Recycling of Li-Ion and Lead Acid Batteries: A Review

The rapid shift toward producing and using clean energy to replace fossil fuels has increased the need for batteries. Batteries have become an integral part in energy storage applications due to their increased demand in electric vehicles, consumer electronics, and grid scale storage. As the demand and usage of batteries increase, it is desired to study their recyclability to reduce the environmental impact. Among the available batteries, lithium ion (Li-ion) and lead acid (LA) batteries have the dominant market share. This review paper focuses on the need to adopt a circular economy with effective recycling of batteries. Furthermore, the state-of-the-art processes to recycle batteries and challenges faced by companies to recycle Li-ion and LA batteries are discussed. It is found that the recyclability of Li-ion batteries is < 1% and the process is still not efficient to recover Li for reuse in battery applications. LA batteries are now recycled with more than 99% efficiency in the USA and EU because of factors such as separation at the source, availability of methods to economically recover materials and regulations supporting recycling. Novel recycling techniques are being developed for effective recycling of Li-ion batteries.