EV battery recycling the key to long-term sustainable e-mobility

Attero recycling plant in Roorkee

India’s booming EV market is in dire need of a ballast of sorts that’ll help manage its energy needs in the coming years. This means that along with scaling up production of lithium-ion battery cells, something India is yet to do. (seems incomplete.) But with multiple EV battery gigafactories in the works, we need a robust battery recycling ecosystem – EV batteries will soon be the single largest producer of battery waste. Across the globe, EV battery recycling has become the need of the hour for a variety of reasons.

For starters, the process of mining essential battery materials like lithium carbonate, cobalt and nickel is extremely carbon and water-intensive – the latter being the primary reason behind the drying-up of the "lithium triangle" formed by countries like Bolivia, Chile and Argentina – three countries with the largest lithium reserves. But there are other pressing factors as well.

According to Nitin Gupta, the Co-founder and CEO of Attero, a Noida-based battery recycling start-up, the limited nature of lithium as a resource isn’t the biggest concern for EV makers. “The time it takes for a mine to get prospected to the time it can actually deliver the metals required is somewhere between five to seven years”. Still, the environmental cost of over-mining lithium continues to be the biggest concern. "To mine one tonne of lithium carbonate you need half a million gallons of water," says Gupta.

Geopolitical factors at play

While less water and carbon-intensive lithium mining processes are being worked on, it won’t do much to lessen the stranglehold that China has on the lithium refining process – the other major reason to set up a strong recycling base, on a war footing. "More than 80 percent of battery-grade lithium carbonate or lithium hydroxide comes from China. From a China dependence perspective, globally the regulators are creating policies to incentivise the domestication or disincentivise the import from China."

Strong legislative frameworks incentivising battery recycling do appear to be emerging. Earlier this year, the United States launched the Inflation Reduction Act which deems every battery recycled in the US as American-made regardless of its point of origin, therefore making it eligible for the same incentives as locally-made batteries.

India too, updated its Battery Waste Management Rules in 2022 obligating OEMs to sign-up with government-registered recyclers who in turn will provide them with a certificate that makes OEMs responsible for their battery waste. Under the aegis of the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), producers of battery packs will be responsible for their battery waste.

Brands like Ather Energy and MG Motors have already been granted five-year certificates during which they’re required to tie up with or set up a proper recycling apparatus. When it comes to the essential minerals and materials required to create EV batteries, India isn’t particularly resource-rich, despite the discovery of at least two lithium reserves in recent times. According to Vikrant Singh, Co-founder and CEO of BatX Energies, discovering a lithium reserve does not automatically translate to battery-grade lithium.

"As someone who is a member of the board that’s responsible for extracting lithium in Jammu & Kashmir, I can tell you, most of it is in rock form and available only as brine with very little in terms of usable lithium. Every kilogram of that rock has only 10 gm of lithium. Even if we can use any of this lithium commercially, it’ll take 7-8 years. By 2030, most EVs on Indian roads will have reached the end of their first life cycle. If not recycled locally, they will most likely be exported and refined only to become a resource for another country. Singh adds that by 2030, India’s EV battery usage requirements will have surpassed 100 gWh. But a strong recycling ecosystem would mean that 50-60 percent of demand, over time, can be met via recycling.

How it works

According to Gupta, 70 per cent of global battery waste is created at the manufacturing level with only 30 per cent coming from end-of-life batteries. This puts India at a very nascent stage of recycling since it does not produce any of its lithium-ion battery cells. “Globally, there are roughly one million tonnes of battery waste, out of which 70 percent is produced during the manufacturing stage”. However, Gupta claims that Attero’s commercial recycling plant is ahead of the curve. “We recycle all kinds of battery technologies. From consumer electronics to energy storage and, of course, EV batteries. Most competitors are only focussed on recycling high cobalt and high nickel content batteries '.

