Single-step battery cathode recycling

University of Illinois Grainger College of Engineering

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Schematic of the single-step battery cathode recycling method. An old electrode is placed into a regenerative bath. An electrochemical process dissolves the valuable metals and coats them onto a new electrode in a single step.

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Credit: The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

A new battery recycling method developed by Illinois Grainger engineers removes scarce, expensive metals from old battery cathodes and coats them onto new cathodes in a single step. The result is significantly more affordable, less environmentally impactful and less risky to health than any recycling method currently in use.

Battery cathodes – the positive part of the battery that helps to store electrical energy – often require rare, expensive metals such as cobalt. It is therefore crucial to develop effective means for recycling cathodes that reclaim the metals essential to their operation.

Researchers in The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have invented a single-stage process for simultaneously extracting metals from old cathodes and creating new cathodes. Focusing on lithium cobalt oxide, the cathode material most used in phone and laptop batteries, the researchers demonstrated that a single electrochemical process can be used to dissolve the material from a spent terminal and deposit it on a new one. As reported in the journal Advanced Functional Materials, the new process is one-eighth as costly and over 50% less impactful than common recycling processes.

“The fact that our process is a single step makes all the difference because the material needs are less than half those of other recycling processes,” said Jarom Sederholm, an Illinois Grainger Engineering chemical and biomolecular engineering graduate student and the study’s lead author. “We collaborated with colleagues in the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering to analyze both the cost and environmental impacts of performing this process at scale. On every factor considered, our process is better.”

Paul Braun, an Illinois Grainger Engineering materials science and engineering professor and the project lead, said, “Current methods for recycling battery cathodes involve too many steps. The cathodes must be broken down, separated and purified, reformed through chemical reactions, and then coated onto new battery components. The processes require considerable energy and chemical inputs, which increases the cost, the potential for environmental harm and risks to human health.”

Sederholm recalls that the idea for the new process came from a hypothetical discussion with Braun.

“Our research group works extensively with electrodeposition – a mechanism by which electrical charge is used to layer a material on a substrate – and has significant research infrastructure,” Sederholm said. “One day, we had a thought: if electrodeposition is possible, then the reverse should also be true. It should be possible to use electricity to dissolve a coating too. So, I went in the lab, set everything up with the right solution and voltages, and the cobalt lithium oxide coating on a cathode came right off.”

Since the required metal was already dissolved in solution from the stripping process, inserting a new cathode into the solution and coating it by electrodeposition was the next logical step. The entire recycling process – reclaiming the valuable metals and reusing them in a new product – takes place as one stage and one reaction in a single chemical bath.

To assess the total cost and impact of the new single-state method, the researchers turned to colleagues in the Illinois Grainger Engineering Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering: graduate student Zheng Liu and professor Pingfeng Wang. They determined that the new method outperforms all techniques currently in use by four metrics: economic efficiency, environmental impact, impact on resources, and human health risk.

The study focused on lithium cobalt oxide cathodes for its prevalence in consumer electronics, but Sederholm plans to extend these results into other cathode chemistries.

“There are many battery technologies based on nickel and manganese oxides, and they would have different requirements for this to work,” he said. “Also, both the cathode and anode can contain binding additives such as polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF), that may be harmful when released into the environment. We want to see if we can mitigate the amount released and even recover other additives for reuse.”

Sederholm, Braun, and Illinois Grainger Engineering materials science and engineering postdoctoral research associate Arghya Patra have filed for an international patent on technology derived from this study.

Jr-Wen Lin and Carlos Juarez-Yescas also contributed to this work.

The study, “Single-Step Electrochemical Battery Recycling,” is available online. DOI: 10.1002/adfm.202511009ope

Support was provided by the National Science Foundation Future Manufacturing Research Grant.

Illinois Grainger Engineering Affiliations

Paul Braun is an Illinois Grainger Engineering professor of materials science and engineering in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. He is affiliated with the Department of Chemistry, the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. He is director of the Materials Research Laboratory and holds a Grainger Distinguished Chair in Engineering appointment.

