As global demand for lithium-ion batteries continues to surge, a team of Rice University researchers has developed a faster, more energy-efficient way to recover critical minerals from spent batteries, potentially easing supply chain pressures and reducing environmental harm.

In a new study published in Small, researchers from Rice’s Department of Materials Science and Nanoengineering introduce a class of water-based solutions that can extract valuable metals from battery waste in minutes rather than hours. The work centers on aqueous solutions of amino chlorides, which mimic the performance of commonly studied green solvents like deep eutectics, while avoiding their key limitations.

“Traditional recycling methods often rely on harsh acids or slow, energy-intensive processes,” said the study’s first author, Simon M. King, a sophomore studying chemical and biomolecular engineering who completed this work as a summer research fellow at the Rice Advanced Materials Institute. “What we’ve shown is that you can achieve rapid, high-efficiency metal recovery using a much simpler, water-based system.”