Closing material and substance cycles is essential for sustainable battery production. In addition to information from the entire battery product life cycle, material composition, battery system assembly and battery use, data from recycling processes is particularly important. The data is important for optimally setting process parameters in recycling processes, achieving high recovery rates and qualities, and significantly reducing energy and material consumption. This requires sensors and self-regulating systems, so-called control loops.
So far, sensor and digitization solutions in industrial recycling operations are only available in early stage form and only for individual processes. The project DiRectION therefore focuses on the systematic acquisition and processing of product and process data in battery recycling as well as their cross-process consolidation and evaluation. For this purpose, systems for data acquisition and processing will be installed at existing or future recycling infrastructures of the mechanical, hydro- as well as pyrometallurgical recycling process chains. The large volumes of data are evaluated automatically with the aid of data mining, i.e. through automated searching and evaluation of data records. This allows the influence of various process parameters on the yield or purity of recovered raw materials to be investigated in a targeted manner. The results are used to formulate recommendations for action which, depending on the objective, identify digitization solutions and implementation steps for designing sustainable battery recycling routes.
The project DiRectION helps to build up a database of battery recycling across all process routes and to derive far-reaching findings by means of data analyses. The associated increase in efficiency in the recovery of raw materials and reduction in the costs of secondary raw materials will lead in the long term to a reduction in Germany’s dependence on raw materials and to the continuous further development of battery recycling in Germany.
