Japan finds a way to recover 90% of lithium from old EV batteries

[zohaibahd]

The big picture: Countries that don't mine their own lithium have two options when supply gets tight: pay whatever the market demands, or figure out how to reuse what they've already got. Japan is trying to lean more toward the latter, and one major breakthrough may help with that. A facility in Fukui Prefecture has figured out how to extract a whopping 90% of the lithium sitting inside dead EV batteries. That's around double what such operations previously achieved.

Behind the breakthrough is JX Metals Circular Solutions, a subsidiary of one of Japan's largest non-ferrous metal companies. While it was announced back in April 2025, it really started grabbing headlines this month after some Japanese publications revealed the actual process at the company's plant in Tsuruga.

Tadashi Nakagawa, the facility's vice president, told NHK that the team achieved its goal by rethinking the chemicals and methods involved in extracting lithium from spent battery cells.

The process starts with old batteries being separated and burned to strip away non-metal components. What's left gets crushed into something called black mass. This is essentially a powder packed with recoverable metals. From there, a water-based chemical treatment called hydrometallurgy pulls the lithium out.

One clever distinction in this new process is that the recovered lithium hydroxide actually replaces a chemical traditionally used during refining. This cuts the carbon footprint by about 40% compared to older methods.

– Furkan Gözükara (@FurkanGozukara) April 8, 2026

For Japan, this breakthrough is especially important since the country has so far imported virtually every bit of mineral it needs for its batteries. That includes not just lithium, but also cobalt and nickel. A lot of the refining has historically gone through China.

Japan has been trying to find a way around this. A new law taking effect this year will require manufacturers and importers to collect and recycle small portable batteries from the likes of phones, vapes, and power tools. The government wants recyclers to hit 70% lithium recovery by 2030, so that 90% number is already well ahead of schedule.

That said, Japan isn't the only country pursuing lithium recovery. In the US, Redwood Materials – the recycling company founded by former Tesla CTO JB Straubel – says it's already recovering 95% of lithium from the equivalent of about 250,000 EVs per year.

In Japan's case, though, the biggest bottleneck right now isn't the technology. It's actually getting dead batteries to recyclers in the first place. Only about 14% of end-of-life lithium-ion batteries in the country currently make it through official collection channels. Many retired EVs actually end up getting exported, making those valuable metals inaccessible. Solving this problem is now more important than ever.

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Japan finds a way to recover 90% of lithium from old EV batteries

 

[pnntmp]

That's cool as a technological achievement, but what's the cost?

Lithium is not at all rare (like the most of the 'rare' earth elements). Getting rid of the 'green' bulshittery that prevents mining of 'rare' elements is definitely the better strategy for solving the vast majority the rarity problems.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

That's cool as a technological achievement, but what's the cost?

Lithium is not at all rare (like the most of the 'rare' earth elements). Getting rid of the 'green' bulshittery that prevents mining of 'rare' elements is definitely the better strategy for solving the vast majority the rarity problems.

Aluminum isnt rare eather and we recycle most of that.

The point of recycling and reclaiming materials is to reduce energy used and environments destroyed to get more raw material. Nowhere was it ever stipulated that the material had to be rare.

Oh yeah, and you cant throw away batteries, they must be recycled, unless you want to light dumps on fire constantly. So.......why not reclaim the materials and reuse them?

 

[p51d007]

Good! Less dependence on China is a good thing!

 

[Endymio]

Aluminum isnt rare eather and we recycle most of that.

The point of recycling and reclaiming materials is to reduce energy used...

It takes so much energy to refine aluminum -- ~60 gigajoules per ton -- that the metal is often referred to as "solidified electricity." Lithium takes only about 1/500 as much energy to refine, and, unlike aluminum which can by recycled through a purely physical process, requires chemical processing to recycle.

 

[bviktor]

It’s been possible since forever, just 3 times more expensive than mining new lithium. Does this new solution solve that?

 

[Kashim]

That's cool as a technological achievement, but what's the cost?

Lithium is not at all rare (like the most of the 'rare' earth elements). Getting rid of the 'green' bulshittery that prevents mining of 'rare' elements is definitely the better strategy for solving the vast majority the rarity problems.

