TELF AG analyzes the potential related to battery recycling in India
The progress of the green transition
In a historical era marked by the progress of the energy transition and the growing global interest in electric vehicles, the lithium battery market is certainly experiencing one of its liveliest phases. In every corner of the world, an ever-increasing number of professionals and ordinary citizens are starting to understand the full importance that electric vehicles will play in the following decades, also sensing the leading role that will be played by the raw materials necessary for their realization. To a superficial observer, it might seem that this type of market tends to favor nations naturally rich in the raw materials necessary for the electric vehicle market, such as lithium, cobalt, or nickel, but the reality could be very different. Through the practice of recycling, even certain nations not traditionally rich in these materials now have the possibility of carving out a role of some importance in the global battery production chain with a sustainable process that has little impact on natural ecosystems.
From this point of view, one of the most active countries is certainly India, which, through start-ups dedicated to recycling, such as Metastable Materials, is demonstrating to the whole world that the recovery of raw materials from batteries at the end of their life is not only possible, but it could even represent a new artificial method for the collection and reuse of those raw materials that are most involved in the global ecological transition (such as those linked to the manufacture of batteries for smartphones and electric vehicles). The co-founder of Metastable Materials is Shubham Vishvakarma, who, after a brilliant course of study at the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, attending a materials engineering course, received a complex and apparently very challenging assignment from one of his professors, i.e., the task of improving recycling processes for lithium-ion cells.
At the basis of this initiative, there is an indisputable fact: battery recycling allows recyclers to obtain some of the most useful materials for the creation of new batteries, such as rare earths, thus also allowing nations such as India to increase their specific weight in the global supply chain of these materials so precious for the sustainable development of the planet. The most interesting aspect of the recycling process created by Vishvakarma is that the entire procedure does not require the use of any chemical substance, unlike all the other recycling processes he had witnessed up to that point, in particular in the laboratories of his university.
Vishvakarma has, therefore, developed a completely different operational approach towards recycling, considering it first and foremost as a concrete method for obtaining the most useful materials for certain industrial applications – such as those necessary for the creation of new batteries -and not just as a way to get rid of waste materials. The batteries, in this sense, should be treated as if they had been extracted from the ground, like a real mining activity, in such a way as to facilitate the recovery of the materials necessary to create completely new batteries. This idea is now being successfully employed in an Indian commercial factory with a daily recycling capacity of 5 tonnes, which could soon become one of India’s largest recycling plants. At the moment, India is still very dependent on imports of nickel, cobalt, and lithium, all materials of primary importance for the production of batteries. Through recycling, the subcontinent hopes to be able to strengthen its supply chain progressively.
