Scaling lithium-ion battery recycling: Systemic failures, innovation pathways, and policy imperatives

The global lithium-ion battery market is projected to exceed by 2030, highlighting the need for scalable and sustainable solutions to address the anticipated rise in end-of-life batteries. Traditional recycling techniques exhibit systemic inefficiencies marked by high energy requirements, considerable greenhouse gas emissions, and restricted economic feasibility, especially for low-value materials such as lithium iron phosphate. This review analyzes the limitations and presents direct regeneration as a feasible solution, providing enhanced economic and environmental results. Direct regeneration consumes only 16% of the energy and generates merely 1.34% of greenhouse gas emissions compared to Hydrometallurgy, while achieving nearly double the profit of conventional methods. To realize its full potential, the sector must tackle the "black mass bottleneck" by establishing a quality-based routing framework, exemplified by the Black Mass Quality Index, which channels high-purity feedstocks towards value-maximizing Direct regeneration pathways. The EU Batteries Regulation promotes this transition through the establishment of mandatory targets for recycled content and carbon footprint thresholds. Achieving true circularity requires an integrated smart recycling ecosystem that includes the Digital Battery Passport, AI-assisted disassembly, and advanced Direct regeneration technologies. The implementation of enhanced circularity metrics, such as EVDP and CTI-LCIA, is advocated to assess and promote the resource efficiency of cathode-to-cathode recycling.