A new $20 million facility for recycling lithium-ion batteries is set to be opened in Singapore by global e-waste recycler Tes.
The country’s senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry Koh Poh Koon announced the recycling facility on 30 October, according to reports by news outlet The Strait Times.
Named TES B, the facility will use auto-punching machines and shredders, before utilising magnetic separators to recover the copper and aluminium while a chemical treatment process is used to recover cobalt and lithium.
The Singapore facility is expected to be completed by next February, and will recycle 14 tonnes of lithium-ion batteries a day, according to The Straits Times.
Speaking at the Clean Energy Summit, the news source quoted Koon as saying the development came as the use of batteries for grid-related energy storage was projected to grow to manage the increasing adoption of intermittent renewable energy such as solar.
In October, 2018, Tes acquired the assets of Recupyl SAS, a battery recycling firm in France and mainland Europe, to allow the Singapore company to create a battery recycling centre in Europe.
Recupyl’s recycling plant based in Grenoble, France, uses a patented low-temperature, low-power process to recover a broad range of materials, including manganese and lithium.