Adding context to a Fox News article on lithium-ion recycling.

While drinking my morning coffee and doing my daily lithium news search I came across an article from Fox News written by Kurt Knutsson, who I guess also goes by CyberGuy New tech recovers 92% of EV battery metals. There was a lot of odd generalizations and misconceptions about both lithium-ion recycling and the mining of the battery metals. I felt that an old fashioned fisking was in order.

“As demand for clean energy grows, so does the need for smarter storage solutions. Lithium-ion batteries are leading the charge, but they don’t last forever. That creates a big problem: what do we do with all the dead batteries?”

I recently had a discussion with someone about how semantics and terminology, while seemingly trivial, actually matter a great deal when writing about the lithium-ion industry. Using the right terms is important, and this becomes evident when the phrases like “clean energy” are used.

Most people use that term without much thought, but “clean energy” is really just a Fifth Avenue marketing slogan better suited for a card congratulating someone on buying an EV. It is a term that has become the battle cry for ideologies that are focused on climate change, and the root of all that is wrong with the energy infrastructure in the world for others. It is why its usage needs to be phased out of any real substantive article or report. Mainly for the simple fact in the context of that paragraph, the term glosses over the real reason lithium is used and as such adds no value to the conversation about shifting from a linear, fuel-based energy system to a circular, material-based one.

Lithium-ion batteries are central to that transition because, if processed correctly and efficiently, their materials can be reused almost indefinitely. Recycling has always been part of the equation for a material-based energy system, where materials from the previous generation are used to make the next. The question of what to do with all the dead batteries was never asked beyond skeptics and journalists looking for a story, because it was always the goal to recycle them.

“Thanks to a new method developed by researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), we may finally have an answer. This scalable and eco-friendly recycling technique transforms old batteries back into high-performing, next-gen components, with minimal environmental impact.”

Where to start?

Maybe it will help to give some details on what Dr. Yan Wang, spoiler that is who the article is really about, has created. Subscribers of my Substack will know that name; he is considered a pioneer in the lithium-ion recycling industry and is one of the founders of Ascend Elements. To say I’m a fan of his work is an understatement.

The process that Ascend uses is a black mass processing method that, instead of removing individual metals, removes the impurities, leaving the cathode metals as a collective product. That product is then processed to create what is known as precursor cathode active material (pCAM). This kind of platform has actually been developed by several different companies.

Isn’t that patent infringement? No.

What Dr. Wang did was create a process, or recipe, based on basic metallurgy and chemistry. In U.S. patent law, this falls under a process patent, which is a type of utility patent covering a specific method or sequence of steps for producing a result.

Other companies developed their own methods that yield a similar final product, but because process patents protect only the method, not the product itself, each can operate without infringing Dr. Wang’s patent as long as their process is sufficiently different.

Ascend Elements will use this process alongside a separate proprietary method they developed to produce black mass. That additional process isn’t covered in the Fox News article, but if you want to learn more about it and get a deeper look at all the processes Ascend employs, you can find more detailed information here.

Is it better than producing individual metals? This comes down to whether someone wants to make biscuits using their own recipe or use a pre-made mixture. That is what Ascend Elements does: create a pre-made mixture. Ironically, despite their marketing focus on environmental benefits from avoiding production of individual metals, they will still need the capacity to produce those metals. If not, they will have to purchase them to produce the specified pCAM.

Here is how it works. Ascend receives an order for NMC811 pCAM from SK On. SK On provides a specification sheet including required purity levels, particle size distribution, tap density, and other physical and chemical properties, most importantly the exact cathode metal ratios. This means that if NMC111 is the source material but the order is for NMC811, they will need to add the required amount of nickel to meet the ratio.

The company that produces only individual metals will sell to Ascend Elements and others planning to produce their own pCAM from recycled material, such as Redwood Materials, which plans to go further by producing cathode active materials (CAM) using a process licensed from L&F in Korea.

