Lithium-ion battery recycling technology and innovation
With the acceleration of global energy transformation and the rapid expansion of the electric vehicle market, lithium-ion batteries as core energy storage devices are experiencing unprecedented demand growth. It is expected that by 2025, global demand for lithium-ion batteries will reach 200GWh and rise sharply in the following years. However, the average service life of lithium-ion batteries is usually less than ten years, which means that an astonishing number of waste batteries will be generated in the future. These retired batteries are both valuable "urban mines" containing high-value metal elements such as lithium, cobalt, and nickel, and may become a source of environmental pollution due to improper disposal. This article systematically sorts out the latest technological advances in the field of lithium-ion battery recycling, including breakthrough developments in innovative processes such as direct recycling and hydrometallurgy, analyzes the enabling role of artificial intelligence in optimizing the recycling process, evaluates the economic and environmental benefits of improving recycling technology, and explores the challenges and solutions faced by large-scale applications, providing a comprehensive perspective for building a sustainable battery circular economy system.
The urgency and status of lithium-ion battery recycling
Lithium-ion battery recycling has become a key issue in the global sustainable development agenda. With the explosive growth of the new energy vehicle industry, the global retired power battery volume is increasing at an average annual rate of 50%. It is estimated that by 2025, the total retired power battery volume in China alone will reach 137.4GWh, equivalent to about 960,000 tons of waste batteries that need to be processed. This figure will climb to more than 4 million tons per year by 2030, forming a situation where huge environmental pressure and resource opportunities coexist. Lithium-ion batteries contain a variety of valuable metals, and their content is often much higher than that of primary ores. For example, the lithium content in waste lithium batteries can reach 1.1%, while the content in high-quality lithium ores is only 1.5-2%, which makes recycling more economically attractive than mining.
From the perspective of environmental protection, if lithium-ion batteries are not properly disposed of, the heavy metals such as cobalt, nickel, and manganese and various compounds they contain will cause serious soil and water pollution, and the organic solvents and lithium salts in the electrolyte may also cause fires or produce toxic gases. The energy density of the power battery of a new energy vehicle is approximately equal to that of 1,800 mobile phone batteries, and the environmental risks it brings are also exponentially magnified. The International Energy Agency (IEA) warns that by 2030, the global battery and related mineral supply chain needs to expand 10 times to meet demand, and recycling will play a key role in alleviating this supply-demand gap.
The current lithium-ion battery recycling market presents a "two-sided" situation. On the one hand, policy support continues to increase. China's "14th Five-Year Plan" clearly proposes to improve the power battery recycling system, and the EU's "New Battery Law" builds the world's most stringent battery environmental protection standards through rigid requirements such as carbon footprint accounting and recycled material ratio. On the other hand, industry practice still faces many challenges: although there are more than 40,000 registered recycling companies in China, the proportion of formal "white list" companies is less than 10%; nearly 80% of retired batteries on the market have not flowed into formal recycling channels, but have been obtained by small workshops with backward technology and insufficient environmental protection investment. This phenomenon of "bad money driving out good money" has seriously hindered the healthy development of the industry.
In terms of technical routes, lithium-ion battery recycling is mainly divided into two paths: cascade utilization and disassembly recycling. When the battery capacity decays to the range of 80%-30%, it can be used in energy storage, communication base stations and other scenarios that do not require high energy density after detection and reorganization; when the capacity is less than 30%, it enters the disassembly and recycling stage to extract valuable metals. However, cascade utilization faces practical obstacles such as complex battery status assessment and high transformation costs (about 23,000 yuan/ton). China has temporarily suspended the construction of large-scale cascade utilization energy storage projects. This makes the research and development of efficient and green disassembly and recycling technologies more urgent.
From the perspective of economic value analysis, the recycling benefits of different types of batteries vary significantly. Because ternary lithium batteries contain precious metals such as cobalt and nickel (cobalt content exceeds 5%), they have a high recycling value and a unit waste gross profit of 38,400 yuan/ton; while lithium iron phosphate batteries contain only a small amount of lithium, and the direct recycling economy is relatively low, and they rely more on cascade utilization paths. As high-nickel ternary batteries begin to be retired in a concentrated manner after 2022, the industry is expected to usher in a real "scrap tide" and a golden period for the recycling industry.
