Researchers study water-based battery recycling

Millions in funding for collaborative project: focus on sustainability and circular economy. In the new joint project 'ProRec', researchers aim to recover materials from aqueous-processed electrodes and analyze them for their further use. MEET - Judith Kraft The recycling of lithium-ion batteries is playing an increasingly important role in battery research not only because of its environmental sustainability, but also because of the shortage of raw materials. While the number of production facilities is increasing in Germany and Europe, there is a lack of natural deposits of numerous starting materials for battery cell production. This is where the new research project "ProRec" (short for "Novel Processes during Recycling of Aqueous Processed and Future Batteries"), coordinated by the MEET Battery Research Center at the University of Münster together with the Institutes of Business Management and Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry located in the Department of Chemistry and Pharmacy there, comes in. With the help of a water-based recycling process, the researchers want to recover materials from aqueous processed electrodes - i.e. electrodes produced using water as a solvent - and analyze them for their further use. The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research is funding the joint project with 3.2 million euros over three years.