A team of U.S. researchers has pulled off a double win for electric vehicles: making batteries safer and recycling them more effectively. According to a recent article by Interesting Engineering, scientists at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts recovered lithium of 99.79% purity from used EV batteries in a new study while also simplifying the design of next-generation, solid-state batteries.
EV battery waste has been piling up in recent years, and mining new lithium often comes with steep environmental costs, including toxic runoff and unsafe labor conditions. The team's breakthrough points the way toward how we can keep precious materials in circulation while lowering costs and cutting pollution.
The WPI team, led by Professor Yan Wang, focused on a key problem with solid-state batteries: making them stable enough for long-term use. Solid-state batteries are considered safer and more powerful than conventional lithium-ion batteries, but they've required complex protective layers that add to the cost.
The researchers found a way to make the solid-state battery stable without those extra layers by "doping" a lithium-indium chloride material with iron. As a result, cells then ran for more than 300 charge cycles while keeping 80% of their capacity. In Wang's words, according to the article, this was the "first such demonstration in the field" of this kind of long-term stability.
The team also tackled the waste problem directly. Using a self-driven chemical reaction with acetone, they transformed spent lithium-metal anodes — the highly reactive core of many batteries — into lithium carbonate that was nearly 100% pure.
That's important because ultra-pure lithium can go right back into new batteries. The researchers even built fresh cathodes with the recovered material, and tests showed performance on par with commercial batteries.
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Keeping lithium in circulation means fewer new mines being needed, reducing the risk of heavy metals leaking into soil and groundwater. It also potentially cuts down on the destructive impact of mining operations, helping to bring down the cost of EVs and large-scale energy storage. More affordable batteries mean more people making the switch to electric cars — a shift that helps improve air quality and reduce harmful pollution.
This discovery could pave the way for safer, more powerful, and more sustainable EV batteries in the years ahead. While still in the research phase, the process was designed to be scalable, opening the door to future industrial adoption.
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