ReCell—Working to Advance Battery Recycling

End-of-life lithium-ion batteries in electric and hybrid-electric vehicles are just now starting to reach their end of life. Battery recycling is needed to recover the valuable materials needed to support new battery production and reduce waste and environmental impact. The ReCell Center is working to develop, scale up, and demonstrate battery recycling processes that reduce cost and increase the profit and viability of battery recycling. ReCell has developed direct recycling processes to recover cathode materials intact, reducing the processing steps for reuse. Four focus areas are targeted: direct cathode recycling, recovery of other materials, design for recycling, and modeling and analysis. Additionally, ReCell uses advanced characterization with synchrotron-based spectroscopy and diffraction tools to study the shredding and thermal binder removal of the end-of-Life cathode material to determine structural and chemical changes and gain a fundamental understanding of the direct recycling processes.