Pingfeng Wang is an Illinois Grainger Engineering professor of industrial and enterprise systems engineering in the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering. He holds Jerry S. Dobrovolny Faculty Scholar and Donald Biggar Willett Faculty Scholar faculty appointments.

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Journal

Advanced Functional Materials

DOI

10.1002/adfm.202511009ope 

 

Farm conservation is an economical path to save Colorado River water

UCR experts examined the costs of hundreds of Colorado River water projects over 20 years

University of California - Riverside

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Paloma Avila and Mehdi Nemati

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Credit: UC Riverside

The most cost-effective way to conserve the dwindling waters of the Colorado River may not come from building new reservoirs, canals, or wells, but from changing how water is used on farms that consume most of it.

That’s the conclusion of a comprehensive study by UC Riverside’s School of Public Policy, conducted with the Utah Rivers Council.

Led by UCR graduate student Paloma Avila, the study examined 462 federally funded Colorado River conservation and supply projects, totaling about $1 billion (in 2023 constant dollars) between 2004 and 2024, using available spending data from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

It found that agricultural conservation programs saved water as low as $69.89 per acre-foot, while new supply efforts—such as reservoirs, wells, and wastewater treatment facilities—cost more than $2,000 per acre-foot on average. In water conservation, an acre-foot is a measure of the amount of water required to cover one acre of land to a depth of one foot, or approximately 325,851 gallons. 

“It’s important to understand where investments in conservation are being made across the Colorado River Basin and to evaluate their effectiveness,” Avila said.

The study has broad implications because the Colorado River is the economic lifeblood for agriculture in seven states while providing water for as many as 35 million people in and out of the basin.

The UCR analysis showed that the greatest savings occurred where most of the river’s water is used, said Mehdi Nemati, an assistant professor of public policy, co-author of the study, and Avila’s faculty advisor.

“Eighty percent of the water in the basin is consumed by agriculture,” Nemati said. “Agricultural conservation—particularly incentive programs—gives us the lowest cost with the highest savings.”

The vast scale of agricultural water use includes maintaining pasture grasses and alfalfa crops, grown for cattle feed, that cover wide stretches of Wyoming, Colorado, and Arizona. Keeping those fields green often means flooding entire parcels.

Nemati explained that paying ranchers and farmers to cut back on such practices, even temporarily, can deliver meaningful water savings at relatively low cost.

In California’s Palo Verde Valley and parts of Arizona, federal funds have been used to pay farmers to leave alfalfa fields unplanted for a season or two. Other programs encourage “deficit irrigation,” in which growers intentionally use less water while still harvesting a crop. Subsidies have also supported growing other crops and replacing flood irrigation with sprinkler or drip systems that deliver water with much greater precision.

The findings, Nemati said, are particularly useful for policymakers.

“If the goal is to prioritize limited funding, then projects with the highest cost effectiveness make the most sense—especially in agriculture,” he said.

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Journal

JAWRA Journal of the American Water Resources Association

DOI

10.1111/1752-1688.70042 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Public Spending and Water Scarcity: An Empirical Analysis of USBR Investments in the Colorado River Basin

Article Publication Date

29-Sep-2025

 

Feeling in control helps beat daily stress, researchers find

Penn State

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UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A looming deadline at work, a clogged toilet, an argument with a loved one — these daily hassles can make any day feel more stressful. When these demands pile up, it can feel overwhelming, like there’s no end in sight. Yet, the perception of control could make resolving these everyday inconveniences easier, according to a new study from a team including researchers from Penn State.

The research team found that on days when people felt they had more control over stressors than usual, they were 62% more likely to take actions, such as calling the plumber or tackling a difficult conversation, to resolve the stressors, and this relationship strengthens with age. The findings suggest that one’s sense of control over everyday stressors could be a resource — one that can be strengthened or increased — for managing daily life and impact health outcomes.

The study was published in the journal Communications Psychology.

“This research shows that even small boosts in how much control people feel they have over everyday hassles make it more likely that those hassles actually get resolved,” said David Almeida, professor of human development and family studies at Penn State and senior author on the paper. “Learning to find and act on these pockets of control in daily life may not only reduce stress but also support long-term health and well-being.”

