Bead Mill for Battery Recycling: Grinding Black Mass for Lithium, Cobalt, and Nickel Recovery. Black mass is the powdered mixture of cathode and anode materials recovered after shredding end-of-life lithium-ion batteries, and it typically contains lithium, cobalt, nickel, and manganese. Particle size directly controls how much metal a recycler can extract: grinding too coarse leaves valuable material locked inside unliberated particles, while poor particle size control can