US battery recycler Blue Whale Materials announced Oklahoma as the site for its first commercial-scale lithium-ion battery processing facility.
The plant will be on a 35-acre campus with 150,000 square feet of warehouse space at the Bartlesville Industrial Park in Bartlesville. It will process comprehensive battery processing, testing, dismantling and storage and is due to commence operations in late 2024.
Blue Whale Materials’ technology processes spent lithium-ion batteries and production scrap into a highly concentrated dry product it calls blacksand. It contains cobalt, nickel and lithium, as well as copper and aluminium. It removes organics and impurities.
The company also offers testing, including performance assessment, thermal cycling, aging analysis, and abuse and safety testing. This is for a variety of battery chemistries such as lead-acid, lithium-ion and other emerging chemistries (nickel-zinc, sodium, etc.).
