The research work titled Lithium-ion battery recycling relieves the threat to material scarcity amid China's electric vehicle ambitions by Professor Wang Zhaohua's team from Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT) was published in the journal Nature Communications, a subsidiary of the journal Nature.

The rapid growth of electric vehicles has boosted demand for lithium-ion batteries, raising concerns about the supply of essential materials such as cobalt, lithium, nickel, and manganese. Shortages of these materials could constrain the large-scale deployment of electric vehicles.

Recycling lithium-ion batteries can help ease these supply shortages. Quantifying the potential of lithium-ion battery recycling to mitigate critical material shortages, systematically assessing its impacts on environmental benefits, spatial distribution, and economic feasibility, and developing optimal recycling strategies are key scientific issues that urgently need to be addressed.

Therefore, Professor Wang's team developed an integrated evaluation framework using dynamic material flow analysis, life cycle assessment, and a geospatial optimization model. This framework systematically quantifies the potential of battery recycling in terms of resource compensation, environmental performance, spatial allocation, and economic feasibility, providing solutions for the development of electric vehicles under China's carbon neutrality goals.

This research revealed the inherent trade-offs between the economic and environmental performance of power battery recycling, providing a decision-making basis for formulating battery recycling strategies that enhance supply chain resilience. It contributes to the orderly advancement of vehicle electrification in the context of China's carbon neutrality goals.

Paper details: Bin Zhang, Qingyao Xin*, Siyuan Chen, Bo Wang, Hao Li, Zhaohua Wang*, Prateek Bansal*. Lithium-ion battery recycling relieves the threat to material scarcity amid China's electric vehicle ambitions. Nature Communications (2025).