As the world looks to decarbonize, many eyes are on electric vehicles (EV) and
renewable-energy infrastructures to pave the way. Over the next 20 years, the EV
market is set to grow substantially — by 2050, a projected 300 million EVs on
the road by 2050, accounting for
60 percent of new car sales. The world will also become more reliant on
renewable sources — by 2050, 90 percent of the world's energy will be
derived
from renewables.
Batteries may be electrifying our
future,
but their production remains problematic: To meet the demands of our booming EV
and renewable-energy industries, significantly more raw materials are needed for
battery production — in particular, crucial metals including lithium, cobalt,
nickel and manganese. Mining for these metals puts a heavy strain on the
surrounding environment — large areas of earth are removed and a vast amount of
water is required (it takes 500,000 gallons of
water to
mine one tonne of lithium), which can lead to nearby reservoirs being poisoned
and water being diverted from local communities. In addition to this, metal
mining has been linked to human rights violations and child
labor.
Another problem with batteries is their limited lifespan — EV batteries only
last between 10-20
years;
and when disposed to landfill, they leak toxic chemicals into the environment,
contaminating water and surrounding ecosystems. Batteries have potential to be
an incredible alternative to fossil-fueled-power; however, ensuring ethical and
sustainable sourcing and disposal of the raw materials needed for their
production is crucial to ensure a sustainable transition.
Luckily, Aqua Metals has created a solution.
The Reno, Nevada-based company has pioneered a way to recycle these crucial
metals — closing the loop for metal recycling and producing pure metals that can
be put back into the supply chain. Currently the world’s only company that has
produced a commercially proven sustainable, closed-loop metal-recycling process,
Aqua Metals’ technology mitigates the environmental and ethical concerns
associated with the extraction and disposal of these critical metals.
Everything you need to know about the state of play in molecular recycling
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“Recycling metals is not ‘difficult,’ per se; but to do it sustainably can be a
challenge. Our innovation takes a well-understood technology pathway
[electroplating — discovered in
1805] and
applies it in a novel way to selectively recover critical metals from spent
batteries,” Aqua Metals CEO Steve
Cotton told Sustainable
Brands®. “This enables us to recover high-purity metals — as we quite
literally plate them, atom-by-atom, using electricity. Combine this with our
patent-pending, unique process for recovering lithium in the form of hydroxide
directly, and we can recover all valuable metals contained within lithium-ion
batteries (LiB).”
Aqua Metals’ process obtains critical metals from spent, shredded lithium-ion
batteries — also called “black mass.” This material is run through a filter
press, which removes graphite and any remnants of aluminum; then, the copper is
electroplated.
Lithium hydroxide is recovered directly with the patent-pending, closed-loop,
electro-hydrometallurgical (metal-recovery) process. The solvent used is also
regenerated as a byproduct of this process — eliminating the need for a constant
supply of chemicals and reducing waste by as much as 95 percent compared to
typical recycling. They then electroplate nickel, followed by “combo plating”
cobalt and manganese hydroxide. This ensures a cleaner recycling process and
offers a solution for reducing climate change — rather than solving one problem
but creating another, by continuing to damage our environment.
"Aqua Metals is committed to driving sustainable energy through recycling
critical minerals from lithium batteries, building a low-carbon domestic supply
chain and reducing the environmental impact of clean-energy technologies,” says
Dave McMurtry, Chief Business
Officer at Aqua Metals. “Sustainable solutions are crucial in addressing global
challenges; and we are excited to be pioneering a critical piece of the circular
supply chain by recycling batteries using clean electricity. Harnessing recycled
materials sustainably is essential for building a domestic lithium battery
industry and closing the loop for critical minerals.”
The Department of
Energy
projects demand for critical materials needed for EV batteries and other
clean-energy technologies to increase 400-600 percent in the coming decades. As
this demand increases, a clean recycling infrastructure will be necessary to
ensure the transition to a circular clean-energy economy without creating new
negative impacts on our environment through air, soil, and water pollution via
mining and other recycling processes.
Aqua Metals' technology is modular, which allows it to be tremendously scalable.
The company can adapt to the needs of its customers and off-takers — building
large, centralized facilities or adding on modular capacity to existing
sites/campuses near battery manufacturing or black-mass processing. As an
example, the company's Waltham campus complex will have room for 10,000+ tons per year.
Cotton says the company hopes to help create a sustainable, circular supply of critical battery
minerals in the US that helps meet the goals of the Inflation Reduction
Act
and provides a technology pathway to recycling that does not further damage the
environment. In five years’ time, Aqua Metals expects to have a fully up and running Waltham
facility in Reno — providing thousands of tons of sustainably recycled metals to
a wide array of partners and off-takers throughout the industry.
“We are also aiming to explore additional facilities — both standalone and
dedicated to customer needs — and to have created hundreds of good-paying jobs
in the advanced-energy economy, centered in the ‘Nevada Lithium
Loop,’”
Cotton says.
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Scarlett Buckley is a London-based freelance sustainability writer with an MSc in Creative Arts & Mental Health.
Published May 19, 2023 11am EDT / 8am PDT / 4pm BST / 5pm CEST