​​Yu Haijun and Xie Yinghao​

Traditional recycling methods for lithium-ion batteries, especially lithium nickel-cobalt-manganese oxide (NCM) cathode materials, are energy-intensive and chemically demanding. These processes break down batteries into basic compounds, which consumes large quantities of water, acids, alkaline and energy resources, and generates secondary waste. The recovered materials are often lower in quality, making them unsuitable for new battery production.

Brunp Recycling’s team developed a more selective alternative. Their "reverse-positioning" method reuses the existing structure of the battery material's core cells, including the aluminium element from the positive electrode, as a functional input rather than waste. The technology physically separates spent batteries to extract positive electrode tabs, which are then mixed with a special slagging agent and residual aluminium before undergoing a thermally initiated reaction. This produces a special nickel-cobalt-manganese alloy state, which is treated to create a porous structure powder. When combined with lithium and sintered, it becomes a high-grade cathode material.

The company reports near-complete metal recovery—99.6% of nickel, cobalt and manganese, and 96.5% of lithium. Acid and alkali use drops by 73%, and the workflow is over 18% shorter than with traditional hydrometallurgy, enabling higher throughput and more practical mega-industrial scaling. Recycling nickel, cobalt and lithium emits about 80% fewer greenhouse gases than mining these materials. With global EV battery installations exceeding 1 000 GWh and 190 GWh of scrap already accumulated, recovering materials from spent batteries can reduce the need for new mining.

Realising a circular economy vision

The invention grew out of practical experience with battery manufacturing and waste management. In the early 2000s, the team observed the growing obstacle of managing spent batteries alongside China’s dependence on imported raw materials. This insight led to the establishment of Brunp Recycling and a long-term research effort focused on scalable recycling technologies. Haijun joined the company in 2006 and Xie Yinghao in 2013, and have long been dedicated to research in battery recycling and utilisation technologies. They became central to the company’s innovation efforts.

Developing technologies to recover spent batteries presented challenges at every turn. As Xie Yinghao recalls, “Our first challenge was that the experiments were very difficult to conduct. We tried a lot, and failed a lot, before we got the right results. The next challenge was converting the experimental results into real production.”

A major turning point came in 2009, when Yu Haijun proposed Reverse Product Positioning Design (RPPD) and Directed Recycling Technologies (DRT), seeking to shift from destructive chemical treatment to selective preservation and directed recovery of core materials—disruptively achieving high efficiency and low cost. By 2012, the team had developed the first generation of DRT for ternary battery cathodes.

After Brunp joined Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Limited (CATL) ecosystem in 2015, the team advanced DRT across CATL’s supply chain. By 2019, after analysing thousands of samples, they overcame longstanding challenges in regenerated NCM materials and created the second generation of DRT, producing materials with high performance, greater safety and a lower carbon footprint. “With our ultra-high recovery rates, superior material performance and exceptionally low processing costs. we are reducing our reliance on millions of tons of virgin nickel, cobalt and lithium ore, which is a major contribution to sustainability,” says Yu Haijun.

About the inventors

Dr. Yu Haijun is research Fellow, director of the National-Local Joint Engineering Research Center for Power Battery Recycling of New Energy Vehicles, director of the Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Battery Recycling, is also the founder of the RPPD concept. He has contributed to 153 Chinese national and industry standards and holds 43 research awards. Xie Yinghao is a Director at Brunp and an accomplished researcher, having authored 75 scientific papers and contributed to 110 Chinese national and industry standards.