Lithium-ion batteries are critical to a lower-carbon future. But their production requires a lot of energy, especially when it comes to mining and refining the metals.
According to a recent US Department of Energy report, the global lithium battery market is expected to grow 10-fold over the next decade, reflected in everything from electric vehicles to power storage for renewable energy sources like solar and wind.
The good news is that while the cathode materials that store electricity in the battery degrade, the materials that make them up don’t. They are infinitely recyclable. While several companies are already in the battery recycling business, one claims that they not only recycle, they “upcycle” by bringing raw materials from discarded lithium-ion batteries directly back into the supply chain.
Massachusetts-based company Ascend Elements captures battery metals and formulates them into new battery materials rather than just recycling entire components. Ascend can then sell these materials directly to manufacturers.
The process seems pretty simple, but it took decades to perfect. Ascend crushes used batteries and production waste and turns them into a blackish sand. It then removes all the plastic, aluminum and copper chunks and leaches out the impurities, leaving behind the valuable nickel, cobalt and lithium that make up a battery’s cathode material.
“We are effectively urban mining, bringing in this material and converting it into very useful material for battery manufacturers; therefore we offset the amount of mining required,” said Michael O’Kronley, CEO of Ascend Elements. “We’re able to reduce that carbon footprint by 90-93% just by recycling these batteries and producing new cathode material.”
A study in the scientific journal Joule, co-authored by the Ascend scientist who formulated the recycling technique, found that batteries made using the cathode recycling process not only performed as well as they did from scratch newly manufactured batteries, they also lasted longer and charged faster.
There are other battery recyclers on the market but they don’t break components down to this high quality cathode material.
“That’s really at the core of our intellectual property. That’s what we’re commercializing now,” O’Kronley said, adding that he expects to double his nearly 100-strong workforce this year when the company opens its first commercial facility in Georgia . It has three smaller facilities in Massachusetts and Michigan.
Ascend has raised $95 million to date from investors including Jaguar Land Rover’s InMotion Ventures, Hitachi Ventures, Orbia, Doral Energy, as well as At One Ventures, TDK Ventures and Trumpf Ventures. She is currently in another fundraising round.