NJIT Alum Named a Global Climate Innovator for Groundbreaking Battery Recycling Technology

Chao Yan, a New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) alumnus and co-founder of Princeton NuEnergy, has been named one of Business Insider's Climate Action 15 for 2024 - a list highlighting global leaders deploying innovative solutions to combat the climate crisis.

The 15 honorees are trailblazers in energy, transportation, agriculture and shipping and provide answers to questions raised by climate change. In its profile of Yan, Business Insider highlighted his childhood, education and impetus behind finding a new way to recycle batteries. Yan's work tackles the pressing issue of lithium-ion battery recycling, a critical element in advancing clean energy.

Raised in Taiyuan, China, a city shaped by coal and steel industries, Yan grew up questioning the environmental costs of industrial progress. This curiosity ultimately guided him to NJIT, where he earned a master's and Ph.D. in chemistry under the mentorship of Chemistry Professor Lev Krasnoperov. There, Yan began pioneering research that now drives Princeton NuEnergy's revolutionary plasma-assisted recycling technology.

Conventional recycling methods for lithium-ion batteries are energy-intensive and pollutive, but Yan and his team have developed a sustainable alternative. Princeton NuEnergy's process recovers up to 98% of valuable battery materials such as cathodes and anodes while significantly reducing costs and emissions.

"With our approach, we are able to more simply separate valuable material like the cathode and use plasma to clean the material, minimizing impurities in the recycling step," said Yan, in an earlier interview. "The deep cleaning in our system guarantees the high quality of the final products … We can produce the battery grade materials just like virgin materials.

"Our approach reduces the chemical use and waste production, and generates a high quality of battery materials with lower costs than current industrial process."

Read Yan's Q&A with NJIT

In the U.S., only about 5% of lithium-ion batteries are currently recycled, but by 2030 that number will need to improve dramatically. Along with increasing battery waste from personal electronics, our cars may also soon contribute to the problem, as electric vehicle (EV) sales are expected to jump from 1.7 million to 26 million by the end of the decade. Overall, some experts estimate 80 metric tons of lithium-ion batteries will need to be recycled in the U.S. in 2030 alone.

Since its founding in 2019, Princeton NuEnergy has earned national recognition, including the U.S. National Grand Prize from the CleanTech Open, the world's largest clean technology accelerator program. The technology has received backing from Princeton's IP accelerator program and grant funding from the U.S. Department of Energy.

Most recently, the company broke ground on its first commercial-scale recycling plant in South Carolina, set to begin operations in 2025. The facility aims to recycle materials for 100,000 electric vehicle batteries annually, addressing not only environmental concerns but also national security by reducing reliance on foreign supply chains for critical minerals like lithium and cobalt.

Global e-waste is projected to reach 74 million metric tons by 2030, and Yan's work exemplifies the kind of innovative problem-solving NJIT fosters, which was also recognized by New Jersey business publication ROI-NJ. Princeton NuEnergy's ambitious plans to scale its recycling infrastructure underscore the university's role in empowering graduates to lead sustainable change worldwide.