Given the absence of battery cell manufacturing, and therefore, battery cell manufacturing waste in India, Gupta attests that Attero’s e-waste comes from multiple sources. “About 40 percent of our energy waste comes from ESS (energy storage solutions), another 40 percent from end-of-life EV battery packs (predominantly those from electric two-wheelers) and another 20 percent from consumer electronic battery packs. This isn’t the case when it comes to Attero’s international plants. “The commercial battery recycling plants we’re setting up in Poland and the US will predominantly recycle e-waste generated during the manufacturing stage”. Recycling start-ups like BatX presently import battery waste given that India doesn’t produce any.

Is lithium infinitely recyclable? It is, according to Suhas Rajkumar, the Co-founder of Simple Energy – a Bengaluru-based e2W start-up. “Lithium can be recycled, just like nickel and cobalt, infinitely without performance loss”.

Highest yield for lowest cost

This appears to be the prevailing formula to make EV battery recycling profitable. Gupta claims that Attero is the only commercial battery recycling plant in the country that can extract 98 percent pure battery grade output from specific battery chemistries, but the global norm is around 70 percent. The road to profitability for something as capital-intensive as setting up a battery recycling plant is directly related to how much battery-grade material you can extract from it. Gupta however, contends that it’s not hard to attract capital. But breaking even depends entirely on how many battery chemistries a commercial plant can successfully recycle.

Essential building blocks of a circular economy

How a circular economy works is simple. First, battery manufacturers import lithium-ion cells from cell manufacturers. Following this battery packs are manufactured and supplied to OEMs. Once a vehicle’s battery pack has reached the end of its life cycle it goes to a recycler where its dismantled and essential materials like cobalt, lithium, and nickel are extracted and then, eventually find their way back to the cell manufacturers.

According to BatX’s Vikrant Singh, “The basic problem for India is that because we don’t manufacture the cells we don’t have a supply chain infrastructure. Today if I’m extracting coal, nickel, manganese – on a commercial scale, there’s no consumption of these materials in this country, so it must be exported. And because there’s no cell manufacturing, scrap dealing isn’t organised.”

While the Battery Waste Management Rules dictate that the level of recycling materials used by OEMs steadily rises by 10 percent every year, Rajkumar believes that it is an unrealistic target. According to Singh, the recycled material use required by OEMS should reach 90 percent by 2028, Rajkumar contends that they will realistically reach 30 percent by then.

Challenges that lie ahead

According to Singh, “India will cross the 100 gWh mark of battery production and battery usage by 2030”. While the new Battery Waste Management Rules have organised what was a fairly unregulated space in the past, Singh believes that the right incentives are yet to be put in place. “Grants should be based on production-linked incentives. Because the big players are utilising these grants and other smaller ones are not able to reach that level. A PLI would enable recycling to have more impact since it will go to those who produce the most.” According to Gupta, a PLI aimed at recyclers is in the works.

“So this way the Govt has regulated recyclers to do actual recycling rather than doing second trading. Earlier, it was unregulated so scrap dealers were reselling battery packs of consumer electronic goods. Or selling different parts to the second-hand market. But now real scale recycling is emerging because of policies. There is another angle that hasn’t been looked at, according to Singh. “We also need to collaborate more with other countries. Compared to China alone, we refine only 2 percent of lithium-ion battery materials. Refining of these critical materials is almost nil.”

Gupta paints a brighter picture. “Battery recycling and gigafactories go hand-in-hand. There are PLI schemes for setting up gigafactories. In parallel, there’s also a discussion as far as we are aware of a PLI scheme for battery recycling as well – expecting it to come in soon. That will ensure that there’s an incentive for creating more capacity for battery recycling and setting up a circular economy.”

Truly sustainable and emission-free mobility will require a multi-pronged approach. For one, batteries will be designed to last longer, and not just provide more charge. On the OEM front, Rajkumar agrees, “Earlier you had EV batteries which could not last more than two to three years. Now the average warranty period is six to eight years, and batteries, if used with care, can last even longer”. Gupta also sheds some light on this “The other one is, can we increase the lifespan of the battery by taking away the electrolyte.” But it will never take away the need to recycle, because batteries will always have a limited lifespan, no matter how durable. The second step is to ensure that the mining process is less carbon-intensive, something companies are already working on. But a battery-powered world of private and commercial transport simply cannot exist without a fortified recycling apparatus.