Technology needs for realizing a circular battery supply chain

The growing use of batteries for energy storage will eventually result in significant waste. While recycling is currently the main option for managing this waste, existing methods are energy intensive, emit pollution, produce waste, and recover a fraction of the battery mass. The shift to cheaper battery chemistries makes recycling less economically viable as fewer high-value metals can be recovered. A circular economy approach offers a better solution by focusing on designing and manufacturing batteries with their entire lifecycle in mind. These strategies emphasize the need for material selection, design, and manufacturing approaches that can maintain battery performance for as long as possible. They should also facilitate disassembly to enable rework, repair, reuse, remanufacture, and recycling at the end of life. This perspective piece identifies technology needed to achieve a circular battery supply chain. Particular attention is given to material regeneration, innovative cell designs, modular pack designs, reversible manufacturing methods, and AI-enabled autonomous robotic disassembly to facilitate repair, remanufacture, and recycling; and advanced cell-level sensing methods to prolong battery life. These innovations could create new business opportunities and reduce the demand for new materials while lowering energy need and lifetime costs, and thereby maximize the environmental benefits of electrification. • This position paper explains how there is more to circularity than recycling. • Strategies to prolong cell life and rejuvenate battery materials in situ are discussed. • Reversible manufacturing methods can facilitate repair, reuse, and remanufacture. • Autonomous robotic disassembly of battery packs using AI is essential to circularity. • Metrics quantifying the value proposition of a circular battery supply chain are presented.