Battery Recycling Patents Win Europe's Top Invention Prize

💡 On 2 July 2026, the European Patent Office awarded its European Inventor Award 2026 to Chinese inventors Xie Yinghao and Yu Haijun of Brunp Recycling, a CATL subsidiary, for a battery directed recycling process protected by patents EP4202089B1 and EP4194572. The technology recovers up to 99.6% of nickel, cobalt and manganese from spent lithium-ion batteries while cutting carbon emissions by 61% compared with conventional methods, and could rewrite where the world sources the critical minerals inside every electric vehicle.

What these patents actually do

Every lithium-ion battery eventually dies. When it does, the conventional path is hydrometallurgy: dissolve the entire cell in acid, extract each metal through a long chain of chemical steps, and accept whatever recovery rate the process allows. It works, but it is costly, slow, and generates large volumes of hazardous waste.

Brunp Recycling took a fundamentally different approach. Patent EP4194572, granted December 11, 2024, describes a staged pH-adjustment process that separates iron and aluminium impurities from a nickel-cobalt-manganese (NCM) solution without losing the valuable metals. By carefully precipitating the unwanted elements at each pH step, the process leaves a clean NCM stream behind. The recovered byproducts, sodium carbonate and goethite, are reusable, meaning there is no hazardous waste discharge.

Patent EP4202089B1, granted March 12, 2025, goes further. It takes the ternary polycrystalline micropowder that accumulates as a production byproduct in most cathode factories, material most manufacturers discard, and converts it into high-performance single-crystal NCM cathode material through primary sintering, jet pulverization, and secondary coating. The result delivers a first discharge capacity of 200 to 206 mAh/g and over 96% capacity retention after 50 cycles. Waste becomes feedstock for new premium cells.

Together these two patents form the backbone of what Brunp calls Directed Recycling Technologies (DRT): instead of destroying spent materials and rebuilding from scratch, the process preserves and upgrades what is already there. That is a conceptual shift, not just an incremental improvement. The next challenge is understanding why that shift matters right now.

The problem they solve: the battery end-of-life crisis

More than 2,000 GWh of lithium-ion battery capacity was installed worldwide between 2018 and 2023, supporting roughly 40 million electric vehicles and thousands of grid storage projects. Those batteries last 8 to 15 years, which means the first major decommissioning wave is now arriving. The volume will accelerate sharply through the 2030s.

The metals inside spent cells, lithium, nickel, cobalt and manganese, are classified as critical raw materials by both the European Union and the United States. Mining them is geographically concentrated, politically sensitive and environmentally costly. Efficient recycling is therefore not merely a business opportunity: it is a strategic necessity for any country that wants a domestic battery supply chain.

The scale of the prize is substantial. At 99.6% recovery of Ni/Co/Mn and 96.5% recovery of lithium, virtually none of the metals inside a spent battery needs to be landfilled. Every percentage point of recovery translates directly into reduced mining demand and lower raw-material costs for battery manufacturers. That economic logic is driving the patent race, and Brunp is currently winning it. Understanding how they got there requires looking at the chemistry breakthrough more closely.

From waste micropowder to single-crystal cathode: the key insight

Patent EP4202089B1 deserves close attention because it solves a problem within the problem. Even efficient conventional recycling generates polycrystalline NCM micropowder as a size-distribution byproduct, particles too fine to meet specification, which most plants landfill or downcycle. Brunp's process converts this micropowder into single-crystal NCM, a higher-purity form that commands a premium over the polycrystalline material most cathodes are made of today. Single-crystal NCM resists micro-cracking, lasts longer, and is increasingly specified for premium battery cells in long-range EVs.

The commercial implication is striking: a process that was previously a source of waste cost becomes a source of premium revenue. This is what inventor Yu Haijun calls Reverse Product Positioning Design (RPPD): designing the recycling process backward from the desired high-value end product, rather than forward from the waste input. That systems-thinking approach is precisely what the EPO recognised with the award, and what sets Brunp apart from most competitors. But the technology does not operate in isolation.

What it depends on and what it could unlock

Directed recycling requires a reliable supply of spent batteries, which in turn depends on EV adoption continuing to grow, and on collection and sorting infrastructure that routes batteries to licensed recyclers rather than informal channels. China leads the world in battery collection regulation; Europe is implementing the EU Battery Regulation, which from 2031 will require minimum recycled-content levels in new cells. Both policy frameworks create pull demand for exactly the technology Brunp has patented.

On the unlock side, high-quality recycled NCM cathode material could feed directly into new battery production, reducing dependence on primary mining and stabilising cathode prices. For manufacturers targeting closed-loop supply chains, a capability Brunp parent CATL has explicitly stated as a strategic goal, the ability to recover battery-grade material from spent cells is a durable competitive advantage.

Further out, single-crystal NCM produced from recycled feedstock could also supply next-generation applications: solid-state batteries, aircraft batteries, and high-cycle grid storage all benefit from the material's superior stability. The patent's value therefore compounds over time as the applications expand. But the strategic picture also depends on who holds the patent, and what that means for the industry.