“When they die, they leave behind components such as nickel, cobalt, and manganese, materials that are expensive and environmentally damaging to mine. Without a solid plan for recycling, the clean energy revolution could create a very dirty problem.”

This ties back to what I mentioned earlier: the primary goal has always been to recycle batteries and recover the materials they contain. There is a solid plan in place, but the challenge lies in implementing it outside of China, and it is not because of a lack of technology, but rather due to the absence of commercial-scale operations. Also, this is where the correct use of terminology come into play again. The components of a cell are the cathode, anode, separator, and so on. They are made from materials. It is those materials that are recovered, not the components, unless we are talking about direct recycling, but that is for another day.

“Standard recycling methods aren’t quite up to the task. They’re energy-intensive, generate significant emissions, and often fail to recover materials in usable form. This means many recycled batteries can’t be turned into new, high-performing ones. As a result, manufacturers continue to mine for raw materials, causing further environmental harm. That’s why scientists have been searching for a better way to close the loop.”

This is a common misunderstanding that keeps getting repeated. When it came to creating battery-grade materials, platforms did exist and were at commercial scale, but until a few years ago there was no real demand for them outside of China. Lithium-ion cells were typically processed alongside alkaline or nickel-cadmium batteries using high-temperature smelting furnaces. In these systems, transition-metal oxides like nickel, cobalt, and the copper used for the anode in lithium-ion cells are melted to produce alloys. Lithium and manganese, however, usually remain as stable oxides and end up in the slag, a dense, glassy byproduct that traps them and makes recovery difficult without further chemical processing. A good example of this type of platform was what Redwood Materials used. For years they used high-temperature smelting alongside a basic hydrometallurgical system to convert the transition metals into sulfates. What lithium was recovered was more of a bench-scale effort than a commercial-scale operation.

Today, pure smelting platforms are rarely used outside small workshops in parts of Asia, and even those are being replaced by basic shredding platforms. Modern commercial operations that still employ pyrometallurgy, such as Umicore, use additives like fluxes, slag modifiers, or reducing agents to improve recovery. These additives promote the reduction of transition metals while preserving lithium in forms that can later be efficiently extracted through hydrometallurgical steps.

As the onshoring of lithium-ion manufacturing in other countries was planned alongside growing EV sales, the need for loss prevention for manufacturers and a system beyond sending EVs back to China for recycling began to be explored. While some companies licensed existing systems, others like Ascend Elements developed their own.

But let’s look at this “continue to mine for raw materials, causing further environmental harm” statement, and this is something I have seen pop up almost exactly word for word in other articles and I think has become a boilerplate response from AIs.

With some baseline data and simple math, it takes about 0.85 kg of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) to produce 1 KWh of battery capacity. That’s about 0.16 kg of pure lithium. To get that from spodumene, you need roughly 4 to 5 kg of concentrate. But that concentrate starts from raw rock. Spodumene has a rock to metal ratio (RMR) of 1600:1. That means when you factor in total material moved, including overburden and waste rock to get the 0.16 kg of lithium needed for a single KWh, around 256 kg of total rock must be moved.

For brine sources, it is a bit simpler with lithium concentrations typically between 150 and 600 mg/l. You’re looking at somewhere between approximately 267 to 1,067 liters of brine to obtain the same 0.16 kg of lithium.

Used battery feedstock usually contains about 5% lithium by weight on average. To get enough lithium for 1 kWh, you’d need with a 90% recovery rate approximately:

• 5 kg of LCO cells

• 6 kg of NCA/NMC cells

• 8 kg of LFP cells

But that’s just the lithium. Recycling also recovers nickel, cobalt, manganese, copper, aluminum, and graphite, all of which are needed again in battery manufacturing. And if the recycling process is advanced enough, it can even recover the fluorinated salts and solvents that can be distilled and purified into new electrolyte components. That means you’re not just closing the loop on one material, you’re recovering nearly the entire bill of materials for a new lithium-ion cell.

