Ascend Elements ($1.5B to recycle spent lithium batteries for producing sustainable battery materials)

Ascend Elements (formerly known as Battery Resourcers), an American cleantech company founded in 2015, recycles valuable elements from spent lithium-ion batteries and produces sustainable electric vehicle battery materials. The company upcycles those materials to contribute to a closed-loop process that reduces waste.

Challenges: lithium battery recycling

Rapid growth of electric vehicles has a substantial effect on the demand for Li-ion batteries. By 2030, it is anticipated that there will be 140 million electric vehicles on the roads worldwide, while 11 million metric tons of Li-ion batteries will reach the end of their service lives. Currently, less than 5% of spent Li-ion batteries are recycled, and the majority of used batteries are disposed of in landfills.

A typical lithium-ion battery consists of four essential components:

• Cathode

Containing different formulations of lithium metal oxides and lithium iron phosphate depending on battery application and manufacturer, intercalated on a cathode backing foil/current collector (e.g. aluminum)—for example: LiNixMnyCozO2; LiNi0.8Co0.15Al0.05O2; LiCoO2; LiFePO4; LiMn2O4;

• Anode

Generally containing graphite intercalated on an anode backing foil/current collector (such as copper);

• Electrolyte

For example, lithium hexafluorophosphate (LiPF6), lithium tetrafluoroborate (LiBF4), lithium perchlorate (LiClO4), or lithium fluoroalkylphosphates dissolved in an organic solvent;

• Separator

Between the cathode and anode: for example, polymer or ceramic based.

It is estimated that over 11 million tons of spent battery packs have a residual value of approximately US$65 billion in metals and other components. In addition, lithium-ion battery recycling could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by offsetting/reducing the amount of raw material derived from primary sources (i.e. mining, refining) and preventing the landfilling of metals (e.g., heavy metals) and materials from spent lithium-ion batteries.

Thus, recovering materials from spent Li-ion batteries is highly desirable.

Pyrometallurgy method

Pyrometallurgy is a method for extracting valuable metals from waste lithium ion batteries. The pyrogenic process burns the organic binder in the electrode material by high-temperature incineration at near 1500 °C, and then obtains the metal compounds via flotation, precipitation and other similar techniques. These metal compounds recombine again to create a new active material. The high temperature approach therefore requires a substantial amount of energy, expense, and processing to separate and recombine the desirable materials.

The essential pyrometallurgical processes  are as follows:

1. Disassembly
2. Smelting
3. Mixed alloy and slag
4. Leaching
5. Impurity removal
6. Lithium extraction
7. Nickel extraction
8. Cobalt extraction
9. Precurser synthesis
10. Cathode production
11. Battery manufacturing

Hydrometallurgy method

In comparison to pyrometallurgy, hydrometallurgy processing or chemical leaching is a less capital- and energy-intensive alternative. These processes for extracting and separating cathode metals can recover lithium, copper, and other transition metals and typically operate at temperatures below 100 °C. The requirement for caustic reagents (such as hydrochloric, nitric, and sulfuric acids and hydrogen peroxide) is a drawback of hydrometallurgy techniques.

The essential hydrometallurgy processes are as follows:

1. Shredding
2. Leaching
3. Impurity removal
4. lithium extraction
5. Nickel extraction
6. Cobalt extraction
7. Precurser synthesis
8. Cathode production
9. Battery manufacturing

Current pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy techniques involve extracting the useful elements Co (cobalt), Ni (nickel), Mn (manganese), and Li (lithium) separately and then recombining them to produce cathode materials for new batteries. These processes lack efficiency.

Ascend Elements Technology

Ascend Elements' method differs from conventional pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy in that it does not separate Ni, Mn, and Co out. Instead, Ascend Elements uses uniform-phase precipitation as starting materials to synthesize the cathode materials directly from recycled components. The research revealed that the recycling process is practical and has high recovery efficiency, and has commercial value as well.

Ascend Elements battery recycling

The essential battery recycling processes of the Ascend Elements are as follows:

1. Shredding
2. Leaching
3. Impurity extraction and direct precursor synthesis
4. Cathode production
5. Battery manufacturing

How Ascend Elements recycles and synthesizes LiNixMnyCozO2 cathode

The following diagram illustrates the recovery and synthesis of LiNixMnyCozO2 cathode material.