How people respond to stress is a dynamic process, according to previous research led by Almeida, and the accumulation of stress over time, including from minor daily inconveniences, can impact health. Resolving stressors, such as settling an argument, is a key part in how stress is processed, especially in helping emotions settle.

The research team set out to examine whether perceived control over stressors — the sense that people feel individual agency over daily challenges — was associated with a greater likelihood that the stressor would be resolved. For example, does feeling control over a billing error motivate a person to call the company to fix it? Several factors can influence one’s sense of perceived control, including the type of stressor, the frequency with which they occur and socioeconomic factors.

“If perceived stressor control promotes stress resolution, can we leverage that as a modifiable resource to influence stressor resolution and therefore our emotional health and well-being?” asked lead author Dakota Witzel, who was a postdoctoral scholar at the Center for Healthy Aging at Penn State during the time of the research and is now an assistant professor at South Dakota State University.

The team analyzed data from over 1,700 adults who participated in the National Study of Daily Experiences, a component of Midlife in the United States Survey (MIDUS), the national longitudinal study on health and well-being. For eight consecutive days, participants reported on daily stressors that occurred in the past 24 hours and whether the stressor was resolved by the end of the day. The survey included common types of stress, such as interpersonal tension including arguments and avoided arguments, job or home-related stress or work overload and network stress — stressors that happen to other people, like family or friends, but are stressful to the participant.

Participants also reported how much control they felt they had over reported stressors on a scale from none, a little, some to a lot of control. The team repeated the survey with the same participants 10 years later to see if the relationship between perceived control and stressor resolution changed over time.

The researchers found that a person’s perceived sense of control over everyday hassles and challenges varies greatly from one day to the next. In other words, the level of perceived daily control isn’t a constant or static trait of the individual — the relative perception of control is what matters.

Overall, across all age groups, days when participants felt they had a greater sense of control over daily stressors than they normally do — reporting that they had some control when they usually report only a little control — increases the odds of resolving the problem. The results didn't vary by the type or severity of the stressor.

The relationship also strengthened as participants got older. At the start of the study, on days of higher perceived control, participants were 61% more likely to resolve the stressor that day. Ten years later, the same boost in perceived control in the same people had a 65% chance that a stressor would be resolved.

“This work also begins to show that as we get older, not only do we have more control but that control helps us get better at handling stress,” Witzel said.

The findings suggest that perceived control could be a lever to mitigate and manage daily stress.

“It’s encouraging news that daily control isn’t fixed. It can be strengthened through practical strategies such as setting priorities or reframing what’s within reach,” Almeida said. “We need to figure out how we can create the context and setting to allow people to feel more control.”

For example, Almeida suggested focusing on what’s within one’s influence such as breaking big challenges into manageable parts and using time blocking or lists to track progress. This can help build momentum with quick wins. Asking for help or delegating tasks can help create an environment where one feels supported and therefore more in control of their situation. Ending the day with a brief reflection can also better prepare for the next day.

The research team plans to continue to explore the nature of the relationship between perceived control and stress resolution, including how it may influence chronic stress.

“In this study, we’re talking about daily stressors, the minor inconveniences that occur throughout the day, but there’s also chronic stress where people are continually impacted by stressors again and again,” Witzel said. “Exploring the idea of whether resolution can be a mechanism that decreases the effect of chronic stress is an interesting area to explore.”

Eric Cerino, associate professor at Northern Arizona University, is co-lead author of the paper. Other authors on the paper include Robert Stawski, professor, Utah State University; Gillian Porter, assistant clinical professor, Raechel Livingston, research coordinator, and Amanda Black from Northern Arizona University; Jonathan Rush, assistant professor, University of Victoria; Jacqueline Mogle, RTI Health Solutions; Susan Charles, professor, University of California, Irvine; and Jennifer Piazza, professor, California State University, Fullerton.

Funding from the National Institute of Aging and the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities supported this work.

At Penn State, researchers are solving real problems that impact the health, safety and quality of life of people across the commonwealth, the nation and around the world.

