Princeton NuEnergy's battery recycling tech recovers 97% of lithium-ion material
18 comments
·August 16, 2025oulipo
That's really cool! And if before recycling your (ebike) batteries you want to repair them, check out what we've designed in France at Gouach: https://gouach.com
password4321
This is awesome! I want to see the full video from the flame tests to failure vs. the security camera footage online of the e-scooter burning down the house while everyone is out.
plemer
Brilliant! Looks like you’ve recently started shipping, too. How are your unit economics?
throwawayoldie
Not only is this so-called article slop, it breaks the back button. One more site to blacklist.
lightedman
At what SoC?
Cuz I know in San Diego a lithium battery recycling project just cleared government inspection to shred and recycle batteries at ANY SoC, which is a major improvement vs most any other li-ion recycling facility which needs those batteries drained as much as possible before recycling begins.
_Microft
I hope someone digs up a proper source for that because this one is a pile of AI slop illustrated with more AI slop.
Edit: I could not find anything yet.
ac29
The original press release is here: https://pnecycle.com/the-u-s-battery-circular-economy-advanc...
ronsor
I don't know. It looks like every battery recycling facility I've seen before: piles of non-descript objects with unreadable labels, machines with unreadable signs posted on them, etc.
Animats
Right.
Anybody with piles of batteries like that needs a very powerful sprinkler system. Lithium battery fires at recycling centers have become a major problem, even with only a few lithium batteries. Search "lithium battery recycling fire".
There are deluge systems that can cope with battery fires. They're simple, but need a big water supply.
SoftTalker
This is why this sort of industry usually ends up in places like Pakistan and Bangladesh. They’re desperate for work and don’t worry about safety or environmental pollution.
zaphar
It was my understanding that battery fires don't go out because they are basically self fueling. You would be better served having a way to contain it until it burned itself out.
adgjlsfhk1
it's self catalyzing, but only above a certain temperature. if you dump enough water on it, it goes out
jeffbee
Seems like a waste of good water. Anyone with that quantity of batteries should have a large pile of sand on hand, a pre-placed giant hole in the ground, and a bulldozer to manage the job.
cyberax
One of the recycling steps is dissolving the lithium in water. So they might just as well take a burning battery and just chuck it into the shredder, and then mix the burning slurry with water.
Contrary to the popular belief, lithium batteries do NOT contain enough oxygen to just keep self-burning. Most of the lithium-ion pyrotechnics is just from good old atmospheric oxygen, which oxidizes the organic electrolyte.
What lithium-ion batteries have is the ignition source that basically keeps going on and on. So once you extinguish the burning electrolyte, it just keeps reigniting.
Sounds awesome, but this article seems to be an LLM rewrite of a press release:
> This article is based on verified sources and supported by editorial technologies.
Is there perhaps any other news about this plant or process, maybe with additional context on what will determine the market viability of their approach?