So clearly, secondary sources, i.e., recycling, is the superior source. Why don’t we switch now? We can’t, and the reason is not that no one has cracked the code, sorry, that was in another headline that was about recycling and still annoys me.

The reason is that there are not enough available batteries to do that. According to Shanghai Metals Market (SMM) and the International Energy Agency (IEA), China expects to supplement lithium-ion battery raw materials with secondary sources, targeting around 20% to 30% recycled supply across all key metals by 2026.

Those figures are misleading if taken at face value. The projected 20% to 30% recycled supply is not truly sustainable; it is instead a short-term projection resulting from a temporary surplus and overcapacity driven by early infrastructure development and stockpiling. Moreover, global battery demand is outpacing the rate at which batteries reach end of life. As a result, despite growth in absolute recycled volumes, the share of materials sourced from recycling will decline in the near to mid-term.

Globally, by 2035, recycled content is projected to supply roughly:

• Lithium: 5–15%

• Nickel: 10–20%

• Cobalt: 15–25%

• Manganese: 5–10%

• Copper: 15–25%

Source: International Energy Agency, Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2024 (IEA, 2024)

This is why companies like Panasonic estimate they will use no more than 30% recycled content in the CAM they produce, not due to cost or preference, but because there simply aren’t enough available batteries to produce the recycled material needed to meet demand. Even under the most optimistic projections from organizations like the IEA, secondary sources won’t overtake primary sources as the dominant supply of raw battery metals until the later half of the 2040s in China and around 2050 for the rest of the world.

“Led by Professor Yan Wang, the WPI team developed a method that uses hydrometallurgy to extract critical metals from spent Ni-lean cathodes, then upcycles them into Ni-rich 83Ni cathode materials, which are used in next-generation batteries.”

This is where being very specific with terms also comes into play. When the term lithium-ion recycling is used, it refers to the entire processing train from battery waste to battery grade material. In order to really calculate and even evaluate a recycling platform you have to break it down into its 3 distinct components.

1. Collections

2. Black Mass Production

3. Black Mass Processing

What Dr. Wang has created, or rather what he has done with this iteration of his invention, is to advance the efficiency of the original process, and this distinction is important. This process doesn’t include taking a battery and creating an intermediate, it is the process that converts that intermediate into battery-grade materials or, in the case of Ascend Elements an engineered product like pCAM

But a true evaluation of any recycling platform can’t just look at one part in isolation. You have to consider the emissions and waste from both the mechanical black mass creation and the chemical processing components. Ignoring either side gives you an incomplete and misleading picture of the environmental impact.

On top of that, there’s an often overlooked challenge: collection. Gathering spent traction batteries from thousands of vehicles, along with modules from BESS and the cell from consumer products, is one of the most energy and pollution intensive parts of the entire recycling process.

This ties into another topic I’ve discussed at length: co-location. While many think of co-location as simply companies sharing a broom closet, in practice it means sharing a geographic area to reduce collection costs. Collection generates significant ancillary pollution, from the fuel burned transporting heavy loads over long distances, emissions from handling and repackaging, to the energy required for temporary storage and sorting facilities. Because of this, even the most advanced recycling processes can fall short of their environmental goals if upstream collection and transport are not optimized.

So when assessing a lithium-ion battery recycling platform, you have to look at the full chain: collection, mechanical processing, chemical extraction. Only then do you get a realistic sense of the true environmental cost and benefits.

“Even better? These recycled batteries perform just as well as new ones. Unlike traditional methods that recover raw metals but degrade performance, this upcycling process regenerates high-value cathodes with next-gen chemistry, turning old batteries into components even better aligned with today's EV and storage systems.”

I took this section out of order, but it fits well into this part of my fisking. Plus, whatever AI program he used completely mangled that explanation.

A few years ago, thanks to Dr. Wang’s research, scientists discovered that recycled cathode materials can actually perform better than new, virgin materials. This is because during recycling, the materials develop a structure (imagine a sponge-like texture) that gives recycled NMC111 cathodes 82% more surface area and 61% more pore space compared to fresh materials.

