Recycling

Material Recovery: Key Approaches

Physical Pre-treatment

Hydrometallurgy

Discharging, shredding, and separation

Acid/alkaline leaching of black mass selective separation via:

Solvent Extraction

Precipitation

Ion exchange

Recovery of:

Cu & Al foils

Black mass Li-Ni-Co-Mn rich fraction)

Graphite

Recovers Li, Ni, Co, Mn with high purity Most widely adopted industrial route

Pyrometallurgy High-temperature smelting 1200 °C Recovers: Ni, Co, Cu (alloy phase) Limitations: Lithium mostly lost to slag High energy consumption Limited compositional control

Source: 1 Asad ali et al, j.jenvman. 2025, 391, 126512; 2 Xiaotu Ma et al, Nat. Rev. Clean Technol. 2025, 1, 7594; 3 BK Biswal et al, Chem. Soc. Rev., 2024, 53, 55525592.

Direct Regeneration Preserves cathode crystal structure Re-lithiation and surface reconstruction Benefits:

Lower energy input

Higher value retention Challenges:

Feedstock variability

Process scalability

Extracted from the PDF; charts and images may read imperfectly.