With the growth of e-cars, an urgent problem arises: What happens to the old batteries of the cars? The industry is currently preparing for the return of the batteries.
Recycling is an important element in the sustainable management of lithium-ion batteries.
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With the growing number of electric cars, solar panels and wind turbines, the question of how to dispose of and recycle batteries and solar installations is also becoming increasingly important. Despite existing capacities, the German Environment Agency believes that the expansion of recycling capacities is necessary in order to be able to recycle the predicted quantities of waste. Recycling and the expansion of the circular economy are a key success factor in achieving climate targets. In this respect, Germany is already comparatively well positioned in a Europe-wide comparison.
According to the Battery Atlas of RWTH Aachen University, the recycling capacity for batteries in Germany in May 2024 was almost 115,000 tons. This puts Germany well ahead of other countries, such as the UK, which has a capacity of just under 29,000 tons. However, the capacities are still far from being exhausted. In Europe, around 17,000 tons of batteries from electric cars were recycled or reprocessed 2023, according to the researchers at RWTH Aachen University. However, this potential will increase significantly to around 290,000 tons in the next six years.
Waiting For The Used Electric Cars To Come Back
"The market is growing", says Lukas Brandl, one of the managing directors of BLC. The company, which is backed by Rhenus and TSR Automotive, opened a new fully automatic plant in Magdeburg in summer 2024 that can process up to 15,000 tons of batteries. Also near Magdeburg, the Canadian company Li-Cycle opened one of Europe's largest recycling plants for lithium-ion batteries (LIB) 2023. It will be able to process up to 30,000 tons. Recently, Mercedes-Benz also opened its own recycling plant in Kuppenheim in Baden-Württemberg – with a capacity of 2,500 tons.
According to the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI), proximity to battery material manufacturers, battery cell manufacturers or automobile manufacturers is a recognizable driver for the selection of recycling infrastructure locations. Numerous plants are planned from pilot projects or smaller plants with expansion stages. For the former, for example, Cylib or Tozero can be mentioned as start-ups close to universities. For the latter, already established companies such as Northvolt, SungEel HighTech and EcoBat can be mentioned, which would like to expand the recycling capacity of their sites by 2030 by more than 100 kt of processing capacity per year in some cases.
“The first e-cars have been on the road for twelve years, and 96 percent of them are still running,” says Brandl from BLC in Magdeburg. ‘The industry is currently preparing for the volumes to come back from the market.’ One challenge, in particular, is the variety of different battery types, because each manufacturer has its own concept. In some cases, vehicle manufacturers have up to 50 different battery types in their portfolio.
Sufficient Capacities So Far – Need for Ramp-up
The German Environment Agency estimates that capacities in Germany are currently sufficient for the near future. The efficiency of the facilities for lithium-containing used batteries is also good. The EU has recently set targets for battery recycling and stipulated that, for example, 50 % lithium and 80 % cobalt, copper, lead and nickel must be recovered as a minimum. This should further reduce the mining and use of raw materials. Lithium is considered a critical raw material by the EU.
The Fraunhofer ISI estimates that the recycling capacity for lithium-ion batteries in Europe will increase to 330,000 tons per year by 2026. A comparison of the planned recycling capacities with the forecasted return volumes of recycling batteries and production rejects (in 2026, the forecasted return volume is approximately 270,000 tons per year) indicates that the cumulative planned capacities in the coming years will exceed demand.
In summary, according to Fraunhofer ISI, it can be stated that the development and expansion of recycling plants for LIB recycling is "currently developing very dynamically and strong growth in both the required capacities and the number of plants is to be expected in the next few years", as it is put. With the expected return volume, actual recycling capacity and processing in Europe is expected to approach the input streams.
This is a partly automated translation of this German article.