Battery Recycling Summit 2023: Not yet a gold rush

Considering global electric vehicle (EV) sales numbers that have advanced solidly and policies designed to further boost those sales, accompanying upward pricing momentum in EV battery metals has not yet materialized as anticipated.

The state of EV battery metals recovery and pricing was addressed by several speakers at the Asia INTL Li-ion Battery Recycling Summit 2023, held in Singapore in early December, with general agreement that in 2023, the anticipated bonanza did not arrive.

At the event, Leah Chen, a Singapore-based editor with S&P Global Commodity Insights, offered perspective into its recently introduced black mass pricing service.

S&P’s definition of black mass has the recycled-content mixed material grade including on average about 31 percent cathode active material (CAM, which includes lithium, nickel and cobalt), 22 percent anode material (which is heavy on graphite), 17 percent copper, 8 percent aluminum and 3 percent plastic.

In the current market, she cited battery production scrap as one predominant source of black mass and hydrometallurgical recycling methods as the other. Pyrometallurgical recycling of lithium-ion batteries involves smelting at a temperature that makes it difficult to harvest the lithium.

The company introduced four black mass pricing assessments earlier this year, with Chen saying companies having an interest in indexed pricing include North American and European battery recyclers like LiCycle, Glencore and Ecobat and China-based firms including Brump and Huayou Cobalt.

Compared with mined materials and primary metals, the black mass market is small currently and will take time to grow, Chen said, pointing to forecasts that have recycled-content nickel comprising from just 3 percent to 9 percent of nickel used in batteries produced in 2030.

The percentages for lithium and cobalt could be higher, she added, and in all cases, those “numbers are expected to keep increasing in the years ahead.”

Thus far, she said, recycled-content battery materials have not fetched a premium, and in most supply-demand markets, recycled materials are usually priced at a discount, even though chemically, it’s the same thing.

Batteries harvested from EVs are generally finding reuse and repurposing markets, other presenters at the summit noted, with Hans Eric Melin of Germany-based Circular Energy Storage Research and Consulting saying, “If you look at the black mass price, it is much, much lower [that what a recycler] would get for reuse.”

Research summarized by Park Jaebum of the South Korea-based Posco Research Institute said if the world follow’s China’s lead, in may need to pay greater attention to lithium-ion phosphate (LFP) battery recycling.

In the early days of hybrid and EV batteries in 2005, Park said, lithium-ion batteries containing cobalt (LCO) had 93 percent global market share, followed by 3 percent for emerging nickel-cadmium-manganese (NCM) batteries and just 2 percent for LFP batteries.

By 2021, however, the NCM configuration had leapt to 62 percent market share while LCO had dropped to just an 8 percent share. LFP batteries, however, have maintained a niche, growing to have 12 percent market share by 2021.

Regarding LFP EV battery growth, Park said China was responsible for 58 percent of it, and automakers and battery producers there continue to pursue improvements in LFP technology.

While the now market-leading NCM configuration has been the predominant beneficiary of EV growth in the past 18 years, Park warned: “Market share does not last forever.”

Posco Research’s forecast for 2050 has LFP rising to 32 percent market share by then, while the remaining 68 percent will be split between NCM and emerging lithium-nickel-cobalt-aluminum oxide (NCA) battery configurations.

While such technology shifts pose potential problems, on a more optimistic note, Park predicted that by 2060, 80 percent of battery metals globally will be produced via recycling methods.

The Asia INTL Li-ion Battery Recycling Summit 2023 was organized by Shanghai-based Global Decision Maker Management Consulting Ltd. and took place at the Crowne Plaza Changi Airport in Singapore in early December.