Recycling of Li‑Ion and Lead Acid Batteries: A Review

Abstract

The rapid shift toward producing and using clean energy to
replace fossil fuels has increased the need for batteries. Batteries have
become an integral part in energy storage applications due to their
increased demand in electric vehicles, consumer electronics, and grid
scale storage. As the demand and usage of batteries increase, it is
desired to study their recyclability to reduce the environmental impact.
Among the available batteries, lithium ion (Li-ion) and lead acid (LA) bat‑
teries have the dominant market share. This review paper focuses on the
need to adopt a circular economy with effective recycling of batteries.
Furthermore, the state-of-the-art processes to recycle batteries and chal‑
lenges faced by companies to recycle Li-ion and LA batteries are dis‑
cussed. It is found that the recyclability of Li-ion batteries is<1% and the
process is still not effcient to recover Li for reuse in battery applications.
LA batteries are now recycled with more than 99% effciency in the USA
and EU because of factors such as separation at the source, availability
of methods to economically recover materials and regulations support‑
ing recycling. Novel recycling techniques are being developed for effec‑
tive recycling of Li-ion batteries