As automakers race to meet rising electric vehicle demand, researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison say they’ve developed a cost-effective way to recycle lithium from spent batteries.

Led by chemistry professor Kyoung-Shin Choi, the team created a two-step electrochemical process that extracts lithium from widely used lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries. Unlike conventional methods, which rely on energy-intensive heat treatments or chemical-heavy processes, the new technique minimises waste, reduces chemical inputs, and recovers lithium as high-purity compounds suitable for making new batteries.