Utilizing Industrial Wastes for Low-Cost Battery Cathode Production-Mozees 

Funded by the Research Council of Norway.

This pre-project, funded by the FME MoZEES, explored the potential of applying direct lithium extraction (DLE) technologies to recycling streams from electric vehicle lithium-ion batteries. The research was carried out mainly at the Particle Engineering Centre within the Department of Chemical Engineering at Norwegian University of Science and Technology, in close collaboration with Norsk Hydro and Equinor. The project aimed to identify sustainable processing steps that could enhance the recovery of valuable materials from battery waste.

With global demand for lithium rising rapidly, efficient recycling has become increasingly important to secure future supply and to meet evolving policy requirements in Europe that call for higher lithium recovery rates from end-of-life batteries. Instead of developing entirely new technologies, the project assessed how existing DLE methods, widely used in primary lithium production, could be adapted for battery recycling.

A key part of the work was comparing pretreatment routes for spent LIBs before DLE. Four options were assessed, including combinations of dry and wet crushing, pyrolysis of whole cells or modules, and froth flotation. The study identified that pyrolyzing whole cells followed by dry crushing and flotation minimized lithium losses, largely by preserving electrode material and enabling efficient leaching of lithium from the processed black mass.

The project also reviewed a range of DLE technologies—such as solvent extraction, adsorption and ion exchange sorbents, membranes, and electrochemical separation—rating them against technical criteria and recommending specific approaches based on lithium concentration in feed streams.

While the analysis was literature-based, the outcome highlighted promising pathways and underscored the importance of experimental validation of selected DLE methods for different stages of the recycling process.