The batteries of electric vehicles are designed to last a long time: their average degradation is between 2 and 3% per year in the first years. In this way, most manufacturers guarantee The battery for about 8 to 10 years or up to 160,000 km at 200,000 kmmaintaining at least 70% or 80% capacity.
When the battery low from that capacity threshold, it is not discarded immediately and enters a second -use phase in stationary applications, such as energy storage for households or electrical networks. After this … the batteries that end this last life They will begin to appear in large volumes from 2028-2030.
By 2030, the amount of electric vehicle battery waste that will be generated annually could reach 2 million metric tons. This is the same amount of weight as 100,000 totally loaded maritime transport containers: a row of containers that would extend over 600 kilometers (the distance between Madrid and Barcelona approximately).
Now, a team of scientists from the University of Shenzhen has found a solution to recycle those millions of tons of electric garbage. When a lithium battery is spent, The key material that stores energy (the cathode) suffers two types of damage. Inner one, basically lithium is lost and the internal crystalline structure of the material is messy, and another superficial: the carbon layer that helps the material to conduct electricity is broken or degraded.
Traditional recycling methods are expensive and polluting, as simply Metals extract without reliving battery structure. The solution proposed by the authors of the study, published in Advanced Materials, is Use tea polyphenols. The team, led by Yupin Sun, has developed a direct regeneration method (or “healing”) that reverses the damage, using two key components.
The first would be a “electron donor” (tea polyphenols). These compounds “return” the missing lithium and, essentially, regenerate the original chemical composition of active battery material. It’s about A low cost, energetically efficient and ecological step. And very economical for China, which produces 40% of the planet’s tea.
The second step is a “patch” that seals the surface. To solve this, Sun’s equipment used an aluminum source that creates a very fine aluminum phosphate coating (alpo₄) and lithium phosphatewhich acts as an intelligent patch that adheres only to the damaged regions of the cathode particle.
This coating reconstructs dual channels that allow rapid transport of ions and electrons, Returning to the battery its loading and durability speed. Or that are responsible for the study. This technique shows that it is possible to restore the properties and performance of the batteries used at a level similar to that of a new battery, instead of simply extracting its components.
The use of a natural material such as tea in the process marks a significant advance towards a circular economy in energy technology, making the management of lithium batteries at the end of their useful life much more sustainable and less expensive. What does not clarify the study is whether tea can be used once drunk, which would turn the progress into a complete recycling.