For decades, federal support for research has fueled innovation that makes our country safer, our industries more competitive and our economy stronger. Recent federal funding cuts threaten this progress.

Learn more about the implications of federal funding cuts to our future at Research or Regress.

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Journal

Communications Psychology

DOI

10.1038/s44271-025-00313-7 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Daily association between perceived control and resolution of daily stressors strengthens across a decade of adulthood

 

Seal’s sensitive whiskers hold key to foiling fish escapes

Seals use their sensitive whiskers to detect tiny sized differences between vortices in fish escape wakes that would tell them in which direction the fish was fleeing

The Company of Biologists

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Life beneath the waves can be a game of cat and mouse. Seals pursue swimming fish by following the tell-tale wakes and spinning vortices they leave behind, sensing the faint swirls with their sensitive whiskers. But fish might have a trick up their sleeves. Yvonne Krüger from University of Rostock, Germany, explains that escaping fish produce three jets of different sizes they dart away, squirting in individual directions almost simultaneously – at least two of which form into vortex rings, like smoke rings – which could confuse a seal. But might seals be able to see through the deception?

‘The seal will have a better chance of guessing a fish’s escape direction if it can tell the difference between the two vortex rings’, says Wolf Hanke. To do this, the seals’ whiskers would need to detect size differences of tens of millimetres between the two spinning vortex rings. But was that possible? Krüger, Hanke, Lars Miersch and Guido Dehnhardt (University of Rostock) publish their discovery that seals can detect differences in the width of vortex rings in wakes of just 17.6mm using their whiskers alone, which could help them to detect a fleeing fish’s direction, in Journal of Experimental Biology.

First the team taught a harbour seal (Phoca vitulina) named Filou, who lived at the Marine Science Centre, Rostock, to submerge his head while blindfolded as they released a spinning vortex ring from a piston positioned to one side of the seal’s head, occasionally visualising the vortex ring with uranine dye in the water. Then, shortly after, they released a smaller or larger vortex ring on the other side. Filou had to decide which of the vortex rings was larger based only on the feeling as the water swirled across his whiskers, tapping one of two green balls on either side of his head to let the scientists know which side had produced the larger vortex ring and receiving a fish reward when he was correct. ‘It took him quite a while to grasp the concept of different vortex ring size’, says Krüger.

Initially, the team tested Filou’s ability to differentiate between vortex rings ranging in size from 89.9 mm, down to 45.8 mm – with a smallest difference of just 17.6 mm – and Filou was remarkably successful (well above 80%), correctly selecting the side with the largest vortex using only his whiskers. But to be sure that Filou really could distinguish between vortices of different size, Krüger changed the way that the vortices were paired, so that one of the smaller vortices (68.0 mm) – which Filou had ignored previously – became the larger vortex. And he still picked it out. After months of patience and thousands of trials switching between vortices, Krüger and colleagues were convinced that harbour seals are capable of distinguishing between vortex rings that differ in size by as little as 17.6 mm using their sensitive whiskers.

But what does this mean for fleeing fish? As the second jet produced by an escaping fish – which squirts in the opposite direction from the fish’s travel – is accompanied by a larger vortex ring and Filou can distinguish between jet vortices that differ by just 17.6 mm, Krüger and colleagues think that it is very likely that seals can see through the fish’s attempted evasion. The seals’ sensitive whiskers could simply detect the largest spinning vortex generated as fish attempt to flee and dive in the opposite direction to outmanoeuvre and foil a fishy escape.

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or https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article-lookup/doi/10.1242/jeb.249258

Krüger, Y., Hanke, W., Miersch, L. and Dehnhardt, G. (2025). Sensitivity of the mystacial vibrissal system of harbour seals (Phoca vitulina) to size differences of single vortex rings. J. Exp. Biol. 228, jeb249258. doi:10.1242/jeb.249258

DOI: doi:10.1242/jeb.249258

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Journal

Journal of Experimental Biology

DOI

10.1242/jeb.249258 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Sensitivity of the mystacial vibrissal system of harbour seals (Phoca vitulina) to size differences of single vortex rings

Article Publication Date

30-Sep-2025