BELIEVE: BioElectrochemical LIthium rEcoVEry

The increased use of Li-ion batteries (LiB) has caused a high demand for Li, a high-tech metal found only in a few locations worldwide. Li production is costly, energy-demanding, and environmentally damaging: It is essential to design and optimise methods for recovery spent Li.

Li recycling is complex, expensive and inefficient, recovering only a small quantity of low-grade Li. The EU Green Deal 2020 set regulations to achieve 65 per cent recycling efficiency for LiB and 70 per cent material recovery rate for Li by 2030.

Similar regulations are expected to be introduced in the UK to ensure the high recovery of strategic metals.

We will design and optimise a bioelectrochemical system (to recover high purity Li. Exploiting the ability of some microbial species to transfer electrons to external acceptors

We will design a microbial electrochemical system to recover Li from LiB waste, focusing on the main aspects affecting the process: microorganisms, reactor configuration, electrodes, metal concentration, substrates, etc.

We will screen diverse microbial species and microbial communities for their capability to remove Li from the waste and test them in different reactor designs (MFC, MEC, MDC, tubular).

This will provide a qualitative and quantitative correlation between metal removal, the composition of the microbial community, electrochemical performance and the characterisation of different designs of microbial electrochemical reactors for efficient processing of LiB.

We will conduct a detailed life cycle assessment and techno-economic analysis to analyse the environmental and economic implications of the process to reach circular economy-focused policy requirements. Combining sustainability assessment with experimentation will facilitate understanding of the system and guide scale-up strategies.

The ultimate objective is the optimisation of this biotechnology-based solution for attaining high purity and yield of recyclable Li from spent LiB's black mass waste.