Scientists Pioneer Chemical Bath Method to Restore Aging EV Batteries Without Breaking Them Down

A conventional battery pack – credit, Getty Images via Unsplash + What if instead of investing billions into battery recycling plants, you could simply take your aging electric vehicle battery back, give it a good scrub, and get all that lost range back? That’s near the mark of what Cornell University scientists have recently demonstrated, if a little editorialized.

Indeed, the current foreseen solution to the absolute tsunami of retired lithium-ion battery packs coming towards global landfills following the US and Chinese EV boom is called pyrometallurgy, and involves shredding the batteries into a giant corrosive mess before extreme heat separates out the cobalt, lithium, nickel, aluminum, and manganese for reuse. Typically, however, much of the tonnage that’s chucked into these pyrometallurgical circuits consist of usable EV battery packs that are charging and discharging at about 70-80% of their previous maximum capacity, making them very much usable.

First reported by Good News Network.