This is typical American thinking. Don't recycle anything, that's for liberal losers. Get rid of all the environmental protections in place and just destroy the entire environment to get all your precious metals and fuels. Destroy all the habitats that animals need, destroy all the plants, pollute the air, the ground, the water, who cares, right? USA #1!

 

[Theinsanegamer]

This is typical American thinking. Don't recycle anything, that's for liberal losers. Get rid of all the environmental protections in place and just destroy the entire environment to get all your precious metals and fuels. Destroy all the habitats that animals need, destroy all the plants, pollute the air, the ground, the water, who cares, right? USA #1!

It is certainly not American thinking nor limited to conservatives. Ironically, it is very American to assume that America is the defining example of an issue.

 

[Endymio]

This is typical American thinking. Don't recycle anything, that's for liberal losers.

It's typical smart thinking. Recycling rarely makes economic sense. The point you fail to understand is that "economic good sense" translates into "environmental good sense". The expense of a process is simply the sum of the energy, labor, and materials required. When recycling is far more expensive than new production, it's telling you that process is worse for the environment. This is why the vast majority of "recycled" materials you people spend so much time sorting out of your trash are simply recombined and dumped together somewhere conveniently out of sight.

Destroy all the habitats that animals need, destroy all the plants, pollute the air, the ground, the water, who cares, right? USA #1!

This absurd doomsayer philosophy is why so many people rightly classify environmentalism as a religion. According to the lunatic enviro-Nazis of the 1960s, by the year 2000 all the birds would be dead, the oceans barren of fish, the trees all dead or dying, not one drop of oil would be left, and we'd be reverting to cannibalism in order to feed a starving world.

Luckily, out here in the real world, the air, water, and soil are cleaner than they've ever been, total planetary biomass is increasing, and instead of famine, our largest problem today is obesity due to overeating.

 

[pnntmp]

The point of recycling and reclaiming materials is to reduce energy used and environments destroyed to get more raw material. Nowhere was it ever stipulated that the material had to be rare.

This is typical American thinking. Don't recycle anything, that's for liberal losers. Get rid of all the environmental protections in place and just destroy the entire environment to get all your precious metals and fuels. Destroy all the habitats that animals need, destroy all the plants, pollute the air, the ground, the water, who cares, right? USA #1!

I'm not against recycling, if economically justified. Not at all.
But I'm against the id1otic notion that it can replace mining. That we can somehow just recycle and hug trees, leave the mining to the third world, and still have more and better stuff.
I'm even more against the order of magnitude more id1otic notion that we shouldn't make more and better stuff because "the environment".

Everything we need, we should actively search for and mine - preserving the environment as much as possible, but without that becoming an obstacle.

 

[abactuon]

Have they filed any patents?

 

[eldakka]

Good! Less dependence on China is a good thing!

China supplies about 17% of the Lithium market. China is in no way a dependency in Lithium mining and supply.

So what's this got to do with a non-existant dependency on China for Lithium supply?

 

[Endymio]

So what's this got to do with a non-existant dependency on China for Lithium supply?

Very wrong. While China directly mines just under 20% of global lithium, the CCP controls or owns 70+% of global lithium production and 60-70% of lithium refining capacity.

 

[DrSuess]

That's cool as a technological achievement, but what's the cost?

Lithium is not at all rare (like the most of the 'rare' earth elements). Getting rid of the 'green' bulshittery that prevents mining of 'rare' elements is definitely the better strategy for solving the vast majority the rarity problems.

Hopefully the cost is a lot less than mining and refining more lithium. If it is the price of lithium EV batteries will decrease.

 

[pnntmp]

Hopefully the cost is a lot less than mining and refining more lithium. If it is the price of lithium EV batteries will decrease.

I don't mind recycling, if economically justified, but it can't be a substitute for mining.
In regard to lithium in particular, the number of EVs is rapidly rising and that will accelerate further for a very long time. Hence the gap between what can be recycled and what is necessary to meet the demand will keep growing very fast. The only solution to that is mining more and more, faster and faster.

We should either rapidly grow our domestic mining and refining capacity, or rapidly grow our dependence on import from countries that are less than ideal partners.

 

[p51d007]

China supplies about 17% of the Lithium market. China is in no way a dependency in Lithium mining and supply.

So what's this got to do with a non-existant dependency on China for Lithium supply?

Not just lithium...ANYTHING coming out of the CCP!