Recycling of Lithium-Ion Batteries with Novel Solvents

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are used in many products like electronics, toys, and electric vehicles.

LIBs will play an important role in the energy transition but will cause health and environment problems if not recycled properly at the end of their life cycle.

Currently, only 5% of all LIBs are recycled due to technical and economic difficulties, which means that millions of tons of spent batteries including the critical raw materials are wasted.

In this project, we will investigate novel solvents like supercritical CO2 and crown ether mixtures for efficient recycling of LIBs.