Faced with this major opportunity and challenge, global research institutions and companies are accelerating the innovation of lithium-ion battery recycling technology, aiming to break the bottlenecks of current processes in terms of environmental protection, economy and efficiency, and build a sustainable battery life cycle management system. The following chapters will analyze these technological advances and their application prospects in detail.
The latest progress in lithium-ion battery recycling technology
Lithium-ion battery recycling technology has made breakthrough progress in recent years, and various innovative methods have emerged, which have improved economic feasibility while improving recycling efficiency and reducing environmental risks. These technological advances are driving battery recycling from the traditional high-energy consumption and high-pollution mode to the green and intelligent direction, laying the foundation for building a sustainable battery circular economy. The current mainstream recycling technologies can be divided into three categories: pyrometallurgy, hydrometallurgy and direct recycling, and the latest research has achieved many improvements and innovations within these traditional frameworks.
Innovation of hydrometallurgical technology
Hydrometallurgy is the most commercialized lithium-ion battery recycling process. It extracts and separates metals from batteries through solutions (mainly aqueous solutions). It has the advantages of low reaction temperature (usually below 100°C), high metal recovery rate (nickel, cobalt and manganese recovery rate can reach more than 99%), and high product purity. However, the traditional hydrometallurgical process relies on strong acids (such as sulfuric acid and hydrochloric acid) and reducing agents (such as hydrogen peroxide), which not only produce harmful byproducts (such as Cl₂, sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides), but also have operational safety risks and high wastewater treatment costs.
In response to these bottlenecks, the scientific research team has developed a number of innovative solutions. The "precise disassembly of charged batteries in water" technology proposed by Kang Feiyu and Li Baohua's team at Tsinghua University has subverted the traditional process. It can safely disassemble charged coil batteries in water without pre-discharging, avoiding the risk of uncontrollable reactions at the negative electrode and electrolyte combustion. The method then uses water as the only leaching agent (only the positive electrode uses the renewable NaOH leaching agent), achieving leaching rates of 99.7%, 89.1% and 99.2% for lithium, iron and phosphorus respectively, greatly reducing the consumption of chemical reagents and secondary pollution.
The more cutting-edge contact electrocatalytic mechanism was proposed by the team of Tang Wei, a researcher at the Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Systems, Chinese Academy of Sciences. This technology uses silicon dioxide (the main component of sand) as a catalyst, and induces electron transfer during contact electrification of the material through mechanical ultrasonic vibration, producing free radicals with high redox activity, thereby promoting efficient leaching of metal ions. Experiments show that under the conditions of 90°C and 6 hours of ultrasound, the lithium leaching rate in cobalt oxide lithium batteries reached 100%, and the cobalt leaching rate reached 92.19%; for ternary lithium batteries, the leaching efficiency of lithium, nickel, manganese and cobalt also reached 94.56%, 96.62%, 96.54% and 98.39% respectively. Silica is low-cost, stable and recyclable, making this process efficient, economical and environmentally friendly.
Professor Hua Yixin's team at Kunming University of Science and Technology has developed an innovative recycling strategy based on a low eutectic solvent. They used choline chloride-oxalic acid-water low eutectic solvent and achieved the first preferential extraction of lithium and precise separation of cobalt by precisely controlling the water content in the solvent. The entire process does not require the addition of reducing agents and precipitants. The unique advantages of this method lie in its low viscosity, high solubility and selective precipitation of lithium-containing compounds, which not only reduces recycling costs and environmental risks, but also provides new ideas for the recycling of other types of battery materials.
Breakthrough in direct recycling technology
Direct recycling technology repairs or regenerates the crystal structure of electrode materials (especially positive electrode materials) so that they can be directly reused in new battery production, avoiding the destructive decomposition and complex resynthesis process in traditional recycling methods. It has significant advantages such as low energy consumption, short value chain and intact material value preservation7. However, direct recycling has long faced challenges such as high technical barriers and strict battery classification requirements, and commercialization progress has been relatively slow.
