RecycLiCo awaits final impact assessment

American Manganese Inc. reported that it has received the preliminary life cycle assessment results for its RecycLiCo lithium-ion battery recycling process and is awaiting the final external review by an ISO-compliant third party before releasing the results.

The complete "gate-to-gate" life cycle assessment (LCA) was performed by Minviro Ltd., a UK-based and globally recognized sustainability and LCA consultancy, to quantify the environmental performance of producing nickel-manganese-cobalt cathode precursor and lithium hydroxide from recycled and upcycled battery waste.

"It was a pleasure working with Minviro over the past three months, and I'm extremely pleased with their detailed work in dissecting, evaluating, and quantifying the impact of every stream in our process," said American Manganese President and CEO Larry Reaugh. "We look forward to reporting the values of the RecycLiCo process once the external review is complete."

Besides examining the mineral reclamation processes, Minviro also benchmarked the values to industry averages in primary material production and common hydrometallurgical lithium-ion battery recycling processes.

Impact categories such as global warming potential, water scarcity footprint, acidification potential, minerals and metals depletion, and fossil fuel depletion were all assessed by Minviro, with the preliminary results indicating that American Manganese's RecycLiCo process has a lower environmental impact than what would typically result from primary material production or common hydrometallurgical lithium-ion battery recycling processes.

To ensure all data is scientifically robust and transparent, the values of Minviro's assessment will not be finalized or announced until an external review by an International Standards Organization- (ISO) compliant third party is complete, which is expected in roughly four weeks.

"Similar to patents, publications, and recycling extraction results, external review and approval are critical in supporting our claims and maintaining our reputation for transparency," added Reaugh. "I would encourage an LCA study for all aspects of the lithium-ion battery supply chain to guide a transparent and detailed discussion on a project's environmental footprint, and to support strategies which adopt the most efficient and environmentally friendly technologies for an electrified future."

The LCA was conducted in accordance with ISO-14040:2006 and ISO-14044:2006 standards and carried out with a combination of data provided by American Manganese and public databases. The data quality assessment ranked the technological representativeness and completeness of all background data points from the company's mass and energy balances as "very good."