Elhoucine Elmaataouy earned his PhD at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University in Morocco under supervision of Prof. Dahbi Mouad, where he developed a process to recover vanadium from spent catalysts. This work is closely connected to Morocco’s strong fertilizer industry, where sulfuric acid is used to treat phosphate rock. Since this process depends on V2O5-based catalysts, vanadium plays an important role. He also studied recycling V2O5 in energy storage applications (SIBs and VRFBs). In parallel, he worked on recycling end-of-life lithium-ion batteries.
Since December 2025, he has been working as a postdoc in the Chemical Engineering Department at KU Leuven, in the research group of Prof. Giuseppe Granata. Based in the Materials Engineering Department, he focuses on recycling spent catalysts and processing end-of-life batteries, with a particular interest in NMC chemistries.
What is your research about?
I use mechanochemistry as a pretreatment step in battery recycling to reduce energy and reagent consumption of the next step, hydrometallurgy. Hydrometallurgy already works for battery recycling, but in its current form it is not very suitable for industry because it consumes too much energy and chemicals. By treating the black mass with mechanochemistry first, we can make the whole process more efficient and more realistic for real industrial use.
So your research focuses only on the mechanochemistry step?
No, this is just the beginning! After mechanochemistry, we do leaching to recover lithium and other critical raw materials, and there are many parameters to optimise before moving to the next stage, which is the purification of transition metals. The goal is to design a complete process, starting from black mass and ending with a new battery: first mechanochemical pretreatment, then leaching to recover transition metals, and finally the synthesis of NMC cathode material.
What is mechanochemistry?
Mechanochemistry means that chemical reactions are driven by mechanical forces. It has two main types: reactive and non-reactive. In reactive mechanochemistry, we add chemicals that react with the material and change its structure or oxidation state, which makes the next leaching step easier. In non-reactive mechanochemistry, we simply grind the material into finer particles. This increases the surface area and improves contact between the solid and the leaching solution, which also makes leaching more efficient.
So, does mechanochemistry actually work?
Yes, it makes a huge difference! For example, when leaching NMC or LFP materials, you normally need 2M to 3M sulfuric acid. With reactive mechanochemistry, I can produce a material where lithium can be leached using only water, without any acid. Of course, in the second stage, acid still needs to be used to recover nickel, cobalt, and manganese, but already at a much lower concentration.
What is your favourite part of this research?
During my PhD, I worked a lot on batteries, especially nickel-rich cathode materials. I focused on advanced characterization techniques to understand how batteries behave during cycling, so it was very much about mechanisms. What I enjoy now is that I work on the full cycle, from black mass to a new battery. I also like that my work is highly relevant. Recycling batteries helps reduce the pressure on primary mining resources. Nickel, cobalt, and lithium are essential for the green transition. While primary resources are still needed, recycling will be key if we want to move towards electric mobility in the near future.
What is the most challenging part of your research?
The biggest challenge is developing a low-cost process with low-cost reagents. Recycling batteries is simple if you use high temperature, high energy, and strong acid concentrations, but that approach is not scalable because it is too expensive. The real goal is to reduce the cost of recovering critical raw materials from batteries, so the process can actually be adopted by industry.
What helps you relax?
My friends and my family, especially my wife. She is also doing a PhD on batteries, but on the anode side. So together we almost cover the whole battery 😊
