BCMRC 2025 session preview: Battery identification and sorting for safe disposal

At the upcoming Battery and Critical Metals Recycling Conference, June 9-10 in Nashville, Tennessee, industry leaders will come together to discuss one of the most pressing safety and operational challenges facing recycling facilities today: the identification and removal of batteries from recycling streams.

During Battery Identification and Sorting for Safe Disposal, June 10 from 9:45-10:45 a.m. CT, Jordan Vexler, CEO of Monterrey Metal Recycling Solutions, San Antonio; Edel Rodriguez, vice president of sales at Steinert, Germany; Raghav Mecheri, CEO of Visia, New York; Jeff Snyder, senior vice president of recycling and sustainability at Rumpke Waste & Recycling, Cincinnati; and Felix Hottenstein, sales director at MSS Optical Sorters, Nashville, Tennessee, will share best practices and technological advancements for identifying various battery types and sizes, understanding their labels and sorting them from different recycling streams for safe disposal.

Ahead of the event, Recycling Today spoke with some of the panelists to highlight the topics and insights they’ll be exploring during their session.

Recycling Today (RT): What challenges do operators face with identifying batteries in their incoming material?

Jordan Vexler (JV): All end-of-life facilities, such as material recovery facilities (MRFs), metal recycling entities (MREs) and solid waste facilities, fear the volatility of certain battery types and the risk of fire they pose. While technology to identify batteries in material streams does exist, only three out of the 370 MRFs nationwide have implemented such systems to date.

This session will feature insights from two operators on the risks batteries pose and the challenges of integrating detection technologies in MRFs and MREs. Additionally, three companies with distinct sensor-based detection methods will present their solutions, offering a comprehensive view of current capabilities and industry challenges.

RT: What are the challenges in integrating battery sorting technology into existing operations?

JV: Safety, efficiency and flow are always top concerns for operators when integrating new equipment. Key questions include: Where can scanning take place? When a battery is detected, how can it be removed most safely and efficiently? What technologies exist to scan material at the scale or tipping floor before processing or post-processing and sorting? This session will explore the challenges and advantages of integrating various technologies at end-of-life facilities and examine their limited adoption to date.

RT: What are some current solutions for battery identification and sorting that will be discussed in this session? 

Felix Hottenstein: MSS offers Vivid AI, an artificial intelligence-based sensor sorting solution for the effective detection and separation of potentially harmful and hazardous batteries in electronic and metal scrap processing facilities. On the extraction side, MSS offers robotic as well as air jet-based systems. Not only does Vivid AI identify and sort, but it also monitors material composition at unprecedented levels of granularity, including valuable commodities such as central processing units (CPUs), random access memory (RAM) chips, etc., which is simply not possible with conventional sensor solutions. The relatively reasonable price level of Vivid AI allows you to integrate it at various places throughout your facility to capture batteries at various stages and streams—small or large size, light or heavy fraction and final commodity streams.

Raghav Mecheri: Visia is the recycling industry’s only multi-sensor artificial intelligence platform, powering advanced detection technologies to analyze material through burden depth, identify hazards and deliver real-time, actionable composition intelligence for more efficient operations. Through a combination of X-ray and camera modules, Visia gives processors complete visibility into their inbound material stream, helping automate operations, prevent battery fires and keep pace with increasingly complex waste streams.

Edel Rodriguez: Steinert offers multiple solutions for both MRFs and battery sorting facilities. For MRFs, the tip floor solution combines magnets and X-ray sensor sorting, while the battery sorting facility system utilizes an advanced X-ray sorter integrated with cameras and sensors to achieve high-quality material separation. Steinert, in collaboration with a supplier partner, also has developed an in-truck scanning system capable of detecting batteries before materials reach the facility. This allows haulers to divert the load, dump it outside the tip floor and run it through Steinert’s X-ray sorter to safely remove hazards before they enter the sorting process.

RT: How can these advanced technologies contribute to operational safety?

JV: Identifying batteries prior to processing would enable end-of-life facilities to remove them from feedstock and allow for isolation and storage for proper recycling or disposal.

RT: What are the potential economic benefits of implementing battery sorting technology into operations?

JV: I envision a future where full truck scanning is completed at local and regional hubs prior to vehicles arriving at end-of-life facilities. Trucks would be required to be certified as free of batteries and other prohibited materials. If such a service and infrastructure were achievable, it could significantly reduce losses across industries and potentially lower insurance costs.

Additionally, end-of-life facilities throughout the country are already making substantial investments in fire prevention practices due to the increased flow of batteries. There also should be a value-add to collecting batteries that have critical minerals for recapture.

RT: What can attendees expect to learn from this session?

JV: Attendees can expect to learn how real the opportunity is to use technology to identify and extract batteries from feedstock, how existing technology can work with existing process flows at end-of-life facilities and what operational risks are generated by the practice of successfully identifying and removing batteries from feedstock.