Making batteries circular sounds simple: use them longer, then recover what they are made of. In practice, battery circularity depends on dozens of steps working together, from the first design sketch to the last gram of recovered lithium. To find out where those steps break down, four European projects sat around one table at a stakeholder workshop hosted by BeyondBattRec.
CIRCUBATT joined BeyondBattRec, BATMASS and ReUse to compare notes. Their main conclusion was clear. No single technology can deliver a circular battery economy on its own. Instead, design, data, logistics, treatment technologies and markets have to move forward together.
Four projects, four pieces of battery circularity
Each project works on a different part of a battery’s life. CIRCUBATT starts at the very beginning. It looks at how batteries can be designed for dismantling, how AI can track their health during use, and which business models and policies make second life work.
BeyondBattRec focuses on end of life lithium-ion batteries. Its work covers safe dismantling, assessment, sorting, recycling and regeneration, and ends with testing recovered materials in new battery cells.
BATMASS follows a “Circular Valley” approach. It links demonstrators for collection, dismantling, second life use, hydrometallurgical recycling and automated remanufacturing across European regions.
ReUse concentrates on lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries. It develops sensor based sorting, automated disassembly and direct recycling routes that regenerate battery materials.
Put side by side, the four projects cover the whole value chain. Yet the workshop showed that the hardest problems sit in the gaps between them.
Barrier one: battery data is hard to get
Deciding whether a used battery should be reused or recycled starts with one question: how healthy is it? Engineers call this its state of health. AI can predict it and forecast how the battery will age, but only if it learns from large amounts of real world data.
That data is often out of reach. Manufacturers and fleet operators may treat it as confidential. Different owners hold different pieces of it, and they rarely store it in the same format. As a result, many promising AI tools still learn from limited datasets.
Help is on the way. From 18 February 2027, the EU Batteries Regulation requires a digital battery passport for electric vehicle batteries, light means of transport batteries such as e-bike batteries, and industrial batteries above 2 kWh. Participants saw the passport as a real chance to improve transparency and traceability, and to make information available for sorting, reuse and recycling.
Barrier two: not every battery arrives the same
Recyclers face a challenge most people never think about: they rarely know exactly what is coming through the door. Scrap from battery factories is fairly uniform, so it is easier to process.
End of life batteries are a different story. They vary in chemistry, manufacturer, condition, design and material content. Consequently, sorting and assessing them takes time. It also becomes much harder to produce recycled materials that meet the strict specifications of battery makers.
Better information could change this. If recyclers knew a battery’s chemistry, health and history in advance, they could build cleaner, better defined material streams. They could also decide more confidently whether a battery deserves a second life or should go straight to recycling.
Barrier three: the long road from pilot to plant
Many circular battery technologies already work at pilot scale. Researchers often describe this stage as mid level technology readiness, halfway between a lab experiment and a commercial product. Moving beyond it is where many good ideas stall.
Scaling up needs substantial investment, a reliable supply of used batteries, proven performance and lower financial risk. Above all, investors and industrial users need a clear business case, backed by evidence from real operating conditions.
Second life and direct recycling feel this pressure most. Falling prices for new batteries can shrink the margin for reuse. Meanwhile, recycling plants need predictable volumes and quality to run efficiently. For these reasons, participants suggested that integrated ecosystems may work better than isolated solutions. These ecosystems bring together battery owners, manufacturers, recyclers, technology developers and end users.
Barrier four: cheaper chemistries change the economics
Battery chemistry is changing too. Newer chemistries based on cheaper, more abundant materials make supply chains more resilient. However, they also mean there is less valuable material to recover at end of life, which weakens the financial incentive to recycle.
This raises a subtle but important point. The most circular option is not always the one with the lowest overall environmental impact. Good decisions have to weigh carbon emissions, energy use, material recovery, durability and cost together.
Policy will therefore remain essential. The EU already sets lithium recovery targets of 50% by the end of 2027 and 80% by the end of 2031. Participants agreed that clear rules, long term planning security and incentives that recognise environmental costs will help circular technologies become commercially viable.
Meet our sister projects
Sister projects often share CIRCUBATT’s work with their communities, and we are happy to return the favour.
BeyondBattRec is a Horizon Europe project with 13 partners, coordinated by Aalborg University. It develops next generation preprocessing technologies to sort, deactivate and dismantle lithium-ion batteries with greater precision. As a result, it can recover valuable components such as anodes, cathodes, electrolytes, solvents, binders and strategic metals. The team also tests whether these processes make economic sense at industrial scale. Follow their work on the BeyondBattRec website and on LinkedIn.
ReUse is a Horizon Europe project coordinated by Fraunhofer ISC. It develops solutions to reuse and directly recycle LFP batteries, from both production scrap and end of life applications. Its goal is to keep battery materials in their highest value form wherever possible, reducing Europe’s need for virgin raw materials. Explore the ReUse website, their open results on Zenodo and their LinkedIn page.
What comes next for battery circularity
The conversation continues on 3 December in Vienna, where CIRCUBATT hosts a clustering event with BeyondBattRec, ReUse and several other projects. Find out more in our article on CIRCUBATT at CARE INNOVATION 2026.
Battery circularity will not come from one breakthrough. It will come from projects like these connecting their pieces of the puzzle. Curious how CIRCUBATT fits in? Visit our frequently asked questions.
Horizon Europe Grant Agreement No. 101192383. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or CINEA. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.