Lithium battery recycler Li-Cycle Corp. will build its third commercial lithium-ion battery recycling facility in North America, to be located in Gilbert, Arizona, within the Phoenix metropolitan area. It will join Li-Cycle’s existing facilities in Rochester, New York, and Kingston, Ontario.
When complete, Li-Cycle’s “Spoke 3” facility will be capable of processing up to 10,000 tonnes of end-of-life batteries and battery manufacturing scrap per year, bringing Li-Cycle’s total recycling capacity to 20,000 tonnes per year. The construction of Spoke 3 builds on Li-Cycle’s roadmap to construct 20 Spokes globally over the next five years. The Phoenix metropolitan area is located close to Li-Cycle’s existing battery supply network, as well as being at the nexus of where there will be continued growth in the quantity of lithium-ion batteries available for recycling.
“Once completed, our newest Spoke facility will add significant recycling capacity to Li-Cycle, strategically expanding the geographic footprint of our closed-loop solution for recycling lithium-ion battery materials,” said Tim Johnston, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Li-Cycle. “Our Arizona Spoke will have two 5,000-tonne processing lines, effectively doubling our total recycling capacity in North America. It will also be engineered to directly process full electric vehicle packs without any dismantling. Spoke 3 will mark another important milestone as we continue to execute on our global growth plans and scale our sustainable, safe and innovative Spoke & Hub Technologies.”
Li-Cycle’s Spokes convert battery manufacturing scrap and end-of-life batteries into intermediate products, including “black mass,” a powder substance that contains a variety of metals, including lithium, cobalt and nickel. The Spokes will supply black mass to Li-Cycle’s future North American Hub, which is currently in late-stage development in Rochester, New York. The North American Hub will process black mass through a hydrometallurgical circuit to produce critical, battery-grade materials, including lithium carbonate, cobalt sulphate and nickel sulphate, as well as other recycled materials that can be returned to the economy. Li-Cycle’s patented Spoke & Hub Technologies minimize the overall environmental footprint of the end-to-end resource recovery process, and substantially reduce the intensity of greenhouse gas emissions that would otherwise be produced from mining these finite resources.
Spoke & Hub Technologies can achieve a recovery rate of up to 95% resource mass recovery. Legacy recycling technologies have largely relied on thermal operations, which can emit harmful emissions and result in lower recovery rates. The company’s two-stage battery recycling model enables customers to benefit from a safe and environmentally friendly solution for recycling all types of lithium-ion materials.
News item from Li-Cycle
“Spoke & Hub Technologies can achieve a recovery rate of up to 95% resource mass recovery. Legacy recycling technologies have largely relied on thermal operations, which can emit harmful emissions and result in lower recovery rates. The company’s two-stage battery recycling model enables customers to benefit from a safe and environmentally friendly solution for recycling all types of lithium-ion materials.”
This is already becoming more important as the automotive industry is talking about GWh and now are mentioning TWh of energy storage around the World in the decades to come. I would think the final goal is to recycle, refine and remanufacture battery cells and battery packs at one operations site to feed the demand for battery products and packs. Take a load of spent batteries and packs to the loading station and drop them off for recycling. Drive around to the front and pick up a “fresh” battery pack for one’s home energy storage or EV.