Diamonds and Rust is a classic folk song with a heavy metal cover and a metaphor of the opportunity and problem with black mass recycling – that is, getting gems out of stuff that might literally be rust.
Critical materials recovery from lithium batteries’ black mass is confounded by contamination from decomposed electrolyte and binder. OnTo Technology addresses this challenge with patented direct-recycle methods to recover critical elements in pretreatment of black mass/battery active material (BAM).
On August 18 OnTo was funded for the project, titled, “Critical Material Recovery in Cathode-Healing” through a Small Business Innovation Research Fast-Track grant from the US Department of Energy. The commercial application is pretreatment of end-of-life BAM or new-scrap BAM. The technology enables on-site cathode recovery at the battery factory for benefit of the manufacturer through eliminating loss of valuable cathodes.
OnTo has pioneered Cathode-Healing™ direct recycling processes that reinstate electrode functionality to well-aged EV battery electrode materials. It has been demonstrated to produce manufacturing-acceptable material for NCM-523, NCM-622, LFP, graphite, and other lithium-ion cathodes.
While direct recycling works – as shown performance criteria have been attained for these materials – market adoption of direct recycling is slow. This effort utilises the benefits of direct recycling to support industrialisation of hydro/pyro recycling. Specifically, this relates to BAM pretreatment to meet specifications for refining. It also introduces new product revenues from critical material recovery and reducing process costs.
About OnTo Technology. OnTo develops recycling for the economic and environmental sustainability of advanced batteries. Safety and efficiency are critical for achieving sustainability. OnTo’s patent portfolio addresses these with battery deactivation, sorting, harvesting of electrode materials, cathode-healing™ and black-mass pretreatment for manufacturing. OnTo’s scientific and engineering experience and breakthrough technologies are available for implementation for original manufacturing and recycling industries.
