Hydrovolt, a joint venture between Norway’s metal company Hydro and Sweden’s Northvolt, opened a new production line for the discharging and dismantling of end-of-life electric vehicle (EV) and industrial batteries.
In 2022, Hydrovolt’s Fredrikstad plant began manual operations and this has now been automated.
Ole-Christen Enger, CEO of Hydrovolt, said: “We are the first to have an industrial and automated set-up for battery discharging and dismantling. The company believes the process will contribute to increased efficiency and improve safety in battery recycling. The project has received Nkr15.3 million ($1.4 million) in support from Norwegian state agency Enova.
Residual energy from collected batteries is stored in a 1MW/1.1MWh battery bank as part of the new line. This energy, which previously went to waste, can be used for the facility’s own consumption or sold to the power grid.
The recovered electricity from the used batteries will be enough to power large parts of, and potentially the entire, facility, based on residual energy from collected batteries, it said.
On average, there is 50kWh of residual energy remaining in the battery pack being recycled. With a planned intake of 100 battery packs per day, this could amount to around 5MWh per day, roughly equivalent to 1.6GWh over the course of a year.
A deep discharge follows residual-charge discharge. This is performed using resistors, to ensure that the battery is at 0V – as the batteries may have a small voltage increase upon disconnection from the battery load unit due to the recovery effect.
Automated guided vehicles operate between various workstations. There are plans to use the production line technology at future facilities in Europe.
Separately, Hydro is now the sole financing source of the battery recycling JV. The Norwegian group recently raised its stake in Hydrovolt to 62% from the original 50% when the partnership was established in 2020. Hydro spokesperson Halvor Molland told BEST: “The situation is that Northvolt remains a partner but has withdrawn its financing.” Northvolt has said it is evaluating its operations.
Northvolt spokesperson Martin Höfelmann sent BEST a statement but did not respond to a specific question about its financial contribution to, or shareholding in, the JV: “We remain an active owner, board member and partner in Hydrovolt, and will continue to work with Hydrovolt and Hydro to grow and enhance the business, as we have done since 2020.”