Recently, the eutectic system direct repair technology published by Liang Zheng, Zhou Guangmin, and Cheng Huiming's team in the Journal of the American Chemical Society has brought important breakthroughs in this field. They used a eutectic combination (melting point below 200°C) formed by lithium iodide (LiI) and lithium hydroxide (LiOH) to repair NMC523 cathode materials under relatively mild temperature conditions. By adding Co₂O₃ and MnO₂ to the eutectic mixture, the repaired material obtained after two-step heating treatment exhibited properties and crystal structures comparable to those of newly produced battery materials. Although this method still requires disassembly and reassembly of the battery, and the capacity has not been fully restored, it provides a more energy-efficient and economical feasible path for direct recycling.
The Quick-Release Binder technology developed by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the United States facilitates direct recycling from the source of battery design. This new type of binder made of polyacrylic acid (PAA) and polyethyleneimine (PEI) can separate the two polymers through the intervention of sodium ions in alkaline water, thereby easily releasing the electrode assembly. Compared with traditional adhesives, this technology not only makes the battery recycling process more environmentally friendly and simple (just disassemble it and put it in alkaline water and shake it gently), but its production cost is only one-tenth of the commonly used commercial adhesives. It has now cooperated with the recycling company OnTo Technologies to promote commercialization.
Improvement of pyrometallurgical technology
Pyrometallurgy converts metal oxides in battery materials into metals or alloys through high-temperature (usually above 1000°C) treatment. Although the process is simple and has strong adaptability to battery types, it has disadvantages such as extremely high energy consumption, toxic gas emissions and serious lithium loss. At present, the pyrometallurgical process is mostly used in combination with the wet process, that is, alloys or slags are first obtained through high-temperature treatment, and then the metals are separated and purified through the wet process.
In order to reduce the environmental impact of the pyrometallurgical process, the industry is exploring two improvement paths: one is to optimize the energy recovery system, use the heat energy generated by the combustion process to generate electricity, and improve overall energy efficiency; the other is to develop new filtration and purification technologies to reduce the emission of toxic gases such as dioxins and furans. Companies such as Qunfeng Heavy Industries regard pyrometallurgy as a "sunset technology" and believe that it will gradually be replaced by more environmentally friendly wet and direct recycling methods.
These technological advances are jointly driving the lithium-ion battery recycling industry towards a more efficient and environmentally friendly direction. However, a single technical route is often difficult to take into account all battery types and application scenarios. In the future, it is more likely to form a solution with multiple technologies coexisting and optimized combinations for different battery systems and recycling needs. At the same time, with the introduction of cross-domain technologies such as artificial intelligence and automation, the efficiency and accuracy of lithium-ion battery recycling are expected to be further improved, which will be discussed in detail in the next chapter.
Application of artificial intelligence and intelligence in battery recycling
The lithium-ion battery recycling industry is ushering in a wave of digital transformation. The introduction of artificial intelligence, machine learning and automation technology is completely changing the face of traditional recycling processes. With the increasing complexity of battery types and the continuous expansion of retirement scale, traditional methods relying on manual experience and simple machinery can no longer meet the needs of efficient and accurate recycling. Intelligent technology can not only optimize recycling process parameters and improve metal extraction efficiency, but also achieve accurate classification, safe disassembly and full life cycle tracking of batteries, providing necessary technical support for large-scale battery recycling.
Artificial intelligence optimizes recycling process
In chemical recycling processes such as hydrometallurgy, process parameter optimization has a decisive influence on metal recovery rate and purity. Traditional trial and error parameter adjustment is time-consuming, labor-intensive and costly. Today, machine learning algorithms can establish complex nonlinear relationships between leaching rate and variables such as temperature, pH value, reagent concentration, reaction time, etc. by analyzing historical production data, thereby recommending the optimal process parameter combination. Deep learning models can also monitor and predict reaction progress in real time, and dynamically adjust operating conditions to ensure the best recycling effect.
