Recovering Critical Elements From Wastewater for Battery Materials: A Review

Driven by global carbon neutrality goals, the transition toward a circular economy and sustainable resource management has become increasingly imperative. Given the indispensable role of battery technologies in modern energy storage systems, strategic elements such as lithium (Li), cobalt (Co), and nickel (Ni)—identified by the European Commission as high-risk critical resources—are facing mounting supply pressure, underscoring the urgent need to exploit alternative secondary resource streams. In this context, industrial wastewater, containing both critical metallic elements (e.g., Li, Co, Ni, Mn, and Fe) and nonmetallic battery-related elements (e.g., phosphorus (P) and fluorine (F)), represents an underutilized yet highly promising resource reservoir. This review systematically examines resource recovery pathways from diverse industrial wastewaters enriched with key battery elements. Advanced recovery technologies, including adsorption, precipitation, electrochemical methods, and membrane separation, are critically compared in terms of pollutant removal performance, elemental selectivity, and recovery efficiency. Beyond elemental extraction, particular emphasis is placed on the conversion of recovered species into functional battery-grade materials (e.g., FePO₄ and Li₂CO₃), thereby establishing a closed-loop framework of “wastewater purification-element regeneration-material reconstruction”. Furthermore, key technical challenges associated with wastewater matrix complexity, process integration, and scalability are critically discussed, and future research directions for advancing battery material production from wastewater are proposed. Overall, this review provides a system-level perspective that bridges wastewater treatment and battery material manufacturing, offering fundamental support for sustainable resource utilization and the global transition toward green energy.