As electric vehicles powered by rechargeable lithium-ion batteries become increasingly common on U.S. roadways, Dr. Jessica Durham Macholz ’10, M.S. ’12, is working to expand recycling opportunities for batteries at the end of their usable journeys.
Macholz, a materials scientist with Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, returned to her alma mater to present “Recycling Methods for Lithium-ion Batteries” March 1 for Illinois State University’s Energy for a Sustainable Future Seminar Series seminar.
“Batteries are critical if the U.S. will successfully transition to clean energy,” Macholz said.
Introduced in the 1990s, rechargeable lithium-ion batteries have powered cell phones, laptops, and digital cameras for the past three decades. They were eventually used to power medical devices and power tools, and now, larger versions of them are being used to fuel vehicles.
Macholz explained that lithium-ion battery manufacturing has ramped up to meet an increasing demand for electric vehicles. These batteries contain several valuable and recoverable materials, including lithium, copper, aluminum, cobalt, and nickel.
“It’s important not to throw these batteries into the landfill because they contain so many critical materials that we depend on other countries for. We should try to recycle batteries and get those materials back,” Macholz said.
Recycling batteries, Macholz said, reduces U.S. dependence on importing materials from other countries, keeps toxic materials out of landfills, and harnesses unused energy.
At Argonne National Laboratory, Macholz works as a lead investigator for the Department of Energy’s ReCell Center for Advanced Battery Recycling. Here, scientists focus on four main areas of battery recycling: direct recycling of materials, advanced resource recovery, design for sustainability, and modeling and analysis.
One of the ReCell Center’s focuses has been developing technologies for direct recycling, which involves taking intact battery material and putting it into another battery. This is achieved through battery shredding and materials separation. Through advanced resource recovery, ReCell scientists investigate different types of recycling to help industries improve their processes and make them more profitable. ReCell scientists also use modeling and analysis to deeply understand the battery materials and evaluate the economic and environmental impacts of recycling processes.
“At ReCell, we bridge the gap between academia and industry, where we take new processes that academia has developed, validate them, and scale them to a point where industry can take them and run,” Macholz said. “That’s important for us working with the Department of Energy, because we want to help establish a successful battery recycling infrastructure in the United States.”
Macholz presented a few technologies she is working on as part of the ReCell Center. Batteries are a chemical way to store energy and safely preparing them to be recycled is a key step in recycling.
“What I use is basically a glorified paper shredder,” Macholz said. “The battery goes down through the blades of the shredder, and we end up with these nice pieces of material to use in our recycling processes. To be able to do this safely, we make sure we take all the energy out of the battery beforehand.”
Macholz and other researchers in the ReCell Center are working to separate the materials in batteries using a 10-foot floatation column by exploiting the materials’ properties such as density or magnetic properties. The goal of ReCell is to develop these new processes so that they can be transferred to industry to recycle lithium-ion batteries from end-of-life electric vehicles.
She said the Environmental Protection Agency’s website is a good resource for learning how to properly package batteries for disposal and how to find battery recycling drop-off locations.
Macholz developed an interest in battery technology while studying chemistry as a first-generation undergraduate and graduate student at Illinois State University. Her mentor, University Professor of Inorganic Chemistry Lisa Szczepura, attended Macholz’s talk alongside more than 30 students and a handful of faculty.
“I never thought I’d be the person standing up in front and talking to you in this classroom,” Macholz told the audience during her talk. “It’s nice to be back here at ISU.”