In the practice of building a closed-loop carbon value chain for power batteries, Guangdong Province actively explores the application of intelligent decision-making systems in recycling production lines. By integrating heterogeneous data sources (including battery chemical composition, degree of wear, environmental conditions, etc.), the artificial intelligence system can customize the optimal recycling path for retired batteries of different batches and types, significantly improving the adaptability of the production line and resource utilization. This intelligent transformation has enabled the lithium recovery rate of the traditional hydrometallurgical process to remain above 90% while reducing carbon emissions by about 15%, effectively responding to the carbon barrier challenge of the EU's "New Battery Law".
Generative artificial intelligence in the field of materials science has also begun to be applied to the design of new recycling reagents and catalysts. By analyzing the relationship between the structure and performance of known efficient compounds, AI algorithms can generate molecular structure suggestions with ideal properties, greatly accelerating the development of new environmentally friendly leaching agents. This method, combined with high-throughput experiments, is expected to break through the current traditional R&D model that relies on empirical exploration and bring revolutionary material solutions to battery recycling.
Intelligent disassembly and automated sorting
Battery disassembly is one of the most dangerous links in the recycling process. Traditional manual operations face multiple risks such as electrolyte leakage, short circuit fire, and toxic gas release. The application of intelligent disassembly robots is gradually changing this situation. The dynamic decision-making disassembly robot used by Guangdong's power battery recycling industry can accurately identify the battery model, internal structure and connection method through multi-sensor fusion (including vision, X-ray, laser scanning, etc.), and autonomously plan the optimal disassembly path. Such systems are usually equipped with force feedback control and explosion-proof design to ensure stable operation in hazardous environments.
In the sorting process, automated systems based on computer vision and spectral analysis are gradually replacing manual sorting. High-resolution cameras combined with near-infrared (NIR) or laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) and other technologies can identify the battery positive electrode chemical type (such as NMC, LFP, LCO, etc.), capacity decay and structural integrity at the millisecond level to achieve accurate sorting. This is particularly important for direct recycling technology, because batteries of different types and states often require customized repair processes.
The heterogeneous compatible production lines being developed by companies such as Qunfeng Heavy Industry have realized the automated processing of multiple models of batteries on the same production line through flexible robotic arms, adaptive fixtures and rapid mold change systems. This intelligent production line, combined with digital twin technology, can pre-simulate and optimize the production process in a virtual environment to minimize physical debugging time and resource waste. With the popularization of 5G and industrial Internet technologies, centralized intelligent management of distributed recycling sites has also become possible, which is conducive to the formation of a large-scale recycling network.
Blockchain and full life cycle traceability
The standardized management of battery recycling has always faced major challenges. Although China has a large number of registered recycling companies, a considerable proportion of retired batteries have flowed to small workshops that do not meet environmental standards. Blockchain technology provides a potential solution to this problem. By assigning a unique digital identity to each battery cell and recording its full life cycle data (including production information, usage history, performance degradation, recycling processing, etc.), an unalterable traceability chain can be constructed to ensure that retired batteries flow into formal recycling channels.
The "Carbon Chain Master" model promoted by Guangdong Province is the practice of this concept. This model connects battery manufacturers, vehicle manufacturers, recycling companies and regulatory authorities into a network through blockchain technology, clarifying the carbon responsibilities and resource flows of each link. The carbon footprint accounting and recycled material ratio verification required by the EU's "New Battery Law" can also be efficiently implemented with the help of this trusted traceability system, reducing compliance costs while preventing "greenwashing" behavior.
Artificial intelligence algorithms can also analyze battery life prediction data to optimize retirement timing judgment and recycling strategy selection. By monitoring parameters such as capacity attenuation, internal resistance change, and thermal characteristics of the battery during use, the machine learning model can accurately predict the remaining service life and provide a scientific basis for decision-making on cascade utilization or disassembly and recycling. This can not only maximize the value of the battery, but also avoid the waste of resources caused by premature retirement or the safety risks caused by overuse.
The introduction of intelligent technology is reshaping the face of the lithium-ion battery recycling industry, but its full implementation still faces several challenges. The high initial investment cost constitutes a barrier for small and medium-sized enterprises; the rapid iteration of battery design and chemical system requires continuous algorithm updates; and the different data standards of different manufacturers also hinder the implementation of industry-level solutions. In the future, as the technology matures and the scale effect emerges, these obstacles are expected to be gradually overcome, and artificial intelligence will become an indispensable core competitiveness in the field of battery recycling, driving the industry to develop in a more efficient, transparent and sustainable direction.
