Metals recycling firm Aqua Metals has produced its first lithium hydroxide from lithium-ion battery black mass.
The company used its Li AquaRefining technology, which uses electrons as the reagent instead of chemicals or high heat to produce the material at is its Innovation Center in Nevada, US.
Li AquaRefining is a closed-loop process that recycles the chemicals it uses, with the company claiming an “estimated 99.5% less waste streams” than the standard hydro process.
The company also claims the emissions-free, room-temperature process uses about one-two-hundredth of the chemicals of a standard hydro process and does not generate the carbon footprint of a high-heat approach.
In addition to producing lithium through a patent-pending proprietary process, the company’s R&D program at the Innovation Center is working to recycle the other key elements of lithium-ion batteries such as cobalt (already plated), nickel, copper, and manganese.
Ben Taecker, chief operations and engineering officer of Aqua Metals, said: “Our goal is to produce battery precursor grade lithium hydroxide, and these early results indicate we are on track for meeting this goal.”
David Regan, Aqua Metal’s vice president of commercial, said: “As of today, the only commercially proven recycling technology for lithium-ion batteries is smelting, which has a negative environmental impact and does not recover the lithium or manganese.
“Applying the AquaRefining process to lithium-ion batteries has the potential to be an important industry breakthrough, as we believe it is the only truly sustainable recycling technology under development that recovers all the valuable metals and compounds without using high heat or consuming massive quantities of chemicals that create difficult to manage waste streams.”
Formerly an exclusively lead recycler, Aqua Metals established an Innovation Center to apply its know-how to lithium-ion battery recycling research and development and prototype system activities last October.
The Aqua Metals Innovation Centre is on the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center (TRIC) where the company opened its first recycling facility, which suffered a fire in 2019.
Last November, Aqua Metals signed a collaboration agreement with Linco Corporation to focus on closed-loop lithium-ion battery recycling, and processing lithium-ion battery black mass into metals.
