CLOSING THE LOOP ON EV BATTERY RECYCLING

Recycling battery materials is vital to the electric-vehicle future, but the way forward faces a host of hurdles.

Development of a robust electric vehicle (EV) battery recycling industry has moved from a net-positive sideline to a necessity as automakers, and their suppliers, transition away from internal combustion. Experts say that global mining operations are simply not on track to produce the virgin raw materials needed to meet the dramatic ramping up of the world's battery production. Additionally, the sourcing of these materials raises numerous red flags in terms of conditions for workers, site pollution, geopolitical complications and concentration of ownership.

The good news is that the Biden Administration's recently enacted Inflation Reduction Act provides incentives for automakers to use recycled minerals in their batteries. Startup companies, including one founded by the former longtime CTO at Tesla, are taking on the recycling challenge and partnering with carmakers. Automakers are also concentrating on proven technologies such as hydrometallurgy (often, leaching, which involves immersing the cells in acid to dissolve the acids into a solution) and pyrometallurgy (burning and smelting), to efficiently recover a very high percentage of key metals from used lithium-ion (li-ion) EV batteries. But there's a conundrum: battery companies are working to reduce the amount of problematic, hard-to-source metals in their cells, which has the potential to also reduce their viability for cost-effective recycling.