Economic and environmental benefit analysis of battery recycling
Lithium-ion battery recycling is not only an environmentally necessary technology, but also contains huge economic value and ecological benefits. With the surge in global battery demand and fluctuations in raw material prices, recycling valuable metals in retired batteries has become an important way to alleviate resource shortages and stabilize the supply chain. At the same time, compared with primary mineral mining, battery recycling can significantly reduce energy consumption and environmental pollution, and contribute to the goal of carbon neutrality. This section will deeply analyze the economic feasibility and positive environmental externalities of battery recycling, and reveal its inherent driving force for the development of a circular economy.
Economic value of resource recycling
Lithium-ion batteries contain a variety of high-value metals, and their concentrations are often much higher than those of primary ores. Taking the common ternary lithium battery as an example, its cobalt content exceeds 5%, the nickel content is about 12%, and the lithium content is 1-3%, while the cobalt content in high-quality cobalt ore is only 0.1-0.5%, and the lithium content in lithium ore is 1.5-2%. This "urban mine" effect gives battery recycling a significant economic advantage. According to industry analysis, the gross profit of waste recycled from ternary lithium batteries can reach 38,400 yuan/ton, and the gross profit per unit of lithium carbonate is 19,200 yuan/ton. Even if the price of lithium carbonate falls from a high of 600,000 yuan/ton to 90,000 yuan/ton in 2024, causing some recycling companies to stop production, in the long run, the cyclical fluctuations in metal prices will not change the fundamental economic logic of recycling.
The recycling economics of different types of batteries vary significantly. Nickel-cobalt-manganese (NMC) ternary batteries have the highest recycling value because they contain precious metals cobalt and nickel, and the market recycling price can be more than five times that of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries. Although lithium iron phosphate batteries do not contain high-priced metals, they can still obtain a profit of about 30,000 yuan/ton through cascade utilization (such as for energy storage systems), which is more economical than directly recycling raw materials (about 10,000 yuan/ton). With the popularization of high-nickel and low-cobalt batteries and the recovery of lithium iron phosphate technology, the product structure of the recycling market will change significantly in the future, requiring recycling technology to have stronger adaptability.
From the perspective of the industrial chain, battery recycling has created a new business model for closed-loop resource flow. CATL's Brunp Recycling has built China's largest waste battery recycling base, which recycles recycled nickel, cobalt, manganese and other metals into positive electrode materials, with a metal recovery rate of more than 99%, realizing direct regeneration from "battery to battery". This closed-loop model not only reduces the risk of raw material price fluctuations, but also enhances the resilience of the supply chain, especially in the context of unstable supply of key minerals due to geopolitical tensions.
In terms of market prospects, the market size of China's waste lithium-ion battery recycling, disassembly and cascade utilization industry is expected to grow from 15.44 billion yuan in 2022 to 105.36 billion yuan in 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of 27.2%. The global market is also showing a rapid growth trend. MarketsandMarkets predicts that the global power battery recycling scale will reach 12.2 billion US dollars in 2025 and increase to 18.1 billion US dollars in 2030. This rapid growth has attracted a lot of capital investment and has also spawned the emergence of professional recycling companies.
Environmental benefits and carbon reduction
The positive environmental externalities of battery recycling cannot be ignored. Research by the International Energy Agency shows that the use of recycled materials to produce new batteries can reduce carbon emissions by 30-40% compared to the use of virgin raw materials. This mainly comes from three aspects: avoiding the high energy consumption process of mineral mining and refining; shortening the transportation distance of raw materials; and reducing the environmental burden of waste disposal. Taking lithium as an example, extracting 1 ton of lithium equivalent (LCE) from hard rock ore generates about 15 tons of CO₂ emissions, while recycling from waste batteries only generates about 1-3 tons of CO₂.
