manufacturers in Britain crush old batteries into a material called “black mass”, which is then exported to other countries—mostly, experts say, to China. There the black mass is dissolved in acid before the most useful materials are separated and processed.is young, the amount of valuable stuff that is currently being exported is small. But as volumes grow, so will the pressure to recycle closer to home.
It is cheaper to export the stuff to Asia and buy extracted materials back, according to Heather Plumpton, an analyst at Green Alliance. Research is under way to make black-mass processing more economic but it will take time for new tech to prove itself, says Paul Anderson at the Faraday Institution, another think-tank.s sold there will need a share of recycled materials—16% for cobalt, 6% for lithium and so on. It has also fast-tracked the approval of battery-recycling projects.