May_June_2022_AMP_Digital

A D V A N C E D M A T E R I A L S & P R O C E S S E S | M A Y / J U N E 2 0 2 2 2 6 ERIC GRATZ: PRESENTER CTO and Co-founder, Ascend Elements, formerly Battery Resourcers Former Assistant Research Professor, Metal Processing Institute at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Mass. High Performance Materials through ClosedLoop Recycling There is a great need to discover the best recycling methods for making new cathode materials from spent lithium-ion batteries. It is driven by the growing use of lithium-ion batteries, which is putting pressure on existing supply chains. For example, Europe currently has a capacity of 40 gigawatt hours, which is scheduled to increase to 512 gigawatt hours. This is bound to put immense strain on the supply of nickel, cobalt, lithium, etc. Ascend Elements, formerly known as Battery Resourcers, is closing the supply chain loop by recovering critical elements in used batteries and engineering new, sustainable cathode material to be returned to the battery supply chain. Cathode material is a higher-value, engineered material compared to metal salts, which are more of an unprocessed raw material. Currently in North America, the largest recyclers such as Umicore and Redwoods Materials use a pyrometallurgical process to recycle spent batteries. Here a used battery is dismantled, crushed, and the resulting material is smelted to produce a nickel cobalt ore. When dissolved in acids, the nickel and cobalt turn into their respective sulfates while lithium changes into a carbonate. After purification, these materials are sent to a battery manufacturer to be turned into cathodes. Other recyclers use a hydrometallurgical process that does not require smelting. With this method, the crushed battery materials are directly dissolved in an acid and the resulting sulfates and carbonates are separated by organic solvent extraction. Once purified, they are sent to a battery manufacturer as well. Ascend Elements takes a different approach by converting the crushed battery materials to a nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) hydroxide which can be directly used in battery manufacturing, which makes it far more efficient than the previous two processes (Slide 5). If the elemental composition of the specific cathode does not match with the NMC hydroxide, additional sulfates or carbonates can be added to the mixture to reach the correct stoichiometry. This process eliminated the need for many intermediate steps and provides an advantage in that the recycling and manufacturing happens at one site, thereby saving costs and emissions involved in shipping. This process also costs around 35% less than virgin rawmaterials, making it desirable for manufacturers. For comparison, pyrometallurgical processes cost 2% more than the original raw material. There is also an 87% reduction in the amount of carbon dioxide produced. These gains are significant as the cathode is the most expensive and carbon intense material in batteries. The cathode materials produced at Ascend Elements have high purity and cycle life and are targeted at Tier I European and Asian suppliers. They are working on high nickel cathode material, single crystal materials, anode materials, and high purity graphite. ~AM&P Acknowledgments The webinar was sponsored by Linde and UPC Marathon. Editorial assistance on this roundup article was provided by Vineeth Venugopal, postdoctoral researcher at MIT. For more information: The recorded webinar from August 4, 2021, is available on demand on both the MRS and ASM websites at: • https://mrs.digitellinc.com/mrs/ sessions/32642/view • https://www.asminternational.org/ on-demand Gratz Slide 5

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