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The ReCell Center, a Department of Energy's, Vehicle Technologies Office managed program led by Argonne National Laboratory, is working to develop and demonstrate, battery recycling technologies that improve the economics of responsible end-of-life lithium-ion battery management. This presentation will provide a brief summary of ReCell’s work and the progress it has made over the past 3 years of it existence.

Lithium-ion batteries in electric and hybrid-electric vehicles are just now starting to reach their end-of-life. There are several options to address these end-of-life batteries, landfilling or recycling. Recycling is a desirable option because of the benefits it can bring, including reductions in life-cycle costs, reduced energy usage, lower environmental impacts, and decreased dependence on scarce or imported materials. The options available now for recycling of lithium-ion batteries are not optimal, so research and development (R&D) is needed to make economic processes available for use by the time large volumes of batteries from electric vehicles and other uses go out of service. By then these battery materials could be 20 year-old formulations with little residual value from its structure or contained elements. In particular, cathode formulations are evolving towards varied morphologies, emphasizing formulations that contain reduced quantities of cobalt (the valuable element sought in most current recycling operations), reducing the incentive for recycling with standard pyrometallurgical or hydrometallurgical methods. Several key questions must be addressed by R&D. Most of these focus on the cathode, which is the most valuable form of material that can be recovered. How can the cathode get separated from the other cell components? Can they be recovered? How can optimum cathode function get restored? Can we separate one cathode type from another? Can we modify the cathode composition or morphology to update it for reuse? This presentation will provide a summary of Argonne’s work to create a feasible battery recycling system.

End-of-life lithium-ion batteries in electric and hybrid-electric vehicles are just now starting to reach their end-of-life. The recycling infrastructure that these batteries are expected to go through will likely result as a cost to the end user. Argonne National Laboratory is working to develop, scale-up, and demonstrate, recycle processes that reduce cost and increase revenue to improve the economics of responsible end-of-life lithium-ion battery management even as the use of cobalt is reduced in batteries. Four focus areas are targeted: direct cathode recycling, recovery of other materials, design for recycle, and advanced characterization. This presentation will provide a summary of Argonne’s work to create a profitable battery recycling system.

The number of plug-in electric vehicles sold in the U.S. has grown from 52,500 units in 2012 to over 160,000 vehicles sold in 2016; that is over a 300% increase in just four years. These vehicles’ batteries are going to reach auto dismantlers after approximately 10 years and require proper end-of-life processing, but the current solutions are not cost-effective. Argonne National Laboratory has developed a model that evaluates every stage of a battery’s life from material acquisition through recycling to provide a total cost and environmental impact. This allows for a direct comparison of virgin batteries to batteries with recycled content.

We will need recycling facilities to handle the avalanche of batteries reaching their end-of-life, estimated to be over 20,000 metric tons from electric vehicles alone in the U.S. by 2025. Even if the batteries do find a second use (which is in question), they will eventually be unsuitable for further use and require some sort of environmentally acceptable and economically viable end-of-life handling. Disposal is not a suitable option; the batteries will need to be recycled to deliver better environmental and economic benefits. This presentation will examine barriers to recycling, compare available processes, and suggest ways to optimize the battery life-cycle.