NyBat – new batteries from recycled material
Martina Petranikova
Chalmers University of Technology
Battery recycling will be a key toll in the transition to electric vehicles, by reducing the environmental impact of producing batteries on a large scale. Re-use of the materials from batteries will be a major part of a circular battery flow and will reduce the need for mining, transportation, and production of cathodes from primary resources. It has been verified that hydrometallurgical methods for recycling of batteries (NMC) allow to recover metals with sufficient purity to directly produce new cells with up to 100% of recycled content. A comparison of cathodes from recycled and virgin metal salts has been performed via extensive cycling and aging simulating the life of a car battery. Recycled cells exhibited the same battery performance as cathodes made from the primary resources. This study is one of the first published that uses industrial recycling (Northvolt) and includes long-time cycling (Volvo Cars) to study if the properties are affected by the use of recycled cathodes.