RELOAD: Recycled lithium ion battery anode materials for high value products

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The demand for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) has increased exponentially since their inception. Although they were initially applied into portable electronics, the last decade has witnessed an increasing use of LIBs into EVs given their high specific capacity, high energy density, and impressive cycling performance over conventional secondary batteries.The development of LIBs is threatened by the increasing cost and limited reserves of virgin materials used in the battery industry. This vast demand of LIB's entails great challenges related to the exhaustion of non-renewable resources and the management of spent batteries. The recovery/recycling of LIBs has been mainly concentrated on the most economically valuable materials, that is, cobalt, lithium, nickel, manganese, copper, and aluminium. However, the commercial breakthrough of LIBs resulted in the inclusion of materials with lower added value, such as natural graphite, in the 2020 list of the European Union (EU) of critical raw materials (CRMs), leaving no doubt that the supply chain of natural graphite is also at risk.This considerable amount of solid waste containing heavy metals, toxic and flammable electrolytes, and diverse organic matters will require extensive landfill resources and could threaten human health and the ecological environment if not handled properly. Indeed, spent batteries are the fastest growing type of waste electrical and electronic equipment. In line with the Circular Economy principles aiming at reintroducing end-of-life materials back into the economic cycle, the recycling and reuse of spent graphite from batteries are an urgent task.Talga intends to carry out a feasibility study to evaluate the reuse the spent graphite anode material to produce high surface area graphite and graphene like materials.The study will therefore evaluate potential commercial benefits by developing a business case for Talga to further invest in this concept of using waste/spent materials for high value applications using its available technical know-how.