Battery waste to anode-grade graphite: Pioneering sustainable recycling solutions
Garima Jain
Vianode
Keeping in mind the rising need for reducing carbon footprint, recycling becomes paramount. Graphite both natural as well as synthetic has been added to the EU’s critical raw material list. It constitutes a major part (around 20%) of the batteries as anode material. Therefore, large amount of anode waste is being produced that contains hazardous materials such as metallic impurities, electrolyte, binders, and organics. This needs to be treated and converted back to the useful resources otherwise it would be detrimental to the environment.
Vianode is an advanced battery material company providing sustainable anode graphite solutions for battery and EV value chains. Vianode’s technology to produce synthetic graphite generates only 2 CO2/kg per graphite/kg, i.e. 90% reduction in CO2 emissions compared to the traditional method that creates around 20 CO2/kg per graphite/kg. Moreover, Vianode has also developed a unique method to recycle graphite concentrate from end-of-life batteries and the production scrap back to the highquality anode grade graphite. The electrochemical performance of the recycled graphite is similar to the pristine synthetic graphite. This concludes that the recycled anode-grade graphite must be accepted by the battery producers and help in saving the environment.