The primary goal is to reduce cumulative environmental damages (land clearing, mitigation of CO² emissions, nature (conservation) from the current linear economy system by recycling waste when reducing and reusing are not possible.
In the case of scarce metals like cobalt and lithium present in batteries, recycling can extend the life span of the stocks, mitigate dependence on imported materials, help to retain the value of recovered materials within the Norwegian economy and create employment in the recycling sector.
While a lot of research has been published since 2009 about chemical processes for recycling lithium batteries, automatic discharging, disassembly, and sorting processes have received very little attention. These steps are nonetheless essential for effective and economically achievable repair, reuse or recycling.
Standing on the shoulders of the five TRCM research themes, AA 2 Recycling (Batteries) will push the technology forward in automatic discharging, robotic disassembly and sorting of batteries.