This helps reduce mechanical stress by 16% and allows lithium ions to move through the material more easily. The result is better battery life, faster charging and discharging, and improved structural stability.

These findings were tested in different battery formats, from small coin cells to larger pouch cells and commercial 11 Ah cells. Recycled materials showed 88% to 170% higher capacity at high charge rates 5C, which means charging or discharging five times faster than normal. 25% longer cycle life in pouch cells, and much better performance at very fast rates keeping over 60% capacity at 5C and nearly 30% at 9C, compared to only 48% and 17% for new materials.

However, further studies have shown that this advantage is not unique to the process Ascend Elements uses. This is why recycled material with its potential for higher performance and reduced environmental impact will command a premium over virgin-sourced material. Additionally, the process is not feasible for virgin-sourced materials because it requires first producing cathode active material from raw metals only to then break down that material again using the recycling platform to recreate it.

“Battery waste is piling up, and mining for fresh materials isn’t sustainable. Wang’s team has proven that high-performance batteries can be made from recycled components at scale.”

Yes, battery waste is piling up outside of China and this is a problem. Once again, it’s due to the lack of commercial-scale operations to process black mass into battery grade, not a lack of the technology to accomplish it.

I’ve written about the new standards China has issued concerning black mass quality and how that will determine whether it’s allowed to be imported. China is taking steps to regain ownership of the materials in lithium-ion cells that were shipped out globally from their processing infrastructure, as well as trying to secure material that was produced in other countries.

China also needs to address the quality issues it faces domestically, which have driven up battery-grade processing costs due to subpar intermediates. This is one of the two purposes of GB/T 45203-2024: to crack down on operators producing low-quality black mass while opening the door to higher-quality material, imported from foreign-based companies.

Latest estimates show that nearly 90% of the world’s black mass may not meet China’s new standards. However It won’t be long before small impurity-removal facilities start emerging across Southeast Asia. These sites will primarily clean up black mass produced in nearby countries but will likely begin purchasing lower-quality material from other regions as well, including the United States.

As a result, black mass from the U.S. will be shipped to countries with favorable trade agreements, but much of it will ultimately be cleaned and sent to China from there. This is why the days of companies raising capital and working on lab or bench scale projects are over. There must be a concerted effort from both private industry and the federal government to accelerate domestic recycling capacity capable of taking decommissioned batteries and producing battery grade materials ready for use in new ones.

Finally, let’s talk about mining and sustainability. I just finished an article on using waste from over a century of mining to supply not only the lithium-ion industry, but also to provide a path to produce critical minerals and rare earths needed for the high-tech sector the Trump administration wants to build. Technically, those would be considered secondary sources or secondary streams from primary sources, but they are a great example of how the mining industry is taking the issue of sustainability seriously.

Without going too far down a rabbit hole, let’s look at how sustainability is often misunderstood when it comes to mining. Most people aren’t worried about running out of metal in the ground, well, some are, but those are usually the same people who post a photo of a copper mine in Chile and claim it’s a lithium mine in Africa. For most, the concern is the chemical waste and pollution generated by mining. This waste is why people call mining “unsustainable.”

If you compare the technology used today to what was used just 10 years ago to mine lithium and other metals, you’ll see there have been leaps and bounds in extraction rates. These improvements come from advances in automation, better ore characterization, more efficient chemical extraction methods, and improved mineral processing. They’ve enabled higher recovery from lower-grade and more complex ores.

Alongside those gains in extraction, there have been major advances in waste recovery, treatment, and, as mentioned above, the reuse of that waste to produce more of the mine’s primary commodity or even to create secondary revenue streams. There’s also a financial incentive here: the more efficient a process is, the less waste it creates and the more metal it extracts. That’s been the main driver of technological progress. The bottom line is simple: the more “sustainable” a mine is, the more money it makes for shareholders.

