“Spent batteries need different recycling methods, too” ... Korea University proposes criteria for the “optimal process” based on raw-material prices

[Financial News] As the spread of electric vehicles drives growth in the spent-battery recycling market, quantitative criteria have emerged for choosing the most profitable recycling method based on battery composition and fluctuations in raw-material prices.
A team led by Professor Won Wang-yeon of Korea University’s Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering said on the 21st that it had established criteria for evaluating the economic and environmental performance of different recycling methods for different types of spent batteries, enabling the selection of an optimal recycling process.
Spent batteries used in electric vehicles come in various types, including nickel-cobalt-manganese (NMC), lithium-cobalt (LCO), and lithium-manganese (LMO). The research team combined these battery types with three recycling technologies—thermal treatment, wet processing, and solvent-based processing—and conducted a detailed comparison of nine process scenarios in total.
The analysis found that under typical market conditions, a thermal-treatment-based process that uses heat to melt material and extract metals was the most economical, with the lowest environmentally adjusted minimum selling price (e-MSP), a break-even price. However, if market prices for recovered metals such as nickel and cobalt fell by 50%, the wet process, which uses water or chemicals, had the lowest e-MSP. In other words, the optimal recycling method for avoiding losses changes with raw-material prices.
The study also found cases where economic viability and environmental performance did not align. For LCO batteries, the solvent-based process cost more than the wet process and was therefore less economical, but it produced lower greenhouse gas emissions.
Professor Won Wang-yeon said, “In recycling spent batteries, it is important not only to achieve high metal recovery rates but also to determine which process should be used to recover the metals in a battery in order to achieve both economic viability and environmental performance.” He added, “This study provides quantitative criteria that can be used in industry to select recycling processes and assess future scale-up and commercial viability.”
The findings were published online in the international journal Environmental Impact Assessment Review. The research was supported by the Global C.L.E.A.N. program of the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF), under the Ministry of Science and ICT, and an R&D program of the Korea Agency for Infrastructure Technology Advancement under the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.

[email protected] Kim Man-gi Reporter