Value recovery from spent lithium-ion batteries: A review on technologies, environmental impacts, economics, and supply chain

The demand for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) has surged in recent years, owing to their excellent electrochemical performance and increasing adoption in electric vehicles and renewable energy storage. As a result, the expectation is that the primary supply of LIB materials (e.g., lithium, cobalt, and nickel) will be insufficient to satisfy the demand in the next five years, creating a significant supply risk. Value recovery from spent LIBs could effectively increase the critical materials supply, which will become increasingly important as the number of spent LIBs grows. This paper reviews recent studies on developing novel technologies for value recovery from spent LIBs. The existing literature focused on hydrometallurgical-, pyrometallurgical-, and direct recycling, and their advantages and disadvantages are evaluated in this paper. Techno-economic analysis and life cycle assessment have quantified the economic and environmental benefits of LIB reuse over recycling, highlighting the research gap in LIB reuse technologies. The study also revealed challenges associated with changing battery chemistry toward less valuable metals in LIB manufacturing (e.g., replacing cobalt with nickel). More specifically, direct recycling may be impractical due to rapid technology change, and the economic and environmental incentives for recycling spent LIBs will decrease. As LIB collection constitutes a major cost, optimizing the reverse logistics supply chain is essential for maximizing the economic and environmental benefits of LIB recovery. Policies that promote LIB recovery are reviewed with a focus on Europe and the United States. Policy gaps are identified and a plan for sustainable LIB life cycle management is proposed.