Japanese recycling process reclaims up to 90% of lithium from spent EV batteries

Engineers at a Japanese recycling facility report a process that recovers roughly 90% of the lithium in used EV batteries, well above the sub-50% typical of conventional recycling. The key change is substituting recovered lithium hydroxide for the standard sodium hydroxide when treating ‘black mass’—the shredded battery waste—which yields high-purity lithium suitable for new cells. Researchers claim the approach also cuts carbon emissions by about 40% versus existing methods.

The strategic angle is supply-chain independence. Japan imports nearly all of its battery minerals, and lithium mining is costly, energy-intensive, and geopolitically fraught. Recovering the metal domestically at scale would ease reliance on imports and steady supply. Stated targets include stronger production capacity by 2027 and extraction of tens of thousands of tons of material annually by 2035.

The main obstacle is collection, not chemistry: only about 14% of Japan’s used lithium-ion batteries currently enter formal recycling channels, so the infrastructure to feed such a process barely exists yet. The figures come from a single facility and press coverage, and some of the surrounding commentary (including viral claims of guaranteed ‘economic security’) is promotional, so the results warrant caution until independently validated at industrial scale.