Lithium-ion battery recycling company Li-Cycle Corp has completed its battery recycling pilot plant where the Canadian firm produced black mass— a mixture of lithium, nickel, cobalt and copper— from used lithium-ion batteries.
The Canadian firm received 45 end-of-life lithium-ion battery modules from e-buses totalling 3,200 pounds from New Flyer Industries Canada and New Flyer of America— subsidiaries of bus manufacturer NFI Group— in Q4 of 2020.
The batteries were processed and turned into battery-grade materials at Li-Cycle’s Spoke 1 facility in Ontario, Canada.
Kunal Phalpher, Li-Cycle’s chief commercial officer, said: “As of 2019, approximately 425,000 of the world’s buses are electric. By recycling thousands of pounds of lithium-ion batteries, we’re serving the dual purpose of reducing hazardous waste, while recovering critical materials so they can be reintroduced into the supply chain.”
Chris Stoddart, President, New Flyer and MCI, said: “Working with Li-Cycle delivers a triple sustainability benefit: we recover critical resources and divert them from landfills, provide them for re-use in the battery supply chain, and do so through their proprietary clean recycling process.”
Last December, Li-Cycle opened a second plant to produce black mass for the battery industry in New York, US.
The Canadian firm’s Spoke 2 facility in Eastman Business Park in Rochester will produce an intermediate mixed battery material product (black mass) from all types of used lithium-ion batteries.
A year ago, Li-Cycle completed its first shipment of commercial battery materials. The material, processed at the Canadian firm’s facility in Ontario, contained metals such as cobalt, nickel and lithium.