In an interview with AutoEVTimes, Shubham Vishvakarma, Founder & Chief of Process Engineering at Metastable Materials, emphasized that battery recycling must be the backbone of India’s EV future. He shared how their chemical-free ICR process delivers 95% metal recovery while cutting environmental impact. Vishvakarma outlined Metastable’s roadmap to scale operations, reduce import reliance, and position India as a global leader in clean materials manufacturing.
Read the full interview here:
AET: India’s EV boom is in full swing, but recycling seems to be lagging behind. In your view, how critical is battery recycling to ensuring India’s EV growth remains truly sustainable?
Shubham: Battery recycling definitely must be a backbone of a sustainable energy transition and complement it for the success of EV growth. The focus has been on accelerating EV adoption, recycling is definitely gaining traction as we are beginning to focus of the lifecycle of batteries The pressure on mineral supply chains is huge especially for lithium, cobalt and nickel. Recycling is the only scalable circular solution to keep the already mined minerals used in batteries in circulation, reduce the need for fresh extraction, and mitigate the environmental impact of battery disposal and build a domestic supply of strategic materials. Without a robust technology driven recycling infra, the promise of EVs would become a deferred liability.
AET: Metastable’s Integrated Carbothermal Reduction (ICR) process is a key differentiator. Could you walk us through how this chemical-free method works and the impact it has on recovery efficiency and environmental sustainability?
Shubham: The Integrated Carbothermal Reduction (ICR) process is sustainable, zero-liquid discharge, low carbon technology that breaks new ground in battery recycling. Unlike conventional hydrometallurgy, our method does not rely on chemicals or produce toxic effluents. Instead, we leverage the physical properties of metals like copper, aluminium and plastics such as density , magnetism etc to separate the materials. The other materials undergo high temperature treatment in a controlled atmosphere to facilitate reduction of the materials to cobalt and nickel mixture and lithium in carbonate form.
The impact is twofold: first, we achieve high recovery efficiencies, with yields of up to 95%, and second, we drastically reduce the carbon and water footprint of recycling operations. This positions ICR as both an economically and environmentally sound solution, aligned with India’s climate commitments.
AET: How does the design of EV batteries influence recycling efficiency, and what role should manufacturers play in designing for disassembly and resource recovery?
Shubham: Battery design is one of the most formidable challenges faced by the recycling industry. Even with cutting edge technology, upstream design fundamentally impacts the scalability, safety and economics of recycling.
Battery packs are understandably designed prioritising energy density, performance and cost but neglect end of life considerations. Battery packs are tightly sealed in welded aluminium, or steel or hardened plastic and casings filled with sealants or epoxy that makes disassembly hazardous and labor intensive. Battery packs are quite often disassembled at the scrap dealers’ end, who sell the the casing and other such materials and the job of recycling the cell within lies with the recycler. Another layer of complexity is added by the great variety of battery chemistries (NMC, LFP, LCO) and cell formats (pouch, cylindrical, prismatic). Metal recovery techniques, fire safety precautions, and handling procedures vary depending on the chemistry and form factor. Yield predictability and economics are impacted by the inconsistent metal content. Unpredictability in recovery yields even arise from differences in manufacturers and product use cases, even when the same chemistry may be used.
To put it briefly, we are executing large-scale recovery procedures while simultaneously investing time and effort into resolving what ought to be standardized engineering issues. Costs increase, throughput declines, and achieving sustainability targets becomes more challenging.
AET: Your ‘waste-as-ores’ philosophy is quite visionary. How does this approach help in reducing India’s reliance on critical mineral imports, and what industries stand to benefit most from your extracted materials?
Shubham: Our ‘waste-as-ores’ philosophy is based on how our technology treats batteries as if they were ores dug out from the ground. We apply mining principles to recover critical minerals like lithium, cobalt, nickel, and copper. These materials are essential not only for EVs, but also for grid-scale energy storage, consumer electronics.
We aim to secure our country’s critical minerals requirement by extracting these metals domestically from batteries. Essentially, we hope that a parallel, secondary supply chain of metals is created to supplement virgin mining and keep metals in circulation. This benefits a wide spectrum of industries including automotive, reconstruction, electronics, renewable energy, any manufacturing industry that uses these metals within the batteries really and supports India’s ambitions of becoming a global manufacturing hub.
AET: With the pilot plant underway, what are Metastable’s next steps in scaling up operations, and how do you plan to handle 4–6% of India’s end-of-life Li-ion battery volumes initially?
Shubham: As we transition from pilot to full-scale operations, our immediate focus is on solidifying our supply chains and customer base, while ensuring our technology scales reliably and sustainably. We are currently aligning with key OEMs, and providing commercial samples to customers to secure a steady pipeline of feedstock and a strong customer base.
In the short term, we plan to expand to strategic locations across India where logistics can be optimized. In the long term, “no atom left behind” should be the aim if we are to truly close the loop. Every atom of a critical metal should be put back into the supply chain. So we aim to evolve into a global hub for critical material recovery, unlock maximum value from end-of-life batteries not just for India, but for the world. Our roadmap includes building high-throughput facilities that set new benchmarks for circularity, efficiency, and environmental stewardship.
AET: Battery recycling is often seen as a back-end process. But you’ve described it as “the new manufacturing.” How do you foresee this industry creating green jobs and driving India’s next industrial revolution?
Battery recycling, far from being a back-end activity, it is instead a high-value process that blends advanced materials science, clean tech and automation. As we scale, we foresee the creation of thousands of green-collar jobs across engineering, plant operations, R&D, logistics.
The infrastructure and capabilities we build today will lay the foundation for India’s position in clean materials manufacturing. Recycling plants could function as modern refineries, not just recovering metals, but also refining them to make higher grade metals. This would redefine our position in the global value chain. India could move from a raw material importer to a circular economy powerhouse. Recycling batteries is actually about how materials are sourced, processed, and reused in the 21st century.
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