Schulich students explore new ways of recycling electric vehicle batteries

With more people opting for zero-emissions vehicles in Canada and globally, questions are being raised about sustainability.

Particularly, what happens to electric vehicle (EV) batteries when they don’t work anymore or when you get rid of the vehicle?

While the industry has evolved over the years to deal with internal combustion-engine vehicles, the same can’t be said for EVs.

A team of Schulich School of Engineering students is looking to change that with a fourth-year capstone project.

“Batteries weren’t made with recycling in mind as they are so tightly compacted with a focus on energy density to increase range and reducing costs,” says student Josh Archibald. 

“This, in turn, means increased battery performance at the cost of a really difficult process to recycle these batteries without tons of wasted materials and high carbon dioxide emissions.”

The students therefore created RenewVolt, a process aiming to recover and recycle the critical metals EV batteries used. The team includes Archibald along with Samantha Amundarain, Erik Barrett, Kalen Cameron, and Jose Gutierrez Quintero. 

Using water instead of fire

Under the watchful eye of Dr. Steven Bryant, PhD, the RenewVolt team decided to take a different approach to recovering and recycling battery materials.

Instead of the conventional pyrometallurgical processes — which are heat-based like roasting, smelting and refining — the team decided to utilize hydrometallurgical, or water-based, processes like leaching and solution purification.

“This results in far less carbon emissions as we don’t use high temperatures to break down the battery into its critical minerals,” Cameron says. “Along with this, we aim to extract every material instead of sending these into landfills, where it is left to break down in the environment.”

It’s an ambitious goal that has required a lot of research, says Bryant, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering.

“There are some companies out there that are just trying to get one thing like lithium,” he says. “This group is doing everything from crushing the batteries down to extracting the metals as carbonates, which requires each team member to do a lot of things to handle all the different steps in the process.”

Bryant says the project is unique, so he recommended the team approach the project through an entrepreneurial lens.

Igniting a passion for future careers

Part of RenewVolt’s journey includes Schulich’s Engineering Design Fair, which is scheduled for April 1. It’s the school’s annual showcase of fourth-year capstone projects, with dozens on display to be seen and judged by industry and faculty experts.

The students are hopeful someone in industry will see what they are doing and help them continue their research in what they believe is a large market for Canada in which to develop and become leaders.

“This has sparked an interest in all of us that as it’s such an innovative and exciting area, highlighting such important global issues that are real-world problems,” Amundarain says. 

“We hope to stay involved in this research and improve the future of global mineral recovery and ensuring sustainability for generations to come.”

Bryant is impressed with the RenewVolt idea, although cost is a major hurdle that will need to be overcome to take it to the next level.

“This is Phase one, so let’s see what’s feasible; what are the drivers and what is needed to be able to do this and turn a profit in some reasonable amount of time?” he says. 

“This isn’t a slam-dunk money-making deal, but we should look at what it will take from a research and policy perspective to make the process more economically feasible.”

A full list of all Engineering Design Fair projects can be found here.