While electric vehicles are seen as an important tool in the decarbonisation of transport, pack and module architectures make disassembly and recycling slow and complex. Removal of physical fastenings such as clips, screws, welds and adhesives are the rate limiting factor in pack to cell disassembly.

Recovery of elemental copper, bismuth, tellurium, antimony and tin from thermoelectric generators (TEGs) is vital to recover the high content of critical metals and potential risk of environmental pollution as a result of incorrect disposal of TEGs and to enable the circular economy.

Carbon dioxide has become an attractive alternative solvent as opposed to traditional organic solvents in recent years, based on its inert, non-toxic, environmentally friendly and non-flammable properties, as well as being relatively inexpensive.

The market dynamics, and their impact on a future circular economy for lithium-ion batteries (LIB), are presented in this roadmap, with safety as an integral consideration throughout the life cycle. At the point of end-of-life (EOL), there is a range of potential options—remanufacturing, reuse and recycling.

The electrification of the transport sector is a critical part of the net-zero transition. The mass adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) powered by lithium-ion batteries in the coming decade will inevitably lead to a large amount of battery waste, which needs handling in a safe and environmentally friendly manner.

It has long been claimed that the anion of the DES or IL is critical for controlling the redox properties of metal ions. In this study we investigate the effect of different salt anions on the copper redox properties and speciation, and compare that with the effect of the different solvent anions, when a single...