The EU's "New Battery Law" has set carbon footprint accounting and recycled material ratio as market access thresholds, requiring electric vehicle batteries and rechargeable industrial batteries to declare product carbon footprints and meet the gradually increasing minimum content requirements of recycled materials after 2027. This "carbon barrier" forces export companies to pay attention to the emission reduction benefits of the recycling link. The practice of Guangdong Province shows that by building a closed-loop carbon management system of "mineral mining-production-recycling", battery products can significantly reduce carbon emissions throughout their life cycle and enhance international competitiveness.
The green innovation of hydrometallurgical processes further amplifies the environmental benefits of recycling. Traditional hydrometallurgical processes use strong acids and reducing agents to produce a large amount of harmful wastewater, which is costly to treat. The water-based disassembly and leaching technology developed by Tsinghua University completely avoids the use of strong acids, greatly reducing the toxicity of process wastewater. The contact electrocatalytic technology developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences uses cheap and non-toxic silica as a catalyst and mechanical energy as a drive to achieve a green recycling process with nearly zero chemical addition. The low eutectic solvent strategy developed by Kunming University of Science and Technology also does not require the addition of reducing agents and precipitants, reducing environmental risks.
From the perspective of resource security, battery recycling reduces dependence on imports of key minerals. China's cobalt, nickel and lithium resource reserves account for only 1.1%, 3.1% and 6.8% of the world's total, respectively, but its demand accounts for as high as 32%, 56% and 57%, and the contradiction between supply and demand is prominent. This structural shortage can be effectively alleviated through high-proportion recycling. The European Union and the United States also regard battery recycling as an important strategy to ensure the security of the supply of key raw materials, and have set ambitious recycling rate targets and a sound policy framework.
Cost structure and industry challenges
Despite the broad prospects, the battery recycling industry still faces severe cost pressures and operational challenges. The cost structure of recycling companies mainly includes collection and transportation, disassembly and sorting, chemical treatment and environmental compliance, among which chemical treatment (hydrometallurgy or pyrometallurgy) usually accounts for 40-60% of the total cost. The sharp fluctuation in lithium carbonate prices (from 600,000 yuan/ton to 90,000 yuan/ton) directly led to the cancellation and revocation of 1,417 recycling companies in China in the first half of 2024, an average of about 20 per day. This shows that the industry's ability to resist risks still needs to be improved.
An imperfect collection network is another major pain point. China's power battery recycling capacity is about 1.2 million tons, but the actual recycling volume is only 1/5 to 1/6 of the capacity, and a large number of retired batteries flow to informal channels. This is because the recycling cost of formal companies is high (invoices need to be issued and environmental protection investment is borne), and because consumers are not aware of the problem. Small workshops gain cost advantages through competitive bidding and irregular processing, but they cause serious environmental externalities, forming a "bad money drives out good money" effect.
The long payback period for technology investment also restricts the willingness of enterprises to innovate. Advanced technologies such as intelligent disassembly robots and AI optimization systems require a lot of upfront investment, and metal price fluctuations may make the expected benefits fall through. The increase in compliance costs brought about by regulations such as the EU's "New Battery Law" has also increased the burden on enterprises in the short term, although it will help the industry to develop in a standardized manner in the long run.
Overall, lithium-ion battery recycling shows significant economic and environmental benefits, but fully unleashing these benefits requires overcoming existing market failures and structural problems. The coordinated promotion of policy interventions (such as the extended producer responsibility system), technological innovation (such as green and low-cost processes), and business model innovation (such as battery as a service) will be the key to the healthy development of the industry. As economies of scale emerge and technology continues to advance, battery recycling is expected to transform from an environmental burden to a value creation center and become a model area for the circular economy.
Challenges and Future Outlook
Although lithium-ion battery recycling technology and industry have made significant progress, there are still multiple structural challenges on the road to achieving a large-scale and sustainable battery circular economy. These obstacles involve multiple dimensions such as technology, economy, policy and international competition, and require collaborative innovation and system design across the entire industry chain to effectively overcome. At the same time, the urgency of global energy transformation and carbon neutrality goals has also created unprecedented development opportunities for battery recycling. This section will analyze the key challenges currently faced, and based on the trend of technological evolution and changes in market demand, look forward to the future development path of lithium-ion battery recycling.
