Two US companies have demonstrated lithium-ion battery neutralisation services at hazardous waste generator sites on the island of Ohau in Hawaii in cooperation with the US Department of Defense.
The demonstration, by battery technology company OnTo Technology of Oregon and ProteQ, a Virginia-based company specialised in field tests and complex system integration, applied a method to treat end-of-life lithium-ion batteries to render them inert.
OnTo Technology developed and patented (US #12,021,202) the process to neutralise various military lithium-ion batteries to make a neutral co-product. That was shipped to OnTo’s pilot factory, which produces cathode products for new batteries.
The demonstration was conducted using a mobile portable system at multiple military facilities. OnTo said the test operations combined innovations in automation, environmental health and safety, and nanomaterials manufacturing.
The aim was to enable value-added processing for environmental service operational workers to eliminate risks in handling, storage and transportation of end-of-life lithium-ion batteries.
OnTo offers four services for treating end-of-life batteries:
- battery deactivation, including elimination of class-9 hazards in recycling lithium batteries, including sodium, zinc, iron and metal-hydrides
- on-site cathode healing, covering recycling of scrap batteries from manufacturing at the source and for the source
- lithium iron phosphate recycling for industrial reuse
- pretreatment services, including critical materials recovery from black mass.
OnTo said it plans development of a system for flexibility in mobile and/or centralised neutralisation operation to eliminate hazardous waste.
