Crucial know-how destined for a bright future, while thermal cars will be banned from 2035.
Promote electric cars, yes. But how to ensure a virtuous loop with their batteries? While the ban on thermal vehicles is for 2035, a chemist from Claude Bernard-Lyon 1 University has developed a completely innovative battery recycling system, based on the capture of CO 2.
Scrap batteries or batteries at the end of their life will ultimately be used to manufacture others. All without effluent, without acid, and with compact machines.
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“Giving value to CO2”
The invention was born ten years ago from an accidental discovery, confides Julien Leclaire, the Lyon chemist at the origin of this process, in his laboratory at Claude Bernard University. “By dissecting the material, we realized that our technology made it possible to capture the metals found in batteries, and therefore to give value and meaning to CO 2 which had been captured.
These metals are dissolved by a low-impact process which has since earned the Lyon professor an award from the French and American chemical societies. He is currently applying it to scrap electric batteries in production: industrial scrap or batteries at the end of their life.
“The CO2 is captured, it actually generates not one product, but lots of different products, and each one will assemble with a distinct metal when we introduce, at the same time, battery waste: lithium, aluminum, nickel, copper, cobalt, or manganese”
Julien Leclaireat franceinfo
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Powder batteries
Each of these metals is transformed into powder form, thanks to the introduction “more or less smoke in the middle”, explains the Lyon professor. With these powder harvests, its partners then remanufacture electrodes, then complete batteries. The start-up that Julien Leclaire created with associates, in parallel, makes it possible to raise funds and scale up to an industrial scale. The France 2030 Plan thus provides them with 23 million euros. From 2026 a unit based on this process will open in the future Vallée des Batteries, in the north of France. A beginning : “The ideaexplains Julien Leclaire, it is to establish these first two factories by 2026-2028: one which will process production drops, the other batteries at the end of their life. By 2030, we plan to have at least five factories operating in Europe.
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Visions for growth of the process range from peer with the increase in volumes, and especially in the need for metals, explains the chemist. “The objective is to move to 40% electric vehicles by 2030. So we will need material, and there will surely be associated waste.” Not only produce the batteries, but also recycle the metals. Crucial know-how to overcome the ban on thermal cars in 2035.
Electric batteries: how to recycle them? Report by Mathilde Imberty