There’s also another important aspect often missed in the recycling versus mining discussion. Recycling will never eliminate the need for mining because every recycling process has inherent material losses. As a result, recycled materials will never fully meet demand. Industry data shows recovery rates ranging from 70% to 95%, depending on the metal and recycling method. This means 5% to 30% of a material is lost during recycling. Even if a platform achieved 99% recovery, mining would still be necessary to cover that 1% loss.

If we look at it from a production standpoint, we can use numbers from Tesla. In 2024, Tesla recycled 7 GWh of material, 1.7 GWh in-house and 5.3 GWh sent to recycling partners. They reported an average recovery rate of 90%. That is usually the cumulative recovery; the actual recovery rate for lithium is typically in the 80s, but we’ll run with 90%.

It’s estimated that the Nevada Gigafactory produces 41 GWh of NCA 2170 cells a year, which breaks out to about 2 billion cells annually. That would imply a scrap rate of around 17%, but since they also included end-of-life batteries, let’s assume a 15% scrap rate. At 90% recovery, approximately 300 million cells are scrapped yearly. Each 2170 cell contains about 0.96 grams of lithium, so the scrap stream holds roughly 288 metric tons of lithium. At 90% recovery, about 28.8 metric tons of lithium are lost annually during recycling.

Cathode clippings, powders, and slurries are also factored into the GWh for recycling, but as with a recycling platform, any manufacturing platform will also have inert losses estimated at about 0.05%.

Together, these losses are why recycling alone cannot fully meet lithium demand and why mining will always be needed. The goal is to reduce the amount of mining bare minimum that is needed, but recycling will never eliminate it.

“This reduces our dependence on destructive mining operations, lowers emissions, and makes battery manufacturing more resilient to global supply shocks.”

We have already discussed the mining part, and while recycling will significantly lower the CO2e per kWh:

• Mining (lithium): 3 to 9 kg CO₂e/kg

• Hydrometallurgical recycling (lithium): 0.6 to 2.4 kg CO₂e/kg

• Mining (battery-grade material): 100 to 160 kg CO₂e/kWh

• Hydrometallurgical recycling (battery-grade material): 10 to 30 kg CO₂e/kWh

However those numbers for mining can be outdated and can be even lower. Most figures used in life cycle assessments (LCA) are based on legacy data and often fail to capture recent innovations. One of the largest contributors to emissions is mining equipment itself, but this is beginning to shift. Some of the largest mining operations are transitioning to battery-electric haul trucks or adopting electric trolley systems that draw power from overhead lines. These changes are actively reducing the emissions related to mining, but updated emissions data has yet to fully reflect their impact.

But the text that I want look at is “resilience to global supply shocks.” The most repeated fevered dream from analysts is that a demand shock is on its way. Most of these projections hinge on the anticipated rise in demand for BESS, but they overlook why prices are where they are now and why a true demand or even a supply shock is unlikely. The primary reason is China’s massive overcapacity, not just in lithium-ion cell production but also in processing battery-grade materials. This acts as a buffer in the global market, reducing the likelihood of a sudden disruption.

Looking specifically at the United States, current lithium demand sits around 65,000 tonnes of LCE per year. If that quadruples by 2030, as many forecast, domestic demand would reach roughly 260,000 tonnes annually. But much of that growth will be driven by a handful of players. Tesla and Panasonic who are scaling operations, and others like LG Energy Solution who are ramping up new production. Of the two dozen lithium-ion cell production facilities once planned, only about ten are expected to move forward within the next five years, and new capacity from them will roll out slowly, about one or two sites per year.

China is the primary source of lithium-ion cells for the United States and also supplies most lithium precursors. These materials have been under Section 301 tariffs for some time but are listed in Annex II, exempting them from retaliatory tariffs. However it is expected over the next five years, imported lithium such as SC6 and lithium chloride, which can be processed in the United States and therefore technically count as domestically produced, will make up the bulk of U.S. lithium precursors.

