Managing Impurities in Direct Battery Recycling: Advancing Separation and Purification for High-Quality Feedstocks

Direct recycling offers a more sustainable and energy-efficient alternative to conventional metallurgical methods for treating end-of-life lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). However, the large-scale deployment of direct regeneration is limited by its low tolerance to impurities, making the production of high-purity feedstocks and impurity management essential for viability. Drawing on insights into how impurities affect cathode regeneration, this Perspective discusses current and emerging separation and purification technologies and delineates the remaining gap to the mass production of high-quality feedstocks. We propose integrated, high-efficiency approaches that elevate feedstock quality and broaden impurity control across the entire workflow, positioning impurity management in both preprocessing and regeneration as being essential to the economic and environmental performance of direct recycling. The result is a research roadmap to enable scalable, sustainable, and cost-effective battery recycling practices.