Main challenges currently faced
The compatibility of battery design and recycling is the primary technical obstacle facing the industry. There are currently many types of lithium-ion batteries, and the positive electrode materials include various systems such as NMC, LFP, and LCO. The external structures include different forms such as cylindrical, square and soft packs, and the connection methods and packaging processes vary greatly. Although this diversity meets the needs of different application scenarios, it brings great difficulties to recycling, especially direct recycling. Each battery type often requires customized disassembly and processing processes, making it difficult to form a standardized and large-scale recycling solution. Although the eutectic system direct recycling technology developed by Professor Liang Zheng's team is highly innovative, it still requires precise classification and disassembly of batteries, which is extremely costly to implement in a highly heterogeneous retired battery flow.
Insufficient recycling infrastructure has constrained the rapid improvement of the industry's processing capacity. Although China's power battery recycling capacity has reached about 1.2 million tons, the actual recycling volume is only 1/5 to 1/6 of the capacity, reflecting the serious imbalance between the collection network and processing capacity. On the one hand, formal recycling companies are facing the dilemma of "no rice to cook"; on the other hand, a large number of retired batteries flow into informal channels and are processed by small workshops with backward technology and substandard environmental protection, causing resource waste and environmental pollution. The closed-loop carbon management system required by the EU's "New Battery Law" also faces challenges in China, mainly because the traceability platform of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment has not been fully connected with the recycling system of automobile companies, and the responsibility for battery recycling
management is difficult to effectively implement.
The issue of economic sustainability is particularly prominent against the background of volatile raw material prices. The price of lithium carbonate plummeted from a high of 600,000 yuan/ton to 90,000 yuan/ton in 2023-2024, directly leading to the deregistration and revocation of 1,417 power battery recycling-related companies in China, an increase of 96.5% compared with the same period in 2023. This drastic fluctuation exposes the fragility of the profit model of recycling companies - over-reliance on metal market prices makes it difficult for companies to plan long-term investment and technological upgrades. The economic efficiency of lithium iron phosphate battery recycling is even weaker. In the absence of effective cascade utilization channels, many recycling companies even refuse to accept such batteries.
International standard competition poses another challenge. The European Union took the lead in establishing the world's most stringent battery environmental protection regulatory system through the "New Battery Law". Its carbon footprint accounting is based on the PEFCRs (Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules) methodology, while China's local database coverage is low and its voice in international rule-making is insufficient. This standard asymmetry may form a technical trade barrier and increase the compliance cost of China's battery product exports. The United States supports local recycling companies through policies such as R&D tax incentives and government procurement. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and other institutions have made breakthroughs in innovative adhesives and other basic materials, trying to control the commanding heights of recycling technology from the source of design.
Technological innovation direction
In the future, lithium-ion battery recycling technology will develop in the direction of green, intelligent and precise. Green is reflected in reducing the use of chemical reagents, reducing energy consumption and waste generation. Tsinghua University's underwater disassembly technology and the contact electrocatalytic mechanism of the Chinese Academy of Sciences represent this trend. They either use water as the only medium or drive the reaction with mechanical energy, which greatly reduces the environmental footprint of the process. The low eutectic solvent strategy developed by Kunming University of Science and Technology also follows the principles of green chemistry, achieving selective metal extraction through water balance regulation without the addition of reducing agents and precipitants.
Intelligent disassembly and sorting technology will solve the challenges brought by battery diversity. The "heterogeneous compatible production line-molecular purification-closed loop regeneration" equipment system promoted by Guangdong Province adapts to different battery types through dynamic decision-making by intelligent robots, reducing the cost of production line switching. The high-throughput sorting system combining computer vision and spectral analysis can identify the chemical composition and state of the battery in real time, providing accurate classification for subsequent processing. Digital twin technology can simulate and optimize the recycling process in virtual space, reducing the resource consumption of physical experiments.
At the molecular level of recycling, new catalytic materials and separation media will achieve higher selectivity and efficiency. The contact electrocatalytic mechanism proposed by Researcher Tang Wei breaks through the traditional concept of catalysis, using the electron transfer when the material is contacted and electrified to induce the production of active substances, providing a new idea for efficient metal leaching. New functional materials such as bionic separation membranes and magnetic nanoadsorbents are also expected to achieve precise capture of specific metal ions, reducing purification steps and energy consumption.
