Automotive News Canada - March 2022 - 18

18
* MARCH 2022
BATTERIES VALUABLE,
EVEN WHEN SPENT
Li-Cycle Holdings has
two plants that shred
recyclable batteries,
and it plans to add
four more.
SUPPLIED PHOTOS
The mother lode of
sustainable EV supply
chain? Recycling
By DAVID KENNEDY
T ORONTO BUREAU CHIEF
AS THE ELECTRIC-VEHICLE MARKET
expands, so grows a North American battery-recycling
industry. And Canadian
companies are looking to play a lead role
in the goal to bring the EV supply chain
closer to home while cleaning up the battery
business.
" There's no difference between the
materials we produce and what the
mining industry produces, " said Tim
Johnson, co-founder and chairman of
Toronto-based Li-Cycle Holdings Corp.
" It's just really about how much can you
actually recover practically from that
battery at the end of its life? "
EV batteries today rely on materials
from a global network of mining projects
processed along a lengthy supply chain
anchored in China, Japan and South
Korea. It typically takes tens of thousands
of kilometres of driving before an
EV makes up the carbon cost of mining
and battery manufacturing to overtake
traditional gasoline or diesel vehicles on
overall emissions, according to analysis
by researcher BloombergNEF.
Li-Cycle is among North
America's recycling leaders in
processing capacity. It has two
plants - in Kingston, Ont., and
New York state - each capable of
breaking down 5,000 tonnes per
year of end-of-life lithium-ion batteries
of all types and sizes. Its
pipeline of projects under development
will add a further 45,000
tonnes of processing capacity per
year at three U.S. plants and one
in Norway.
MINE, THEN RECYCLE
A steep ramp-up in mining
over the next decade will be
critical to getting enough battery
materials into circulation,
Johnson said, but once that happens,
the industry must turn to
recycling to operate sustainably.
By 2030, Li-Cycle estimates new EV
batteries will contain between 10 and 20
per cent recycled materials. Eventually,
that figure could reach as high as 95 per
cent, though that will require efficient
recycling and far more end-of-life batteries
than are currently available.
Johnson:
The battery
industry needs
jump-start
from mining
but requires
recycled
material to
operate over
the long haul.
SUPPLIED PHOTO
With majority adoption of EVs still
years away - the Canadian government
is targeting 2035 for all light-duty vehicle
sales to be zero-emissions,
for instance - end-of-life battery
material is expected to remain in
short supply through the 2030s.
The limited feedstock has
made location a key early consideration
for recyclers.
Nevada-based Redwood
Materials, launched by Tesla
Inc. co-founder JB Straubel in
2017, built its first battery- recycling
facility about 50 kilometres
from Tesla's Gigafactory 1. It is
also next door to California, the
United States' largest EV market.
As it awaits the quantities of
end-of-life batteries from EVs
to increase, waste from the battery-manufacturing
process as
well as batteries from commercial
and consumer electronics
are key sources of material, said
Alexis Georgeson, Redwood's vice-president
of communications and government
relations.
Across several facilities in northern
Nevada, Redwood has the capacity to process
about 20,000 tonnes of battery material
per year. Expansions aim to triple
that capacity in the near term.
LOCALIZING A GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN
Unlike Li-Cycle, which intends to supply
battery cathode and anode producers
with recycled materials, Redwood plans
on producing those key components of
new battery cells itself.
The recycling process breaks down batteries to isolate a
mix of materials known as black mass, made up of graphite,
nickel, lithium, cobalt and manganese.
" Our entire
vision is to
really create a
truly circular
supply chain
here [in North
America],
localize this
entire kind of
convoluted,
50,000-plusmile
supply
chain of battery
materials, " Georgeson said.
Localizing and integrating the different
steps will help drive down cathode
and anode costs, which today account
for about 65 per cent of battery-cell price
tags, she said.
Having struck partnerships with
firms such as Panasonic, Envision
AESC and Ford Motor Co., Redwood is
concurrently scaling up its recycling
capacity and mapping out plans for a
cathode manufacturing plant expected
to open in 2025.
Li-Cycle has put together similar
partnerships. Among other deals, it
signed a recycling agreement last year
with Ultium Cells, the General Motors
and LG Energy Solution joint venture.
In January, Li-Cycle detailed plans
to co-locate a recycling facility with a
15,000-tonne-per-year capacity at GM's
RECYCLING FACTS
* Li-Cycle's shredding process separates
batteries into three parts: plastics,
metals and a valuable mix of
battery materials known as black
mass.
* From these shredding sites it calls
" spokes, " Li-Cycle plans to ship
the soil-like black mass, consisting
of shredded graphite, nickel, lithium,
cobalt and manganese, to its
" hub " in Rochester, N.Y. That plant,
scheduled to come online in 2023,
will use a metal extraction technique
known as hydrometallurgy to isolate
and ready the battery materials for
reuse in new batteries.
* EV batteries can be used in " second-life "
applications, such as stationary
energy storage, after they no
longer hold enough charge to be of
use on the road.
* Demand for lithium, graphite, cobalt
and nickel is expected to skyrocket
between 500 and 1,000 per cent
as EV adoption accelerates through
the late 2020s, said Moe Kabbara,
senior consultant with Dunsky Energy
Consulting in Montreal.
Automotive News Canada - March 2022

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