eVehicle Technology
American Battery Technology Company, an integrated battery materials company specializing in primary battery minerals manufacturing and secondary lithium-ion battery recycling, has initiated the operational start-up of its commercial-scale recycling facility in McCarran, Nevada’s Tahoe-Reno Industrial Centre (TRIC). This marks a significant milestone in the implementation of their pioneering lithium-ion battery recycling technologies on an industrial scale.
“We are excited to have achieved this major milestone and to now be generating commercial-scale quantities of domestic recycled battery metal products,” stated ABTC CEO Ryan Melsert. “By securing our move-in-ready industrial facility in early 2023, we were able to greatly accelerate our timeline to operations, and the last step of receiving approvals for the updated operational permits for our specific internally-developed processes were received over the past week.”
ABTC’s first-of-kind integrated battery recycling system utilizes a strategic de-manufacturing and targeted chemical extraction train in order to recover battery materials with high yields, low cost, and with a low environmental footprint. These processes are fundamentally different than conventional methods of battery recycling, which utilize high temperature furnaces, such as in smelting operations, or non-strategic shredding or grinding systems. The ABTC system results in efficient separation, recovery, and purification of high-value battery-grade products with less environmental impact and greater cost efficiencies than conventional methods.
This commercial facility has the capacity to process over 20,000 metric tonnes of battery feedstock materials per year when fully ramped, and this first phase of operations will process these battery feedstock materials into recycled products including copper, aluminum, steel, a lithium intermediate, and a black mass intermediate material that will be sold through an already executed marketing agreement with the global metals trader TechMet-Mercuria. Once the second phase of this integrated recycling facility is operational, this lithium intermediate will be further refined into a battery grade lithium hydroxide product, and the black mass intermediate material will be further refined into battery grade nickel, cobalt, manganese, and lithium hydroxide products.
“Our research & development, engineering, project management, and operations teams have been working with the commissioning of this facility as our highest priority, and we are proud to have accelerated our timelines to have installed our first piece of equipment within a month of gaining access to this new site, and to now have begun commercial operations less than six months later,” stated Andrés Meza, chief operating officer for American Battery Technology Company. “We appreciate Storey County and Nevada Department of Environmental Protection (NDEP) in their work to permit and establish these processes, and we look forward to our continued engagements as we move through operations.”
ABTC has been validating and optimizing its first-of-kind recycling technologies for several years, and has showcased its innovation through winning the battery recycling portion of the competitively awarded BASF-sponsored Circularity Challenge; through a $2M battery recycling grant through the U.S. Advanced Battery Consortium (USABC), which is comprised of the US Department of Energy, General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis for a commercial-scale project currently underway to demonstrate that recycled battery metal products from domestic U.S. resources can be produced at lower cost than, and at significantly improved social and environmental impact, than conventionally mined virgin minerals; and through a competitive U.S. DOE grant for a $20M project to develop and commercialize a set of Next Generation battery recycling technologies to even further enhance the recovery of recycled products and reduce the cost of operations.
SOURCE: American Battery Technology Company
