In broad strokes, what were the company's beginnings and in which context did you become the CEO of RecycLiCo?
RecycLiCo has a long history going back to mining exploration and process development. Previously named American Manganese, the company patented the process for extracting manganese from a low-grade deposit in Arizona. The project was put on the shelf in 2012, as there was not a profitable payback for this project. It was not until 2016 that the parallels between extracting manganese and the process of obtaining the cathode components of a lithium-ion battery became evident. We started the concept work in the R&D lab, where we obtained full leach of the materials. We then pivoted to bench scale work, pilot plant work, demonstration plant work, and, finally, signing a joint venture on our first commercial plant.
Being a mining engineer at heart, I see battery recycling as a kind of urban mining. Given my excitement for the electrified future that unfolds in front of us, and the physical proximity to RecycLiCo, I reached out to express my passion about their work, and, after years working as a consultant and CTO, I ended up becoming the CEO in September 2022.
Why is recycling batteries important for the planet and for the future green economy that we are trying to build?
The transition to the electrification of all aspects of life is inevitable, but if we want to switch to a green economy, we cannot be dependent on mining for the next hundreds of years. In the coming decades we will reach an inflection point where a majority of our electrified goods will come from recycled materials. In terms of sustainability, our processes have been analyzed by Minviro, a third-party lifecycle assessment consultancy company, and the results showed a 62% reduction in CO2 emissions as compared to other hydrometallurgical recycling companies.
What is special about the RecycLiCo recycling technology and how does it make your company different from competitors?
Battery recycling implies physical processes like crushing the battery, and doing magnetic separation to split up the component materials to, ultimately, obtain the black mass that contains concentrate materials like lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese, and carbon. The next step is using chemistry to convert that mass into a usable product. The latter is where RecycLiCo process has been focused. Unlike other recycling companies, we do not look to extract the individual components only to be recombined again to make cathode material. Instead, we directly produce the battery grade material, thus enhancing the efficiency of the process, in the least number of steps. The conventional recycling methods usually produce a lot of sodium sulphate, a byproduct that can become very problematic. This is something that we avoid in our recycling processes. As a last step, we employ a closed loop model, where we do not have wastewater discharge, and the few chemicals that are used are regenerated at a point in our process that cycles back.
Could you tell us more about the joint venture with Zenith Chemical? Why do you see it as an important step for the journey of RecycLiCo?
This joint venture helps us build our very first commercial plant in Taiwan and it acts as the commercial validation of our process, opening up new avenues for feedstock and offtake agreements. Considering that part of our business model is not to build a standalone recycling facility, but to integrate the process with partners that have a footing in the market, Zenith is the ideal match. They produce nickel sulphate for the battery industry, and have an existing network of customers in the battery supply chain.
The plan for the future is to bring our technology to multiple regions across the world and integrate it with strategic players, whether they are battery manufacturers, EV manufacturers, or chemical producers.
With Zenith, we have a 2,000-ton-per-year commercial plant, but we can also scale up future commercial plants in markets with more feedstock to produce 20,000 tons per year, for example.
What advice do you have for other players that would like to establish a business in the recycling sector?
I encourage curiosity, and digging deeper into things, because there is so much nuance in the space of battery recycling that there are opportunities for three to four businesses to operate just within the supply chain. We see many companies talking about green solutions but, at the end of the day, the net positive impact is the most important metric that should be studied and taken into consideration.
