The Next Frontier in EV Battery Recycling: Graphite
EV battery recycling is entering a new frontier with a focus on graphite—one of the most valuable and under-recovered materials in the lithium-ion battery supply chain. In the race to build a circular battery industry, one mineral has been overlooked—until now.
As more Americans adopt electric vehicles, automakers and the federal government are racing to secure the materials needed to build EV batteries, including by investing billions of dollars in battery recycling. Today, recyclers are focused on recovering valuable metals, such as nickel and cobalt, from spent lithium-ion batteries. But with the trade war between the U.S. and China escalating, some are now taking a closer look at another battery mineral that today’s recycling processes treat as little more than waste.
On December 1, China implemented new export controls on graphite, the carbon-based mineral best known for use in pencils but also used in a more refined form in commercial EV battery anodes. The new policies, which the Chinese government announced in October shortly after the Biden administration increased restrictions on exports of advanced semiconductors to China, have alarmed U.S. lawmakers and raised concerns that battery makers outside of China will face new challenges securing the materials needed for anodes. Today, China dominates every step of the battery anode supply chain, from graphite mining and synthetic graphite production to anode manufacturing.
Along with a new federal tax credit that rewards automakers that use minerals produced in the United States, China’s export controls are boosting the U.S. auto industry’s interest in domestically sourced graphite. However, while it may take many years to establish new graphite mines and production facilities, there is another, potentially faster option: harvesting graphite from discarded batteries. As U.S. battery recyclers build big new facilities to recover costly battery metals, some are also trying to figure out how to recycle battery-grade graphite—something that isn’t done at scale anywhere in the world today due to technical and economic barriers. These companies are being supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, which is now investing tens of millions of dollars in graphite recycling initiatives aimed at addressing fundamental research questions and launching demonstration plants.
If the challenges holding back commercial graphite recycling can be overcome, “the used graphite stream could be huge,” Matt Keyser, who manages the electrochemical energy storage group at the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, told Grist. In addition to boosting domestic supplies, recycling graphite would prevent critical battery resources from being wasted and could help reduce the carbon emissions associated with battery production.
To understand why graphite is difficult to recycle, some basic material science is necessary. Graphite is a mineral form of carbon that exhibits both metallic and non-metallic properties, including high electrical and thermal conductivity, as well as chemical inertness. These qualities make it useful for a variety of energy and industrial applications, including storing energy inside lithium-ion batteries. While a lithium-ion battery is charging, lithium ions flow from the metallic cathode into the graphite anode, becoming embedded between the crystalline layers of carbon atoms. Those ions are released while the battery is in use, generating an electrical current.
Graphite can be found in nature as crystalline flakes or masses, which are mined and then processed to produce the small, spherical particles needed for anode manufacturing. Graphite is also produced synthetically by heating byproducts of coal or petroleum production to temperatures exceeding 2,500 degrees Celsius (approximately 4,500 degrees Fahrenheit)—an energy-intensive (and often emissions-intensive) process that triggers the “graphitization” of carbon atoms.
Relatively inexpensive to mine or manufacture, graphite is valued lower than many of the metals used in battery cathodes, which can include lithium, nickel, cobalt, and manganese. Because of this, battery recyclers have traditionally shown little interest in it. Instead, with many battery recyclers hailing from the metals refining business, they’ve focused on what they already knew how to do: extracting and purifying those cathode metals, often in their elemental form. Graphite, which can comprise up to 30 percent of an EV battery by weight, is frequently treated as a byproduct, with recyclers either burning it for energy or separating it for landfill disposal.
“Up until recently, people discussing recycling for batteries focused on those token [metal] elements because they were high-value, and because the recycling process can overlap quite a bit with conventional metal processing,” Ryan Melsert, the CEO of U.S. battery materials startup American Battery Technology Company, told Grist.
For graphite recycling to be worthwhile, recyclers need to obtain a high-performance, battery-grade product. To do so, they need methods that separate the graphite from everything else, remove any contaminants such as metals and glues, and restore the material’s original geometric structure, a process often achieved by applying intense heat.
Crude recycling approaches, such as pyrometallurgy —a traditional process in which batteries are smelted in a furnace —won’t work for graphite. “More than likely, you’re going to burn off the graphite” using pyrometallurgy, Keyser said.
Today, the battery recycling industry is moving away from pyrometallurgy and embracing hydrometallurgical approaches, in which dead batteries are shredded and dissolved in chemical solutions to extract and purify various metals. Chemical extraction approaches could be adapted for graphite purification, although there are still “logistical issues,” according to Keyser. Most hydrometallurgical recycling processes utilize strong acids to extract cathode metals; however, these acids can damage the crystalline structure of graphite. A longer or more intensive heat treatment step may be necessary to restore graphite’s shape after extraction, which would increase energy usage and costs.
A third approach is direct recycling, in which battery materials are separated and repaired for reuse without any smelting or acid treatment. This gentler process aims to keep the structure of the materials intact. Direct recycling is a relatively new concept that is further from commercialization than the other two methods, and there are some challenges in scaling it up because it relies on separating materials with great precision and efficiency. However, recent research suggests that cathode metals can offer significant environmental and cost benefits. Direct recycling of graphite, Keyser said, has the potential to use “far less energy” than the production of synthetic graphite.
