Electra highlights battery recycling complex

David Baillot; UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering

The resulting material after end-of-life lithium-ion batteries have been shredded, the black mass is then further refined and separated into its constituent components to be resold for new batteries.

Inching closer to a fully operational battery recycling and refining facility, Electra Battery Materials Corp. has utilized the last year to meticulously streamline, optimize, and improve its battery recycling trial, as well as the recovery systems for lithium, nickel, cobalt, and other critical minerals at its Ontario complex in Canada.

"Throughout this 12-month demonstration operation, our team has continued to refine and optimize the processes resulting in successive improvements to the saleable products," said Electra Battery Materials CEO Trent Mell. "These results support our thesis that Electra's battery materials recycling flow sheet could be an important contributor to our refinery operations."

Over the past year, Electra has improved its lithium carbonate quality by nearly 20% from its initial processing, with final product quality approaching "technical grade" lithium carbonate. The company added that discussions are currently ongoing with lithium companies to assess the tradeoffs between collaboration or producing technical grade in-house.

For its manganese, recovery rates have increased further, improving to approximately 95% by strategically modifying the use and sequencing of reagents.

Continued refinements to the process parameters for the nickel-cobalt mixed hydroxide precipitate (MHP) produced from the recycling process have at times improved pay-metal concentration in the final MHP product to nearly 50% nickel and cobalt, well above quoted market standards.

Electra adds that improved metal concentration creates the opportunity to generate a higher metal payable, thereby improving the potential economics of continuous recycling operations.

Despite the mass of improvements, continued optimization studies remain underway, including metal recovery from internal recycling streams such as reusing tailings water as process water to feed the plant, thus making the process entirely closed circuit with minimal environmental impacts.

Finally, preliminary results of laboratory work to explore the potential of isolating the cobalt from the nickel contained in the leach liquor using hydrometallurgical methods have returned positive results. Isolating the cobalt is estimated to improve the overall payability of both the resultant cobalt and nickel products.

Black mass trial

Aside from its targeted refinement and recoveries, work is still ongoing on Electra's black mass trial which began late 2022. The resulting shreds of lithium-ion batteries, black mass operations have successfully continued through 2023 on a semi-continuous basis to maximize product recoveries.

The battery recycling strategy remains part of a multipronged development plan for a battery materials park to supply battery-grade material to third-party lithium battery cathode precursor manufacturers.

"The Ontario refinery is a unique asset that can be expanded on a modular basis, leveraging existing permits and infrastructure," said Mell. "As the transition continues toward green energy solutions and electrification, the supply of material in need of recycling will increase."

Once recovered utilizing proprietary hydrometallurgical technology that targets all the resaleable critical minerals present in the black mass, the products can be further upgraded to battery grade materials and potentially reused by manufacturers such as gigafactories to produce batteries or other products.

To date, Electra has processed 40 metric tons of black mass material in a plant-scale setting, the first of its kind in North America.

Recovery rates for all targeted metals – lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite, and manganese – have improved since the beginning of the trial in December 2022.

Approximately 28 metric tons of nickel-cobalt MHP have already been shipped to customers over this time.

To elevate the ESG credentials of the battery materials produced at the Ontario plant, reagent requirements have been reduced and in some cases alternative, less costly reagents were used for improved overall metal recovery. Further, some of the reagent substitutions have reduced overall impurities within the process.

The reduction in reagent use and substitution of certain reagents are expected to lower operating expenses, thereby improving the economics of continuous recycling operations.

"Electra's technical team successfully operated the first refinery in North America to process black mass on a plant scale, providing important insights on what will be required to operate a black mass plant and support our downstream cell manufacturing clients," finished Mell.