Other no-Co battery contents need to be extracted in one go to develop recycling processes with economic, societal and environmental perspectives. They, for instance, include low-density plastics, metal shells and foils, binders, separators, organic solvents, Li salt, anode active materials. Successful separation methods have the potential to enrich the constituent of targeted materials and improve the profit for recycling.

In recent years, several pre-treatment processes were tested at least at lab-scale (usually mechanical, thermal and chemical options).

The following pre-treatment concepts are expected to be addressed:

1. Battery sorting at component level that should be more efficient, accurate, also including recommendations for the standardisation of labelling of battery components, due to the huge variation of physical configurations, cell types and chemistries, with the aim of re-using the suitable components.
2. Advanced pre-processing methods including (but not limited to) physical, mechanical, dry, thermal and aqueous pre-treatment methods that allow improved pre-concentration while minimising as much as possible waste side products.
3. Process design enabling the recovery and valorisation of anode materials.
4. Electrolyte valorisation through the development of sustainable and safe processes for the recovery of Li-salts.
5. Separation of all the strategic battery materials that should be integrated into existing/innovative recycling processes to mitigate potential effect of impurities.
6. Recovery of electrode current collectors (Al and Cu) that should be improved by developing more efficient separation methods of the metal foils from the electrode materials and easier removal of the organic binder.
7. Other recoverable not-active materials from the EoL battery (solvent as EC, DEC, DMC, binders, separator).
8. Pre-assessing concepts by their life cycle sustainability and safety impacts and studying overall techno-economical solutions for recovery systems in order to minimize cost, environmental impact and system losses.