Today, companies are exploring various graphite recycling processes.
American Battery Technology Company has developed an approach that begins with physically separating graphite from other battery materials, such as cathode metals, followed by a chemical purification step. Additional mechanical and thermal treatments are then used to restore graphite’s original structure. The company is currently recycling graphite at a “micro scale” at its laboratory facilities in Reno, Nevada, Melsert said. However, in the future, it plans to scale up to recycling several tons of graphite-rich material daily with the help of a three-year, nearly $10 million Department of Energy, grant funded through the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law.
Massachusetts-based battery recycling startup Ascend Elements has also developed a chemical process for graphite purification. Dubbed “hydro-to-anode,” Ascend Elements’ process “is based on some of the work the company has done on hydro-to-cathode,” the company’s patented hydrometallurgical process for recycling cathode materials, said Roger Lin, the vice president of global marketing and government relations at the firm. Lin noted that Ascend Elements can take graphite that has been contaminated during an initial shredding step and return it to 99.9% purity, exceeding EV industry requirements while retaining the material properties needed for high-performance anodes. In October, Ascend Elements and Koura Global announced plans to build the first advanced graphite recycling facility in the United States.
The Department of Energy-backed startup Princeton NuEnergy, meanwhile, is exploring direct recycling of graphite. Last year, Princeton NuEnergy opened the first pilot-scale direct recycling plant in the United States, located in McKinney, Texas. There, batteries are shredded, and a series of physical separation processes are used to sort out different materials, including cathode and anode materials. Cathode materials are then placed in low-temperature reactors to strip away contaminants, followed by additional steps to reconstitute their original structure. The same general approach can be used to treat anode materials, according to founder and CEO Chao Yan.
“From day one, we are thinking of getting both cathode and anode materials recycled,” Yan said. However, until now, the company has focused on commercializing direct recycling for cathode materials. The reason, Yan said, is simple: “No customer cared about anode materials in the past.”
That, however, is beginning to change. Yan said that over the past year—and especially in the last few months since China announced its new export controls—automakers and battery manufacturers have taken a greater interest in graphite recycling. Melsert also said that he’s starting to see “very significant interest” in recycled graphite.
Still, customers will have to wait a little longer before they can purchase recycled graphite for their batteries. The methods for purifying and repairing graphite still need refinement to reduce the cost of recycling, according to Brian Cunningham, the batteries R&D program manager at the Department of Energy’s Vehicle Technologies Office. Another limiting step is what Cunningham refers to as the “materials qualification step.”
“We need to get recycled graphite to a level where companies can provide material samples to battery manufacturers for evaluation of the material,” Cunningham said. The process of moving from very small-scale production to levels that allow EV makers to test a product “could take several years to complete,” he added. “Once the recycled graphite enters the evaluation process, we should start to see an uptick in companies setting up pilot- and commercial-scale equipment.“
Supply chain concerns could accelerate the journey to the commercialization of graphite recycling. Over the summer, the Department of Energy added natural graphite to its list of critical materials for energy. Graphite is also on the U.S. Geological Survey’s list of critical minerals — minerals that are necessary for advanced technologies but are at risk of supply disruptions.
This classification means that domestically sourced graphite can help EVs qualify for the “clean vehicle credit,” a tax credit that includes strict requirements around critical mineral sourcing following the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. To be eligible for the full credit, EV manufacturers must obtain a significant portion of their battery minerals from the U.S. or a free-trade partner. By 2025, their vehicles may not contain any critical minerals extracted or processed by a “foreign entity of concern” — an entity connected to a shortlist of foreign countries that includes China. This requirement could “drive a premium” for domestically recycled graphite, Lin said.
Tax incentives could be key to helping recycled graphite compete with virgin graphite, according to Yuan Gu, a graphite analyst at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a consulting firm. Despite China’s new export controls, Gu expects graphite to remain relatively inexpensive in the near future due to an oversupply of graphite on the market at present. While Gu said that graphite recycling is “definitely on the radar for Western countries” interested in securing future supplies, its viability will depend on “how costly or cheap the recycled material will be.”
If graphite recycling catches on, industry insiders are hopeful that it will be able to meet a significant fraction of the country’s future graphite needs—which are growing rapidly as the clean energy transition accelerates—while making the entire EV battery supply chain more sustainable.
“You can help regional supply chains, improve efficiency, and reduce carbon footprints,” Lin said. “I think it’s a no-brainer this will happen.”
This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/transportation/the-next-frontier-in-ev-battery-recycling-graphite/.
Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org
Graphite Recovery Is the Missing Link in EV Battery Circularity
While lithium and cobalt dominate the recycling conversation, graphite, which represents up to 30% of a lithium-ion battery, is rarely recovered. That’s changing with Klean Industries’ advanced technologies.
Klean Industries Leads the Way in Graphite Circularity:
✅ Innovative process for converting recovered carbon into high-purity graphite
✅ Integration into existing EV battery recycling and pyrolysis systems
✅ KleanLoop™ traceability for ESG-aligned graphite supply
✅ Partnerships for anode material regeneration and supply chain resiliency
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