Perspective of availability and sustainable recycling prospects of metals in rechargeable batteries – A resource overview

Abstract

The growing need for strategic and rare earth elements (REE) led to an enormous interest in the development of new technologies for the recycling and recovery of these metals from secondary resources especially batteries. The primary reserves, production scenario and possible secondary resources of cobalt, lead, lithium, manganese, nickel, REE, and zinc, with respect of metal content, quantity, the source of generation is discussed. The purpose of this review is to depict the status of the recycling technologies for the extraction of metals inherent in primary and secondary batteries from secondary resources like process wastes, catalysts, effluents, metal and alloy scrap, e-wastes, mine tailings, and metallurgical slags and spent batteries, depicting a summary of those under-utilized wastes. Also, the problems and the prospect of the studies of their recycling technologies especially focused on the hydrometallurgical and pyrometallurgical processes have been put forward. The future avenues in spent battery recycling are also discussed with respect to the directions of research needed for their sustainable utilization and environmental management.