SMART THINKING

As electric cars increasingly become part of the motoring landscape, scientists in the UK have found an innovative, green way to manage the difficult to recycle lithium-ion batteries used to run the cars.

A breakthrough for EV batteries.

Thanks to the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and rely less on oil, governments around the world are offering incentives to move towards electric vehicles (EV). By 2030, the European Union hopes that there will be 30 million electric cars on European roads. In New Zealand, the government is introducing subsidies to make EVs cheaper, and new petrol and diesel cars more expensive to encourage people to go electric. In Australia there are some government incentives – such as the removal of stamp duty and free registration for two years in some states – that have encouraged the import of a host of new electric vehicles arriving this year. These include the BMW iX3, Kia Niro, Lexus UX 300e, Mercedes EQA and the Volvo XC40 Recharge.

But while EVs may not emit any carbon dioxide, people are concerned about the environmental impact of the lithium-ion batteries used in the EVs when they are at the end of their life; they are more difficult to recycle than traditional lead-acid batteries and if they end up in landfill they can release some pretty nasty toxins.

Attention is now turning towards the best way to recycle the batteries, and researchers from the University of Leicester have invented a groundbreaking new way. The challenge of recycling the lithium-ion batteries is how to separate out valuable materials (such as lithium, nickel, manganese and cobalt) from electrodes in a fast, economical and environmentally friendly way, so that the materials can be fully recovered from batteries at the end of their life. Current recycling methods typically feed end-of-life batteries into a shredder or high-temperature reactor. A complex set of physical and chemical processes are subsequently needed to produce usable materials; methods that are energy intensive and inefficient.

The new method, developed by Professor Andy Abbott, uses an ultrasonic delamination technique that effectively blasts the active materials required from the electrodes. Professor Abbott says, “This novel procedure is 100 times quicker and greener than conventional battery recycling techniques and leads to a higher purity of recovered materials. It essentially works in the same way as a dentist’s ultrasonic descaler, breaking down adhesive bonds between the coating layer and the substrate. It is likely that the initial use of this technology will feed recycled materials straight back into the battery production line. This is a real step change moment in battery recycling.”

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