Direct recycling technology will evolve towards universality and commercialization. The Quick-Release Binder of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the United States makes battery components easy to separate under mild conditions through molecular design. This "design for recycling" concept may change the way batteries are manufactured in the future. The eutectic system repair technology developed by Chinese scientists gradually improves the electrochemical performance of recycled materials by optimizing the combination of additives, making it close to the level of new electrodes.
Policy and industry synergy
Improving the policy framework is the key to promoting the healthy development of the battery recycling industry. The extended producer responsibility (EPR) system of the EU's "New Battery Law" is worth learning from. The system clearly defines battery manufacturers as the responsible entities for recycling, implements the principle of "whoever produces, recycles", and realizes 100% recycling responsibility binding through the battery identity code system. Although China has established a similar system, there is still room for improvement in enforcement and precision, especially in combating informal recycling channels.
Carbon pricing mechanism can enhance the economic competitiveness of recycling processes. Incorporating high carbon emissions from pyrometallurgy and carbon emission reduction from improved hydrometallurgical processes into cost accounting can change the economic comparison of different technologies through carbon taxes or carbon trading. The closed-loop carbon value chain that Guangdong Province is trying to build is the practice of this idea. By transforming carbon compliance pressure into the driving force for industrial upgrading, it promotes enterprises to actively adopt low-carbon recycling technology.
Innovation in industrial synergy models will optimize resource allocation. Battery manufacturers, vehicle manufacturers and recycling companies can form a community of interests through joint ventures or strategic cooperation to ensure the stable return of retired batteries. The vertical integration model of CATL and Brunp Cycle demonstrates this synergy advantage. Another idea is to develop a "Battery as a Service" (BaaS) business model, where car companies retain ownership of batteries and users purchase energy storage services, thereby simplifying the recycling process and improving transparency.
The coordination of international standards and certification systems is also crucial. China needs to accelerate the construction of carbon footprint accounting methods and databases that are in line with international standards but based on national conditions, and improve compatibility with the EU PEFCRs methodology. At the same time, China's recycling technology and standards should be promoted through platforms such as the "Belt and Road Initiative" to enhance its voice in the global battery circular economy governance.
Future Outlook
By 2030, the global lithium-ion battery recycling industry will enter a mature development period. As a large number of power batteries deployed between 2015 and 2025 are gradually retired, the recycling market size is expected to grow from 36.6 billion yuan in 2023 to 68.6 billion yuan in 2027, with an annual compound growth rate of more than 13.38%. In terms of technical routes, hydrometallurgy will still dominate but continue to green innovation, the direct recycling ratio will gradually increase, and the application scope of pyrometallurgy will shrink to specific battery types.
The closed-loop industrial ecology will become the mainstream model. Battery manufacturers, application companies, recycling companies and users of recycled materials will form a close collaborative network to achieve multi-level recycling of resources. Digital twin and blockchain technology ensure the transparency and traceability of material and information flows, and smart contracts automatically execute profit distribution, greatly reducing transaction costs. This ecological development not only improves resource efficiency, but also enhances the risk resistance of the entire industry chain.
In the longer term, fundamental material innovation may reshape the recycling pattern. If the new generation of energy storage technologies such as solid-state batteries and lithium-sulfur batteries are commercialized, they will change the existing composition of recycled materials and process requirements. At the same time, the concept of "design is recycling" is deeply rooted in the product development process, and the convenience of end-of-life processing is considered from the beginning of the battery, such as the use of unified standard connectors, modular design and environmentally friendly identification materials.
As a model field of circular economy, the development of lithium-ion battery recycling is not only related to resource security and environmental sustainability, but also an important position for global green industry competition. Faced with multiple challenges in technology, market and policy, it is necessary to innovate collaboratively between industry, academia, research and application to build a battery management system covering the entire life cycle. Through continuous technological breakthroughs, wise policy guidance and effective international cooperation, lithium-ion battery recycling is expected to transform from the current "necessary burden" to the future "value center", providing solid support for global energy transformation and carbon neutrality goals.