Currently, only about 5% of the raw lithium used in the United States comes from China, and that share is unlikely to increase. Most imports are sourced from fair trade partners like Chile and Canada. Since the beginning of President Trump’s second term, aside from increased tariffs and tighter restrictions on federal purchases of Chinese-made batteries from companies such as CATL and BYD, not much else has changed, and in reality not much more should change.

As for the rest of the battery metals like nickel and cobalt, while there are efforts to expand domestic production, there are viable fair trade agreement sources for them, and they are also exempt from retaliatory tariffs as well. Domestic production is needed but is not as urgent as lithium.

Secondary sources, such as recycling and lithium recovery from tailings and waste, will remain the only authentic sources of domestic lithium outside Silver Peak until at least 2028. By 2030, four or five primary lithium projects may be producing lithium in the United States. This would raise domestic output to around 100,000 tonnes of LCE. The shortfall can be met through imported raw lithium. Tesla is already on its way to producing 70,000 tonnes of LCE produced from SC6 sourced from Canada and Australia at the Texas lithium facility. The remaining balance will be meet by recycling.

“This new method from WPI means future batteries in your devices could be made from sustainably recycled materials, without sacrificing performance. That helps keep costs down, reduces toxic waste, and shrinks your personal carbon footprint.”

And like with the previous text, we covered pretty much all of it, so here I just want to focus on helping keep costs down. I have to give Kurt kudos here because this is the main topic that for some reason so many lithium-ion recyclers do not talk about. When you reduce the waste and energy used to produce a material, the cost drops for the end product drop. This is how recycling will benefit people beyond reducing their perceived carbon footprint. It directly reduces their financial footprint by lowering the cost of that new EV, the Tesla solar and Powerwall they have installed to charge that EV, and even that electric rechargeable toothbrush.

But there is something that has to be watched for: passing the cost of collection and recycling infrastructure onto the consumer. It is fair to require a consumer to temporarily bear some of the costs of recycling, as seen with lead acid battery recycling. While this is possible with larger products like an EV, it is not practical with smaller items like a rechargeable toothbrush. For smaller consumer electronics, an advanced recycling fee (ARF) will be used. This will happen through government policy, whether local or federal. California is set to implement a covered battery embedded waste recycling fee on devices containing non-removable batteries starting in 2026. It is designed to fund proper disposal and recycling, but critics warn that improperly managed ARFs can become a hidden tax that undermines the cost savings that recycling promises.

“Would you trust a car or device powered by recycled battery components, or are you still holding out for "new" to mean "better"?”

Hate to have to inform Kurt but a good portion of the EVs and other products from cell phones to that rechargeable toothbrush, if it is a lithium-ion battery it will have recycled material in it.

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That is the bulk of the article, and the question is:

As an article for the general public, is it ok? And the answer is no.

It is missing the real story about why lithium-ion recycling needs to be a national effort. Recycling is, once you move past its ability to scale rapidly, its lower carbon footprint, and how it will reduce mining, above all else a loss prevention strategy. But it’s not just about recovering material for reuse but also about retaining ownership of it, ensuring that U.S. resources stay in the country rather than being lost to China. If there is a supply shock, recycling will not stabilize the market, there is simply not enough capacity outside of China for that. However, it can help fill gaps in the supply chain until, in three to four decades, it becomes the primary source of material for lithium-ion manufacturing.

If you enjoyed this article, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support would help fund work like this and grants you access to exclusive archives and paid articles, where Abe and I explore companies, their projects, and the current ever evolving landscape of the critical materials in much greater detail.

DISCLAIMER: This article should not be construed as an offering of investment advice, nor should any statements (by the author or by other persons and/or entities that the author has included) in this article be taken as investment advice or recommendations of any investment strategy. The information in this article is for educational purposes only. The author did not receive compensation from any of the companies mentioned to be included in the article.

The look on Abe’s face is very good representation of my feelings about the Fox News article.