollutants and water use.
As batteries rapidly become an integral part of society, whether in mobile phones or electric vehicles or home and utility-scale energy storage, the race for materials to meet demand has caused prices to skyrocket as supply diminishes.
Various battery recycling methods have been proposed and demonstrated – and are even beginning to be scaled up to full commercialisation – but the battery industry predominantly relies on what Cornell researchers describe as a linear “take-make-dispose approach” that invariably sees batteries end up in landfills.
Battery recycling methods are evolving to deconstruct spent batteries and reuse their base materials, but this requires significant investment in the infrastructure and processes needed to shred batteries down and separate the resulting “black mass” to their base components, before refabrication.