Who is Brunp, and why CATL is at the center of this story

Brunp Recycling was founded in 2005, a decade before the EV boom made battery recycling a strategic priority. It entered the CATL ecosystem in 2015, giving the battery giant visibility into the full battery lifecycle at a time when most cell makers were focused exclusively on production. That foresight is now reflected in a portfolio of over 5,770 domestic and foreign patent applications in battery recycling and related materials.

In the battery circularity field, the EPO-IEA joint report published in April 2026 identified Brunp as the top patent owner globally, ahead of Toyota, LG Chem and Sumitomo. CATL itself commands a 46.7% domestic market share in China. The combination of manufacturing scale, recycling capability and patent depth gives the CATL-Brunp group a competitive moat that is genuinely difficult for rivals to replicate quickly.

For inventors Xie Yinghao and Yu Haijun, the European Inventor Award is recognition that their work, developed mostly in Chinese-language patent filings, has achieved global significance. European patents must be translated to be enforceable in each national market, which is where the intersection of deep technical knowledge and precise patent translation becomes critical. The next question is who stands to lose from this advantage.

Who it threatens: primary miners and conventional recyclers

The immediate impact of highly efficient battery recycling falls on primary miners of nickel, cobalt and lithium. Every tonne of cobalt recovered from a spent battery is a tonne that does not need to be mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which produces roughly 70% of global supply. The same logic applies to nickel from Indonesia and the Philippines, and to lithium from Australia, Chile and Argentina.

Efficient recycling is a long-run substitute for primary mining, not a complete replacement, because the volume of recoverable material is limited by past production. But as the installed base of EV batteries grows, the substitution effect grows with it. By 2030, some analysts project that recycled materials could supply 10% to 20% of cathode demand globally. At Brunp's recovery rates, that figure could be higher.

The secondary impact falls on conventional recyclers using older hydrometallurgical processes. If customers can obtain battery-grade NCM at competitive cost from directed recycling, the market for lower-grade recovered material contracts. European patent protection (EP4202089B1 and EP4194572) gives Brunp exclusivity in key markets through the patent term, though competitors in jurisdictions not covered by the EP patents can develop alternative approaches.

The patent race: seven-fold growth in a decade

Brunp's dual win at the European Inventor Award is the headline, but the deeper story is the patent race building behind it. The EPO-IEA joint report found that international patent families covering battery circularity grew at an average annual rate of 42% from 2017 to 2023, more than 20 times faster than the average for all technology fields (2% per year) and nearly three times faster than battery manufacturing overall (16% per year). The field grew seven-fold in a decade.

China led the surge: its share of international battery circularity patent families rose from 5% in 2013 to 29% in 2023, making it the single largest national source. Europe accounts for around 20%, Japan and South Korea for a combined 25%. The geography of battery recycling IP closely mirrors the geography of EV production.

The commercial stakes are significant. The global battery recycling market is estimated at $32.28 billion in 2026 and is projected to reach $91.72 billion by 2034 (CAGR 13.95%). The EV battery segment is growing even faster, at 27.7% per year. Those growth rates explain why Toyota, BASF, LG Chem and Sumitomo are all filing battery recycling patents, and why Brunp's decision to patent aggressively in Europe early was a strategically sound move.

So what does it mean for us?

Efficient battery recycling is easy to underestimate from a distance because it looks like a cleanup operation. The Brunp patents reveal it to be something different: an IP-intensive manufacturing technology that can determine who controls the battery materials supply chain in the 2030s. The EPO recognition confirms that the patents are not only technically sound but commercially significant across multiple jurisdictions.

For businesses in translation and localization, patents like EP4202089B1 carry a specific implication. A European patent must be translated to be fully enforceable in each national market. A Chinese company holding European patents, with technology developed in Mandarin-language research, faces a translation challenge that is both legally critical and highly technical. Errors in translating electrochemical claims are not just editorial: they are legal vulnerabilities that can narrow or void protection.

More broadly, the Brunp story illustrates the direction of the battery sector as a whole: from a linear model (mine, make, use, discard) toward a circular one (mine less, recover more, reuse at high quality). The patents protecting that transition are some of the most strategically important IP being developed today. How they are enforced, licensed, and localized across markets will shape the competitive landscape of the clean energy economy for decades.

FAQ

Sources

• GlobeNewswire: European Inventor Award 2026 announcement (July 2, 2026)
• Google Patents: EP4202089A1 - Ternary Single Crystal Positive Electrode Material (2023)
• Google Patents: EP4194572A1 - Method for recycling Fe/Al in NCM solution (2023)
• IEA: Battery Recycling Innovation Surging (2026)
• IPWatchdog: Battery Recycling Patent Families Increase Seven-Fold (May 2026)

About the author

Dao Huy (Lucas) is a professional translator with 7+ years of experience working between English, Chinese, French and Vietnamese, with a specialisation in technical, patent and intellectual property documents. He works regularly with engineering firms, IP law offices and technology companies, and understands the legal precision that patent translation demands: every claim in a patent like EP4202089B1 must be rendered exactly, or protection is weakened.

If your business needs patent translation, IP translation, technical translation, or technology localization into Vietnamese, contact Dao Huy for a quote at daohuy.com.