The surge in electric vehicles has brought with it a growing pile of retired lithium-ion batteries that are difficult and costly to recycle.<\/p>\n
While these batteries still contain valuable metals like nickel, cobalt, and lithium, most recycling techniques destroy the very structure that made them efficient in the first place.<\/p>\n
A team from Huazhong University of Science and Technology now claims to have found a better way that restores, rather than rebuilds, the material inside.<\/p>\n
Their molten salt-based method directly regenerates degraded battery cathodes, allowing them to recover their performance and structure with minimal waste.<\/p>\n
Traditional recycling usually extracts metals from spent batteries through chemical or thermal processes. <\/p>\n
The metals can then be reused, but the intricate atomic arrangement that once enabled high-energy storage is lost in the process.<\/p>\n
\u201cTraditional recycling can recover metals, but it cannot bring back the original atomic structure of the material,\u201d said corresponding author Yang Yang. <\/p>\n
\u201cOur method allows the degraded cathode to be reborn, regaining its crystal order and high capacity.\u201d<\/p>\n
The researchers focused on a material known as NCM811, or LiNi\u2080.\u2088Co\u2080.\u2081Mn\u2080.\u2081O\u2082, a staple in modern electric vehicle batteries due to its high energy density.<\/p>\n
Over years of charging and discharging, NCM811 loses lithium and develops defects that weaken its performance.<\/p>\n
To counter this, the team used a ternary molten salt made of lithium hydroxide, lithium nitrate, and lithium salicylate. <\/p>\n
When heated, the molten salt turns into a liquid medium that allows lithium ions to flow freely.<\/p>\n
These ions penetrate the damaged material, repairing defects while helping atoms return to their original, ordered structure.<\/p>\n
Restored structure and performance<\/p>\n
Microscopic analysis revealed that the repaired cathodes regained a uniform, single-crystal structure, with the unwanted \u201crock salt\u201d surface layer completely removed.<\/p>\n
The rejuvenated material showed an initial discharge capacity of 196 milliamp hours per gram and retained 76 percent of that capacity after 200 charge\u2013discharge cycles, surpassing most current recycling results.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis process effectively heals the internal and surface damage of the cathode material,\u201d said first author Fangshu He. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt not only replaces the lost lithium but also restores the ordered layered structure that is key to long battery life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because the molten salt process works at lower temperatures and avoids harsh acids or toxic solvents, it significantly reduces both energy use and environmental impact. <\/p>\n
The team says this approach could form the foundation for a closed-loop system in which used batteries are directly converted into high-quality materials for new ones.<\/p>\n
Toward scalable green recycling<\/p>\n
The researchers acknowledge that their work is still in the laboratory stage.<\/p>\n
They plan to optimize the process for industrial-scale production and conduct a full life-cycle analysis to assess environmental performance and cost-effectiveness.<\/p>\n
If scaled successfully, the molten salt<\/a> method could help address one of the biggest sustainability challenges in electric mobility of what to do with used batteries<\/a>.<\/p>\n By reviving old cathodes instead of breaking them apart, the process could make battery recycling both cleaner and more circular.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The surge in electric vehicles has brought with it a growing pile of retired lithium-ion batteries that are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252533,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[25433,49,48,117796,8986,28190,295,25436,117797,3489,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-252532","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-battery-recycling","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-cathode-regeneration","12":"tag-electric-vehicles","13":"tag-energy-storage","14":"tag-environment","15":"tag-lithium-ion-batteries","16":"tag-molten-salt","17":"tag-recycling","18":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}