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Electrode separation via water electrolysis for sustainable battery recycling

Nature Sustainability volume 8, pages 520–529 (2025)Cite this article

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An Author Correction to this article was published on 15 May 2025

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Abstract

Recycling large quantities of lithium-ion batteries facing retirement is pivotal for resource conservation and environmental sustainability. Direct recycling, while offering a promising avenue with reduced waste compared with pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy, often involves intricate and long processes. Here we introduce a water electrolysis-induced separation approach, using H2 or O2 gas bubbling to efficiently separate electrode materials from current collectors. The process achieves 99.5% materials recovery with metal impurities <40 ppm within 34 s for LiFePO4 and 3 s for graphite at 10 mA cm−2, with minimal energy consumption of 11 and 1.1 kJ kgcell−1. Moreover, this approach accommodates various electrode types, encompassing cathodes and anodes from spent batteries or manufacturing scraps. The subsequent dry electrode manufacturing process with lithium replenishment substantially enhances environmental sustainability by eliminating the use of N-methyl pyrrolidone, while maintaining performance through the effective mixing of active materials and conductive agents. An EverBatt analysis underscores a remarkable reduction in energy consumption and waste generation compared with industrially adopted recycling methods. This finding provides an efficient and sustainable solution for battery recycling while ensuring high-quality materials production.

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Fig. 1: Separation of LFP cathode with the WES method.
Fig. 2: Characterizations of the WES process using LFP electrodes in various configurations.
Fig. 3: Separation of Gr anode using the WES method.
Fig. 4: Characterizations of dry electrodes fabricated using recycled black mass.
Fig. 5: Environmental and economic analysis of different recycling methods.

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Data availability

All data supporting this research are available in the main text and the Supplementary Information and original data can be obtained from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request. The EverBatt database can be downloaded via https://www.anl.gov/amd/reference/everbatt-model-download-form. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

C.W. thanks the support of the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2022YFB3803400), the Shanghai Pujiang Program (22PJ1413400) and the Fundamental Research Funds for Central Universities.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, China

    Fangzhou Yang, Xinlong Chen, Ge Qu, Quan Nie, Ganxiong Liu, Wang Wan, Sa Li & Chao Wang

  2. State Key Laboratory of Materials Processing and Die & Mould Technology, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China

    Tanyuan Wang & Yunhui Huang

  3. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Ju Li

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Contributions

F.Y. and C.W. conceived the research idea. F.Y., X.C., W.W. and G.L. designed the experiments. F.Y., X.C. and G.Q. carried out electrode fabrication and electrochemical characterization. Q.N., G.Q. and W.W. assisted with material characterization. T.W. and C.W. assisted in revising the paper. All authors discussed the results and contributed to the data analysis. F.Y. and X.C. wrote the paper with contributions from all authors. S.L., Y.H, J.L. and C.W. supervised the work.

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Correspondence to Sa Li, Yunhui Huang, Ju Li or Chao Wang.

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Nature Sustainability thanks Youngsik Kim, Xiangyang Zhou and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Discussion, Figs. 1–55 and Table 1.

Reporting Summary

Supplementary Video 1

The separation of LFP electrode via the WES method.

Supplementary Video 2

The separation of LFP electrodes from a spent pouch cell via the WES method.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 1

Statistical source data.

Source Data Fig. 2

Statistical source data.

Source Data Fig. 3

Statistical source data.

Source Data Fig. 4

Statistical source data.

Source Data Fig. 5

Statistical source data.

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Yang, F., Chen, X., Qu, G. et al. Electrode separation via water electrolysis for sustainable battery recycling. Nat Sustain 8, 520–529 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01539-3

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