SeRoBatt: "Secondary Sources of Critical Raw Materials for Battery Cell Production - Potentials, Recovery, Resynthesis"

The research project aims to identify and utilize new sources of secondary raw materials for the production of battery cells. The focus here is on end-of-life (EoL) products that are not batteries. The project is developing suitable recycling processes for these EoL products in order to resynthesize the resulting materials into NMC active material and then integrate them into test cells. A final evaluation of the performance and an analysis of the limit values should provide information on the extent to which impurities can be tolerated.

At present, material cycles are not closed, which means that a considerable proportion of EoL products either end up in landfill sites or are exported abroad as scrap. This leads to the loss of valuable raw materials. At the same time, the new EU Battery Regulation is increasing the pressure on manufacturers to use a certain proportion of recycled materials in new batteries. However, there are not enough used batteries available on the recycling market and European recycling capacities are still being built up.

In a circular research approach, various EoL products containing lithium, nickel, manganese and cobalt are examined for their suitability for battery production using material and material flow analyses. The focus is particularly on glass ceramics, which represent the second largest group of lithium-containing products after lithium-ion batteries and for which there is currently no regulated material cycle.

An ecological and economic assessment is used to investigate the extent to which the recovery of these raw materials makes sense from this point of view. All steps along the value chain are also considered, from collection and dismantling to pre-treatment, recovery and resynthesis. The aim is to analyze the ecological and economic viability of a circular business model. The results are summarized in a “secondary raw materials map”, which also provides information on transferability to other material flows, optimization potential and regulatory gaps.

The work plan is divided into eight steps:

1. identification of significant EoL products through material and material flow analysis
2. procurement, dismantling and characterization of the selected material flows as input for mechanical processing
3. preparation of the EoL products for the lithium and NMC recovery processes by developing and testing product-specific mechanical processing concepts
4. lithium is recovered as lithium carbonate from Li-containing glass-ceramic powder
5. recovery of NMC materials through process development and implementation
6. evaluation of industrial transferability with regard to ecological and economic aspects
7. use of recyclates in active material synthesis and cell construction. Derivation of quality requirements for the metal salts and the production of new lithium-ion batteries by identifying a sensible proportion of recycled material
8. recording significant research results for industrial purposes

• RWTH Aachen – IME
• Münster Electrochemical Energy Technology (MEET) der Universität Münster
• FH Münster – IWARU
• Waste Management Specialist elorec
• Fraunhofer FFB