The patent for recycling lithium batteries is Italian. The study begun in 2014 by Cnr and Cobat is within a whisker of its goal: recovering used batteries from smartphones and electric cars will soon be a reality.
Five years after the start of the trials, there is a possible answer to the question "how will we dispose of spent batteries?" — and it is entirely Italian. It was 2014 when…: "Lithium battery recycling starts in Italy. Taking up this challenge will be Iccom, the Institute of Chemistry of Organometallic Compounds of the Cnr, and Cobat, the National Consortium for Collection and Recycling. The aim is to find a reliable, eco-sustainable technology for treating this now extremely widespread type of battery, found in portable electronic devices (smartphones, tablets, PCs) and electric cars." Five years on, according to the first reports, we have arrived: with the filing of the European patent, the end-of-life of lithium batteries has reached a turning point — an entirely Italian one.
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The issue has been debated for years: the electric car alone is not enough, at least if we truly want to make mobility sustainable. At least two conditions are necessary: energy for charging must come from renewable sources, and serious thought must be given, from the outset, to the fate of batteries — in particular the lithium, nickel, cobalt and manganese they contain. That is why the news arriving in recent days from the Cnr Iccom Institute — the Institute of Chemistry of Organometallic Compounds in Florence — is particularly encouraging. Officially launched in 2014, the feasibility study to identify a process for treating and recycling spent lithium accumulators has reached an important milestone. The project to recover the metals and components contained in batteries, transforming them into resources, is on the verge of becoming reality, with the filing of the European patent and other partial patents relating to the individual stages of the process. In short, if, in addition to those powering electric vehicles, the batteries in all lithium-battery-powered devices — such as smartphones and laptops — are also recycled, it will be an entirely Italian achievement. Naturally, the rest of the world is also in the race, and recently the American company American Manganese Inc. announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted a patent for its technology for recycling cathode materials from lithium-ion batteries.
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Today, recycling lithium relies on pyrolysis: a high-temperature process that melts the various metals, allowing them to be recovered. The side effect is the toxic gases emitted. The Cnr system, tested in the laboratory, instead involves treating the components of the so-called "black mass" (the electrochemically active part of the accumulators) at low temperature. The environmental impact of the process is therefore reduced, allowing all elements of the battery to be separated (plastics, electrical circuits, copper and aluminium collectors) and, subsequently, the active metals to be recovered through acid leaching, then separated by selective precipitation and extraction.
But where do spent batteries end up today? At present, lithium batteries in Europe largely end up in Germany, where there are several operators who, however, use processes that are unable to properly recover the materials contained in the aforementioned black mass: they limit themselves to recovering cobalt and nickel, not lithium and manganese. The situation is better in South Korea, the Philippines and China, because thanks to appropriate processes developed in China, all materials are extracted correctly.
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According to estimates by Cnr Iccom researchers, recycling spent batteries today costs between 4,000 and 6,000 euros per tonne. In other words, at current raw material prices, recycling is not economically sustainable. The break-even point? It is considerably lower, in the order of one thousand euros per tonne. Whether this figure is achievable thanks to the Made in Italy process, we will only find out once the pilot project to verify the possibilities of its industrialisation is carried out; it seems that a possible industrial partner is to be announced shortly. "We want to give a response today to the environmental challenge of the future," Giancarlo Morandi, president of Cobat, had declared five years ago. Today, that dream has (almost) become reality.