3 in 1 battery recycling technique recovers 95 percent of Lithium

Researchers have developed a battery recycling technique that recovers 95% of the battery’s lithium using only carbon dioxide and water. The process also captures CO2 and converts the leftover metals into useful catalysts for other green energy technologies.

The team, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Beijing Institute of Technology, published their three-in-one strategy in Nature Communications.

Spent batteries are a problem. Battery recycling rates are low, and most batteries pile up in landfills or sit around in our houses, wasting all the valuable metals and other materials in them. The world is expected to have about 381 million metric tons of spent batteries by 2050.

In landfills, batteries can leach toxic metals and harmful chemicals into soil and water. Plus, mining the metals needed for batteries also bears a significant environmental footprint, including water consumption to carbon emissions.

Recycling batteries would help solve the environmental impact of lithium-ion batteries. But traditional recycling techniques are energy-intensive or require harsh chemicals. Many researchers are trying to develop better recycling techniques that use less energy and harmless chemicals.

The team in China first ground battery parts into a fine powder in a high-energy ball mill. Then they added a pressurized mix of CO2 and water. The CO₂ reacts with water to form carbonic acid, a very weak acid. The acid reacts with lithium in the battery cathode, the positive electrode of the device, and forms lithium bicarbonate. The process extracts 95% of the lithium out of the battery cathode.

“Conducted under ambient conditions without additional grinding aids or leaching reagents, this method minimizes environmental impact,” the team writes in the paper.

The cathode also typically contains cobalt, manganese, and nickel. The researchers found that the grinding process changes the molecular structure of these leftover metals, transforming them useful catalysts for producing green hydrogen fuel. The researchers show that these catalysts perform stably for over 200 hours of operation.

“This approach not only provides an efficient pathway for lithium recovery but also upcycles spent cathode materials into valuable catalysts, supporting sustainable energy conversion technologies,” they conclude.

Source: Yue Wang et al. A three-in-one strategy for lithium recovery and upcycling of spent cathode materials. Nature Communications, 2026.