Read the full story in Chemical & Engineering News.
Sales of electric vehicles are surging and firms in Asia, Europe, and North America are building large facilities to recycle the valuable metals in those cars’ lithium-ion batteries, which start to show declining performance after a decade or 2 of use. Recyclers hope that reusing the lithium, nickel, and cobalt in used batteries will reduce the environmental impact of making new batteries. Some firms also hope to recover less-valuable materials, like copper or graphite, and they’re competing to show that their technologies use less energy or fewer chemical reagents than competitors do. But building a big lithium-ion battery recycling industry won’t be easy. In some cases, firms need to transfer a pilot-scale process into much larger facilities. They also must deal with ever-changing battery chemistries and navigate a web of new rules regulating the industry.
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