Electric vehicle batteries are typically recycled by breaking them down with heat or strong chemicals. But new research shows that recycling does not have to begin with destruction.
In this conversation, Dr Wenjia Du explains how his team demonstrated a method for regenerating battery components without breaking them apart, and why that could make battery recycling cleaner, faster and more affordable
What is the typical lifespan of an electric vehicle battery?
Electric vehicle batteries are generally designed to last many years. In practice, they are often removed after around eight to ten years of use, depending on how the car is driven and used.
It similar to an ageing phone battery. As your phone battery gets older, it still holds energy, but you may need to charge it more often. The same principle applies to electric vehicle batteries.
When batteries are retired, they usually still retain a large proportion of their original capacity, often around 70–80%, and in some cases up to 90%. The battery still contains usable material, it simply isn’t performing at the level required for a vehicle.
How are electric vehicle batteries typically recycled today?
The conventional route begins by shredding the battery into a mixed powder known as “black mass”. This powder contains graphite, lithium and other metals all blended together. After shredding, the material usually goes through one of two processes. It is either treated at very high temperatures, often above 1000 degrees Celsius, or processed using strong acids to separate and recover valuable elements. It is an effective way to recover metals, but it is also lengthy, energy-intensive and expensive. This is why we urgently need a sustainable way of recycling.
What did you do differently?
Instead of shredding the battery into powder, we kept the electrode sheets intact after opening a used EV battery and washed them using purified water and a mild vitamin C solution, removing built-up residues while preserving the material’s original structure. By regenerating the whole electrode system rather than separating it into components, we were able to bypass several energy-intensive steps and avoid breaking down something that was still in good condition.
How effective was this approach in practice?
The really exciting part is how well the regenerated materials performed in laboratory testing. In some early tests, the regenerated graphite held slightly more charge than new material under the same conditions, even without high-temperature treatment. The washing stage takes minutes rather than days. Of course, this is proof-of-concept work, but it shows that materials taken from used batteries can be regenerated without being destroyed and cross-contaminated.
What could this mean for the future of battery recycling?
If we can make this work beyond the lab, it could significantly reduce the amount of material that is unnecessarily discarded. Over time, that could make recycling more efficient and potentially less costly, both environmentally and economically.
What are the next steps for you and your team?
There is still a lot we do not fully understand about what happens during the washing process. We know that it works, but we want to look more closely at what is happening at the surface of the material as it is cleaned.
One of the next steps is to use more advanced imaging techniques to watch the process in greater detail. The more we understand, the better we can refine and improve it. This work is another milestone conducted by our group in collaboration with Professor Paul Anderson (University of Birmingham). Taken together, these advances point towards a future where batteries can be quickly evaluated, intelligently reused, and recycled more efficiently when needed.
While there is still much to do before that vision becomes reality, the pieces are beginning to come together.
This opinion piece reflects the views of the author, and does not necessarily reflect the position of the Oxford Martin School or the University of Oxford. Any errors or omissions are those of the author.